Unemployed? Conduct a proper on-line search for a job.

With the United States unemployment rate hovering at 9.6% and consumer confidence waning. Businesses, small and large, are still in survival mode as far as hiring is concerned!  Many unemployed workers in the US are just starting to realize the potential of social media and social networking for individual unemployment usage.

Here are ways to find leads to employment; the unemployment office won’t teach you!

Social media and social networking technologies offers unique and relevant ideas on how to research and find present and future career opportunities. Also, social media has ways to determine if your on-line reputation is credible or in doubt. In addition, using and manipulating various social media tools will enhance your skill sets!

REMEMBER, make use of social networking and social media as part of a well rounded career search. Set a schedule and stick to it each day or every other day for career-based social media research and interactions! In short, what one puts in, one will get out!

DO ATTEND VARIOUS CAREER  NETWORKING OR COMMUNITY NETWORKING FUNCTIONS.

DO ATTEND CAREER FAIRS.

DO ATTEND VARIOUS OFF-LINE SOCIAL NETWORKING EVENTS! These meet ups offer ways to network with people in upcoming and evolving industries.

5 ways social media can help in your job search:

1. Determine the keywords being used on-line about your industry. Know on-line trending topics or keywords describing your past employment and future employment in your industry. Use on-line tools such as Google Trends and Google Insights. Use these keywords in a simple social media monitoring plan! (See #3)

2. Join LinkedIn business social network. Join LinkedIn Groups relevant to you past and possible future careers. DO NOT ASK THE GROUP FOR A JOB! Get to know your groups, then participate in discussions using your knowledge. Create group content by asking questions or posting interesting on-line articles related to the groups subject matter. Answer other group members questions or leave comments. Twice a week, participate in LinkedIn Answers based questions. This unique LinkedIn feature allows one to create a following with their expertise in a real world question environment. HINT: See these questions as interview questions! FYI-LinkedIn Jobs .

3. Is your on-line reputation positive or negative? Set-up a simple and free on-line social media monitoring system using Google Alerts , Socialmention , BoardTracker , Icerocket and Kurrently . Set-up searches for your full name, nickname, Last name. Remember those keywords about your industry you researched from Idea #1, run on-line alerts using the keywords with a geographic focus or industry focus. The amount of employment ideas or company research will stagger one. Run an alert based around the following: new companies in (insert name of city or town here).

4. Create a blog about yourself.  One will have to pay for storage and web addressing. Relate in a weekly posting about a local or national news event to your expertise and what you would have done differently. Talk about problems you solved and how you would enhance your previous solutions. Submit your blog posting to other social business sharing sites. Place your blog web address with a link right before your closing salutation in an e-mail. Make sure to place your blog web address on various on-line profiles and social networks! A blog is a wonderful social hub presence or home page about you on-line. Also, your blog can be updated as needs warrant. Consider placing your resume, testimonials and references on your blog. DO NOT whine about being unemployed! Your blog postings should be insightful, unique to your employment experience, and be authoritative. Run on-line searches for topics to help you brainstorm blog postings.

5. Many social networkers forget to participate or “talk” to people on communities outside the Big 3 (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). Consider using the above social monitoring idea and find on-line communities where one can network with their background and expertise. Are you a member of any professional associations? Many professional associations are presently developing their own social networking abilities. Consider looking for on-line directories like this one . Also, consider looking at on-line social news sites like The Social Customer and Mashable . Check the search boxes on these sites using your industries keywords. Check for specialized community blogs related to your career field by using Blogsearchengine .

The above ideas will helped both the unemployed or employed generate ideas and leads to possible employment. Remember to keep your on-line profiles updated!

What other ways would you use the social media or social networking to generate employment research and leads?

Your main social media HQ can be your business website, blog, or any of the on-line profiles one creates on the many social networks or communities within the social web. Your main social media HQ is where your business wants to drive people for increased engagement and transactional activities.

Your on-line profiles or business pages, on-line participation, blogs, content, or specialty landing pages should all point to your main social media HQ!

Not only should calls to action be placed on your main social media HQ, but placed in profiles and blog postings! If you tell your friends, followers, or customers what you want them to do, they will do it!

Where and what is your social media HQ? Is it relevant to your calls to action on your on-line profiles? Are you running one different call to action from each profile or one generalized call to action from all profiles?

Are you tracking and analyzing the traffic to your main social media HQ from your on-line profiles?

Did North Korea's Guarded Society do itself in on Facebook?

North Korean social media update!

Looking for a North Korea page on Facebook? Don’t think you will find it.

