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

“Hiring managers are using the Internet to get a more well-rounded view of job candidates in terms of their skills, accomplishments, and overall fit within the company”–Rosemary Haefner Vice President of Human Resource Careerbuilder.com

Susan and I presented our workshop “Web 2.0’s Impact on Job Seekers: The Changing Roles of the Resume, Job Search, and Job Seeker” at CSIX this past Tuesday to a packed house of over 110 hopeful job seekers. As we settled into facilitating this workshop, we realized that for the first time we were about to present our complete thesis and theme.

We have been supporting blogging as a more powerful and proactive “living” resume since June of 2008. Yet Tuesday was our first opportunity to evangelize the emergence of a paradigm shift, where social media tools and Web 2.0 strategies replaced the resume, as a job seeker’s main marketing tool.

Web 2.0 Paradigm Shift in Communications

The decades of mass media dominance and stranglehold over the control and flow of information is waning. Today is the greatest time in human history for communication, connectivity, collaboration, networking, and delivering your message of value, expertise, and experience to your strategicially targeted hiring managers and companies.

There is a global conversation going on between bloggers, people networking and finding opportunities on Linkedin, resources and messages being broadcast on Twitter, and companies searching for human capital talent throughout the social media stratosphere.

Companies Adopting Web 2.0 and Blogs: Tools to Promote Business

Our friend and blogger Ray Schiel, of globalsocialmedianetwork.com, has produced a massive resource page that outlines the participation of 105 major corporations in blogging, 64 on Facebook pages, 12 podcasting, 12 crowdsourcing sites, and 100’s of companies microblogging on Twitter.

Job Seekers’ Tip: These social media tools are being used by major corporations to promote their products, services, and business practices. If you want to connect with your target company, and they utilize social media tools, then this is a major opportunity to connect as well as demonstrate your understanding of their efforts.

Companies Monitoring Web 2.0 and Social Media: Screening and Hiring Practices

Not only are major corporations utilizing these tools for their own business practices, they are using them to find new talent and perform due diligence on potential applicants. Computer World’s “One in Five Employers Uses Social Networks in Hiring Process” outlines a Careerbuilder.com survey of 31,000 employers. The results are very compelling:

1. 24% of hiring managers “found content on social networks that helped convince them to hire a candidate.” In addition hiring managers said that “profiles showing a professional image and solid references can boost a candidates chances for a job.”

2. 22% of the 31,000 employers said they “peruse social networks to screen candidates.”

3. 9% more of the 31,000 employers said they are planning to do so

4. A total of 9,600 employers are going to search for candidates and perform due diligence rather than rely on resumes to tell a job seekers story

Deliver Your Value First

The conclusion is that job seekers must deliver their value first before attempting to deliver their resume. Social media and Web 2.0 are changing job search. The resume is no longer a job seeker’s marketing tool. It is up to job seekers, in this very rough job market, to utilize these tools in order to stand apart and become memorable.

It’s no secret that Dean and I embrace and promote Web 2.0 and social media as powerful opportunities for networking, building relationships, and moving your message of value to potential clients, employers and business affiliates. This new trend and paradigm shift in how business is done is being embraced at the highest levels of our new government. The Obama team has launched Whitehouse.gov, their platform to communicate with the people through blogs, video that delivers the President’s weekly address, and a “contact us” page to support Obama’s commitment to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history.

We have shifted into an age of transparency, where the focus is on building relationships first, with the understanding that selling something comes from the development of the relationship.

What does this shift mean to you as a job seeker or business owner?

• You need to make yourself accessible in Linkedin and other social media sites.
• You need to get involved in the conversations available, not sit back passively collecting connections.
• You need to show up as a caring human looking to engage authentically. Remember, it’s no longer about “me”; it’s about common good.
• Stop the hard sell. Promote your expertise by sharing it, not selling it.
• Create more tightly targeted prospect lists and personalize your messages to meet the unique needs of each prospect.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about how you are making the shift, or the obstacles that are holding you back.

