Many people outside of the online marketing realm, unless they are under 25 years old, have difficultly understanding the concept.

In a nutshell, Social media is Web 2.0, or interacting with others online.  Web 1.0 was all about showcasing oneself, while Web 2.0 involves a sense of community and openness in which the line between author and reader is blurred.

Savvy businesses and organizations are beginning to utilize social networks to interact with current and prospective clients or customers, introduce new products and services, and launch viral campaigns to involve its market.  Businesses are able to communicate directly with target markets and monitor what others are communicating about its brand or service.

Most organizations are recognizing the value of social media but clueless how to use it.  A job seeker who understands Web 2.0 automatically can have an edge over the competition.  If a company is on Twitter or Facebook, job seekers can get a pulse on what that company values.

To understand what social media is, consider the six main categories:

• Social Networks. In general, these sites allow users to build a profile, connect with friends, and interact with others who have similar interests on the site.  The most popular social networks are MySpace and Facebook.  For business use, LinkedIn is a rapidly growing network of professionals.
• Blogs and Micro-blogs. Blogs are probably the most popular form of social media because they existed before Web 2.0.  Many people write blogs to convey their expertise on a subject, review products, report news, or simply as a diary for all to see.  On the flip side, blogs have become a recognized news source.  The social aspect of blogs involves reader comments and sharing.  Micro-blogs, like Twitter, allow for immediate posting and more interaction.
• Social Bookmarking. Social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon and Diigo, allow users to access their bookmarks from any computer and share them with others.  Rather than bookmarking a Web page in your Internet browser, you can save it on Delicious to access it from anywhere and give your network access to your favorite articles and Web sites.
• Video Sharing. Popular video site, YouTube, has become almost synonymous with online videos.  Not only are videos entertaining, they are also highly searchable.  Other video sharing networks include Blip.tv, Dailymotion, Hulu and Yahoo! video.
• Podcasts. These include audio or visual files that are available through subscriptions.  Podcasts can be live presentations, webinars, teleseminars, radio shows or anything that contains and audio or video file.  iTunes is a hub for all genres of podcasts and anyone can submit a file to be heard around the world.
• Wikis. These websites contain user-generated content and allow people to add or revise information about a given subject.  Pages become communal documents in an online database.  The best know wiki is Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit.  Other wikis include About.com and Squidoo.

The common thread in each of these social mediums is content creation and distribution.  New media users are not selfish with their ideas or work, instead they share their work with all of their networks through syndication.   Applications like Ping.fm make the distribution process simple, so that content can be disseminated to a number of networks at once.

You can become new media savvy if you remember the following steps: Create, Syndicate, Comment, Repeat.  Use this to your advantage during the job hunt to connect directly with your prospective employers or blow them away with your knowledge during an interview.

Source: Anne Carr, Account and Social Media Director at Bolt Public Relations

It is clear by now that finding a new job is tough in this environment.  I want to provide you with a posting which has a collection of tips, weblinks and ideas…

Check this Social Media Website-  the Interactive Insights Group has some great content.  Their chief Internet and social media strategist, Robin Broitman, has compiled a wide range of resources, advice and tools to help you build and manage your social media brand identity more effectively.

Check out this site for all you wanted to know (and more about how to build your brand on your personal website.  How-To: Build & Manage Your Brand Identity with Social Media

Robin has been using LinkedIn for years and has found it to be one of the most useful professional networking sites online.   It can help you build your professional network, establish your brand/image, and market your services.  She has found LinkedIn’s group feature to be a helpful tool for driving traffic to her blog.  Check LinkedIn SuperGuide -Tutorials, Tips and Tools

The Interactive Insights Group has a You Tube channel: Videos on Social Media and Web2.0 hand-selected by IIG/Interactive Insights Group, Inc.

The Interactive Insights Group has a Delicious link

Videos

Cheezhead is dedicated to issues pertaining to search engine optimization, Internet recruiting, human resources, employment branding, technology and marketing.

Cheezhead founder Joel Cheesman is one of the most widely-read bloggers on emerging recruitment issues in the world.  Joel’s blog is a daily chronicle of how the Internet and technology are shaping human resources and how organizations can attract the talent needed to thrive in tomorrow’s economy.

Here are a sampling of Cheezhead’s Bi-Monthly HR / Recruiting -  specific news and noteworthy items (such as Glassdoor and Mjob) -  all of which may assist you in your job searching:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

See more videos here Recent video topics:  get away from online job databases, monster job hunter, mobile past, present and future, unemployed, a video, tech ticker interviews linkedin ceo, climber’s resume carousel looks time-consuming, michael spafferty’s video resume; plus more.

Job Search Tips

TIP: Here’s a contrarian networking idea: Stop thinking about networking and start trying to be useful to other people. That’s the advice of Dan Sullivan, founder of The Strategic Coach, a focusing program for entrepreneurs worldwide.

According to Sullivan, if you can bring confidence and clarity to people in your network by researching their needs and then offering something useful — in the form of product news, information about their customers, contacts, expertise, etc. — people will make time to talk to you. Because you will be seen as an oasis in today’s desert of bad economic news.