Apparently, nobody is immune to Facebook policies, including North Korea.  Facebook twice over the past week has deleted accounts from organizations in North Korea. The reason due to North Korean organizations posting a personal profile, instead of using a Facebook Business Page for their organizational activities! These organizations needed to place an individual or person in their personal profile, then create their business page attached to their personal account.

REMINDER: First determine if you want to create a Personal or Business Account on Facebook? The Personal Account often contains a profile of yourself with an option to create pages for: local business, organizations, or famous people or performers. Personal accounts offer greater flexibility (for business pages) to be seen by search engines, post and run blogs and other applications on these pages, and allow better sharing and friending abilities using your personal profile with the business page.

Business accounts allow business to create a business page on Facebook. These type of accounts are primarily used to create presence in the social network and administrate any paid advertising activities.
Business pages underneath a business account do not have many find and sharing features, except for widget placement on other sites. These accounts are highly limited but do allow a business to own its own Facebook page without an individual being in charge of the administrative.

Discovered another great social media tool recently!

Kurrently is a real-time search engine targeting on-line conversations on Twitter and Facebook. So far, in my social media exploration I have not encountered a tool that can target 2 social media sites with one search query! There are plenty of blog search engines and social media search engines available to find conversations and content, but the Kurrently search engine offers a very unique tool if a social media user just uses Twitter and Facebook.

Kurrently has the ability for a user to subscribe to a specific search using RSS. Also, Kurrently’s interface is a very simple one to use offering various type of feed speeds, and users can view Twitter and Facebook searches separately or together in one timeline. In addition, another nice feature is for the user to conduct Internet or social media searches from the Kurrently using Google, Bing, Baidu , and Youtube. The incorporation of a foreign search engine into an English based social media search engine is the first this blogger has encountered.

Kurrently is very simple social media tool to use for beginning social media explorers and is free. Except for the RSS search feed feature, Kurrently offers no e-mail features to place searches in your Inbox.

Do you have a favorite social media tool? Do tell!

Will Dobbs is not in the employ of the North Korea government or corporations. Also, Will Dobbs was not paid for recommending the above social media tool. He used these tools and likes how they perform!

Welcome North Korea!

Below are a series of articles discussing their new social media activities and reactions from South Korea and the world.

North Korea on Twitter

US response to North Korea’s Twitter account

South Korea’s National Ban on North Korea’s Twitter Account

North Korea on Facebook

Now that North Korea has created an on-line presence within the social web, will they be able to follow the rules: transparency, honesty, no censorship, and open conversations, and sharing expertise?

Right now, like so many other social media participants, North Korea is new to social media and following the “broadcast” messaging ideal: If I am posting it, they will come. look, and share….  Right now, they are conducting a propaganda offensive similar to many who say they are running “social” based organizations.

This could be another missed opportunity to create citizen-wide transparency on the Korean Peninsula!

North Korea has created the profiles (still need to fill these out correctly), a Facebook Page Community for participants to come and explore, and the (propaganda based) content for their friends or fans to view.

Now, like so many other governments, corporates, or small businesses, North Korea needs to engage their friends and detractors in the on-line social networks and communities.

I would friend North Korea on Twitter and Facebook because it is time to listen not to the governments but also to the people of a country!

Next step, North Korea needs to let its citizens do the engaging….

Are your tweets and updates propaganda messages or conversations?

Would you friend North Korea on Facebook or Twitter?

Are you ready to deal with groups of people with diverse views?

We hear a great deal about on-line communities these days.

On-line communities come in many forms . Communities are created and built by on-line participants to meet a need, discuss ideas, or build subject matter expertise on business products and endeavors. Communities are created by businesses, governments, individuals, and organizations. Communities can be developed around social news sites, products, political initiatives, networks, or popular media events! Communities can be created around positive and negative views of their moderators and participants.

On-line communities offer their members unique venues to share their expertise and skills, discuss topics that matter to them, and offer great ways to network and conduct research using crowdsourcing . Also, on-line communities offer business great ways to develop and create product awareness, build customer evangelism and credit, and initiate new ways to communicate to the general public. Some communities are created to help fellow on-line searchers build thought leadership, and others to push developing technologies like the social media.

On-line community management is becoming one of the most sought after skill sets within the new Internet marketing revolution sweeping across the world. Whether it is a business or non-profit building an on-line community, community creation allows these entities to create homegrown audiences and evangelists for engagement and transactional activities within a “neighborhood”.

