Mothers Day is on the second Sunday of May. The purpose of this holiday, as proposed by Anna Jarvis (1864-1948), is to remind us to appreciate our mother and strengthen family bonds. One great way to show appreciation to your mom is to send her a Mothers Day gift. This article provides ideas for 6 great gifts for mom this Mothers Day.
1. Mothers Day Gift Basket:
A great way to let your mom know you appreciate her unconditional love is to send her a Mothers Day gift basket, which is designed specifically to honor mothers. These beautiful baskets usually contain savory treats, votive candle, and a book of inspirational stories and quotes about mothers (or images of special moments shared by mother and daughter). Other items may also be included in the basket to proclaim your love for her. For example, a popular gift basket for mom includes a self sufficient container garden inscribed with Love You Mom on the outside, and contains the soil, nutrient, and seeds for her to start a blooming garden. All she has to do is to water and flowers will bloom. While the contents of these baskets vary, they can surely deliver your message of love to your mom and warm her heart on her special day and beyond.
2. Spa Gift Basket:
Spa gift baskets are popular Mothers Day gifts, and there are spa gifts designed just for mom. One of these gifts consists of a beautiful container adorned with purple flowers and includes a table top glass and mirrored plaque with a poem just for mom. Also included are lavender bath and body products, exfoliating bath mitt and facial towel, hair brush, rose-shaped tealight candles and heart-shaped holder, floral magnetic notepad, and a mini ceramic angel. This unique gift will not only sooth her body, but also fill her heart with your love.
3. Gardening Gift Basket:
If your mom is passionate about gardening, then a gardening gift basket will bring her joy. You can send her a solid wood gardening planter that contains a soft knee pad, a pair of stylish gardening gloves, assorted vegetable or floral seed packets, a spritzer bottle, a beautiful gardening sign, hand soap, moisturizing hand lotion, and aromatherapy sachets. She will also find some tasty treats inside the planter, including chocolate chip cookies, caramel apple stickies, and herbal tea. She can enjoy these tasty treats while taking a break from planting.
4. Tea Gift Basket:
If your mom is a tea lover, then a tea gift basket will be the perfect gift for her. This white basket contains a delicate rose stoneware teapot and matching tea cup with saucer, and two varieties of tea. Also included are chocolate truffle cookies, raspberry chocolate cake, green tea, breakfast tea, butter toffee caramel corn, chocolate truffles, and chocolate covered pretzels. This sophisticated gift will delight any tea lover.
5. Personalized Picture Frame:
Another way to profess your love to mom is to send her a personalized picture frame featuring a poem in her honor. You can select from one of the 4 different provided verses, and personalized the frame with your special message. The frame can hold your favorite picture with mom.
6. Giant Fortune Cookie:
You can also surprise your mom with your personalized message inside a giant Mothers Day fortune cookie. You can tell her how fortunate you are to have her in your life. The cookie is hand-dipped in fine Belgian chocolate, sprinkled with sweet pastel candies, and decorated with pink hearts, butterfly, flower, and a candy plaque that says Mom.
In summary, there are many ways to show your appreciation to your mother. You can send her a Mothers Day gift basket, or one of the 6 great gifts for mom.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Gift
Gift giving should be a special gesture that needs creativity on the part of the giver. Whatever the occasion may be – birthday, Christmas, anniversary - the gift need not be that expensive in order to be appreciated. Give sweets and chocolates with an online touch. Personalized photo gifts could simply be great, as well as photo canvases, for anniversary gifts. Wedding favors could be most unique.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Off-Page Search Engine Optimization
Off-page optimization refers to factors that have an effect on a website in natural or organic search results. These factors are off-site in the sense that the Webmaster or the coding on your page does not control them. But they play a major role in Search Engine Optimization. According to Google's survey, if a website is not in the first page results, then it looses 63% of potential business. So off-page optimization is really important from all the aspects to promote your website on major search engines.
Off-page optimization basically includes:
1.Proper selection of keyword for anchor text
2.Directory Submissions
3.Search Engine Submissions
4.Blog Comment Posting
5.Social Bookmaking
6.Press Release Submission
7.Link Building
8.One-Way link building
9.Two-way/reciprocal link building
10.Three way link building
11.Article Submission
The major point in off-page optimization is to get back-links to your website. It improves your position in SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Major search engine like Google gives great importance to back-links while calculating the position of a website in search engine. Other than on-page optimization, off-page is really what matters if a site has to perform well in a search result. So proper planning should be made before doing it as a small mistake can really decrease your credibility.
Off-page optimization basically includes:
1.Proper selection of keyword for anchor text
2.Directory Submissions
3.Search Engine Submissions
4.Blog Comment Posting
5.Social Bookmaking
6.Press Release Submission
7.Link Building
8.One-Way link building
9.Two-way/reciprocal link building
10.Three way link building
11.Article Submission
The major point in off-page optimization is to get back-links to your website. It improves your position in SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Major search engine like Google gives great importance to back-links while calculating the position of a website in search engine. Other than on-page optimization, off-page is really what matters if a site has to perform well in a search result. So proper planning should be made before doing it as a small mistake can really decrease your credibility.
Social Media Marketing/Optimization...
Social Media Marketing
SMM/SMO or Social Media Marketing/Optimization is basically the use of blogs, social networks, online communities or any other method of internet for marketing or sales of a product. It also involves making public relations and providing customer service. Some popular tools to carry out social media marketing are: Facebook, Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube. In terms of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users and not direct by employees of the property. For users and not employees can upload example there are many blogs whose content related with the blog.
