Using Social Media as a Career Management Tool

I 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."

 

Posted by Laurie Smith

Comments

[Clare]

... And be patient! It takes time to do all this, to get the sort of visibility and traffic (if blogging) that will be useful to you. There are plenty of cases of abandoned blogs, "never tweeted" twitter accounts that demonstrate that you need time and commitment to make social media work for you.

[David Riklan]

Thanks for blogging about the webinar. If anyone wants to see a replay - we have one available at http://www.selfgrowth.com/socialmedia/recording.html

[Will at Virtualjobcoach]

While I think social media is a good tool for career management, I don't know how many get hired because they are perceived as "experts in their field", but I am guessing it is a tiny fraction of folks. Combine this with the time commitment and your argument really isn't that compelling. Sure use social media, but realize that very,very,very few people are getting jobs through it (although it does happen). I would put forth that if you spent your time networking (as in calling and meeting real people, not linkedin connections) you would be better served. Here's an interesting post about linkedin: http://virtualjobcoach.com/blog/?p=660

Will at virtualjobcoach.com

[Clare]

Good post, Will. I think it's important to work out how you're going to develop your social networks. While I agree that having 500+ contacts isn't going to help you develop mutually useful relationships with all 500 contacts, focussing on a few at a time may well be more fruitful.

I think I've got in the region of 20 contacts on LinkedIn (don't laugh!) - some of whom are previous colleagues, and some of whom I've never met, but am developing professional relationships with. I'd never have met these people offline, so as a freelancer, having these extra contacts is good for me.

[Career Sherpa]

Having a presence on-line establishes credibility. That's what social media is about (I think). In sharing your expertise, no matter what that is, you can become known or recognized. Sure it takes time, so does developing a network from scratch. We'll never know for sure the reason someone is selected for a job, there are so many contributing factors. If having a blog, tweeting good information or connecting with someone on Facebook can help, why not do it?