Back in 2005 and early 2006, when I was last doing a full-time job search, my primary venues for advertising myself were the standards: Monster.com and Yahoo! HotJobs. Am I utilizing these tools again? Absolutely. But so much has changed in the last five years that I have started using other methods of reaching potential employers. From that, I have learned a few valuable lessons to employ when conducting one’s online job search.

Google yourself. The Internet never forgets. I did a recent search on my name and ended up with 3,670 results. I’m actually astonished. On the upside, my top four hits were the places I would most prefer employers to visit:

• My website
• This blog
• My LinkedIn profile
• My Twitter account
• My Facebook profile

Many of the other links were mentions of the blog on other sites, comments that I’ve posted elsewhere, and things related to some of my past jobs. It’s always a good idea to check and see what kind of things are listed in Google under your own name, because you never really know what you’re going to find.

Make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete. A lot of recruiters look to find discrepancies between your resume and the information that you put on your LinkedIn profile. Make sure the information – including dates, title, responsibilities, and so forth – match up. Also, it’s always a good thing to have recommendations. I was lucky enough to be recommended by five people so far, three of whom were my managers. Recruiters are more impressed to see recommendations from managers than from co-workers, so if you don’t yet have any, request them! You never know who might come up to bat for you.

For additional information, Jessica Simko over at Brand-Yourself has an excellent post entitled “Build A Social Media Resume – How You Use LinkedIn Can Impact Your Job Search.” Read the full article.

Apply to companies directly. I had a long discussion with a recruiter last week who informed me that, because Monster.com and sites like that make it very easy for people to apply to jobs, HR departments tend to be overwhelmed with resumes from potentially under-qualified people. That is not to say that these job sites don’t work – I actually had an interview today with one to whom I’d applied on Monster – but by going directly through a company, you have more of a chance of your resume getting to the hiring managers, rather than being discarded early on by an HR assistant.

Be creative! Last month, I read a fascinating article about a young copywriter who managed to land himself a job using Google AdWords. Essentially, he purchased ads using the names of certain creative directors at companies for which he wanted to work as the keywords. He ultimately received calls from most of them and landed two job offers while spending approximately six dollars in total. A number of people have also had success hunting for jobs via Twitter, whether it was by hearing about a job from one of their connections or using a tool like TwitJobSearch. Simply by tweeting about my job search, I’ve gotten about six leads for jobs in the NYC tri-state area so far.

The job hunt is tough, especially with the current economic climate, but I’m keeping positive and chugging right along. The interviews keep getting set up, and I am confident that I will land an exciting, stimulating job soon. Fingers crossed, and best of luck to all of you who are out there with me!

Given that in four days I will have officially been at my current job for three years – god, has it really been that long? – I feel it’s only appropriate to start ramping up this blog again after almost a year of neglect.

And let me tell you, a lot has happened in this past year.  For starters, my company is almost entirely under new management.  Most important to me was the induction of a new VP of marketing back in, oh, May of this year, and from that, the creation of a proper marketing “team,” the likes of which I hadn’t seen in quite some time.  With others handling the stuff that used to take up much of my time – organizing trade shows, for example – I was free to nestle into my role as the company’s Online Marketing Manager.

Some of you might recall a few of the posts I wrote last fall (1 | 2 | 3) that dealt with the ever-present problem of companies not taking advantage of all that social media has to offer.  Quite frankly, while back then I was definitely pushing for the creation of a social media plan, I found myself falling into the same scenario to which Paul Chaney alludes in his post yesterday, entitled “Social Media in Organizations: What Happens When You’re the Only One Talking?“  That is to say, my social media efforts did more to boost my own personal brand than my company’s.

Buuut … things have changed now.  Our VP of marketing is very, very open to the use of social media as a marketing tool, and I presented him with a plan for the next six months that includes, among other venues, current statistics, strategy going forward, and metrics for our company website and blog (yes, we finally have a blog after months of me yipping about it!), Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and so forth.

Look for a string of posts to appear in the next few weeks regarding social media marketing best practices.  I’m looking forward to getting this show back on the road!

And some of them I’ve never met in person.

With the rise in popularity of social networks comes a rise in virtual friend-making.  For me, each social network represents a different set of people that I ‘know.’

Facebook

Without question, this is the place through which I keep in touch with people that I’ve known personally in the past.  From buddies I’ve had since kindergarten, to those guys I met at a poker night last week at a mutual friend’s house, this is essentially my virtual uber-address book.  If I’m looking to send Christmas cards to people, I get their addresses here.  If I need to text a friend, but I just got a new phone that has none of my numbers in it, I get their phone number here.  If I want to check the status of my good friends’ relationship, I can find that out immediately here (and as an aside, why is everyone I know getting engaged at the same time?).  With the exception of less than five friends on my list of 400+, I have met all of my Facebook connections in real life, and I don’t intend to change that policy.

