A Guide to Smart Social Media Use for Students

Up until now, the likelihood is you’ve only used social media to share posts with friends and follow accounts you find interesting. After you graduate, though, social media may play a role in your career. Prospective employees or the admissions team at grad schools may check your profiles to decide whether they want to hire you for a job or accept you on a program. Rather than waiting until later to clean up your social media presence, start now to make more of a difference.

1. Update Your Basic Information

Make sure your current profiles reflect what you’re doing now. Update your location, add your university and the program you’re studying, and list any work or volunteering experience you’ve gained. In addition, do a privacy check to ensure only people you know can see more than just your basic information.

2. Follow Interesting People

Stop following any accounts that post tasteless content, as this could reflect poorly on you. Instead, find figures in the field you want to enter and related accounts to demonstrate your interests.

3. Remove Old Posts

Look through the posts you made in the past and remove any that could give a bad impression of you. Think about how posts may look to someone who doesn’t know you, especially when out of context. Whereas you can set posts to private, it’s better if the content doesn’t exist on social media (at least as far as is possible on the internet).

4. Add New Content

Get into the habit of posting content regularly that expresses your ambitions and who you are in a positive light. As well as the projects you’re working on at university, you could talk about other achievements, extracurriculars, internships, and your part-time job. You could also start discussions to share your opinions on important topics. All these ideas can be interesting to the people who follow you, while improving your personal branding.

5. Delete Accounts You No Longer Use

Make sure you do the above to all your profiles, including those you made years ago, as they could come up in search results if someone is looking for you. If you’re unsure about whether you have any forgotten profiles, do a Google search for your name to check what appears and delete any accounts you no longer want.

6. Stick with Your Strategy

Maintaining a great social media presence is a long-term strategy. Continue being careful about what you post going forward and finding ways to improve your profiles.

Another way to be more prepared for life after your degree is to learn to be independent. Living on campus is restrictive and, in many ways, it’s nothing like the real world, but you can start becoming self-sufficient by moving into your own apartment. You can find UWaterloo off-campus housing at Preston House and Bridgeport House. You’ll still be a short walk from campus, but you’ll have your own bedroom and en suite bathroom in an apartment with a spacious living room and fully-equipped kitchen. Book a tour to see the property of your choice.