In last month’s blog article, Top 25 Social Media Sites, we shared the traffic numbers which make Facebook the #1 social media site. Yet because Facebook is a personal social media site, many people shy away because they are unclear how to mix business with pleasure. Here are four key steps for getting started.

1. When you create your Facebook profile, create the “Education and Work” section to clearly communicate what you do and what kinds of opportunities you are looking for. With the viral power of Facebook, you never know whose attention you will catch and who they are connected to.
2. Join Groups that attract people you want to network with professionally, just like you would with Linkedin.
3. Utilize the “What are You Doing Now Box” (status update) regularly. Each time you update this, it feeds to all your Facebook friends’ home page, enabling opportunities for engaging. Aim to make roughly 70% of your posts personal in nature and the remainder business. You don’t want to be all about business in an environment that was created to build personal relationships because you’ll run the risk of turning people off.
4. Comment on your friends’ updates that appear in your news feeds. This is a great way to expose yourself to your friends’ friends.

The new buzzword in the world of search, and a concept being posited as the downfall of Google, is “conversational search.” The idea being that searching within Twitter, Linkedin, or other social media network search engines is a more robust and valuable search strategy than utilizing Google search. The thought is that the search results on Twitter could lead the searcher to conversation(s) that provide more targeted information, possibility of immediate communication, and feedback.

The following is a retrospective look at our original Twitter case study that highlighted David Murray’s successful job search utilizing Twitter.com as his main tool. Within Dave’s strategy were 5 major tips that any job seeker can use to begin the process of delivering their value to their strategically targeted audience(s). This is a fantastic case study for the value of conversational search: injecting yourself into your desired conversation resulting in an opportunity.

The case study of David Murray written by David Meerman Scott is a powerful example of how to utilize Twitter in your employment campaign. The article “How David Murray Found a New Job via Twitter” provides 5 advanced tips that are very important to consider—if you plan to utilize this free broadcasting tool:

1. Use Twitter: This sounds easy but the first step is to recognize that if you want to stand apart, you need to begin to utilize social media tools your competitors may not be using–yet.
2. Create Keyword List: List all of the keywords for the company, industry, people, and niche you wish to “follow” on Twitter. An example of David’s keyword list: “Social media jobs”, “Online Community Manager”, “Blogging jobs”, “Hiring social media”, and other keywords that fit his job search criteria.
3. Twitter Search: Twitter Search is an internal search engine that you will input your keywords into to find conversations by people who are connected to the industry, jobs, companies, and niches you wish to contact.
4. Google Reader: David then pulled the RSS feeds of his keyword conversations into Google Reader and “made it a habit to check these first thing in the morning every day.”
5. Introduce Yourself: David found conversations related to his job interests and he “took the liberty of introducing himself via Twitter.”

The Results: David was hired as “Assistant Webmaster, Client Services for The Bivings Group.” And as David states “Many times when inquiring about the open positions, the jobs had not been officially posted” and “How cool that on Twitter you can express interest in a job opportunity that hasn’t even been announced yet?”

Since Dean and I started providing Linkedin.com profile writing services, we’ve been hearing the same question posed by nearly every person we’ve worked with—What can I do to create a profile that really makes me stand out?

Our answer is first a reminder that Linkedin.com is a social media site, where there is less of an emphasis on selling your attributes and more focus on demonstrating your value. Sure, you need to highlight your key accomplishments as reasons why you should be hired, and define specific things that make you unique from most candidates. But the compelling power of social media lies in its multi-media dimension, so take advantage of that by adding dimension to your profile.

Here’s a simple example: Which of these profile headlines are you most motivated to click open?

If you are like me, I say the third headline pops out as the most compelling. Why? Because there is a photo attached.

• A photo puts a friendly human behind a name and job title.
• A photo adds warmth and color to an otherwise neutral box.
• A photo delivers the message that you are putting yourself out there, not standing back in the shadows.
• A photo demonstrates confidence that you feel good about yourself.

One concern about adding a photo to a Linkedin profile that I often hear is the age factor. Several people have told me that they don’t want people to know how old they are, so they refrain from a photo. My response to that is two-fold:

1. They’re going to find out anyway if you ever meet them live.
2. Without a photo, you give up the benefits listed above.

With that said, is there any reason why you shouldn’t put your photo up?

