Sarah Fudin currently works in community relations for the University of Southern California’s Master of Arts in Teaching program, which provides aspiring teachers the opportunity to earn a MAT degree and teacher certification online.  Outside of work Sarah enjoys running, reading and Pinkberry frozen yogurt.

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Applying to college and looking for a job are not as straightforward as they once were. Individuals, schools and companies all have a presence on social media, which means more information is available to everyone. All of this additional information is incredibly valuable to job seekers and college applicants, but also poses its own set of challenges around applicants’ privacy and what they make available to those evaluating them.

For high school students applying to college, social media can be a tremendous resource. Most colleges maintain Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and blogs that prospective students can follow to gain a different perspective on a school. These constantly updated resources provide a glimpse into daily life at a college that you would not find in normal admissions materials. In addition to each university’s own resources, sites like Zinch help high school students connect with admissions offices and scholarships, and make the process more personal.

Beyond research, social media can be a great way to make your college application shine. One expert recommends making a brief video explaining why you want to go to a particular school, uploading it to YouTube and linking to it on your application as a way to make yourself stand out. Tufts University even added video submissions to their application recently. If you want to show that you have a strong interest in a certain area, consider starting a blog to showcase not only your passion but your writing skills and including a link to it on your application.

Social media is useful in similar ways during a job search, and using these tools as ways to engage with possible employers is even more important. The first step is creating a LinkedIn profile and filling it out, but savvy social media users can put Twitter, Facebook and blogs to use, too. Both Twitter and Facebook are useful for reaching a wide audience, beginning with notifying your friends and acquaintances that you are looking for a job, which might produce leads or referrals. Tools like In The Door and BranchOut work on top of Facebook to help job seekers find open positions and connect with those opportunities through existing relationships.

Twitter is also useful in a job search as a research tool, a way to build a personal brand and to connect with people at companies you are interested in applying to. It is easy to establish your area of expertise by posting relevant links to articles and engaging with others by responding to their tweets. You can find jobs posted on Twitter by searching hash tags like #jobsearch or #accountingjobs, depending on what you are interested in. Building a following and demonstrating your passion for a field will also help, as employers usually check applicants’ social media presences during the hiring process.

While social media has many positives, it can also adversely affect applicants’ chances when applying to college or jobs. Many admissions officers and hiring managers will search your name on Google as well as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and elsewhere, so it is critical to recognize someone is likely to see whatever information you post publicly online. Knowing this, take care to adjust privacy settings on your social media profiles to restrict what public users can see and think about how you want others to perceive you before writing a post or uploading a photo. Taking simple steps to craft and protect your online presence will insure that social media helps you get into college and land a job, rather than keeping you out of school and out of work.

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Sarah Fudin currently works in community relations for the University of Southern California’s Master of Arts in Teaching program, which provides aspiring teachers the opportunity to earn a MAT degree and teacher certification online.  Outside of work Sarah enjoys running, reading and Pinkberry frozen yogurt.

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Word-of-mouth used to be the primary way that a business’s or individual’s reputation could be enhanced or damaged. But with the growth of social media, like Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and Twitter, almost anyone has the power to affect the reputation of even the largest companies.

A recent case in point was Bank Transfer Day, which began on September 29, 2011 with Bank of America’s announcement of a new $5 monthly debit-card fee. This prompted Kristen Christian, a 27-year-old art gallery owner from Los Angeles, to log on to Facebook and share an idea with friends: Let’s all withdraw our money from big banks and open new accounts with credit unions and smaller community banks. She even suggested a date: November 5. Next she created a Facebook event page for Bank Transfer Day. Within a month more than 80,000 people had RSVPd.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, approximately $4.5 billion was transferred from big banks to smaller institutions on or before Bank Transfer Day. This amount may be just a drop in the bucket compared to the total assets of the nation’s largest banks, but as a symbolic protest, the impact of Bank Transfer Day was immeasurable. Bank of America has dropped all plans to charge customers for using their debit cards and other banks, like Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, have followed suit.

Netflix is another company that recently paid the price for ignoring the power of social media. The company announced its decision to form a new entity called Qwikster, effectively splitting the business in two. Customers would have to join both Netflix and Qwikster and pay nearly double in fees for the same services they were already receiving from Netflix alone. Unfortunately, Netflix seemed to have underestimated the impact of this change on customers as well as neglected to trademark the name Qwikster or check on who owned the Twitter handle. It turns a college student named Jason Castillo already was Tweeting under the name Qwikster and refused to give up the moniker.

