Topic: Making Your Social Media Employer Friendly

I have said it many times, and its still the same – once you put something on social media, its out there forever. Even though there are many different security settings you can put on your social media, it is still on the Internet, for someone to find.

However, using your security settings for good can be very beneficial. It is often talked about how social media checks are becoming the faster and cheaper background checks. According to this article, from monstercollege.com interview candidates could have their Facebook or LinkedIn pages viewed, some even scour the Internet by Googling your name to find information on you from several years.

Here are some tips on “How to make your Facebook profile employer friendly”

• Let LinkedIn be your professional online representative
• Use Facebook as a way to represent your skills and interests
•  Keep your potential future employers in mind
•  Make your profile picture just you
•  Be aware of what your profile links to

Here are some tips that I have discovered over the years are very helpful with social media and the job search:

• only post or allow to be tagged in appropriate pictures
•  be careful of what you comment on others pages or blogs and what people post on yours
•   don’t share every detail about your personal life

Hopefully with these few tips, you will be able to create social media  profiles that appeal to everyone, especially potential employers. 

Topic: Social Media Management Tools

There is so much more to social media than just updating, posting and linking onto your accounts. All the behind the scenes management can really help you make your page and accounts thrive in such a social media savvy world. From sites that can help you manage your posts to giving you statistics of who likes your page. There is so many different types of management.

The first types of management pages that I really know about are sites that allow you to schedule your posts and tweets that make it so you don’t have to be constantly updating your sites. This is nice if you have a busy week, are out of town or have several accounts to manage.

According to Mashable.com they chose the Top 5 Social Media Management Tools that can help make your life easier.

1. TweetDeck – this allows you to manage all your personal social media profiles. Allows you to connect across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google Buzz. You can update all or just a few with the same status at one time.

2.  CoTweet – great for small businesses or divisions of larger businesses that spread social media duties among team members and have a customer service approach to engagement.

3.  HootSuite – small to medium-sized businesses that have one or two dedicated social media managers. Allows you to add five networks to all monitor at the same time.

4. SpredFast – this is specifically for agencies managing social media for several companies with high ROI demands. It has a lot of analytics which is a big advantage over other tools.

5. Engage121 – franchised companies looking to maintain consistent messaging while giving local branches a hand in social media should use this. It’s the best in its class at encompassing monitoring, broadcasting and engagement.

“The Econsultancy/Responsys 2013 Marketing Budgets survey recently revealed that 38% of companies will be increasing their investments in Social Media Management Systems this year, and 62% will increase their social media investment.”

As you can tell, social media is prevalent in todays industry and organizations are taking it seriously to make their mark online.

These tools will be very beneficial to any company trying to grow using social media. If you can stay on top your social media and know what your company demographics are, you are sure to be just fine. 

Topic: Social Media Platforms

As a person who is an avid social media user and an director for the Associated Students of Utah State University (ASUSU), I would like to think I know which social media platform works best at getting “the word out.” Choosing the right platform is key to making sure that your information gets across to the right audience. If you pick the wrong platform can decrease customers and will definitely give your competitors an advantage.

According to socialmediachimps.com, the Top 5 Social Media Sites of 2012 were:

• Facebook (950 million)
•  YouTube (880 million)
• Wikipedia (410 million)
• BlogSpot (340 million)
•  Twitter (170 million)

These are platforms that should be taken into consideration when getting ready to advertise your product/service/company. These have the most amount of traffic and can almost guarantee an increase in traffic if used correctly.

Below is a GREAT infographic from socialmediachimps.com on the top social media platforms within 2012. It shows that “social networks receive 36% of unique visitors, video sites 27%, blogging platforms 15%, wikis 11%, and micro blogging and other types of social media platforms at 6%.”

If you have noticed, whatever you are trying to market – whether it is a product, service, company or even yourself – the more you can get the name out to the public the better chance you will have at success. Be sure to use more than just one platform and make sure you update them frequently. You will often see companies that have a Facebook, who make posts about their blog and link their status to Twitter. This is a great way for them to be seen on multiple platforms.

Once you understand the top social media platforms and what you think could potentially work best for you. You need to then develop a strategy on how to become successful in using these. Socialmediaexamier.com has a great 7 Step process that helps you develop a successful social media strategy.

1.    Determine Your Goals and Objectives

2.   Research, Research and Research Some More

3.   Create a Digital Rolodex of Contacts and Content

4.   Join the Conversation to Develop Relationships

5.   Strengthen Relationships

6.   Measure Results

7.   Analyze, Adapt, and Improve

For more information on these 7 steps – click here

Hopefully these can help you think about which platform works best for you and what you are trying to market. Just remember, whatever you put on social media - is for everyone else to see. You can never get it back!

Topic: Blogging

I have never really been a person who is into blogging. I can barley keep up with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram so blogging was something that I never had time for. Plus, I didn’t think that people were interested in hearing about how my day went, who I am dating or what I ate for dinner.

So what is blogging anyways? According to Dictionary.com blogging, the verb “is to maintain or add new entries to a blog.” Therefore, a blog, the noun, is a “website containing the writer’s or group of writers’ own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other Websites.” I thought this was an interesting definition because I feel like a blog can be way more then what was defined. From what I can tell a blog is anything and everything that a person wants it to be.

This got me thinking, what are some of the top blogs created Blogs.com has made lists of the 10 Ten blogs in many different categories. From DIY Renovation, Stylish Food, Travel for Hedonists, Madrid, Games, Family Crafts, Daily Inspirations, and many more. One blog that was interesting to me was the “Top 10 iPhone Photo (iPhoneography) Blogs. These are blogs that display images that are taken and edited only with an iPhone.

Basically, anyone can write a blog about anything and I’m sure someone will read it. Wordpress.com, which is another blog creation engine gives 6 tips on basic blogging.

1.                    Post regularly, but don't post if you have nothing worth posting about.

2.                    Stick with only a few specific genres to talk about.

3.                    Don't put 'subscribe' and 'vote me' links all over the front page until you have people that like your blog

4.                    Use a clean and simple theme if at all possible.

5.                    Enjoy, blog for fun, comment on other peoples' blogs

6.                    Have fun blogging and remember, there are no rules to what you post on your blog!

Now, since this is all about blogging and I have never been one to have a blog, I still enjoy checking out what other’s have to say on their own blogs.

Here are some of the blogs that I have subscribed to that you might like as well (some of them are more girly than others):

-       http://threadethic.com/

o  a blog created by Desirae and Melody (two of the siblings from the piano playing group “The 5 Browns”) who created a modest fashion blog.

-       http://www.huntsmanschool.blogspot.com/

o        Being a business student, I always like to know what is going on at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business. This blog always has great stories, ideas and tips about the business world. 

-       http://www.jordanchristy.com/blog/

o  Jordan Christy is the author of “How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World,” a fantastic book and blog on how to live with style, class and grace.