it seems like I need some kind of public personal built on social media to back up a resume.Absolutely not required. Many of the best engineers I know don't maintain any social media accounts at all. Many more lurk rather than e.g. writing 500k words a year in a publicly visible fashion.
Tweeting, answering questions on Stack Exchange, and creating a useful library does not cause engagements to magically offer themselves to you. Convincing people that you can create something which makes their business better is, generally, what gets one engagements. If one hypothetically wants to, one can create online artifacts which tend to widen the funnel for inbound interest, but then you still have to sell the inbound leads on working with you. Even if you have 500k+ words of fairly high quality online, you still might find yourself getting most actual consulting leads in meatspace. (This was true for me.)
Many folks have no substantial inbound interest from folks wanting them to work, and have to meet people in e.g. meetups, conferences, and the local community to get engagements. That's not the worse thing in the world. I personally rapidly lose capability to continue high-level interactions after the first hour or two, but luckily an hour or two is all you need to put up with for e.g. a client meeting or a meetup. If you can't do an hour, do thirty minutes and leave early. If you can't do thirty minutes, do ten minutes, and work your way up.
Absolutely not required. Many of the best engineers I know don't maintain any social media accounts at all. Many more lurk rather than e.g. writing 500k words a year in a publicly visible fashion.
Tweeting, answering questions on Stack Exchange, and creating a useful library does not cause engagements to magically offer themselves to you. Convincing people that you can create something which makes their business better is, generally, what gets one engagements. If one hypothetically wants to, one can create online artifacts which tend to widen the funnel for inbound interest, but then you still have to sell the inbound leads on working with you. Even if you have 500k+ words of fairly high quality online, you still might find yourself getting most actual consulting leads in meatspace. (This was true for me.)
Many folks have no substantial inbound interest from folks wanting them to work, and have to meet people in e.g. meetups, conferences, and the local community to get engagements. That's not the worse thing in the world. I personally rapidly lose capability to continue high-level interactions after the first hour or two, but luckily an hour or two is all you need to put up with for e.g. a client meeting or a meetup. If you can't do an hour, do thirty minutes and leave early. If you can't do thirty minutes, do ten minutes, and work your way up.