Questions for you:

How could this be improved?

What did I forget to include?

What suggestions do you have for boomers who want to use Facebook and LinkedIn in their job search?

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NOTE from Phil: I got introduced to Chris when he featured me as one of the 150+ Experts on Twitter ALL Job Seekers MUST Follow. I was impressed with the time he took to create this list, and the care he took to really talk a bit about each person he profile. I quickly realized this was someone to learn from, so I asked him to write a guest post and he asked me to write one, so here goes his fantastic article.

Bloggers from across industries and areas of interest are always seeking new ways to reach greater audiences with their articles and gain increased recognition for their expertise.  Developing your reputation as a blogger often takes a lot of time, effort and patience through consistent publication of valuable content.

Because we live in an age in which we are being bombarded by more and more information on the screen, it is increasingly important to be able to convey the content of your blog in a concise and visually pleasing manner that visitors can swiftly survey and assess.  One way to generate more buzz for your blog (i.e. attract more visitors and get talked about) is to compile and publish critical information in lists.  A list appears shorter and more organized on the screen.  Furthermore, lists are easier for busy professionals to digest on-the-go.

You can create buzz-worthy lists on just about any topic that is relevant to the theme of your blog. Even when you are not specifically writing a list, you should think of ways to break down your articles into bullet points or shorter parts to make them more quickly digestible for your readers and in turn, increase the potential for them to go viral.

The following is itself a list of some ways to generate buzz for your buzz-worthy blog content:

• LinkedIn offers a number of ways to promote your blog content.  First, place a description and a link to your new article in your LinkedIn profile status.  Second, join LinkedIn groups (maximum limit is 50 groups) that are relevant to your industry or areas of interest, and,  where appropriate, submit the article link to each group’s News section.  Third, if you own or manage your own group, you can send the link out in your weekly announcement to your group members.
• Facebook is not the ideal syndication platform for your articles; however, you can also use your profile status to link friends to your article.  If you have a Facebook group or fan page for your blog or website, there you can create a link to your article for your members or fans.
• Twitter offers you the opportunity to “tweet” or broadcast a short description of your article and its link to your followers.  While you should never overtweet anything, you may choose to tweet this to your network at a couple different times of day throughout the week to provide your followers more of an opportunity to see content of interest to them.
• Business Exchange, by BusinessWeek, is a great resource for reading material that is relevant to your areas of interest.  It is also a place where you can syndicate specific articles from your own and other blogs and websites.  You can submit your article to multiple topic categories for increased readership.
• Ning networks within your areas of interest offer you forums where you can share your article content and links to your blog.
• Newsletters are great channels for the distribution of information.  If you maintain an email list of consenting newsletter recipients for your blog or website, your newsletter can be a great place for you to include a link to your article.
• MOST IMPORTANT:  If your lists or articles feature people, blogs, websites, services, organizations , books or anything associated with someone who would value such press or promotion, don’t forget to contact them by email, LinkedIn message or Twitter direct message to let them know about their coverage and politely request that they promote it to their own personal networks.  We all appreciate recognition (you wouldn’t be reading this article if you didn’t) and we are often more willing to do something to help someone else if it also helps us, too.

Chris Perry is a Gen Y Brand and Marketing Generator, a Career Search and Personal Branding Expert and the Founder of Career Rocketeer, the Career Search and Personal Branding Blog.

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Each class will be 90 minutes, with 30 minutes for me doing an overview, 30 minutes for me answering questions, and 30 minutes of folks actually DOING what we talked about (if they bring along their laptop). 

Does that sound like something you’d pay $35 a session for if you knew little/nothing about social media?

Here’s a tentative listing of courses:

• Social Media Basics: The basics of social and a little bit more to get you started. High level overview of blogs and blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
• Listen First, Sell Last: Finding who already is doing what you want to be doing in your niche and learning from the experts’ successes and failures.
• Blogging: Explaininging the various platforms and getting your blog started. 
• Twitter: Can you really say anything in 140 characters? How to find folks who want to hear what you say, and how to use Tweetdeck.
• LinkedIn: Setting up your profile, finding folks to connect to, and using LinkedIn Groups and Answers
• Facebook: Not just for students anymore. Setting up a profile, basic search, updating your status, and customizing to fit your personality.
• Google basics: Search basics, setting up a Gmail account, adding Google Alerts, Google Reader, Google Documents, take a tour of the labs for new stuff.
• Online video basics: Review a few videos, discuss what to include in your video (and what to leave out), what sites are available for upload and a basic overview of searching for other videos.
• Online photos and graphics: How to batch upload your photos, how to tag them so you and others can find them, a little bit about Creative Commons (and why you might want to let other people use your pictures) and how to buy photos you can use for your online and offline marketing campaigns.
• Newsletters are NOT dead: Showing folks how to create a newsletter using content they’ve already created in other places, and so they don’t get sued for sending spam.
• Contact Management: From Outlook to Plaxo to BatchBlue and beyond. What you need to know about your contacts and how to keep it in your mailbox. 

Here’s where you come in, and where I need your help:

What am I missing? 

I’m doing these sessions starting in late June, so I’d love to know what your thoughts are on this. I’m booking the room I’ll be using this week (down to 2 very cool places in Milwaukee), so please share your feedback with me soon.

Thanks in advance!

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Top 10 11 LinkedIn Tips

1)      Your photo – Always include a picture of you smiling in your profile. It humanizes you and makes you seem more approachable. Mine is the same picture you see on the side of this blog.

