Archive for the 'Social Media' Category

Archives for Social Media

You can integrate Twitter into your job search activities and you can do it in 15 minutes a day (after some learning-curve time for setting up your account and reviewing the basics).

It’s disturbingly easy to spend hours watching and responding to your Twitter stream—it’s as easy as spending hours applying to positions online, or as easy as spending far too much time Web surfing. We like the concept of spending 15 well-planned, solidly productive minutes a day on Twitter, at least initially, because it imposes a strategy and discipline that keeps you focused on the big picture—your job search—rather than the procrastinator’s playground of the Web.

These nine steps will make your 15-minute-a-day Twitter approach simple, swift, and strong:

• Know what you want to accomplish and track your progress. Monitor your momentum and value. Twitter provides instant feedback: You can tell if you are reaching your intended audience by the number of @replies, DMs, and retweets you receive. Who needs Nielsen research?

• Know your limits. What’s your attention span? Should you be tweeting at work? Do you get lost Web surfing? Are you easily distracted? Don’t let yourself get sidetracked dreaming of tweets while you are taking care of other things. Bookmark or star favorites online, and keep a notebook or file of topics and themes that you would like to tweet about later. Read More

Archives for Social Media

If you are a compulsive business card collector, please stop it. Handing out your business card to 50 people you talked to for about 30 seconds each, not only makes you look self-serving and desperate, it also sends off a clear message that you’re most likely going to spam people with your newsletter, resume or webinar invites.

This means you and your communications are likely to be considered spam and sent to a place that will get you blacklisted in more ways than one. There was a guy in Chicago who did this at practically every event in town and was on so many blacklists that I’d been warned about him repeatedly weeks before I even encountered him.

What do you do when you encounter someone like this? If they shove their card at you, go ahead and accept it so that you’ll know to keep an eye out for them in the future, but don’t feel like you need to give them a card in return.

Just smile and say thank you, but if they ask for a card, and you don’t want to give them one because you know nothing about them or how you might be able to collaborate with them, just say, “I’m sorry, but I’m almost out and I have another event to go to,” — which at some point you will — smile and move on.

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Archives for Social Media

There are endless reasons to build a strong network of professional contacts. But perhaps none is more compelling in 2009 than the goal of establishing a career safety net.

In a recession jobs are last to get hit, yet are the slowest part of business spending to recover. This is the time to develop or revise an escape plan to insulate you from possible downturns or unforeseen changes at work.

“I don’t know if I would go so far as to call social networking a safety net,” says Kelly Krebs, Senior Account Executive at Horn Group, “but it can help if you if you are looking to move into a new career or if you are looking to expand your customer or partner base.”

Even though the economy is slumping that doesn’t mean you should stop expanding your web of contacts. While ultimately you will find & add contacts one at a time, the truth is you can better leverage your resources by joining social network-based communities.

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Archives for Social Media

Some of you are natural networkers. You are constantly in contact—taking the time to talk with people both inside and outside of your company, and you don’t even have to think about it. Some of you are not natural networkers, but you have learned the critical elements needed to create and maintain a healthy network. The fact is, no one becomes a master networker overnight. It takes time and experience as well as a willingness to try new behaviors. The most important thing is to take the first step.

As a master networker, remember that just as you are looking for individuals to be in your network, others will be looking to put you in theirs. If you meet someone you know you would like in your network, be mindful of their time. Engage with them and if it is going well, ask if they would like to have lunch to continue the conversation. If they seem vague or unresponsive to your suggestion, leave it alone and follow up with them later.

Whatever your strategy is, remember to respect the other person and his or her time. Keep in mind that even though the person may not be a candidate for your network today, he or she may be one in six months. People remember how you treat them much more than what you say.

Here are some more tips to help you on your way to becoming a master networker.

Get to know your boss’s core network. When the people your boss listens to become part of your network, you have an alternate route to get your boss information he or she needs to hear.

Be a giver. Offer to help individuals in your network as often as you can. They will be inclined to reciprocate.

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Archives for Social Media

My first article for msnbc.com. addresses a topic that aligns two of my main interests: careers and social media.

Every unemployed person I interviewed for the piece had a LinkedIn profile prior to their layoff but hadn’t developed it sufficiently. They were making up for lost time quickly. But still, it’s difficult to pull together good recommendations in a rush. A good profile is best phased in over time.

The moral of the story is to feather your nest before you need it.

With the considerable aid of Jason Alba and Alison Doyle, the article addresses important questions such as:

• What can your contacts do for you?
• How do you approach people in a social networking group?
• What’s the right size network of connections for you?
• Should your profile disclose your unemployed status?
• Does it make more sense to start out on Facebook or LinkedIn or do both?

My piece on this topic is available on msnbc.com.

Archives for Social Media

When the scientific study hit the wires establishing that obesity spreads virally across large “social networks,” I figured that science was simply appropriating a popular cyberspace term.

After all, if obesity could spread across Facebook, or MySpace, science would have a larger problem on its hands than excessive girth. Are my contacts on Facebook really that susceptible to my suggestions? If so, I have a get-rich-slowly scheme to sell them.

Still, it’s obvious that some news and ideas spread virally over the Net; think about how many times you have spammed your friends or associates with jokes, links to articles, blog posts or videos. Before there was e-mail there were fax machines and (lawyer) jokes made the rounds pretty quickly, too.

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Archives for Social Media

One of the joys of social networking is reconnecting with people you barely knew 20 years ago but would like to know better now.

Like most people in my age bracket, I have held lots of positions. In my case, in publishing, I survived stints at CMP, Ziff-Davis, IDG and McGraw-Hill.

I’m occasionally invited to real-world reunions for one defunct magazine or another. These are strange gatherings because while there is often a friendly exchange of business cards, what happens down the road is usually nothing whatsoever.

Enter Web 2.0 and social networking. These days you can quickly form or join a social network made up of other former employees. Think of these cyber-gatherings as another form of an alumni network, even if your corporate exit may have been involuntary – without so much as a farewell lunch at T.G.I. Friday’s.

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