Do you think your career story doesn’t lend itself to Instagram?
Do you believe your days full of meetings and screens aren’t visually compelling?
After all, Instagram is about high-quality photos and the overall vibe, say Brian Peters and Hailley Griffis in one of my favorite podcasts, The Science of Social Media.
The aesthetic bar is high. One strategy Brian and Hailley recommend is doing research to find top accounts and see what’s working for others.
Here’s a great way to fast track the research on people who are using Instagram well to tell their career stories: check out the Instagram for the Sparkset App.
Here you can see all kinds of work in a visual way. Lawyers, doctors, communicators, marketers, editors, social media analysts, cinematographers, scientists and many more are featured in the site’s posts.
Beyond that, you can check out the 1,700+ accounts that Sparkset App is following for more great examples.
Together, they show that your workspace, your presentations, your travels, and your interactions with people, data and things – plus so much more – are all ways to tell your professional story in a visual way.
Be sure, of course, to only post what can be shared in public. Always follow your employer’s social media guidelines, both the letter and the spirit. (Opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
How did I find Sparkset?
In doing research about how people are using social media to build their careers, I invited people in my network to complete a survey and share it with their networks.
As a serendipitous outcome, Tom Henkenius, a storytelling expert, introduced me to a fellow USC alum in his network. Her name is Tiffany Frake, a senior account director serving the auto industry.
Tiffany’s three young sons were the inspiration for her to launch an app called Sparkset. Fascinated by how people choose their career paths – or mostly don’t consciously choose them – she wanted to help her children and others make better decisions.
Enter Sparkset.
As Tiffany explains, “It’s a visual platform for current and future generations to truly explore careers and job shadow professionals in a virtual way.”
Here you can:
- Job shadow contacts and professionals from around the world
- Explore and follow professionals in different industries
- Visually capture your professional responsibilities and accomplishments
- Discover new careers and companies.
Tiffany has a big vision. “The hope is that the platform can enable people to make conscious career choices,” she says, “and not just follow the path of least resistance.”
This is especially important as people make decisions about their first jobs, their next career steps, and their career transitions as their interests and the world change at an ever-increasing pace.
A 2017 report by the Institute for the Future estimates that 85% of the jobs people will do in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet. More than ever, we’re all lifelong learners. And we can share what we’re learning as one way of cultivating our personal brand.
When Tiffany embarked on this journey, she did research about current gaps in social media for developing a career and making valuable connections.
She asked two questions. The first: can people tell their professional stories through images? The second: who is doing this well?
She has captured her ongoing learnings in both her app and her Instagram. In each you can see all kinds of day-to-day work in a visual way.
Who else is sharing their career story well on Instagram? A few of my favorites …
TeNita Ballard, a diversity and inclusion champion
Chris Adlam, a top-producing realtor
Jessica Sterling, an LA event and portrait photographer
Young Guru, a hip-hop sound engineer and renaissance thinker
Willow Bay, dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
Jaime Lee, president of the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors
This brings up several more questions for me …
- How are people coming up with compelling content?
- How are they curating content from others?
- How are they using video?
- How are they thinking about the personal and professional blend?
These and many more will be the subjects of future posts.
In the meantime, whose professional stories are you following on Instagram?
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