Successful on-line community management involves creating an on-line destination people want to join and interact with others within. Community managers must be able to focus the community, seduce and drive membership, be actionable and timely moderators with community participants, and steer conversations and activities within their community.

Here are the 7 skills needed to be a successful on-line community manager:

Planning: A Community manager must be constant planners of the community. Day one, they should be creating and setting goals for the community. In addition, they should be creating community rules, focus, membership incentives,and activities to drive community participation. They balance their activities between goals and community members needs.

Personality: Community Managers need to create and develop an on-line personality friendly to all community participants. This personality needs to reflect the business, or brand and stand out among the community. Also, this personality needs to develop transparency and excellent world of mouth among community participants. Your chosen community personality needs to be likable.

Diplomatic: Your community will be populated by full-time members, occasional members, passers-by, and brand detractors. As the community manager, you will need to know the community members and what type of activities they conduct on your site. The community is always watching how you react and balance your moderating of discussions against similar and competitor communities.

First Responders: Sometimes conversations and postings placed within communities by members will create community conflicts . The community manager need to be watching for these events, triaging the problem, and develop solutions to decrease conflicts between community members. Your the sole first responder for your community. Figure out what makes you community happy and have topics ready and waiting to insert into community conflicts to rebuild community trust and participation. You cannot control activities of all your community members, but can anticipate what members may do from past experience.

Technologist: Community managers need to be technologists because of the amount of new applications being developed around Internet marketing technologies. Social media and Internet technologies are changing all the time. Also, the software and applications used to create on-line communities offers many different types features and plug-ins that need to be activated and updated. Community managers will need to be comfortable in maintaining present technologies and incorporating future technologies into the community.

Analysts: Community managers need to be able to record, watch, and analyze on-line interactions. Does the community respond favorably to cyclical based conversations about the holidays, or does the community prefer to discuss improvements about your recent projects. Community managers need to be able to research and predict thru analysis what subject matter will be popular among community membership, and who makes up the community demographic.

Jack of All Trades: Depending on the goals and subject matter of the community, community managers need to be a Jack of All Trades. Be knowledgeable in many forms of various subject matter can make conversations and activities within the community stand out and be very intriguing to its participants. A community manager who is a jack of all trades develops better subject matter for the community and increases the vitality of the community.

Successful on-line community management is based around an individual who is comfortable wearing many hats, constantly transparent in dealings within the community, and developing a community to meet the needs of a business or organization.

Are you an on-line community manager? What other skills are not discussed here?
Please share!

Many may know about these changes all ready!

I encourage those in the process of planning or creating fan pages based in business or personal accounts to wait until these Facebook changes take place. These new changes in the Facebook “Road Map” will be good or bad for users based on their page activities.

Facebook, like many other social networks, is still developing its user interfaces to allow for better service and customizations down the road! These changes are part of these new evolving technologies!

Good week to all!

Will Dobbs will be on vacation Friday, 8/6 thru Sunday, 8/15!

Stay cool in Tucson and other places! Here’s a great vacation song !

Please leave an e-mail and I will get back to you!

-A personal account contains a profile and allows one to create and build a fan page. Personal accounts offer more flexibility in finding friends, sharing your business based fan pages with friends, and allow applications to be placed within Fan Pages. Fan pages created under personal accounts are visually seen by search engines and non-Facebook members. Personal accounts offer the most flexibility for users, less overhead, and allow faster development of fan pages. A negative of a personal account is that if the person leaves your organization you may have to start over again with a new Facebook account including your fan page. Small businesses should choose this account for social media based activities.

-A business account is made up of Facebook Fan Pages. They do not have a profile. They do not have as many easy ways to share and communicate with friends from your administration page. Your Fan Page is not seen by outside search engines or non-Facebook members. A business account allows one to promote their page thru paid advertisement; widgets or badges have to be placed on your website, and various creative on-line and off-line marketing.  Facebook participants can find your page by looking with the Facebook search engine.  A positive about a business account is that the page stands as its own and is positioned properly to be a venue for the company, not an individual Facebook user. Mid-size business and corporations should create a business account.

-Focus on a Unique-Authoritative-Relevant approach to your fan pages. Develop unique content, position yourself as an authority; keep interactions relevant to your goals.

-Facilitating present relations and developing new ones. Create new friends or fans by sharing and asking them to join the fan page. Participate with other fan pages relevant to your goals.

-Ask your fans to participate on the page by asking them what they would like to see!

-One is seeking quality in communications, not quantity of masses!

-Personalize your voice and conversations!

-All types of business can create a personalized community around their business or product. Congrats you are a community manager!

