6 social networks to promote your personal brand and find business contacts

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Social media can ruin a career (hello, a photo in underwear against a carpet), or it can improve if you manage your profiles correctly and be able to find the right people.

In this article, I have collected the sites with the largest concentration of useful business contacts. I deliberately did not include LinkedIn on the list: firstly, this network is blocked in Russia, and secondly, it needs no introduction.

1. Viadeo

Audience: 59,000,000 registered users.

Geography: North and South America, Europe, India, China.

Audience composition: there is no data.

Possibilities:

• Specialists, companies, HR managers can register. Registration is free and available to all users.
• Get a profile with a beautiful visualization in the form of a timeline.

• Exchange private messages, create public posts.
• Subscribe to companies and people.
• Receive analytics by profile: how many people per day are watching who.
• See announcements about courses, educational programs, conferences, forums.
• Search for vacancies.
• Connect paid subscriptions: "Premium" - for 8, 95 euros, "Freelance" - for 19, 90 euros. A premium subscription allows you to view all profile visitors, send messages to any user and raise your profile in the search. Freelance rate allows you to promote your services and contact clients.
• Use apps for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry.

Who benefits from:

• Those who studied French or Chinese.
• Companies and HR professionals looking for employees abroad.
• Professionals who want to work abroad, especially in France and China.
• Freelance tariff helps users who want to provide services to foreign companies.

Viadeo →

2. "Professionals.ru"

Audience: 6 641 829 specialists, 624 985 companies. But the statistics may be inaccurate: one of the first pages in Google for the query “Professionals.ru” is called “Dead Souls of the Social Network“Professionals.ru””.

Geography: there is no data. But the site has only a Russian-language version, so I assume that the bulk of its users live in Russia.

Audience composition: professionals from 166 industries, which of them prevails is unknown. But the portal itself indicates what visitors use the resource for:

• 23% - gaining knowledge and self-study;
• 17% - development of connections;
• 16% - job search;
• 14% - business communication;
• 13% - promotion, customer search.

Possibilities:

• Specialists and companies can register. Registration is free and available to all users.
• Exchange private messages.
• Reach out to 46,032 communities where you can find answers to your work questions.
• Ask a question in the "Question - Answer" section.
• Maintain personal blogs in the user's profile.
• Search for vacancies and import them from hh.ru. Be careful with importing contacts: users complain that adding contacts results in bulk email invitations to the network. Perhaps this bug has been fixed, but I'm afraid to check it.
• Use commercial services: place an ad, buy courses. There are premium services for job seekers, businesses, and recruiters.

Who benefits from:

• For specialists of different profiles: the platform has no restrictions on professions.
• For those who want to keep a business blog. This feature has been added to the profile, and the community is quite active.

"Professionals.ru" →

3. XING

Audience: 5,230,000 registered users.

Geography: mainly Germany, Austria, Switzerland.

Audience composition: 23% - representatives of the service sector, 13% - industry, 9% - media, 7% each account for IT, consulting, trade.

Possibilities:

• Specialists and companies can register. Registration is free and available to all users.
• Subscribe to news, companies, people, events.
• Exchange private messages, create public posts.
• Search for jobs with personalized recommendations.

• Take advantage of paid features. A premium subscription allows you to see who has viewed your account, send messages to a user who is not from your contact list, and improve your search.
• Use Android, iOS and Windows Phone apps.

Who benefits from:

Those who know German and are looking for work in Germany, Austria, Switzerland

XING →

4. E-xecutive.ru

Audience: 310,000 registered users.

Geography: 79% of users are from Russia, 21% are from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Germany.

Audience composition: top and middle managers.

Possibilities:

• Specialists can register. Registration is free and available to all users, but each application is moderated. When you register, you subscribe to three mailing lists. Without consent, you will not be registered for the newsletter. To register a company, publish a vacancy or information about an event, you need to contact representatives of E-executive.ru.
• Get a rated profile.
• Exchange private messages, create public posts.
• Have access to good content from the community: interviews, cases, articles.
• Search for vacancies.
• Use a calendar of business events.
• Ask an expert a question in the "Questions and Answers" section.
• Use commercial services such as advertisements.

Who benefits from:

• Managers.
• For those who are ready to share their experience with the community: in the profile, you can add your articles and book reviews.
• Professionals looking for management vacancies.

E-xecutive.ru →

5. "My circle"

Audience: 66 362 specialists, 30 912 companies.

Geography: 84% of users are from Russia, 5% are from Ukraine, 5% are from Belarus.

Audience composition: more than 50% of users work in the industries "IT, Internet, Telecom", "Marketing, Advertising, PR", "Education, Science" and "Finance, Banks, Investments".

Possibilities:

• Specialists and employers can register. Registration is free and available to all users.
• Get a profile to which you can add reference letters.
• Exchange private messages.
• Search for vacancies.
• Use commercial services for employers (placement and promotion of vacancies, assistance in the selection of employees, access to the resume database).

Who benefits from:

• Specialists whose activities are related to the IT industry.
• For those who want to work in IT. Most vacancies are for developers: about 300 - for back-end-developers, 180 - for front-end-developers, 150 - for software developers.
• Companies and recruiters looking for specialists in the IT industry.

"My circle" →

6. MYCO

Audience: no data on specialists and companies. More than 4,000 professional events.

Geography: 29% - Ukraine, 19% - Russia, 15% - USA, 37% - other countries (Belarus, Germany, India, Canada, Turkey).

Composition: specialists from 29 industries and 56 sectors who are interested in professional events. More accurate data are not available.

Possibilities:

Specialists, companies and individual events can register: conferences, exhibitions, forums, congresses. Registration is free and available to all users. Profiles are structured by location. Most of the interface is occupied by the map

• Exchange private messages with network members, create group chats.
• Subscribe to companies and events by industry and sector.
• At conferences, use a special bracelet that works with MYCO and allows you to exchange contact information when shaking hands.
• Take advantage of paid features for registered events: search promotions, MYCO Band bracelets.
• Use Android and iOS apps.

Who benefits from:

• Professionals from any industry. The list is wider than on other sites.
• Those who promote the company through professional events.
• Event managers, event agencies.
• The network has appeared recently, and you have a chance to become one of the first users.

MYCO →

Registration in any of the listed networks is free, it will take 5 minutes at most and will increase the chances of finding a job and business contacts. Why not give it a try?