Introducing the weekly Tuesday feature “WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP: How to Use Social Media to Get Your Dream Job” by Yael K. Miller and Phyllis Zimbler Miller, co-founders of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing.
Yael and Phyllis will be writing about the FICTIONAL CHARACTER Amy H., who will be a senior this fall at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in English. Find all the posts in this series, organized for your convenience, here.
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Amy H., a senior this fall at the University of Pennsylvania, is spending her last summer before college graduation worrying about what she is going to be when she grows up.
An English major, she has no idea what she wants to do after college. She’s considered applying to grad school or law school to put off the inevitable. But in saner moments she realizes it’s foolish to take out even more school loans for something she’s not truly interested in.
She’s a life guard at a community swimming pool in her hometown of Los Angeles this summer, as she has been for the last several summers. And during her time off she hangs with friends and watches TV shows and movies on Hulu and Netflix.
Then one day online she comes across the ebook “WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP: How to Use Social Media to Get Your Dream Job” by Yael K. Miller and Phyllis Zimbler Miller. The ebook promises to provide a step-by-step plan for using social media to get a first real job after college.
Amy downloads the ebook and reads the introduction. The ebook explains that, instead of chasing after strangers to read your resume or interview you, you can position yourself online so that people seek you out.
Next Amy reads chapter 1 – “Choosing 10 Blogs to Follow for a Possible Career” – and decides she will take this advice.
The ebook says she should follow 10 blogs not all about the same career. To find blogs, she should do a search on Google Blogs – http://blogsearch.google.com/ – and enter a career search term. Then click “Search Blogs” for each search term.
Amy thinks about what an English major’s skills might be good for and also what interests her. She decides to start by searching on advertising and copywriting, and then branching out from there.
One important point the ebook cautions:
As the goal will be, in future assignments, for Amy to leave insightful comments on posts of the 10 blogs she chooses, she needs to pick blogs that are updated at least three times a week and that have many comments left on each post. The example given in the ebook is http://www.copyblogger.com/
In addition, as an “extra credit” tip, Amy downloads programs that allow her to easily see the Alexa ranking of each blog (and website).
How to easily see the Alexa ranking of a site:
1. Download the web browser Mozilla Firefox at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox
2. Get SearchStatus by going to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/321/ and clicking on the button “Add to Firefox”
3. Restart Firefox
4. Now the Alexa rating of a site will be at the bottom of Firefox; hover over the bar to see the ranking
Alexa is just one system used to show the popularity of blogs. In Alexa 1 is the most popular. So if a blog is 11,259 it is rather popular as compared to a blog that is 2,425,697. The more popular a blog on which Amy will leave comments, the more likely she is to be noticed by people who might be interested in her.
For the first week’s assignment, Amy is only to read the blogs that she has identified (this includes the posts and comments) although she is NOT to leave any comments. She isn’t yet set up to utilize the advantage of leaving comments nor is she ready to jump in without first observing each blog’s community.
In order to make sure she doesn’t miss any new posts from her list of 10 blogs, she is instructed to sign up to get notified by RSS feed or email. As she doesn’t know what an RSS feed is, she reads about this at http://www.millermosaicllc.com/what-is-rss/
One other assignment she’ll fulfill this week – having someone take a good headshot of her that focuses on her face without any distractions. The ebook says the photo doesn’t have to be done professionally. No sunglasses, no hat, no t-shirts with slogans or intricate patterns, and she should be smiling. The ebook also says for females no plunging necklines or large, dangling earrings.
Phyllis and Yael hope you’ll sign up for new post notifications here at ebranding.me through an RSS feed or email. Then do Amy’s assignments for yourself so you’re ready for next week.
And leave comments below if you have any questions on the material in this blog series “WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP: How to Use Social Media to Get Your Dream Job.”
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(c) 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC
Miller Mosaic Power Marketing and Magnetic Webworks have a collaboration in which Magnetic Webworks builds WordPress websites/blogs and Miller Mosaic provides social media coaching/consulting. For more information on WordPress websites see http://budurl.com/ultrapro and for information on the Miller Mosaic social media monthly mentorship program see http://budurl.com/joinmmic