LinkedIn

Most of us have high expectations for our respective careers, and networking is key to success.  Thus LinkedIn came into the picture.  Like Facebook, I have met 99% of my connections in person; I’ve worked with them, done consulting for them, or graduated from the same university as them.  I use LinkedIn for business reasons: for problem-solving, for discussion, for recruiting, and for recommending people I admire.

MySpace

I started out limiting my MySpace friends to only those people I know from real life encounters, but it has since spiralled a bit out of control.  Now, though I check MySpace infrequently at most, my friends list includes a hodge-podge of people I have met in real life, musical artists and actors I admire, and randoms who either boost my mob size in the application Mobsters or those people who just look like they would be interesting.  I see no real use to MySpace, and thus don’t usually include it in my top lists of social networks, but I figure most of you know it and/or have used it and would be interested in hearing my thoughts.

Twitter

Honestly, I think I’ve met perhaps ten of my followers in real life, and the same applies for those people I’m following.  I use discretion when following people; I will never be one of those users (and you know who they are) who follow multiple thousands of people in the hopes that they build their followers list.  That kind of thinking doesn’t work for me.  Instead, I have chosen those I follow selectively: either they are social media aficionados and marketing professionals, or they mention an interest in their bio that really catches my eye, like “video game developer” or “entrepreneur” or “start-up junkie.”  And from the looks of it, most of my followers are doing the same thing.

How do you handle your social networks?  Are each of them dedicated to a specific group of people in your life, or do you not make any exceptions when inviting connections or accepting invitations?

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Though still in its infancy – the first prototype was only made available at the end of May, and even then they had “only spent a week building it” – HowSociable? has already measured over 7500 brands as of approximately fifteen minutes ago, and the number is quickly rising. Do note that many of the brands measured are actually just people’s names; I definitely checked mine, and apparently I’m not being sociable enough to have my name splashed all over the ‘Net … though that could be perceived as a good thing, I suppose.

Brands are measured based on a sliding scale that begins with a rank of 1000 for internationally-known brands such as Coca-Cola, and it goes down from there. The ranking system is a good start, but even the developers realize there is much to be altered within it – just think of the Google PageRank algorithm – and so they’ve launched a Feedback Forum for users to post their suggestions for the tool.

In any case, it’s a fabulously interesting concept, and I suggest you try it out for yourself.

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His discussion veered toward his opinion that blogs are far more important than social networks like Facebook and MySpace, even going so far as to say, “If the latter are useful at all, they’re for faddish things like rock bands.” On the importance of blogs, Curt makes comments throughout the discussion, including the ones below.

Can you cite some examples where Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites were used to build business?

As far as I’m concerned, blogging is by far the most important aspect of social networking. It lets me communicate however I want, on whatever schedule I want. It rocks. It’s pretty much the only way I market, so I can say that a huge fraction of my revenue is derived from blogging.

How do blogs fit into a typical enterprise’s online strategy and how *should* they fit in?

Blogs serve at least two – only somewhat overlapping – purposes:

A. The constantly-hyped one of “participating in the conversation.”

B. As a simple flexible platform for publishing what you want, when you want, in the tone you want.

Enterprises constantly overlook B, because they’re too intimidated by what they’ve been told about the “right” and “wrong” ways to blog. In particular, the way IT vendors and many other kinds of companies tell customer stories is stilted and broken, and blogs offer a way out that almost nobody seizes.

Why is it a mistake for companies not to own their own blog software? Doesn’t it make more sense to use the many blogging options already available?

WordPress is a fine choice of software. Indeed, it’s better software than you’ll find on any general site, including Wordpress.com itself. More to the point, you brand your URL. So you should own and control the URL.

I recommend that you take the time to read the entire discussion, entitled Making Friends with Twitter, Forums, and Blogs. Curt is an expert analyst when it comes to information technology, especially in the database sector, but he clearly has a wide knowledge of the Internet, and marketing within it.

And it’s not just YouTube and Twitter that are spawning like-minded children.

It was thanks to Jun’s post on Hey Stephanie that I heard about 12seconds.tv, but it was also thanks to Hey Stephanie taking him on as a guest blogger that I heard of Jun’s new venture. Jun is Chief Marketing Officer for Future Delivery, a start-up that develops technology for students and professionals while shrinking the divide between Generation X and Generation Y.  Its flagship product, FD World, takes the best from Second Life and LinkedIn and mixes them together to form a virtual world in which students and professionals can interact, network, recruit, and collaborate.

