Steps

Simple version

1. Find people for whom you would like to work.
2. Interact with those people on message boards, by replies, through private contact. Make it your goal to be helpful to them and demonstrate your knowledge.
3. Ask if they can help you get a job either by appealing directly to them or posting in a space where they are likely to read your comment.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional social networking site.

1. Join LinkedIn.
2. Create your profile, making it as complete as possible. Remember that your profile will be the first thing any potential boss sees, so adhere to the standards of resume-writing.
3. Add people to your network with whom you know on a professional basis.
4. Solicit recommendations from members of your network. Concentrate on those who know you best and those who have the best credentials themselves.
5. Answer questions on LinkedIn in the questions section.
6. Join groups related to your career interests. Participate on those groups. Add people you develop relationships with to your contact list.
7. Search the job listings on LinkedIn.
8. Update your business card to include your LinkedIn information.
9. Advertise for yourself by handing out your business card at networking functions.

Twitter

Twitter is a great tool for finding all sorts of jobs.

1. Join Twitter.
2. Complete your profile, including links to your other networking pages or your blog. Including your real name, a brief summary of your resume, and your location may help make your Twitter page seem more professional.
3. Follow people who are in the industry you want to be in. Make sure you can actually keep up with everyone you are following; do not allow your follow list to expand excessively. Only follow people who have something to contribute to your job search.
4. Interact with the people you follow by @replying to them and engaging them regularly.
   • Keep in mind that some people receive huge quantities of @replies and direct messages. Make sure that all your interactions are unique, meaningful, and memorable.
   • Reply to all messages in a timely manner. Neglecting to do so makes you seem unprofessional or incompetent and will severely hurt any job prospects you may have.
5. Post tweets that demonstrate expertise in your field.
6. Ask questions of people you are following regarding the area in which you are trying to get a job. Example: If you are an electrician, ask people you are following if they have heard about recent changes to code inspection in your area and how that will impact what they are doing.
7. Update your business cards to include your Twitter profile information.
8. Attend tweet ups in your area. Hand out your business cards when you socialize, and concentrate on people who can contribute to your job hunt.
9. Ask anyone with whom you have communicated about job leads.
10. Watch for tweets about job leads and reply to them promptly.
11. Follow other people who apply for the same job and try to contact them about their own job hunt.

Tips

• Connect your online activity with your real name and other online names where you think you can benefit from having an employer knowing about that activity.
• Always try to be helpful and polite. If you can help some one else by connecting them to a person who can help them get a job, do it. It builds good karma.

Warnings

• Remember to keep your real name separate from the name you use with other forms of online interaction where you may not want a potential employer to discover those interactions.
• Separate your professional accounts from your social accounts. Potential clients don’t need to see pictures of your latest wild party or heated political debates with your friends.
• Never appear overly pushy or unprofessional in asking people about job leads. If someone tells you that he doesn’t think you’re the right person for a job, accept that gracefully or ask what they might be looking for. Never become hostile or angry.
• Guard all your account information carefully now that you are using social networking professionally. The spam and trolling that can ensue after you lose your password can quite quickly ruin any job prospects.

Article used and modified from WikiHow. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Social Media according to Wikipedia.org is: primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences. Source: Wikipedia

Social Media can further be dissected into four primary channels which encompass all of the internet-based tools with relative examples.

1. Communication

The initial grandfather of Social Media is Communication. The internet at its core was developed to communicate among other users. Beginning with usenet, emails, forums, etc. The progression led to our current tools used for communication among Social Media.

• Blogs – Blogger (service), Livejournal, TypePad, WordPress, Vox,
• Microblogs – Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr
• Social Networking – Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, hi5, Bebo
• Social Netowrking Aggregators – Friendfeed, Plaxo, Profilactic, Youmeo
• Events – upcoming.org, eventful

2. Collaboration

As the internet evolved and the adoption of broadband as common use among the majority of internet users, collaboration was fueled by a multitude of companies and services that were introduced. Collaboration is at the heart of Social Media. Such services can be broken up into:

• Wikis – Wikipedia, Wetpaint
• Online Office Suites – Google Docs, Zoho Office Suite, Acrobat.com
• Social Bookmarking – delicious.com, StumbleUpon, reddit
• Social News Sites – Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Newsvine
• Opinion Sites – eOpinions, Yelp, Amazon reviews

3. Multimedia

With the continued emergence of broadband, internet users adopted the sharing of multimedia. File sharing became the norm before copyright laws brought those services down in order to be regulated. This gave birth to multimedia social media sites that were used as tools to facilitate multimedia on demand. These can be broken up into:

• Photo sharing – Flickr, Photobucket, SmugMug, Zoomr
• Video sharing – YouTube, Veo, Revver, Vimeo
• Livecasting – Ustream, Justin.tv
• Audio and Music Sharing – imeem, Last.fm, Pandora

4. Entertainment

The final channel is that of entertainment. Entertainment online through games has been a fixture on the internet as far as the early years of the internet with the early 80’s film “War Games” with Matthew Broderick. Since then gaming and entertainment has evolved into a complete social medium allowing people to interact, communicate, and collaborate in real time with players on a global scale. The current breakup of the entertainment channel for social media can be defined as:

• Virtual Worlds – Second Life, Webkinz, Toppstown
• Online Gaming – World of Warcraft
• Game Sharing – Kongregrate, Miniclip.com

Now that the four main channels are outlined and broken up into understandable mediums it is important to know that these are only tools and technologies that if not understood in how they fit within an overall strategy for a Social Media initiative it will be a case of the unknown for those that try to dive into Social Media. The consensus is to try Social Media for the sake of not remaining behind with a trend. This should not be the case.

There are clear strategies for External (Client Strategy), Internal (Strategy Execution) which include Certain Deliverables along with the most important factor, Measurement of results both from a Return on Investment to what needs to be redefined as Return on Engagement. I will followup with another post on these next topics.