How do you create a professional online presence as a digital learning practitioner?

1 Define your goals and audience

Before you start creating your online presence, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. Do you want to find a new job, attract new clients, network with other professionals, or share your insights and ideas? Depending on your goals, you will need to tailor your online presence to appeal to your target audience. For example, if you want to find a new job, you will need to highlight your relevant skills, experience, and portfolio. If you want to attract new clients, you will need to showcase your value proposition, testimonials, and case studies. If you want to network with other professionals, you will need to demonstrate your expertise, credibility, and personality.

2 Choose your platforms and tools

Once you have defined your goals and audience, you need to choose the platforms and tools that suit your needs and preferences. There are many options available for creating a professional online presence, such as websites, blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, webinars, e-books, newsletters, and more. You don't have to use all of them, but you should select the ones that align with your goals, audience, and content. For example, if you want to showcase your digital learning projects, you might want to create a website or a blog with a portfolio section. If you want to share your insights and ideas, you might want to use social media, podcasts, videos, or webinars. If you want to provide valuable resources and tips, you might want to create e-books, newsletters, or courses.

3 Create and share valuable content

Creating and sharing content is an essential part of having a professional online presence. Your content should be relevant, useful, engaging, and authentic, reflecting your skills, knowledge, values, and personality. It should also address the needs, interests, and challenges of your audience. To ensure your content is valuable, you should research your audience and their pain points, goals, and preferences. Additionally, plan a content strategy and calendar that you can stick to consistently. Use different formats and media to cater to different learning styles and preferences. Utilize clear language that is easy to understand; avoid jargon and acronyms. Add visuals, audio, interactive elements to make your content more engaging. Provide actionable tips, examples, and resources that your audience can apply immediately. Finally, encourage feedback from your audience and respond to them promptly and politely.

4 Optimize your online presence for SEO and accessibility

Creating and sharing valuable content is essential, however, it is not enough if no one can find it or access it. To ensure a wider and more diverse audience, you need to optimize your online presence for SEO and accessibility. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of improving your online presence to rank higher on search engines like Google or Bing. Accessibility refers to the design and development of your online presence to make it usable and inclusive for people with different abilities and needs. You should use keywords and phrases that your audience is likely to search for, as well as meta tags, alt text, captions, and transcripts to describe your content and media. Additionally, you need to structure your content with headings, subheadings, lists, and paragraphs. Furthermore, use clear and descriptive links and buttons that indicate where they lead and what they do. Make sure to also use contrast, color, font size, and spacing to make your content and design legible. Finally, test your online presence on different devices, browsers, and screen sizes to fix any errors or issues.

5 Connect and engage with your online community

The final step to create a professional online presence is to connect and engage with your online community. This includes your audience, peers, mentors, influencers, and collaborators in the digital learning field. Connecting and engaging with them can build trust, credibility, and rapport, as well as provide the opportunity to learn from them and exchange ideas and feedback. To do so, you should follow some tips such as following, liking, commenting, sharing, and mentioning other digital learning practitioners who inspire you or share similar interests. Additionally, joining and participating in online groups, forums, chats, events or challenges related to digital learning topics or niches can be beneficial. Creating and joining conversations, discussions, debates or polls on digital learning issues or trends is also a great way to engage with your online community. Asking for and offering help, advice, recommendations or referrals to other digital learning practitioners can also be beneficial. Finally, collaborating or partnering with other digital learning practitioners on projects, initiatives or campaigns can be a great way to engage with your online community.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?