Intrigued?  I know I am.

Future Delivery also offers what they call FD Office, a project management tool that “creates a virtual representation of your company, where each employee is able easily communicate with offices nationwide, outsourced personnel, employees at client sites, and allows each employee to express themselves uniquely which adds to the positive employee culture of the company.”  Forget about boring ‘ol instant messenging; this really has the potential for increasing productivity, fueling conversation, and managing costs effectively.  And hey, isn’t that what social media is all about?

It’s called “social” media for a reason. Have a conversation.

Companies are beginning to realize that telling people what to think and buy is no longer the most effective means of doing business. Begin by participating in communities that are targeted at the types of people you want to reach. In my case, this means making sure I’ve got Google alerts related to all of my company’s major keywords and making sure various employees comment on related blog posts and news articles with useful insight and commentary. This gets your message to the masses in a non-promotional way, fueling conversation and allowing your message to spread more than it would with more traditional marketing methods. Plus, it enhances your reputation as a knowledgeable source of information.

Provide valuable, useful content that is going to attract a targeted market.

Your web site is already its own advertisement; you don’t have to glorify your company in every piece of content you produce (“Go, [company name], rah rah rah!”). Plus, while you may consider yourself to be the most important person in the world and therefore everyone cares about what you have to say, I’m pretty positive that’s not the case. Robert Treat, an open source technology consultant, made a good point in his comment on my previous post by saying, “As more companies turn to social media as an advertising strategy, we’re bound to see some type of backlash amongst consumers when they start to notice that a blog site is nothing more than a marketing stream for a given product/company.” This cannot be limited to blogs, however, and do in fact apply to all methods of social media marketing. It is essential that you offer your audience information and things they can actually use. If these visitors see that you’re offering them value free of charge, they’re more inclined to stick around and listen to what you have to say. For example – and I’m using my current industry as an example – instead of hosting a webcast that covers why your database is better than all the others, which will only attract a limited amount of people, delivering an online event that details the pros and cons of open source versus proprietary offerings, you’re going to nab a far broader selection of your targeted audience. Instead of posting an interview with a key executive in your company that delves into your company’s product offerings and mission statement, post the same interview with that executive as he discusses current trends in the marketplace, what analysts are saying, and recent headlines. Give ‘em stuff they can use or which causes conversation, and you’ve got yourself some winning marketing efforts.

Remember what your parents told you about the importance of sharing.

It’s the same situation: you’re at happy hour with your buddies, and you say, “Oh, man, did you hear about [insert interesting/shocking/funny subject here]?” That’s the in-person method of sharing; now transfer that to the internet, and you’ll find Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and many other forms of “sharing” content. YouTube has a very simple mechanism for sharing videos via email, web sites, or blogs, just as iTunes makes it easy to share podcasts. Syndicate your content via RSS feeds; allow the “forward to a friend” function on your e-newsletter. Don’t let your content stay static. People want to hear what their friends have to say, and if you make it easy for them to get that information to other people, they’ll be more inclined to share it.

Scratch their backs, and they’ll scratch yours.

Going back to the point about participating on other sites, the worst possible thing you can do is post comments that say, “Hey, your site is great! Link back to mine.” I probably get four or five comments like that every day, and what’s my reaction? Delete. It’s a waste of your time as much as it is a waste of mine, and nobody is going to build a solid, positive reputation with that kind of action. In an effort to get valuable links back to your site, thereby effectively performing one of the major “to do’s” of any good search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, don’t be hesitant about doing the other guys favors. If someone posts something that is interesting, informative, and related to your industry, by all means give a shout-out to him and his content on your blog, web page, or elsewhere. If you’re offering valuable content as well, he’s more likely to return the favor. Maki over at Dosh Dosh refers to this as “borrowed trust,” and forms the basis of the most valuable traffic you can get. As he puts it, “Links from other websites bring visitors who are very likely to be interested in your content. These citation links demonstrate recognition of your site in the eyes of others. It builds your brand.”

Honesty is the best policy, and, no, they don’t all like you.

