Here is the seventh 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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Last week Amy H. read Chapter 6 – “Making Sure Your Facebook Profile Presents a Professional Image” 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.”
And she followed the chapter’s advice about reviewing her Facebook profile page to ensure that she presented a professional image to any job interviewer who might be checking her out on Facebook.
Now Amy reads Chapter 7 – “Using Facebook to Strategically Connect With Potential Job Opportunities.”
The ebook explains that, besides your profile page, you should be interested in groups and what’s now called simply pages (previously called fan pages). Being active in groups and pages related to your interests will help you reach people who are only on Facebook.
As the ebook has warned before, Facebook constantly makes changes, so the following information could at some point no longer be relevant.
Currently, you can use your interests to join public groups (there are private groups) or pages. You can also create a group and/or create a page. But this is not recommended for you at this time unless you already have your own business.
If you do want to create a group or a page, there are some important differences in how these two Facebook entities function that are outside the scope of this information.
You can tell the difference between a group and a page because, if you see “join” at the top of the screen this means you are on a group, and if you see the “like” button at the top of the screen this means it is a page.
(You can unlike a page after you have clicked on the “like” button by scrolling down until on the left-hand side you see the clickable “Unlike.” You can un-join a group after you have clicked on the “join” button by scrolling down until you see on the left-hand side the clickable “leave group.”)
If you type into the Facebook search box, for example, “advertising jobs” – your search results will be separated into pages and groups.
The homework for the coming week is to join groups and pages that are related to your interests. Obviously, as in your choices for following blogs and joining groups on LinkedIn, you want to choose to participate in the most popular and most active groups. And you don’t need to go overboard on joining – just join about five or six.
While some of the updates of the groups and pages of which you belong will come to you directly through your profile functions, it’s a good idea to go directly to your groups and pages every day or so and interact with the information there. Again, you want to leave thoughtful comments to encourage people to click through to your profile to see what you are about.
And, of course, you want your LinkedIn profile link and your website/blog link to be available from your Facebook profile:
Click on your profile tab and then click on the info tab. Then go to the contact information section and click edit.
In the website URL area you can add these links. Plus these links can also be added (be sure to include http://) in the little box under your profile photo.
(Yes, in some ways everything is connected to everything else. In fact, this interconnectedness can work for you by presenting a professional image across several social media platforms.)
Spend the next week carefully choosing groups and pages to join and then start interacting (and learning) from these groups and pages.
Phyllis and Yael hope you’ll sign up for new post notifications here at ebranding.me through the RSS feed or email. Then do the ebook 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
Yael K. Miller and Phyllis Zimbler Miller are the co-founders of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing. Get the free tips booklet HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO INCREASE YOUR BUSINESS (also good for personal branding) at the company’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/powermarketing – and for information on the Miller Mosaic social media monthly mentorship program see http://budurl.com/joinmmic