2)      URL – Always customize the URL to be your name or something folks can remember. Mine is http://www.linkedin.com/in/philgerb 

3)      URL – If you don’t have your own blog or website, buy whateveryournameis.com and forward it to your LinkedIn profile. Don’t forget to include the www in your profile or it won’t work. 

4)      Name – Always include the way folks would know you so when they look for your name, they find you. Include your maiden name and/or nickname if applicable.

5)      Requesting Connections – Always customize your invitation when you ask people to join your network. Include how they know you, how you can benefit them by being a part of their network, and even how you hope to work with them in the future. Leaving this as the default says “You’re not important enough for me to customize this to you” or worse “You sent this to 200 people and are probably going to spam my network.” The default message of “‘I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” is NOT very compelling. 

6)      Email address – If you’re going to use your work e-mail address, always put your personal e-mail address on there as backup just in case you leave a company and forget your password.

7)      Export EVERYTHING – Monthly, export your entire profile and all your contacts so you have a hard copy backup. Email them to your Gmail account for double backup.

      Recommendations – Give folks you work with/for recommendations when they do great work. Be willing to revise them if folks find typos in your recommendation or if they want you to use different words to say the same thing. 

9)      Recommendations – Ask for recommendations after you do great work. Don’t be afraid to offer a suggestion of what a good recommendation to you might look like. Make sure you ask the right people for the right thing. The last thing you want to do is put someone in a place to give you a recommendation on something they can’t honestly say you did.

10)  Answers – Answer questions in your area of expertise, or recommend the questions you find to experts you know can answer them.

11)  Answers – Ask questions of your network when you need help (and for bonus points, publish the answer on your blog for all to read). Never ask folks to respond privately so everyone can learn from your questions.

What are YOUR best LinkedIn tips? Share them in the comments below.

If you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn, please invite me to your network, and let me know how I know you, and I will be happy to connect to you. If you give me a generic “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” and we’ve never exchanged e-mails or I don’t remember you, then I can’t add you. I can’t let just anyone in my network.

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1) Ask yourself the big, tough question: What is your purpose on this planet? Now that you have a little (maybe a lot) of time to reflect, take the time to dig deep into your soul and find your deepest purpose and what you are most passionate about. This is especially important now as you may be asked to change careers. Hopefully you didn’t let yourself be identified by your position in the past. If you did, now is the time to let go and move forward.

2) What are the skills you have that you can apply to that purpose? No doubt you’ve learned a LOT over the last 5/10/20 years. Take a skills inventory of all the things you’ve learned. Include as many specific examples as you can. Folks will want specific proof that you’ve mastered these skills.

3) Do these skills readily translate to a new position? Look at the positions you’ve been applying to. Do your skills fit, or are they lacking? Perhaps you need to broaden your search, or perhaps you need to change the language you’re using.

Start to think like a human search engine: Use the words for the position you are applying for. If they say client service, and you would normally say customer service, change to client service. 

3a) If not…do you need to take some time to learn new skills (and possible take an intermediate position)? Maybe now is the time to go back to school and learn some new skills? Or maybe now is the time to take a part-time position to fill the skill and income gap between what you had and unemployment? Maybe you could even do some freelance work, or find someone to study under for an unpaid internship? Be creative and think hard about what you need and what you already know.

4) Identify which companies you want to work for. Don’t worry as much about position, think about the companies that have the values you value, or the next jump may also be short term. 

4a) Who in your network knows someone in the companies you want to work in? Use LinkedIn or Plaxo to search for folks who are directly connected to these folks. If you’re not using LinkedIn or Plaxo, I be writing more on how to use these tools soon.

4b) Ask for specific help on your search.

Example: “Phil, I see you know Yolanda at XYZ Company. Can you introduce her to me and let her know I am interested in ABC position?” if a position exists.

Or, ask for an introduction and explain WHY you are interested in the company (not just position, but think values and culture). 

Other things to do as you are looking for work, to get you back on folks radar:

• Write endorsements for folks you’ve enjoyed working with, via LinkedIn or otherwise.
• Use LinkedIn to ask for endorsements from folks you know you’ve helped with. 
• Create your own blog (http://wordpress.com is free and easy) and start writing about your values, purpose, mission. Make sure to put a link to your LinkedIn account in the sidebar. Create a nice about page with an informal picture of you, and make sure you have a nice professional email address (gmail.com is free and not full up yet) to send stuff out on behalf of. 

Write…write…write… 
Read…read…read… 

Repeat above steps until you land the job. 

What are YOUR best tips for landing a job in the recession?

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“On a whim, I started a college alumni group on LinkedIn (because there wasn’t one).  With no effort on my part, it has grown to 513 members which I think is pretty solid (I also co-founded another group with 240 members, and founded 2 other groups that have less than 50 members each).  The question I have is “now what”?  What can I do with this group to grow it, create value for members, and become more than an icon in a LinkedIn profile.  I’m trying to think of ideas that won’t become a full time job for, so perhaps soliciting for a “alumni of the month” story or creating a news letter from Alunmi supplied stories (I would just be an editor, not too hard).”

Great question, and some good suggestions to start with!

It got me thinking, what ELSE would I do to grow my LinkedIn community? After thinking a bit about it, I came up with 5 more ideas.

5 Ways to Grow Your Online Community

Create a Ning.com community for each group, and invite all the folks there to start there own conversation. Seed it with a few topics/posts, then invite folks to discuss things and create their own things. Then, set a few folks up as admins and let it do it’s own thing (with some moderation and commenting from you).

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