Now that you’ve got your elevator pitch sorted, you know what jobs you want to go for, and you’re ready to start putting yourself out there beyond uni and starting job applications.
This page is about what can come next. In this day and age, it’s a good idea to begin early building yourself a visible, online presence that can bring in opportunities to you.
The good news is that you don’t need a website, professional photography or hours of content creation to make it work.
Especially in NZ’s small creative and tech industries, consistency and authenticity beat production value almost every time.
Start with one platform
The biggest mistake people make when starting to build their personal brand is trying to be everywhere at once. Instead, just pick one platform where your ideal clients, employers, or collaborators actually spend time — and do that one well before adding another.
How to choose:
| IF You want to reach… | Start With: |
|---|---|
| Tech employers, recruiters, industry peers | |
| Design and creative clients, agencies | Instagram or Behance |
| UX/UI community, design peers | LinkedIn + Dribbble |
| Developers, open source community | GitHub + Twitter/X |
| Broader creative audience, potential clients | Instagram or TikTok |
| Writers, educators, thought leaders | LinkedIn or Substack |
| Local NZ business clients | Facebook + LinkedIn |
Once you’re posting consistently on one platform and getting some traction, only then think about expanding. You’ll be able to start repurposing your content across platforms, and this is much easier once you have a rhythm!
Platform by platform
Best for: tech and creative professionals, B2B, career visibility, industry networking
LinkedIn is where your professional reputation lives in NZ. It’s not just for job hunting — it’s where people in your industry will find you, assess your credibility, and decide whether to reach out.
What works on LinkedIn:
- Short personal reflections on a project, a lesson learned, or something you noticed in your industry
- Case studies or project write-ups (these perform really well as posts or articles)
- Honest takes on your career path — including the non-linear bits
- Sharing resources you’ve genuinely found useful, with a sentence on why
- Celebrating milestones — finishing a qualification, launching a project, landing a role — without being braggy
What doesn’t work:
- Generic “excited to announce” posts with no substance
- Motivational quotes that have nothing to do with your work
- Posting just to post — LinkedIn’s algorithm rewards engagement over frequency
Posting rhythm: 1–3 times a week is plenty. Genuinely engaging on other people’s posts between your own posts is just as important as posting yourself.
GitHub
Best for: developers, software engineers, data analysts, DevOps
For anyone in a technical role, GitHub IS your brand. It’s the first place tech employers look, and a well-maintained GitHub profile does more for your visibility than almost any other platform.
What to focus on:
- Keeping pinned repos current and well-documented
- A profile README that introduces you and links to your other profiles
- Contributing to open source projects — even small contributions show up in your activity graph
- Consistent commits — an active graph signals someone who is regularly building and learning
Substack / Medium / a blog or newsletter
Best for: writers, educators, analysts, thought leaders
If writing is your thing, a newsletter or blog is one of the best long-term brand assets you can build. It’s harder to grow than social platforms but the audience you do build tends to be more engaged and loyal.
What works:
- A consistent topic or angle — not just “thoughts on everything”
- Regular cadence — even monthly is fine if it’s good
- Cross-posting to LinkedIn to drive readers back
Best for: designers, illustrators, photographers, UX/UI, motion designers, visual creatives
Instagram is still one of the strongest platforms for visual creatives in NZ, particularly for reaching potential clients, agencies, and collaborators outside the corporate sector.
What works on Instagram:
- Process content — sketches, wireframes, before/afters, work in progress
- Behind the scenes of how you work (your setup, your tools, your process)
- Finished work with context — not just the image, but what the brief was and what decisions you made
- Reels perform significantly better than static posts for reach right now
- Carousels (swipeable posts) for case studies or step-by-step breakdowns
What doesn’t work:
- Posting finished work with no caption or context — pretty images get likes but not clients
- Inconsistent visual style — your grid doesn’t need to be perfectly curated, but some visual coherence helps
- Ignoring Stories — regular Stories keep you visible even when you’re not posting to the feed
Posting rhythm: 3–5 times a week on Stories, 2–4 feed posts or Reels per week if you can sustain it. Quality over quantity on the feed.