The Internet is a pretty unforgiving place. I should know: my first week on the job at my present company, I neglected to notice Eloqua’s “text-only” option for email campaigns and ended up effectively emailing a list of five thousand people with emails that began with, literally, “Dear First Name.” Thankfully I wasn’t fired for this, but I did get a rather vulgar phone call from one recipient, a blasting in a community forum, and the glorious honor of forever having my name tied to the incident thanks to the fact that nothing posted on the Internet ever really disappears. (And for the record, I learned my lesson really quick and didn’t allow it to happen again.) Keeping in mind that the Internet ‘never forgets,’ it is exceptionally important that you maintain a policy of honesty, transparency, and authenticity. These are the core values of social media marketing. Remember, involving yourself in social media marketing means you no longer have a tight grip on your message or on your brand, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Not everyone is going to say something flattering about you, but allowing such discussion and remaining honest and true in your content makes you look like the ‘bigger man.” I got shot down when I suggested, for a recent e-newsletter, to link to a high-level study that, as it was explained to me, “didn’t make us look good.” But this is the kind of stuff that can help you build a trustworthy following: yes, somebody didn’t say something particularly helpful to your cause, but you used that to your advantage, perhaps by mentioning it in a blog or forum and then responding to it with well-though-out arguments to the contrary. If you’re okay with taking a few punches once in awhile, and responding to them in a way that’s professional and honest, you’re bound to collect more followers than you would if you just censored the information or comments outright.

Set the metrics to gauge your success.

You wouldn’t spend $15k on a webcast campaign without anticipating the number of leads you’ll receive from such efforts. Before launching your social media marketing campaign, you must know what you’re trying to achieve. Do you want to severely boost traffic to your web site? Are you expecting a high conversion rate on your so-called “premium content” – the stuff that requires registration prior to download? Is a low bounce rate – one major sign of a successfully executed web site – your main priority? Are you looking at generating x leads in a certain time period? Or do you just want to increase your share of voice levels in and around the marketplace? Much of this is immediately trackable internally – web traffic, downloads, and so forth – but a lot is not. Considering your objectives, it might be prudent to hire an outside firm to measure consumer-generated content as it applies to you and your company. Dave Evans of the ClickZ Network offers this advice: “The data is there. And just like taking the time to build a solid strategy aligned with your business objectives and audience behaviors, digging in and measuring — rather than chalking the whole thing up to experimenting — will actually take you a long way down the road to reliable measures and a whole lot of experience that will prove useful later.”

For those who are thinking of beginning a social media marketing campaign, the final point to all of this is that it is not for those who demand immediate gratification. It takes time to build rapport and a solid following. You’re not going to get a pre-determined amount of leads from day one; this type of marketing must become as much a part of your day-to-day professional efforts as any other, and requires patience, perseverance, diligence, and keeping the best interests of your potential customers at the forefront of your mind.

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[enter social media marketing stage left]

Wikipedia defines social media in its broadest form as “an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.” In essence, social media – or ‘new media,’ as it is often called – encompasses various methods of communication that go beyond the age-old standard of a marketing team talking to potential customers by adding conversation, fluidity, and collaboration into the equation.

Social media is available in many forms, including blogs (Blogger, Wordpress), microblogs (Twitter), photo sharing (Flickr, Photobucket), video sharing (YouTube), RSS, social networking (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn), wikis (Wikipedia), social bookmarks and commentary (Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit), instant messaging (AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger), podcasts (Podcast Alley, iTunes), webcasts and video blogs (Rocketboom), online communities (MyBlogLog, Plaxo, Google Groups), consumer-owned shopping sites (Zazzle), and even virtual worlds (Second Life). This list does not by any means encompass all social media outlets – and, of course, more are being created and developed every day – but it’s a good start.

“This doesn’t sound like anything I have in my so-called ‘integrated’ marketing campaign. Why would we use any of these strangely-named sites for marketing?”

Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe because over 112 million blogs are already being tracked by Technorati, a number which doesn’t even include those sites not submitted to the leading blog-sharing site. In January of this year, 79 million viewers watched over three billion videos on YouTube. User-generated content attracted 69 million visitors in 2006; that number is expected to jump to over 100 million visitors in 2011, generating $4.6 billion in ad revenue. These are just a sample of some absolutely huge numbers, people. Would it make sense to ignore all of these individuals by disregarding social media, one of the biggest – if not the biggest – consumer influencers? Because let’s be honest: consumers trust other consumers more than they trust any advertisement your creative minds could possibly think of.

HubSpot, now one of the leading internet marketing companies in the country, was a no-name startup just two years ago; it got to where it is now through the use of social media marketing tools like blogs and webcasts that deliver honest and useful information to the masses.

And it’s not just start-ups that benefit from social media marketing. Coca-Cola saw sales of Diet Coke skyrocket after they started creating professional-looking videos on YouTube that demonstrated the wonders of adding Mentos to the popular soft drink (and in case you have no idea what I’m talking about, watch one of the hundreds of videos available).

