1. Clean Up Your Online Image – First and foremost, make sure that your online image is Google-ready. Most hiring managers will Google a job candidate at some point in the hiring process – sometimes before an interview. Google yourself and find out what happens. Is your LinkedIn profile up to date? Has your personal blog been dormant for months? Do photos from a night of over indulging in Cancun come up in search results? Take a good inventory of how you appear online and prepare the groundwork. Make sure that content that a potential employer can access is appropriate. Use privacy settings whenever possible. Untag yourself in photos if you can’t remove them from the public eye. Ask people to recommend you on sites that allow reviews such as LinkedIn and Guru.com. Create new ‘favorable’ content to hit the top of the search results (see next tip).

2. Make Yourself ‘Findable’ – If you don’t have an online presence, you need one. Social media is a great way to quickly create an online reputation for yourself and build out your resume and profile. Most of the tools are free. Create a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook page, join Twitter and any relevant professional networks or communities in your field. Even adding your name to a directory or commenting on a high profile blog can create new content for a prospect employer to find when searching for information on you. You can create a YouTube video of yourself (but make sure it’s industry/job appropriate) or a a full website resume.

3. Be an Expert – In addition to looking for job opportunities, you should be looking for opportunities to put your skills into action. Consider starting a blog, or at least, a guest blog to highlight your field of knowledge. Create an online portfolio of your work with a Flickr account. If you are a marketer, answer questions on LinkedIn pertaining to marketing (this also puts your name  and business smarts in front of all of your connections.) Participate in message boards and forums that are frequented by prospective employers and be a helpful presence – answer questions, post articles, start discussions, etc. Focus your ‘tweets’ on Twitter to build a following in your field. Share your ideas, best practices, relevant articles and other information that ‘prove’ you are in the know and have up to date skills to share. Post PowerPoint presentations on SlideShare to show off your handiwork.

4. Join the Group – Groups on LinkedIn, Facebook and other platforms offer more opportunities to connect with potential employers and colleagues. When you join a group on LinkedIn, you are often able to direct message members. This can be a direct line of communication to a hiring manager or executive at the firm of your desire.When appropriate, you can also post message to the entire group to help in your job search. In addition to groups, a single connection may be your gateway to the right job opportunity. Leverage individual connections to facilitate introductions to hiring managers.

5. Actively Listen – Don’t just rely on the traditional job boards to find your next position. Set up RSS feeds and Google Alerts to notify you when new jobs have been posted in your field. Check out non-traditional job boards. For example, LinkedIn also has job boards inside group settings where only group members can post job opportunities. If you ‘fan’ a company on Facebook, you might be the first to find out about job openings. Seek out and follow recruiters (professional recruiters and internal hiring managers) on Twitter. Many often post job opportunities on Twitter first before sending out mass communications to their network. In addition, responding via Twitter may separate you from the ‘death by inbox’ syndrome that plunges many resumes into the email abyss.

6. Turn Online Connections Into Offline Connections – Social media offers us opportunities to expand our Dunbar Number (theoretical number of sustainable social relationships that one person can maintain) from 150 to hundreds of thousands. However, when it comes to getting a job, candidates are usually only hired after they’ve met the hiring manager in person. And, influencers still tend to recommend candidates that they know and have met directly. So, take your online relationships offline. Participate in networking events, organize a MeetUp, take a connection out to lunch and ask for informational interviews to get some face-time with potential employers.

Additional Resources:

7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media (Mashable)

How to Find a Job on Twitter (Mashable)

Finding a Job Using Social Media (SlideShare)

General Information on the Topic:
PR Newswire Toolkit: http://prtoolkit.prnewswire.com
PRWeb Resources: http://www.prweb.com/writing_release.php
Publicity Insider: http://www.publicityinsider.com/release.asp
Online Marketing Blog : http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/02/seo-tips-for-public-relations/
Why Big Brands Struggle with Social Mediafrom Mashable

Twitter Resources:
Make Tweet Love – Top Tips for Building Twitter Relationships from Brian Solis
Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don’ts from CIO Magazine
Getting Things Done on Twitter from Emily Chang
14 Tools for Highly Effective Twitter Users from Kenny Hyder
How to Get Retweeted from Guy Kawasaki

Presentation
The presentation is available online at SlideShare or here:

UPDATE 2/25: For full webinar replay (slides and audio) click here.

I was agreeing with his sentiments…

Then just yesterday, Spencer Spinnell, director of Google Print Ads, posted a blog that Google is discontinuing its print ad sales program for newspapers on Feb 28 – a program that includes no less than…800 U.S. newspapers!