-You are not selling your products to customers; you are developing your expertise within Facebook relations by creating “seduction” activities pointing toward the sales of your expertise or products.

-Also, you have to be listening to your customers, friends and prospects!  You are listening for when they need your help or expertise.

-Create goals and stay focused! Create schedule of content, and when you are commenting on other pages or profiles

-Join groups, causes and other fan pages relevant to you mission and goals! Think of building alliances with other pages and their owners.

-All social media is a double-edged sword. Your content can be good for you or work against you!

-Depending on your business or product, social media should be used as a marketing mix. Determine what marketing concept works then adjust!

Facebook Science from HubSpot:

-How and Why Questions most interacted with….

-Favorite Subjects:  Pop, Travel, and Unusual Information

-Favorite conversations: Sex, Power, and Education-most discusses top

-Videos rule!

-Religious, How -to and Whining sites are out!

-Women prefer Facebook! Men prefer LinkedIn! Equal on Twitter.

-Facebook Fan Pages work very similar to both blog and websites. They are indexed and stored by search engines for find searches by the general public. Can’t afford a website…ponder a Facebook Fan Page under a personal account.

-Search engines like content. It’s what drives them to index your page, and place your fan page into a search engine results page.

-DO NOT OVERLOAD YOUR PAGE WITH POSTS AND TOO MUCH CONTENT! Think of posting twice a week per your marketing plan! Don’t pollute your site or other sites constantly.

Security Issues: major issues around sharing tools off-site

-Do not run Facebook Connect or share applications from an outside application!

-Do not share and give digital based gifts

-Do not play on-line games from your Facebook page or profile

-All Facebook security issues occurred subscribing to sharing based applications!

-Limit your Facebook extracurricular activities to the site only. Blog feeds and many feed readers running into your profile or Fan Page are safe.

-Avoid filling out and sharing your on-line exploits from an outside the Facebook website. Do not use connection based 3^rd party applications.

Watch out! This could happen…

-Do not actively try to sell your products or conduct sales transactions on your Facebook Fan Page or Facebook profiles!

-If people want to talk to you about buying a product or sale, take your activity off-line. Please ask them to e-mail or use telephone under your information tab.

-In your “What are you doing boxes”, do not write down your telephone or e-mail information. This has lead to fan pages being shut down and erased.

-Befriend people based on your goals. Your fan page should be filled with customers, prospects, and relevant business relations. Chance your friends may embarrass…

-DO NOT continually broadcast about goods or services. Every now and then it is fair to give your followers a look at a new product or show a picture of it.

-DO NOT turn on geolocation services. They will tell people where you live sometimes.

-DO NOT post high amounts personal or financial data on any social network!

-Any legal entanglements going on? DON’T discuss on Facebook!

-RULE OF THUMB: If it would embarrass your mother, don’t post it!

Differences between:

-Profiles

-Fan Pages: Local, Brand, Product or organization; Artist, Band or Public Figure

-Groups-based around discussion

-Causes

-Community Pages

-What is best for your business and goals?

-Invite and friend relevant customers, prospects, contractors, businesses, networkers,

-Have you listened to what may interest your people about your products?

Basic tactics: You are creating activities the share your expertise and allow friends and fans to engage with your business or brand name! They will remember and engage with your posts!

-Create content-videos, blog articles

-Content Curation-present news, on-line and off-line discussions, and RSS feeds

-Post a discussion

-Special offers for Face book fans… Special offers to those joining from your e-mail

-Send notes to present customers, prospects, and send alert notes.

-Post your own event or a charity event.  Make sure a present charity has no Facebook presence! Ask fans to share with followers!

-Share and post events placed in your newsfeed by a friend, another business!

-Post and link to or share the page of a charity or club event.

-Ask a question?

-Storytelling

-If you are selling a highly negative product, create a “bank of credit”.  Conduct goodwill activities and content that supports related endeavors to better your products in the eyes of fans.

-Allow your users to upload photos, videos. And comment…

Intermediate tactics- specialized:

-Adding applications

-Base future content around conversations and feedback from previous stories and content.

-Content Curation targeted toward certain followers, or specialized customers

-Frequently make changes in your page info.

-Create and distribute content to friends and followers who may find it relevant to their business or your dealing with them. Using sharing feature or e-mail feature to accomplish

-People like to communicate…Encourage them to engage by asking for opinions.

-Make yourself an information disseminator

-Place links to your Fan Pages before your salutations in e-mail

-Post interesting facts or trivia questions

-Think seasonally and cyclically when posting content and conversations

-Post RSS feeds to your Fan Page and place under a tab.