For further examples, the Internet Advertising Bureau released a study this year on user-generated content and its effects that includes a number of case studies similar to the ones above (and does, in fact, mention the whole Diet-Coke-and-Mentos thing). It’s only about fifteen pages long, and well worth a read.

In short, social media is everything ‘old media’ is not: fluid, transparent, consumer-driven, and open to conversation and collaboration. Remember: it’s only too late to embrace the ‘new’ when you realize your competitors have run you right out of business by doing it first.

The lawsuit emerged as a result of Hasbro’s recent partnership with game-making behemoth Electronic Arts to create an online version of the board game, which is now available on Facebook. In a statement, a Hasbro spokesman said, “Scrabulous infringes on Hasbro’s trademark. Like all intellectual property owners, we take this type of infringement seriously. We are reviewing a number of options with the parties involved and hope to find an amicable solution. If we cannot come to one quickly, we will be forced to close down the site and its associated distribution points.”

The popularity of the application has sparked an online protest movement. As of this morning, over fifty thousand people had joined Facebook groups with names like “Save Scrabulous!” and “Give Us Scrabulous or Give Us Death.” And message boards are exploding with comments about the affair:

“This stinks of greed and, frankly, really goes against the whole idea of ‘fun’ that a toy company should promote. I hope they wake up and realize that the result of this action is alienating customers rather than attracting them, which is what they were already doing.”

“Why don’t Hasbro just strike a deal with Scrabulous? The Scrabulous design and format is so much better than the Scrabble one. I understand fully that Hasbro want to protect their intellectual property but can they not see what a PR disaster it will be for them if they kill Scrabulous?”

“I have already been invited to the ‘official’ Facebook Scrabble and refuse to join. I own TWO travel Scrabbles and one collector’s edition AND the Scrabble dictionary. Scrabulous has encouraged thousands of people who wouldn’t normally play the game to become interested and purchase Hasbro’s products.”

Despite the clear derivation from Hasbro’s long-beloved board game, the basis for the whole “violation of intellectual property rights” argument, simply shutting down Scrabulous and suing its creators, Hasbro risks losing both current and potential customers for its ‘bullying’ tactics. Hasbro could very well have turned this into a good thing for all parties involved: Scrabulous earns tens of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue every month, and with a quiet settlement, Hasbro could have reached an agreement with the creators of the application to receive a percentage of the profits or to perhaps add its own branding to the application. Instead, they have set a precedent for future Facebook application creators who might not be so inclined to create the extremely popular applications of tomorrow.

In short, Hasbro had the opportunity to turn an awesome viral marketing opportunity into a PR nightmare, and I for one hope that sales to the 18-to-30 crowd – the big spenders – suffer because of it. In the meantime, head over to www.scrabulous.com to play the game while it’s still available.

Facebook recently created French, Spanish, and German versions of its site to attract a wider range of visitors, and, between May of 2007 and May of 2008, grew its user base by 164 percent. United States growth alone amounted to 34%, well above MySpace’s US growth of 7%, reports the Post. Indeed, yesterday Facebook announced in its blog that visitors may use its Translation Application to translate the site into 55 different languages, including Vietnamese, Zulu, Canadian French, British English, Malaysian, and even Latin and Esperanto.

Much of Facebook’s growth is attributed to its clean, uncluttered format. MySpace has had the reputation of having busy, cluttered, and flashy pages, which may have had some effect on the growth metrics mentioned above.

No longer a haven for college students alone (the site opened to the general population in 2006), Facebook now caters to everyone from high school and college students to business professionals (I have had many co-workers request to be my friend in recent months, including the CCO of my current company) to major corporations. The latter now may have their own Facebook presence – and free online marketing tool – with the use of Facebook Pages. Facebook offers its explanation of this utility:

Every Facebook Page is a unique experience where users can become more deeply connected with your business or brand. Users can express their support by adding themselves as a fan, writing on your Wall, uploading photos, and joining other fans in discussion groups. You can send updates to your fans regularly — or just with special news or offers. Add applications to your Page and engage your users with videos, reviews, flash content, and more.

While this tool is free, there is monetary gain to be had. The Associated Press reported today that Visa has designed a small-business network for Facebook, and the credit card company will give a $100 advertising credit to each of the first 20,000 businesses that download the application needed to join the network. In addition, “Google Inc. is providing some of the features on Visa’s business network, including maps, calendars, word processing and a new template for creating expense sheets and business cards.”

Facebook is on the verge of becoming one of the de facto online marketing tools for businesses of any size, and with 80 million users already, it seems as though the future is bright for this social networking behemoth.