A study by US company Arketi Group has found 92 per cent of journalists writing for B2B publications use LinkedIn, 85 per cent of journalists are on Facebook, 84 per cent use Twitter.
Out of the journalists surveyed, 58 per cent have a YouTube account, 49 per cent have a blog, 28 per cent use Flickr, 20 per cent use Digg, 18 per cent have a MySpace account, 15 per cent use Delicious and 14 per cent use Foursquare, according to this report.
Meanwhile, LinkedIn has published advice on its blog for freelancers and those who juggle journalism careers with other jobs.
For example, a freelance or part-time journalist may also be a yoga tutor and have to decide whether or not to include details of both careers in a LinkedIn profile.
Your first decision is whether you want to feature both careers on your LinkedIn profile. If you think it might be puzzling or even damaging to one of your jobs to feature both on your profile, then simply leave off your other employment. There is no rule that you have to show everything you do on LinkedIn.
If, on the other hand, you want to promote both of your jobs or careers, here are two ways to do that effectively:
- Embrace the slash mark: Marci Alboher, author of One Person/Multiple Careers, coined the term “slash careerist” or “slasher” to refer to individuals who can’t answer “what do you do?” with a single word or phrase. If you’re perfectly comfortable being a tech salesperson/photographer or a lawyer/SAT tutor, then proudly display this as your LinkedIn headline.
You’ll also want to list both of these positions as your current employment in your profile. The way to include more than one job as current is to put the end dates of both jobs as “present”. Note that whichever role began more recently will be displayed first.
- If, instead, you want to highlight one of your jobs more prominently (e.g., because you’re hoping to land a new job in that field or believe you’ll have more networking opportunities related to that role), then I recommend writing a profile headline featuring that role exclusively and listing it as your only current position.
The LinkedIn blog post aso has advice from freelancers who are seeking a full-time position.
Here is a Journalism.co.uk podcast on how journalists can best use LinkedIn