-Far easier to reach people on social networks then e-mail!

Suggested Applications For your Fan Page:

-Links, Photos, Events, Videos, Reviews, Discussion Boards

-Memorable Web Addresses for….

-Social Tweet

-Social RSS

-Polls

-Networked Blogs

Before posting news stories or blog content in your Twitter timeline, Facebook profile, or on your blog, consider what your fans and followers will like and engage with on your social network profiles.

Your posted news story should be relevant to you or your brands personality, enhance your relationship with on-line participants, and allow one to maintain an authoritative identity in your business endeavor or product field.

News stories should do the following with your on-line audiences: provide insightful reminders,  examples of real life issues your expertise or product could solve, reviews of your expertise or product, new and unique views, cause and effect ideas, and generate brand or subject awareness.

If unsure what to post, ask your fans or networks!

For example, if you are an accountant, your news content should be based around new tax laws, changes in tax laws, interesting financial stories, or focus on specialized aspects your expertise can offer around both short and long term news stories such as the BP oil spill, and the recent unemployment debate in the Senate.

Your choice of content does define your amount of audience engagements!

Choose wisely!

Are you really being transparent with your on-line relationships?

A recent article in the Huffington Post  caught my eye.

Honesty and integrity, Transparency , to those active in social media marketing stands at the center piece of all on-line and off-line interactions. Without transparency (honesty and integrity), brands, your expertise, and on-line evangelists or detractors wouldn’t exist. In addition, the success of the new free media could fail…

The ideas of honesty and integrity may be dwindling in American business and American civility. How would one maintain honesty and integrity within social media networks and venues? Does honesty and integrity have the abilities to exist or re-emerge through social media interactions?

The above questions need to be pondered at the start of a social media campaign. Right after the creation of your social media goals, a business needs to be planning their “personality” of their campaign around the virtues of transparency, honesty, and integrity. Your personality will dictate how on-line participants and communities will engage with your on-line personality. Keep in mind your new on-line personality will need to be vertically aligned throughout your organization as a whole.

6 ways to maintain transparency with on-line audiences!

Are you telling customers what you are doing and are you following up with your customers? If you are engaging on-line using customer service or brand awareness activities, you need to follow through and take an extra effort to make sure your customers understand what you are doing and how you are helping them. Often, businesses do not update customers in on-line environments of their social actions. Also, businesses do not contact customers after the completion of an on-line complaint to see if the issue was properly solved! Consider implementing the previous sentence…many businesses miss this opportunity.

Is the rest of your organization conducting follow through after your initial contact with an on-line participant. Many companies run their social media operations under one department. Often, different duties between members can become hazy that members often lose touch talking to each other internally. To guarantee that members of your social media endeavor are talking to each other schedule a meeting once a week , or place all members engaging in social media in one office. Your social media staff need to engage with each other during their on-line communications. This action will provide faster coordinated attack to resolve brand issues or answer on-line questions in real-time.

What does the on-line buzz say about our transparency dealings?  Depending on your business size, people will be talking about your customer service, products, prices, executives, employees,and past and present engagement activities.  Look for keywords based around the previous subject matter. Get to know and use social media or keyword buzz sights like Twitter search , Google Trends , and social news site search engines like Collecta .

Are their any organizations or brand detractors saying differently? Many companies do keep a weather eye on what their competitors are doing, but not on the many communities within the social web. They are very unaware of who their brand detractors are outside of their competition. Brand detractors will not often be active on major social media networking sites or your community-owned social network. Consider creating and implementing a social media monitoring program to watch the social web.

Ask your employees,customers, friends, followers, or prospects, if they would recommend your on-line personality as a template for other businesses. Often the truth can hurt with asking people about your present social media operations. Your business feels its a success in the social media while others say differently. Because you have high transactional and engagement goal success, doesn’t mean you are exercising honesty and integrity in your social communications. Note the negatives and see how they can be improved within your social media activities. Think about it: If your on-line audiences are willing to share what you are doing wrong in social media communications, then they are still interested in your on-line personality!

Create and deploy simple polls or surveys using your top three social network profiles, website, blog, etc. Use these polls to determine how well your social media interactions are being conducted. Ask a total of 5 questions. The final question should be a fill-in box asking what is missing from your business-based social media interactions. Polldaddy , Surveymonkey , and LinkedIn polls offer great tools to poll your customers and prospects.
 
How do you establish and maintain honesty and integrity with on-line audiences? Do share….