Netflix was soon dealing with customer uproar over an increase in fees as well as lack of control over the name Qwikster. Within a few weeks, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced in a blog post that plans for Qwikster had been scrapped. The Huffington Post reports that more than 27,000 people commented on Hasting’s post, leaving disgruntled responses like, “Splitting Netflix in two so that you have Netflix and Qwikster is the worst business decision since New Coke.”

What can members of Generation Y take away from these examples? Simply that social media can be a power for either good or evil when it comes to reputation. When using social media channels, companies need to focus on creating two-way conversations with their customers. Using it as an avenue for electronic press release to announce changes that customers will perceive as negative introduces the risk of a very public backlash. In the future, the social media winners will be companies that maximize the opportunity for opening up a dialogue with customers before making controversial changes. Read more suggestions about the effective use of social media in business on SocialMediaToday.com.

On a personal level, social media can incredibly useful for building networks of friends and professional contacts, but when misused it can damage a reputation in ways that are hard to undo. College admissions offices and employers have started to research candidates by performing Google searches and visiting sites like Facebook and MySpace. Reputation.com, a leading online reputation management company, states that 70 percent of people responsible for hiring in the U.S. have rejected a candidate due to something found online. Guarding your online reputation and keeping  your online image clean can make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting into the college of your choice or landing your dream job.

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Erica is a Journalism student at Emory University. She is the Co-Founder/Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Emory branch of HerCampus.com, a national magazine for college women. She loves to write and is passionate about all things related to the media–her life-long interest. Her motivation and enthusiasm has landed her at BizBash Media in New York City, where she is serving as an Editorial Intern before heading back to Atlanta for her junior year.

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If the hiring director at your dream company were to search your name on Google,  what would they discover? Would they uncover some questionable pictures of you on Facebook out at a chic club? Or maybe an inappropriate comment you posted on a friend’s wall years ago? Perhaps they would come across information about other people with a similar name, or worse—find nothing to suggest that you’re even a real person.

I decided it was time to check out what my possible employers were finding out about me on Google. I opened up my browser, went to the search engine, and just typed in my name. Simple enough, right? Continue Reading »

Alban is a contributing writer at Home Loan Finder, a home loan rates comparison website. Alban is passionate about social media and their opportunities.

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Believing in yourself is one of the most important lessons you will ever learn in life, because you have to bewilling to bet on yourself, even when no one else will. However, there is a big difference in believing in yourstrength, your abilities and your determination, as compared to believing you are the person you portray yourself as on social media.

If you really were the person you appear to be on Facebook for example, you’d never sleep – with thousands offriends, hundreds of causes to like and events to attend; how could you? Luckily Facebook isn’t real life, andthere is down time, unfortunately no one wants to hear about that, so you don’t tell them.

What Happens on Facebook

There is no doubt that high school friends and long lost lovers have been able to reconnect over the internet andsocial media. However, there cases are the exception, not the rule and most of the interaction you will see onFacebook will be superficial and insincere. Before you stop reading, consider that this post isn’t to denounce theuse of Facebook, but to help you see it for what it really is, rather than being lulled into the belief that it is real,that all 948 of your Facebook friends will be at your side in an emergency, and that life really is all about thesnapshots and 140 or 420 character summaries you send out to the world. Continue Reading »

This blog post was submitted by Keith Petri, eBranding Me’s Founder/CEO. Keith is a graduate of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY and Digital & Social Media Strategist at CNSLT.us. His studies in business, economics and studio art along with strong passions for marketing, technology and entrepreneurship led him to his current passion for social media and strong understanding of the new rules of networking. Through his prior entrepreneurial pursuits, recent blogging and extensive networking, Keith has seen the need for educating his peers on creating a positive online presence. eBranding Me is the culmination of his efforts.

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Many people exchange business cards and the majority of them end up in a desk drawer. Last week, during a conversation with Matt Bernstein, a fellow Skidmore graduate and the President of Pair of Shoes Digital Marketing, we briefly touched on the informal exchange of business cards at networking events. As the discussion continued we concluded, “connecting on LinkedIn is like trading business cards”. It doesn’t mean a personal relationship was made unless each party consciously decides to make an effort to continue the conversation.

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