Social media presence is a high priority among students and most of them don’t realize that their social media activity may be detrimental to their digital foot print. The “Internet is Forever” and each of us is leaving a permanent trail of activity; good or bad. Building a positive digital image via a personal website is the need of the hour.
Here are 10 reasons for students to build a personal website that can work effectively towards building them a positive digital footprint.
- It’s a central hub of information
Your personal website is the central hub of all the information you wish to share with the world. It could be related to your activities, projects, internships, travel, events, awards, recommendations or even a bucket list of things you want to do. From within this central hub of information, you have the ability to share specific content with specific people. - Complete control over your content
Unlike on social media, you have complete control over your content, textual or visual, on your personal website. Your content reflects your thoughts and ideas, without being commented upon or written about by others as on social media. You control what people see and read to understand your perspective and personality. You also have much more control over the security of your content. - Helps build the right perception
Since you control all the content on your personal website, you also get to control the perception people have of you. It’s up to you to project yourself in the spirit you wish to be perceived, and not depend on your social media pages to do the job. Your social media profiles may not do justice to the real you. Brands spend billions on how they are perceived; you need to spend a little time putting together authentic content on yourself. - Showcase of your achievements through a portfolio
As a student, there are endless activities to be involved in during your academic years, however, you have very little digital documentation to show for it. Sports, drama, debates, conferences, exchange programs, internship projects etc. form an integral part of your school life, and you should have these achievements documented in one place, ready to showcase when required. - Serves as a detailed visual resume
We all know that a simple textual resume doesn’t cut it any longer. Share only your resume, and chances are it will drown among hundreds of others. Share a well-made personal website instead and you will generate interest in your talents and skills because you would have showcased them supported by visuals like photos, videos and documents. - Can be shared easily for any opportunity
Opportunities pop up all the time and it’s our level of preparedness that allows us to grab them. Imagine the next time your name is under consideration for an exchange program, a leadership program, debating or sports opportunity. Sharing your personal website URL at this point allows you to be considered seriously for the opportunity at hand and improves your chances considerably. - Show up well when Googled
If you have your own website and have also taken the additional step to register your own domain name, chances are you’re serving the right content when your name is googled. In the absence of a personal website, the pages that show up when your name is searched are profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc, which may be leading the viewer to irrelevant information about you. - Repository for all your certificates and files
If you’re building your website using a platform such as OnPowerWeb, you can easily scan and upload all your documents and certificates within relevant categories. This means you can share your documents easily online without having to physically show them or digitally share them with specific email IDs over G drive or similar platforms. - Helps set the tone for an interview or interaction
If people who are going to interact with you in the near future could see your website before they met you, they would have a fairly good idea of who they’re meeting beforehand. With a personal website, you’re essentially setting the tone for your initial interaction with the people who have viewed your website. - Controls access to your social media pages
Not all social media pages do justice to the real you; we all understand that social media is more casual, fun and may build an incorrect perception of our true selves. A personal website lets you firstly present the more formal you, and secondly, you can choose to link to your social media pages or not. If you think you’re ok with people checking you out on social media, by all means link to your pages.
Putting together a personal achievements website wasn’t the easiest of things to do a few years back, but now platforms like OnPowerWeb have made it super easy for students and professionals to build personal websites. Here’s a sample student website that gives a fairly good overview of how a student can put together something that looks good and can be easily maintained.
