Quick Social Media Tips

Thanks to the recession, many of us have been out of work this past year, sitting on the sidelines as our colleagues have mastered the new tools, technologies and trends in our industry. One of the biggest, most influential of all is the use of social media in sales and marketing. If you are feeling left behind in the Web 2.0 world, we’ve pulled together some quick tips to help you navigate the social media questions in your job search.

To be successful professionally in social media, we recommend the following:

• Define a clear goal to guide your participation. Does your company want to source referrals? Gain brand awareness? Increase SEO or do you want to SEO your website to the first page of Google? Knowing this will help you narrow down what techniques and sites to use. (For example, a Facebook page will not help your SEO, but it will help you source referrals.)
• Do not use social media sites to hard sell. Ever.
• Blogs are a very important tool to building credibility and to increasing SEO. If your company doesn’t have a blog, they need to start one. Yesterday.
• Social media networking is reciprocal. Link and be linked, but make sure the links are relevant and do not do any brand damage. The idea here is to promote you (and your company) as knowledgeable and helpful, so all links and referrals you post must be credible and valuable to your prospects.
• Create a set of guidelines for employee social media participation. A list of do’s and don’ts will help ensure that your brand is not diluted or damaged in any way by raising awareness about what is and isn’t acceptable.
• Make time every single day for social media networking. To be relevant, you have to be activ! even if you can only dedicate 15 minutes a day!

When preparing for your interview, find out how your potential employer is currently using social media by visiting the top sites. Determine what you think they are doing well and what could be improved. Bring your social media recommendations to your interview. And remember to spend some time on the company’s website. Also, search for them on the big search engines to see how they rank. Arming yourself with this information will make your social media savviness even more impressive.

Happy job hunting!