Behance
Best for: graphic designers, UI designers, illustrators, motion designers, photographers
Behance is less of a social platform and more of a portfolio discovery tool — people find you through search rather than a following. This makes it lower maintenance than Instagram but still worth having if you’re in a visual creative field.
What works on Behance:
- Full project case studies with context, process, and outcomes
- High quality imagery and mockups
- Tagging projects accurately so they come up in search
- Linking to your Behance from LinkedIn and your CV
You don’t need to post frequently — a few strong, well-documented projects is more valuable than lots of shallow ones.
Dribbble
Best for: UI designers, UX/UI, product designers, motion designers
Dribbble is where designers go to get discovered by other designers and by agencies. It’s more of a community and hiring platform than a client-finding one, but it’s worth having a presence if UI or product design is your focus.
What works on Dribbble:
- Clean, polished UI shots and micro-interactions
- Consistent posting of work in progress and finished pieces
- Engaging with the community — following, liking, and commenting genuinely
TikTok / YouTube
Best for: educators, content creators, people who can teach something
If you’re comfortable on camera and have something to teach — a skill, a process, a tool — short-form video is one of the fastest ways to build an audience in 2026. This is more of a longer-term brand play than the platforms above, but worth mentioning if education or content creation is part of where you’re heading.
What works:
- “How I did X” and “What I learned from X” formats
- Quick tips and tool breakdowns
- Honest, unpolished takes — authenticity performs better than high production value on TikTok especially
Tips for imagery
You don’t need a professional photographer or expensive equipment, just decent, high quality images. You can do a fair amount with a free Canva account, and Adobe Express has a generous free tier and is great for quick social graphics, it’s very similar to Canva.
For both – you can acess free Adobe Stock assets here – Adobe Stock Free collection: Photos, Vectors, Videos | Adobe Stock including free Adobe mock ups, Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator files!
For non-visual roles (dev, BA, PM, data):
- Screenshots of your work with annotations – both in progress and finished mock ups.
- Simple diagrams and flowcharts – you can use Canva, Whimsical or Miro. This would be a great opportunity to start getting used to working in something like Figma or a UX/UI wireframing tool, which could help differentiate you from others in your frield.
- Text-based graphics — a key quote or insight from your post, designed simply in Canva.
- Your actual workspace or setup — people connect with real environments. Do make sure it’s clean, tidy and profressional looking first though!
For visual roles (design, UX, motion):
- Mockups are your best friend — Mockup World, Unblast, and Ls.graphics have free device and print mockups.
- In progress/process shots — messy sketches and sticky notes can be more engaging than just the final result, and give the viewer a deeper understanding of how you work.
- Before/after comparisons are especially visually appealing.
- Short screen recordings or GIFs of interactions – great for UX/UI! Another opportunity to use a video software to help put these together, like Capcut, Da Vinci, Premiere or After Effects to help stand out from others in your field.
General imagery tips:
- Fall back on your branding – using consistent colours and fonts across your posts with create visual consistency and recognition without needing a rigid plan.
- Where possible, use natural light and a tripod for any photos of yourself or your workspace – or at least try to avoid harsh white overhead lights.
- Canva Pro is worth it if you’re posting regularly — the brand kit feature alone saves a lot of time
Creating genuine engagement
Engagement is a two-way thing. The accounts that grow fastest are almost never the ones that just post and leave — they’re the ones that show up in other people’s comments and conversations too.
Practical habits:
- Spend 10–15 minutes engaging with other people’s content before or after you post your own
- Comment with something specific and genuine — not just “great work!” but what you actually noticed or found interesting
- Reply to every comment on your own posts, especially early on
- Tag people or tools when they’re genuinely relevant — not as a growth hack, but because it’s good practice and often starts conversations
- Ask a question at the end of your posts — it invites responses and signals to algorithms that your content is worth showing to more people
The NZ advantage:
NZ’s creative and tech communities are small enough that genuine engagement has an outsized effect. One thoughtful comment on the right person’s post can lead to a real conversation, a coffee chat, or a referral. This doesn’t happen in larger markets the same way.