Here is the second column in 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 are 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. feels good about her efforts this week to start exploring possible career paths for after she graduates college. She has completed the first week’s assignment in 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.”
Based on the instructions in the ebook’s Chapter 1– “Choosing 10 Blogs to Follow for a Possible Career” – she has done a search on Google Blogs – http://blogsearch.google.com/ – to find 10 blogs that she is interested in as she doesn’t yet know what career path most interests her. She has also gotten a good headshot of herself.
After learning what an RSS feed is ( http://www.millermosaicllc.com/what-is-rss/ ) she has decided on email notification of the new posts of each of the 10 blogs. And each time she has gotten an email notification she has read the blog post and the accompanying comments.
The one thing she has not done – per the first chapter instructions – is to start adding her own comments to these blog posts.
Now it is time for her to read Chapter 2 –“Setting Up a Professional LinkedIn Profile.”
Here’s what she reads in the ebook:
“When you start leaving comments on the blogs you’ve chosen, you will want to have a link to information about yourself. People reading an insightful blog comment often click through the link to learn more about the person leaving the comment.
“An optimized LinkedIn profile can be an excellent place to link to until you have your own website or business Facebook page.”
Following the chapter’s instructions, Amy goes to http://www.linkedin.com/ and signs up.
Amy now reads the ebook’s explanation that a LinkedIn profile is a “work in progress” with new information being added all the time. “In addition,” the ebook says, “as you refine who you want to connect with on LinkedIn, you’ll refine your profile.”
Amy starts to fill in information on her profile, including uploading the good headshot photo she has gotten ready this past week. She fills in personal information such as the University of Pennsylvania and her expected graduation date of 2011.
Right now she doesn’t have a website or blog or Twitter account whose links she can include in information. She does include her life guard job – it demonstrates she has held a responsible position.
Extra credit tip: She decides to buy the recommended LinkedIn book “Rock the World With Your Online Presence” by Mike O’Neil. The book provides detailed instructions on how to set up an effective LinkedIn profile.
Assignment for the next week: Amy is to do a search on “groups” on LinkedIn to find groups that she might want to join. She clicks on the dropdown arrow next to the word “people” in the upper right-hand search field to change to “groups.” She searches by subject just as she did when searching for blogs.
As LinkedIn only allows people to join 50 groups, the ebook tells Amy to start with only a few groups for now, although she should choose groups with large numbers of members.
This choice of groups with large numbers is made easy for Amy because LinkedIn lists groups from the largest number of members to the smallest number of members. After Amy searches on “advertising” and gets a group list returned, she sees that the number of group members appears next to the name of the owner of the group.
The ebook explains that Amy should check the option to “display the group logo on my page” as she wants to encourage connections with people interested in the same subjects as she is. She can then choose between different options for the group in terms of notifications of group activity.
For now she might want to choose getting an email for each new discussion so that she can have an idea of how active the individual groups are.
But, again, as in reading her chosen blog posts, she’s not yet ready to engage in the group conversations. For now she just needs to spend time reading the comments of others in the group.
One more assignment for this week: To prepare for leaving comments on blog posts, Amy is to go to gravatar.com and get a gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar) using the same photo that she has just uploaded to LinkedIn.
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.”
(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
