Are you an academic, undergraduate, or graduate student wondering how to build community online so that you can get your ideas out there? Come to three workshops by Penn Libraries Weigle Information Commons social media intern Jaime Estrada to discover the basic skills you need to start building an online community. Jaime has worked in academic publishing at both the University of Pennsylvania Press and now Princeton University Press for nearly five years. In her spare time, she writes and edits for blogs on social media, fashion, and LGBTQ social issues. When she was an undergraduate student in English at Smith College, she started and managed the first social media accounts for the Smith College Libraries. For the past two years, Jaime has taught social media workshops and one-on-one social media branding sessions to program directors, professors, Penn Medicine physicians, graduate students, undergraduate students, and special visitors at the Penn Libraries.

Workshop description:

Have you ever heard the phrase “Google me”? Does it strike you as a millennial concept? It’s not. As an academic or student at a research 1 school, if you’re not online, you don’t exist. Learn how to take control of metadata, tagging, and your public LinkedIn profile / personal website to leverage your digital footprint, increase your visibility, and establish social clout.

By the end of this workshop, you should be able to:

1) Identify how and why using LinkedIn and/or a personal website to increase your digital footprint is beneficial for job hunting, networking, and visibility.

2) Use basic professional social media tools and search terminology to track your views and understand your visibility.

3) Have a basic sense of what personal branding options are available to you and how to use them to begin to brand across platforms (i.e. Square Space, WordPress, WIX, LinkedIn, etc.

4) Identify on-campus and library resources that can help you build more digital literacy around social media professionalization.

Digital Media Learning Objective: Using digital tools to edit, remix, and create media.

Digital Pedagogy Learning Objective: Continued professional development through campus and online networks.

Related workshops:

• Get Google to Notice Your Website, Wednesday, April 5th, 2:30-4pm: When you get your personal website up and running, you need to help people find it.  Join WIC graduate intern Chava Spivak-Birndorf earlier in the week for an introduction to search engine optimization, then apply your new knowledge on the 8th when we explore personal websites.

• Web Development for Personal Websites and Blogs, Tuesday, April 11th, 3pm-4:30pm: Get help with the technical side of getting your website online, hooking up your domain, and customizing the look with simple HTML and CSS.

• Social Media Necessities, Part II: Facebook and Instagram, Saturday, April 15th, 2:30-4pm: Use your social media accounts for more than just socializing!  Find out about how to use your personal Facebook and Instagram accounts to help you build your personal or professional brand.  This is the second workshop in the Digital Literacies - Social Media series.

• Social Media Necessities, Part III: Twitter Networks, Saturday, April 22nd, 2:30-4pm: Twitter can be a powerful platform for keeping up with scholarship, news, and business.  Learn to get over social media burnout, tailor your feed, create Twitter lists, and use hashtags to your advantage.  This is the final workshop in the Digital Literacies - Social Media series.