Courtesy Glassdoor.com

Job seekers looking for another source of information and  advantage in performing their due diligence on a potential employer should review Glassdoor.com. Glassdoor.com bills itself with the tag line “see what employees are say.” They further describe their site as a “free inside look at over 21,000 companies.” Essentially Glassdoor.com is a site where employees can “anonymously” post reviews, ratings, and salaries for their employer.

“Give to Get” Model

Glassdoor’s reviews, ratings, and salary information is completely free to any job seeker-on one condition. In order to access site information, you must be willing to write a review, rating, or give salary information on a previous employer or current employer.

Glassdoor’s Credibility: Am I Just Paranoid

Glassdoor’s due diligence in attempting to validate all anonymous reviewers:

“We require our users to verify their account via email before their posts are available to other users. This verification allows us to put measures in place to help identify suspicious users or posts (even if those cases are the exception rather than the rule). These measures, combined with an active employee community and our commitment to review every post before it appears on the site, allow us to have confidence that our information is really from the employees.”

With the current controversy swirling around business review site Yelp.com, it is difficult for me to place complete trust in reviews, ratings, or salary figures. Yelp has been accused of faking reviews, writing falsified reviews, pressuring sales tactics and retribution via bad reviews, and a number of other unsavory business practices.

• What keeps disgruntled employees from posting biased possibly untrue reviews or ratings?
• What keeps paranoid job seekers from “misstating” their salaries or reviews in an attempt to dampen interest in their company from job seekers?
• What keeps company management from reviewing their companies with the highest of ratings and reviews as a form of public relations that match their perception but fail to meet reality?

Glassdoor’s Credibility: This is a Great Tool!

If job seekers beginning to look for advantages that will help them during the interview process, can believe the information at Glassdoor.com, then this site becomes a huge advantage and tool. The benefits of Glassdoor:

• Salary information provides job seekers a base starting point so that they can be as competitive as possible in their willingness to work with an employer’s budget
• Ratings information can foreshadow possible internal communication problems, leadership issues, or other aspects of a business that signals it’s impending downturn. These ratings could save a job seeker time
• Reviews provide a job seeker the chance to look “internally” at how happy employees seem to be in their workplace, satisfaction with their job expectations, and the ability to surmise management styles and work place communication that effects every person’s success

Glassdoor.com Tools

1. Salary Index: This internal search engine gives job seekers a look at salaries from dozens of industries, niches, and regions around the country
2. Review Index: This internal search engine gives job seekers a look at reviews from anonymous employees, both good and bad, about their employer.
3. Learn More: This page describes their due diligence process, how to use the site, FAQ on Glassdoor.com, and tips

Conclusion: Use Glassdoor.com to Your Advantage

I believe that Glassdoor.com offers job seekers an opportunity to see inside the organizations they are targeting in their job search. Like any anonymous information, users should use their best judgement. With that said, Glassdoor.com is an important and even vital tool for any job seeker looking for an advantage.

“With the current unstable economy and rising unemployment rate, more people are heading online to search for jobs, and interestingly not just the unemployed. The career development category also grew 20 percent year-over-year among at work users, suggesting that many people are trying to build up their resumes and get a sense of the job market before the next potential layoff,” –Chuck Schilling, research director, agency & media, Nielsen Online.

In what is surely a sign of the economic times we live in today, Nielsen.com reports that there was a “20% year-over-year increase in unique visitors to career development sites, which grew from 41.5 million visitors in January 2008 to 49.7 million visitors in January 2009.” Here are some of the eye opening and interesting facts about Nielsen’s findings:

1. 65+ Age Group was the fastest growing group in the career development category increasing 41% from 2.5 million unique visitors in January 2008 to 3.6 million visitors in January of 2009 according to job blog Cheezhead.com.
   
2. Careerbuilder.com was the #1 career development “destination in January 2009, with 20.8 million unique visitors.”
3. Yahoo “Hot Jobs” was the #2 career development destination with 11.7 million visitors
4. Monster.com was the #3 career development destination with 9.5 million unique visitors

The following is a breakdown by age group the web traffic to career development sites

Courtesy Marketwire.com and Nielsen.com “Web Traffic to Career Development Sites Increases 20 Percent Year-Over-Year in January, According to Nielsen Online”