Spinnell says Google will continue to devote a team of people to look at how they can help newspaper companies. That’s nice. Maybe open a museum?

“It is clear that the current Print Ads product is not the right solution, so we are freeing up those resources to try to come up with new and innovative online solutions that will have a meaningful impact for users, advertisers and publishers.”

Can you imagine a world with no more newspapers? I’m not sure that will happen. But I do see a trend here. I think this industry is going to shrink enormously in the next few years, especially if more companies like Google start pulling their advertising dollars. And I’m sure they will.

I thought it was a great gathering: The keynote speaker was Ray Kerins, VP Worldwide Communications, Pfizer. The panel that followed was moderated by Melanie Milstein, author of Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution with Dave Armon, President PR Newswire, David Sacks, Founder of Yammer, Paul Gennaro, Chief Communication Officer, AECOM, Morgan Johnston, Corporate Communications Manager, JetBlue, and Marc Monseau, Director, Media Relations, Johnson & Johnson

The forum then broke out into roundtable sessions moderated by professionals in PR and Marketing who are involved and active in social media and real-time communications.

It was exciting to actually meet and talk to all of these good people that are the front-runners in embracing and using social media and real-time communications to strengthen their brand and connect and communicate with their customers.

I must say, it was mostly in a B2C context, but the forum tried to cover B2B as well.

Everyone was fired up; the room was abuzz with talk, questions, and networking. All the social media buzzwords you could find were flying around: Twitter, YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, Flickr, blogging, tweeting, video, RSS, IM, email, wikis and on and on…

I felt that people could not get enough information. Everybody was thirsty to learn more.

The questions seemed to be unanimous and ubiquitous:
How do I start?
What does it take from a tactical point of view? One person or a team of 10?
What are the risks?
What are the benefits?
Can I calculate ROI?
How do I get executive management on board?
How do I manage a crisis?
What is a fast response? Two days, two hours, 2 minutes or 2 seconds?
How do I control what’s out there?
How do I manage and aggregate all the different platforms for RTC?
What about traditional media?
How do I get buzz going for a small company that’s not a JetBlue or J&J?

Some questions were tackled and answered, some were not, some got an honest “we don’t know the answer to that yet”.

My key takeaways – and I hope this helps all of us – were:
- Start by discovering what conversations are going on in the social media space like Twitter, YouTube and blogs
- Monitor these everyday by getting RSS feeds through Google RSS or Google Alerts
- Make sure you understand and define your goals and what your communications strategy is
- Don’t be afraid to dip your toe into this fast-flowing social media river.
- Conversations are happening about your company anyway, so get involved
- Depending on your corporation or business, you should decide how to become part of these conversations and who should be answering
- Key: BE HONEST, BE TRANSPARENT
- Employees are spokespeople for the company – they are out there using Twitter and the likes, so they should be brought up to speed
- To do this, and do this right, in a big corporation, there needs to be a mind shift from the top down. Changes in the organization need to be made. Processes need to be streamlined. The social media spokespeople need to be empowered to reply quickly
- To quote Morgan Jonston from JefBlue, “This is about humanization of the brand!”
- Be careful not to seem like the overbearing “big brother”, don’t be intimidating
- Open up, LISTEN to your customers, be committed to change
- Remember and be aware: The line is thinning between traditional media and social media – many journalists have left traditional media and are now influential bloggers/tweeters

Lots of *stuff* to take in…

I look forward to a follow up event, which, in my opinion, could be a full day event, instead of half a day.

If you’d like to hear the two main sessions they are available here.

*Please* add your comments – I would love to hear your opinion and additions!

Congratulations, Conor!

If you’ve been following Tech Affect, you may have read the recent guest blog by our fantastic intern Conor. Not only does he assist on many of our marketing and PR projects, he brings great ideas to the table and is an overall excellent contributor to the entire Affect Strategies team.

Since Conor began interning with us last summer, he’s really taken an interest in developing Google AdWords campaigns for our clients. In particular, Conor has played a key role in creating great new campaigns that have translated into high conversions for one of our clients, BabyRide. A few months ago, Conor showed me the Google Advertising Professional program and asked if he could get certified. The certification process takes around 15 hours and consists of online tutorials and quizzes. To complete the certification, Conor would have to take a timed test that he would need to pass with a score of 75% or higher to become a Google Advertising Professional.

Well, Conor took the test last Monday — and of course he passed! Somehow he managed to concentrate amidst the chaos of the office (he does owe partial credit to the classical music station he created on Pandora –- he says that Bach helps him focus).

The Affect team (especially me!) would like to congratulate Conor on completing this program! His hard work paid off –- but he’s always been a “professional” to us.

-Katie Safrey