Creating Content on Social Media

My friend Joe Gannon has created an entire crash course, free on YouTube to help you with some of the basics of LinkedIn, best leave it to experts 😉

LINKEDIN CRASH COURSE - Everything you need to create content!

Watch my LinkedIn Crash Course to learn how to optimise your profile for success, how to outline a content strategy and how to build a system for high-volume...

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0fL8O7kNtZ5kKBb6I9oXJpXpW734fKlK

Overall, I can’t stress enough how important LinkedIn is. Make it a part of your social apps, move it over to the home screen and turn on notifications. LinkedIn isn’t just the place to post your achievements, career updates and networ, it is also the best stepping stone for many job opportunities. Remember, it’s not enough to create a profile and leave it at that. You need to be regularly updating and optimising your page so that you have maximum exposure.

Similarly, if you have your own business or blog, tell people about it on LinkedIn. Employers are very much interested in the things you do outside of designing buildings so that they can understand what kinds of hobbies you have, identify common talking points, and see how the skills you have in other areas can get transferred over.

Here are some ideas on what kind of content to engage with or post about:

Achievements in university, nominations, awards, competitions, involvement with societies

Extra-curriculars and hobbies where you have learnt vital skills

Overcoming a hurdle with work

Learning a new skill, starting a new hobby

Appreciation for something in the industry

Celebrating other people’s achievements, supporting content creators and small projects

Speaking out about something like failure, imposter syndrome, mental health

Experiements and iterations of your work

Recent industry news, responses and personal opinions

Instagram

So after battling with what to do with my 'architecture' account, whether to turn it into a digital diary, a collection of random thoughts or a portfolio, I finally decided to give it a go and use it to showcase my work. As you can see, I went with a very simple, minimal look to really let the images speak for themselves.

I've also generally stuck with a rule of 3 where I showcase a drawing or a model in 3 images. This page includes highlights from my undergraduate work especially the developmental drawings and models because those are really useful to show.

I really enjoy Karina's feed. You might notice that although there isn't really a structure or template as such but the colour palette and quality of work is similar.

Her collection of drawings are so amazing and I really love that in the carousel posts, she actually zooms further into the drawings so you can see the details up close.

We tend to draw so many huge images and on-screen they look fabulous, but on an Instagram feed, everything almost gets miniaturised. It's something that many of us don't realise.

The great thing about being designers is that we are practically made for a platform like Instagram. You'd be surprised how much you can play with the structure of the feed and curate it to your creativity.

Here, Bareera has taken a key image and blown it up to cover the span of 6 posts. Notice how there is still ample breathing space around the posts too. You don't have to fill every corner of every post, and sometimes the grid lines in between can actually work to your advantage.

So experiment with it!

Sometimes it's difficult to decide what to post or what it should look like which is why I like to batch all my content in one go and then play around with the composition, order and colour palette. Some of these things can take some trial and error and honestly, the best source of inspiration is through other accounts.

Now that you've begun to work on your digital portfolio, part of this can be to utilise social media and start building your online presence.

If you've already got stuff on your Instagram page and don't really want to ruin the current aesthetic, that's okay! I'd suggest you still try out this exercise or better yet, do some for LinkedIn instead. Those might be less visual because you can experiment with text posts and articles but visuals are equally impactful.

Create Your Content

Write a list of 12 different ideas for posts (portfolio work, techniques and skills you've learnt, and even videos or other forms of media)

Set yourself an end target date or a re-occurring time block to post the content

Gather your images, drafts and outlines (including captions) into your software of choice.

Design and experiment with your posts - share these with each other

Set reminders to post these at times that suit you

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