One thing is certain: If you keep doing what you’ve been doing in your job search, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting. And if you’re not getting calls from employers, why not try being useful to as many people as possible for one week and see where it leads you?

__________________________________________________________________________

TIP: Update your LinkedIn profile at least once a week. Add an article or presentation you’ve done. Change the information in your summary, update what you’re working on, add a book to the list of books you’re reading. You get the idea.

What to add? Add information that reflects your brand as a candidate. What would make you stand out to a hiring manager and/or recruiter? Be very strategic here—make sure everything supports and reinforces the brand you’re creating.

What does this get you? Your update will be sent to all your contacts in that weekly email LinkedIn sends out. Your name will keep coming up week after week with yet something else that brands you. A lot of visibility for just a few keystrokes.

___________________________________________________________________________

TIP:    Responding to a network contact with an article or summary of key points from a recent seminar can also help to remind them of your presence and also provides valuable information that they may not have seen during their busy week.

First, they know you thought of them and secondly, you went the extra step of giving them the main points in the article.  Most of us who receive articles love that considerate touch. Means we don’t have to feel guilty if we just don’t get around to the pile of articles we really mean to read someday.

___________________________________________________________________________

TIP: For going to a MEET UP, how do you feel about going to a meeting? What is the real reason you’re going? Did that reason get met? Do you like what happens and what you learn there? If you leave with one or two solid referrals and feeling energized by new information and/or new contacts, that may be a good meeting to keep attending.

With all the other things we’re talking about here that are essential job search components, if you feel like cutting back or cutting out these kinds of meetings, then do what seems to make sense for you.

Job search today requires creating a strategy that works for you. Test what you hear to see if it’s right for you–even the things we discuss here. Break out of your comfort zone (or perhaps it seems like you already left that far behind). Be creative and be yourself.

___________________________________________________________________________

TIP: Consider the Recruiter Side of the equation..  It may be tempting but so often a waste of your time to send a resume for a position where the key requirements don’t match your experience. If it’s a stretch to tie your experience to the absolute requirements, it’s unlikely anyone at the company will have the time, inclination or ability to make that leap.

Remember that recruiters have to present candidates to the hiring manager with a good reason for doing so. If they present candidates who don’t come close to the basic requirements, the hiring manager questions if the recruiter knows what they are doing. Recruiters rarely want to look stupid to their clients. So no matter how you try to spin it, they won’t be able (or willing) to sell it.

If you’ve got a resume that is oriented to how the hiring manager views the world, if you know how to position yourself and your experience in an interview, and you’ve got a clear, concise and very brief statement (sound bites can differentiate you) of what you bring to the table, you won’t need to send resumes off and hope the recipient can make the leap.

________________________________________________________________________

TIP: What gets you to the strategic table is seeing (and being able to articulate) how HR value-add efforts impact the Profit and Loss.  It is essential for HR Executives to make that connection and use the language of business. CEO is only interested in one thing– “increasing shareholder value”.  HR must connect to that strategy in real ways they can articulate. They need to show the organization how their work impacts the P&L. If they do not, they may not be long at the strategic table.

All of HR, not just the executive leader, should know the Profit and Loss and annual report and know how to tie back the HR initiatives to those results. Read the annual report. Make an effort to understand the financial operations and financial results of the organization. Take your rightful place at the table. We need you!

So perhaps as part of your job search strategy, you might listen to CEO shareholder calls, network with CFO’s, learn the key financial terms and concepts. Translate your accomplishments into P&L impact. Talk about EBITDA in your next interview if you really want to differentiate yourself with a CEO or CFO.

First, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Delicious, watch this show video from Commoncraft:  Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why use Delicious? As you load your bookmarks you can have the delicious tool add subject tags to your websites. Then you can searchyour own bookmarks to find the items on a subject. I have so many bookmarks (like for Job Seeking) I needed more organization that just the file folder format.  Here is how you can benefit from Delicious:

• Search your own tags (subjects)
• Edit and add new tags to your current bookmarks
• Share your bookmarks with friends (or keep them private)
• View other peoples bookmarks to get ideas of what other people think are great sites
• Add other people to your network and review their bookmarks regularly.

You can register for you own account on the Delicious website. As you create your account you will have options to upload your favorite (existing)  links from your current bookmarks (for example, from your Microsoft Internet Explorer browser).

Background on Delicious

Delicious (formerly del.icio.us, pronounced “delicious”) is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005.

Delicious uses a non-hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms (generating a kind of folksonomy).  A combined view of everyone’s bookmarks with a given tag is available. The collective nature makes it possible to view bookmarks added by similar-minded users (like us fellow job seekers).

Use of Delicious is free. All bookmarks posted to Delicious are publicly viewable by default, although users can mark specific bookmarks asprivate, and imported bookmarks are private by default. The public aspect is emphasized; the site is not focused on storing private (”notshared”) bookmark collections.

Here is how you can get started

The San Francisco Public Library – courtesy of Susan Cohen, Librarain – Jobs & Career, has a Delicious presence for job seekers.

See how Susan set up the tags – one-word descriptions that are assigned a web link – specific to the jobs and careers.

http://delicious.com/busscitech/Jobs%26Careers