Using Social Media as a Career Management Tool
ningcontentI just finished attending a very informative webinar on social media offered by SelfGrowth and presented by its founder, David Riklan. A simple definition of social media is that it is “massive information sharing and and communication on the Internet.” Social media tools are key to building your online presence and brand.
There are 5 main tools highlighted in the seminar that appear to be especially effective for business owners and individuals (particularly executives and professionals) looking to proactively manage their careers. These are Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Blogging, and Twitter. According to Riklan, there are 112 million blogs on the Web, 200 million Facebook members, 13 billion views of YouTube per month, 36 million business people on LinkedIn, and 8 million users of Twitter (growing at an astounding 40% per month).
A quick and relatively easy way to start would be with LinkedIn, Blogging, and Twitter (which is really mini-blogging in 140 characters or less). Then, to maximize online exposure, incorporate Facebook, and if you are more adventurous, add YouTube to your personal branding strategy. Major corporations, small to mid-sized businesses, entrepreneurial start-ups, and individuals looking to position themselves as experts in their fields of expertise are all branding themselves effectively using some or all of these tools.
As part of your career management strategy, the key goal of maintaining an online presence through social media sites is to position yourself as an expert in your field. A prerequisite to doing this is to firstly determine how you are going to brand yourself, and then create a profile that matches your brand or message. Next you’ll create accounts at all the major places where you can brand yourself (for free), including establishing a blog (also free at places like Google’s Blogger.com). Then develop a social bookmarking strategy (on places like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon) both as a tool for driving traffic to your blog and your presence on these sites, and for keeping your knowledge up to date. To leverage SEO (search engine optimization) and drive traffic to your presence on each social media site, interlink among your pages or profiles on the various sites.
The next step is to develop a strategy for using video. This may be scary to you (it is to me), but for some it’s going to be a natural and the most effective tool of them all. I’ll explore this strategy further in another post, probably after I have taken the plunge myself. (I hope you’re not holding your breath.) 😉
In order to make all of this work, you must be active on all the sites and establish yourself as a voice for your industry. To increase visibility, participate in or start groups on the various sites. Monitor what’s going on in your industry (via the bookmarking strategy you implemented above) and continually add brief posts, comments, etc. on the sites regarding what you learned. Answer questions on Q&A forums. And remember the most important rule of networking and business/social interation: GIVE, GIVE, GIVE. To paraphrase the great Zig Ziglar: “You can have everything you want in life if you just help enough people get what THEY want.”
Article by, Laurie Smith and courtesy of CareerHub.com. The Career Hub blog connects job seekers with experts in career counseling, resume writing, personal branding and recruiting.
