The days of using social media solely for sharing photos, tweeting quotes, or sending friend requests to old friends and colleagues are long gone. Over the past few years, social media has evolved beyond personal use and has penetrated into professional settings across every sector, including education.
For whichever goal you have—expanding your network, finding employment, or learning new skills, it is absolutely essential to have an online presence. Whether you want to find resources for your classroom or stay on top of educational news and trends, social media has become a go-to place for a lot of things!
You can even incorporate technology into your classroom using social media. For example, use Youtube Videos to teach or create a Facebook Group for your class to promote extra-curricular activities. Being well-versed in social media allows you to understand your students better and turn into a teacher that understands their language and their generation.
In this blog, we explore different social media channels teachers can use to benefit their careers and find ideas, inspiration, and information. Let’s get started.
If you still believe that Facebook is only about liking photos, sending friend requests, posting birthday wishes, and playing games—you’re about to be surprised!
Apart from building a personal profile, Facebook offers a Groups Feature—fostering online communities and collaboration. You can become involved in Facebook groups that bring educators together and become a valuable contributor in them while building your reputation. You can share pictures, videos, and links just as you do with your Facebook account, but all within the group. Groups also allow you to message all group members, helping you to build and expand your professional network. One such example of a Facebook Group is “Growth-Oriented Educators”: a global community of passionate educators who strive to grow together.
You can find and join more such groups and use Facebook to your maximum benefit.
Another interesting feature of Facebook is Facebook Events. You can conduct your own event and invite people or attend virtual global events relevant to you. When you participate and attend events, you position yourself as a thought leader in education, which aids your career advancement and networking.
So teachers, how about we put off Farmville and Candy Crush for a while and see what Facebook Events and Groups can offer instead?
YouTube is designed just like any other social media platform, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. When you follow the relevant people and their channels on the site, you'll get the most value out of it. You can also look into features as:
YouTube has a number of communities focused on teachers and teaching skills. These communities post updates, create polls, share GIFs, and interact with subscribers and visitors on a regular basis. By becoming a member of a community, you get to connect with fellow members and network without any surcharge.
Youtube Shorts is a short-form video-sharing platform offered by YouTube with a watch time of 60 seconds or less. If you don’t have the time to sit for long videos, you can simply watch YouTube Shorts & learn quite a lot in a very short span of time. As you watch more YouTube shorts, it will allow the platform to have a better understanding of the types of videos and channels you enjoy and will begin to automatically send you recommendations accordingly. Here’s what an interesting and informative Youtube Shorts video looks like:
YouTube is a treasure trove of educational content that can transform your career for the better. You can get a lot of informative videos on a wide range of academic subjects and use them towards your classrooms and career management. You can even make a side income as a Teacher-Creator and upload educational videos and create playlists around them. Talking about playlists, you simply cannot miss this — “Inspiring Educators”, wherein the host talks to experienced teachers from across the globe.
Want to learn how you can use Instagram for career growth? Here are a couple of things to watch out for:
Instagram Live is a feature that lets users live stream video to their Instagram followers in real-time. Over the past year, the feature has gained massive popularity with educators using it more often than not to interact with their audience in real-time, and give them a raw behind-the-scenes peek of their lives!
You can join such LIVE sessions, ask questions during the stream, and facilitate a positive community experience. While we are talking about live sessions, here’s a LIVE session happening soon! Save the date on your calendar today!
Similar to YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels is a short video-form content feature offered by the platform. Reels has massively grown over the past year, with more and more users sharing their content using the feature. Again, with Reels, you can learn a lot in a short amount of time and even can have fun watching these 1 minute short videos. One such example would be
Pro-tip: Comment on, like, and share the content of such accounts on a regular basis. It will not only allow you to position yourself in such circles and communities but will enable positive, enriching communication experiences with people beyond your school district and geography.
We bet you all know about LinkedIn and how you can find job opportunities using the platform. But here’s what you might now know:
Newsletters on LinkedIn are a set of regularly published articles on LinkedIn, typically about a specific topic. You can subscribe to a newsletter to receive notifications whenever the author publishes a new edition of the newsletter. A perfect example of this would be "Inspiring Educators"—a teacher-focused newsletter for weekly tips, tutorials, news and much more!
Another great feature of LinkedIn is the recommendation feature. You can give recommendations to people you can vouch for, and vice versa. Start by connecting with your seniors and peers to get recommendations from them. Pro-tip: Build a great reputation on LinkedIn by building connections with people in the education industry at all levels. Following people in your industry will provide you with first-hand industry updates and insights.
Heck yes! Social media is great for career management and professional networking, but here is a word of caution: keeping up and consuming content regularly on various platforms can be exhausting and addictive. A moderation of everything always benefits in the long run. Knowing your place and your purpose can certainly help you decide the amount of time to devote to social media and its consumption.
As you can see, following relevant people and pages on social media can be used for career growth and professional development. Why don't you take a step in this direction and follow us right away:
