Whether you are a job seeker, entrepreneur, or company the first step in engaging with your targeted audience is to become a go-to source of valuable information. The idea is to stand apart from your competition and be relied upon and trusted by your network. The best method to begin this process is to understand how to find information that will make a difference to your network and establish you as that go-to source. The first step is to research, read, collect, and aggregate information.

Step 1: Set up a Google Reader

RSS logo courtesy of RSS wiki

Google Reader allows you to aggregate RSS feeds from blogs and websites that contain valuable information. The reader is a storage area you can set up like your own custom newspaper. Tip: You can share parts or all of your Google Reader with your audience. This is a great method to help your network discover new information and what you are reading.

Step 2: Join Twitter.com

Twitter, first and foremost, is the resource where I find 80% of my research and value content. The strategy is simple:

• Identify your industry, niche, people, associations, companies and news sources
• Utilize the “Search” box and input names of people, companies, industry, or company names
• Follow those sources of information. Ex I follow @guykawasaki, @peterkim, @chrisbrogan because they write blogs, offer value, and offer free download resources
• Once you begin following someone or organization of interest go to their Twitter home page and check to see who they follow. This is called mining your resources resources.

Step 3: Global Social Media Network

Blogger Ray Schiel authors one of the best resources for anyone interested in valuable information on social media, blogging, and Web 2.0. Go to Ray’s “Resource” page to find the following:

• A list of 105 Corporate blogs from Rubbermaid to Clorox to Hewlett Packard
• 75+ Corporate Facebook pages, how they are set up, and how they engage their audience
• Dozens of Podcasts
• A list of over 150 entrepreneurs, companies, global corporations in every niche on Twitter

My business partner Susan Hanshaw, Founder and CEO of Inner Architect, enjoyed a successful Direct marketing career which culminated with her position as Vice President and second in command of her firm. She performed and consulted on marketing campaigns that included Bank of America, Health Magazine, and Victoria Secret.

Together we are studying the possibilities of converging direct marketing methodology and social media. Two questions must be answered before we can move. We are asking for your help:

1. In today’s world has Direct marketing finally met it’s match within the social media space?

2. If Direct marketing and social media are compatible, what would be the best methods to utilize and the best social media networks for your Direct marketing campaign?

Entry Points

The idea in today’s world for any entrepreneur, job seeker, or company is to find an entry point in which they may engage with their audience. Once these entry points are identified, then the value message can be strategically delivered to targeted consumers, hiring managers, or specific audiences.

Peter Kim is a social media expert, strategist, and someone who intimately understands the importance of these entry points for companies. In Peter’s article for Mashable.com “22 Step Social Media Marketing Plan”  ,Peter outlines the major tools (and entry points) for companies and entrepreneurs to consider in their social media efforts.

How could you utilize these tools in a direct marketing plan?

Peter Kim’s Framework of 22 Major Tools for Social Media Marketing

1. Blogs (Johnson & Johnson, Delta Air Lines)
2. Bookmarking/Tagging (Adobe, Kodak)
3. Brand monitoring (Dell, MINI)
4. Content aggregation (Alltop, EMC)
5. Crowdsourcing/Voting (Oracle, Starbucks)
6. Discussion boards and forums (IBM, Mountain Dew)
7. Events and meetups (Molson, Pampers)
8. Mashups (Fidelity Investments, Nike)
9. Microblogging (method, Whole Foods)
10. Online video (Eukanuba, Home Depot)
11. Organization and staffing (Ford, Pepsi)
12. Outreach programs (Nokia, Yum Brands)
13. Photosharing (Rubbermaid, UK Government)
14. Podcasting (Ericsson, McDonalds)
15. Presentation sharing (CapGemini, Daimler AG)
16. Public Relations – social media releases (Avon, Intel)
17. Ratings and reviews (Loblaws, TurboTax)
18. Social networks: applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities (British Airways, Saturn)
19. Sponsorships (Coca-Cola, Whirlpool)
20. Virtual worlds (National Geographic, Toyota)
21. Widgets (Southwest Airlines, Target)
22. Wikis (Second Life, T-Mobile Sidekick)

Silicon Valley star Guy Kawasaki did not intend for his chapter “The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy” in Reality Check to be job seeker’s advice; yet the main theme is vital for any job seeker’s success. The chapter outlines 8 steps to drive your competition crazy aimed at helping entrepreneurs and corporations understand how to win at the art of business.The most valuable theme and step is “Focus on the customer.” Guy outlines the irony that entrepreneurs and businesses should not take action against the competition–don’t do anything to them but everything for the customer.

Theme: Make the Hiring Manager Happy

The idea and theme here is to ignore your competition and focus completely on a hiring manager’s happiness. Ignore the millions who are out of work and competing for the same jobs, ignore the pundits who continue to fuel the panic, ignore the negative naysayers who continue to bring your spirit down.