A couple of weeks ago I sat in on an American Marketing Association presentation, Leveraging Social Media in a Downturn and a statement made by one of the presenters, Charles B. Kreitzberg, Ph.D, Founder & CEO, Cognetics, has stayed with me. He said that the key question he asks himself is, “Am I more visible today than yesterday?”

Maintaining your visibility is truly the point of any networking, whether it be live in person or online social networking. Yet how do you stay visible without being a hard sell or constantly showing up with drivel that nobody really cares about? The answer lies in what my business partner, Dean Guadagni, taught me about networking. It’s about providing value. It’s about building a reputation of being a go-to source for information.

Here are 2 tips on how to provide value that results in visibility on Linkedin:

1. Use your status box (aka What are you working on?) frequently to offer links to articles of value written by you or a well-respected source. This demonstrates your expertise or knowledge while you share valuable information with others who choose to view it when the tidbit shows up on their Network Updates. Use http://tinyurl.com to shorten your URL.
2. Answer questions in groups you belong to or topic matter that you subscribe to through an RSS feed. I always see a direct correlation between my profile view numbers and my answer activity. You can subscribe to answer categories from the Settings page on your account.

If you’re not clear on what kind of value you should provide, think about the expertise you want to be known for. Then start offering it up using these two techniques. If you have other best techniques to share, I’d love to hear them.

And by the way, that AMA presentation, Leveraging Social Media Networks in a Downturn, is available in pdf format on my Linkedin profile.

I landed my first corporate, aka “real”, job out of college in early 1985. The company, Moore Business Forms the largest printing-forms provider in the world, was just finishing a hiring push for sales and business development talent. Please read this article; I have a question I would like you to ask yourself at the end of the piece. Here are some facts about my job search.

State of Technology

In 1985 there was no Internet, no fax machines, no cell phones in regular usage, and at that time answering machines were just beginning to hit the commercial market–I did not own one at the time.

Training and Resources

In 1985 the cottage industry of coaching, life-business or other niches, did not exist. The word tutor was attached primarily to language learning or students still in school. For job seekers interested in resume writing help, you could hire a resume writing service, buy an instruction book, or go to the library for resources.

Instead of instantly finding your job search answers via an online search, I was forced to drive to my nearest library or book store (national bookstore chains not prevalent at the time) wasting time traveling to and from my resource in search of answers.

1985 Job Search Activities that helped me land my job:

1. Purchased resume writing book; wrote my own resume
2. Crafted custom cover letters per job
3. Joined my alumni association
4. Called my friends, family, and contacts to announce my job search
5. Visited my library and bookstore 3 times per week in search
6. Collected 5 References for hiring managers to call
7. Hired a “Headhunter” aka recruiter
8. Read two newspaper’s Want Ads sections everyday; career or job sections dedicated to job search did not exist
9. Visited the unemployment office job board once per week
10. Spammed my local Chamber of Commerce with my resume

My Results

I sent over 150 resumes in a 5 month period. I hired a headhunter who continuously sent me out to interviews that were less than ideal–round peg in a square hole theory on her part. I read the newspaper want ad sections. I finally identified Moore as the opportunity for me. I requested my headhunter arrange an interview which she secured. I nailed the interview and I was hired the same day; nearly 5 months after beginning the job search process.

The Revelation

After being offered the Moore job, my manager asked me “Dean why didn’t you just come in and ask for an interview? Why did you go through a headhunter-I would have hired you and been more impressed if you had come to us directly.” Now it sunk in for me. I just spent $1,800 (1985 money mind you) when all I had to do was deliver my value directly to the company and my manager.

Ask Yourself:

• Are the majority of your job search functions, steps, and marketing based on the same “stuff” I did 25 years ago?
• Is the major focus, and marketing efforts, of your job search based on your resume?
• Do you approach each day like you would when you go to a job; simply put, are you treating your job search like you would a job that an employer pays you to perform?
• Are you educating yourself each day in order to add to your skill sets?
• Do you have an organized and structured plan you are executing?
• Have you performed your research and due diligence on the companies you target?
• Do you have a list of the companies and managers?
• Do you understand how to measure your job search efforts
• Are you networking in the right places online and in the real world?
• Do you understand how to provide value instead of bringing the hard sell approach in your job search efforts?