Instead think about what makes hiring managers happy? How about taking the task of reading resumes off their plate. What about saving them time, energy, and focus by removing the screening process that entails resumes and cover letters. Why not remove the gray areas and guess work for a hiring manager by delivering a better more revealing resource than a resume which is simply a job seeker’s listing of their value? How about removing the issue of back checking aka background checks to validate claims on a resume? Why not attempt to reduce their time wasted recruiting and looking for the right candidate for the job when you are available?

Most Hiring Managers Dislike:

• Deluge of resumes create huge time crunch
• Lost productivity in their own jobs due to resume review process
• Tasking other people from their jobs to help in the review of resumes
• Guess work involved in hoping they choose the right candidate
• Decisions about new hires ultimately reflect upon the hiring manager’s own judgment
• Lack of information or verifiable proof that job seeker can deliver their listed values in their resume

Make a Hiring Manager Happy:

• Craft your value message of expertise, accomplishments, and experience
• Establish your “employment campaign” blog that delivers your value message
• Research how you can provide value to targeted hiring managers then deliver your value message
• Write a keyword rich, descriptive, and opportunity message Linkedin profile
• Utilize Twitter to broadcast and deliver your value message
• Research your target companies for their participation in Web 2.0 blogging, social media networking, and engage them through these channel

Careerbuilder.com ran a survey (Sept ‘08) of 31,000 employers about their use of social media in screening and finding job applicants. The results include:

• More than 1 in 5 employers use social media sites to screen job applicants
• 22% of the 31,000 employers said they use social media to find human capital
• 9% more said they would begin utilizing social media sites in 2009
• 31% or nearly 10,000 employers will focus on social media as a recruiting and screening tool in 2009

The writing, pardon the pun, is on the wall. If you want to make a hiring manager happy, and help yourself, you will adopt all of the steps outlined above to help you–stand apart from the competition.

What do you want to be when you grow up? That is a question that I asked myself many times–in my adulthood. Throughout my adult worklife, I held onto the notion that I understood the focus and direction in my business development career. I thought I understood my sales career path,  I thought I was following the correct course of action, and yet I felt unsettled.

What was wrong with me? Nothing was wrong with me but something was definitely wrong with my thinking.  I was not on a career path that held my passionate interests and I was unwilling to admit that fact. I was holding on to my “business legacy” aka my past experience in the business world as my valuable assets in finding my next job.

Job Seekers Doing the Same Old Thing

You have made your wish lists, educated yourself, and done the following:

1.Target companies
2. Target industries
3. Target hiring managers
4. Target job titles
5. You have hired a resume service
6. Paid a business coach for interview practice
7. You joined every networking group you could find
8. You updated your wardrobe
9. You allowed yourself the expense of a trip to the hairstylist or beauty spa
10. You opened a Linkedin account
11. You connected with people on Twitter
12. You created a Facebook page
13. You educated yourself at various workshops and seminars
14. You marketed yourself to the hidden job market
15. Tapped into every networking resource from family & friends to former co-workers

Yet Something is Wrong

Yet something is missing. You feel a bit lost. You are not completing tasks in a timely manner. You feel challenged when staying organized. Your campaign to find a job feels a bit disjointed. You even find yourself making excuses not to do work that must be done to find a new job. You are falling victim to the same mistake I made for years in my business career.

Job Seeker’s Step 1: Your Direction

The very first #1 step that every job seeker must understand is a simple yet sometimes frightening personal question:  What is it I want to do with my life? Step 1 for any employment campaign is to identify what you wish to do, what industry you wish to focus upon, what jobs are available in your chosen field, and where those jobs exist.

Without executing Step 1 in a job search, you will fail to be inspired. Your motivation to complete the necessary work in research, marketing yourself, and reaching out to find that new job will never happen. In essence your job search will remain in neutral or worse yet frozen in fear. Without a purpose and direction, the employment campaign is nearly impossible to execute to successfully find a new job.

As someone who spent 20 years armed with the task of identifying the best prospects for every type of gizmo, garment and service imaginable, I’ve become a huge fan of Linkedin for reasons other than its business networking muscle. I see Linkedin as a rich cooperative business database that gives you the power to shift your prospecting efforts from blind shotgun frenzy to a targeted, strategic campaign.

Remember that in any marketing campaign, your target list is the most important element to your success. Without a list, you’re shooting blind and you’ve got to aim properly. It’s hard to sell red to blue and vice versa. Whether you are mining for hidden jobs or new customers, Linkedin provides tools for identifying your prospects and building your target list on two levels:

Search Companies by:

• Industry
• Geographic location
• Company size

Search for People by:

• Keyword
• Title
• Name
• Geographic location
• Company
• Industry

What Linkedin provides here is an engine for gathering prospect data. While this is an awesome tool, you must organize and massage the data to put it to strategic use in your campaign. If you want to learn how to do this, check out our upcoming workshop, Blogging to Employment.

Related articles:

Research is a Job Seeker’s Best Friend
How to Sell Yourself with Confidence