What you can gain by SMM?
Social Media Marketing has so much potential that it can rocket your traffic, promote your brand and can grow the visitors to your site to a new height. To promote your business you just have to start a social media-marketing program with a proper planning and strategy. The target should be potential customer and not any audience. For example, suppose you have a company that manufactures child toys, and you want to build a marketing scheme to attract people to buy your products. Here social media marketing plays an important role as you can promote your product on blogs and other SMM sites. To keep your customers updated with happenings on your site, you can use blogs or Tweets to feed them content that catches their eye. In this way you can not only save money but you can also keep them psyched for any next major push from your side.
Social media sites are a great place to find new customers:
If you are very good in communicating with people, then Social Media Marketing can really be a bonus for you. But be damn sure that it is a great time consuming job. You will have to build your friend circle out of which most of them will be not interested in your business. You have to find potential customer for you. Even if you find one, there will be many who will be targeting those. So here comes your ability to present yourself. If you are good at that, then definitely you will have a lot of success in customer building program. Try to know which area of people is more lenient towards your business. Also know other aspects like their age group, general demand and other things. This will help in better presentation of your business to them. Also knowing these facts will make sure that next time you advertise yourself, you approach the group of people who are really interested in your business.
BYJoydeep Das
SMM/SMO or Social Media Marketing/Optimization is basically the use of blogs, social networks, online communities or any other method of internet for marketing or sales of a product. It also involves making public relations and providing customer service. Some popular tools to carry out social media marketing are: Facebook, Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube. In terms of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users and not direct by employees of the property. For users and not employees can upload example there are many blogs whose content related with the blog.
What you can gain by SMM?
Social Media Marketing has so much potential that it can rocket your traffic, promote your brand and can grow the visitors to your site to a new height. To promote your business you just have to start a social media-marketing program with a proper planning and strategy. The target should be potential customer and not any audience. For example, suppose you have a company that manufactures child toys, and you want to build a marketing scheme to attract people to buy your products. Here social media marketing plays an important role as you can promote your product on blogs and other SMM sites. To keep your customers updated with happenings on your site, you can use blogs or Tweets to feed them content that catches their eye. In this way you can not only save money but you can also keep them psyched for any next major push from your side.
Social media sites are a great place to find new customers:
If you are very good in communicating with people, then Social Media Marketing can really be a bonus for you. But be damn sure that it is a great time consuming job. You will have to build your friend circle out of which most of them will be not interested in your business. You have to find potential customer for you. Even if you find one, there will be many who will be targeting those. So here comes your ability to present yourself. If you are good at that, then definitely you will have a lot of success in customer building program. Try to know which area of people is more lenient towards your business. Also know other aspects like their age group, general demand and other things. This will help in better presentation of your business to them. Also knowing these facts will make sure that next time you advertise yourself, you approach the group of people who are really interested in your business.
BYJoydeep Das
What is SEO....???
Most people understand Search Engine Optimization or SEO as a way to increase the traffic on their site. A better understanding of SEO is the process of optimizing your content in order to be easier to find by potential visitors who are looking for the information you have published or the service you provide. In other words, it is more suitable to think of traffic incensement as a result of well performed content/website optimization, not as a SEO itself.
When you build your website
It is important to understand that nowadays SEO literary can be called a science, just like math and physics for example. Due to the fact that it would be almost impossible to cover all the points which make one website well search engine optimized, we will provide you with some basic guidelines how to improve your website and certain things that should be avoided during the web site creation process.
Content and title
Whatever design you decide to make for your website the most important thing for your website will be the content itself. So, providing high-quality, useful, full and accurate information on your website will definitely make it popular and webmasters will link and refer visitors to your website which is one of the key factors of site optimization.
Most crawlers have very sophisticated algorithms and can recognize natural from unnatural links. The natural links to your website are developed when other webmasters include in their articles or comments links to your content or products and not just including you in the blogroll, for example. If a certain page is considered as “important” by a search engine and there is a natural referral link to your website content most probably your page will be also crawled and marked as “important” if the content is relevant to the topic of the original page.
Another important subject that should be considered while creating your content is the title of your pages and articles. Please note that we are not referring to your URLs and links here. You should carefully choose your posts, articles, pages and categories titles in order to be more search engine friendly. When you are creating a content regarding a subject, think what words a potential visitors will use in the search engine websites when they are looking for this information and try to include them in your title.
For example, if you are writing a tutorial about how to install WordPress it will not be suitable to name it “Configuration, adjustment and setup of WP”. That is because people who are looking for this information will use more common words in order to describe the information they need – “How to install Word Press”. Think about the phrases that users would use to find your pages and include them on your site – this is a certainly a good SEO practice and will improve your website visibility in the search engines.
In addition to your title and key words another important part of your page are the meta tags. They are read by the search engines but are not displayed as a part of your web page design. For more information regarding meta tags and meta tags optimization you may refer to this URL.
Dynamic pages issues
People like eye-candies, bots do not. Yes, indeed, people do like colorful websites, flash, AJAX, javascript and so on, however, you should know that these technologies are quite difficult to be assimilated by the crawlers because they are not plain text. Furthermore, most bots can be referred to another page only by static text link which means that should make sure that all of your pages on your website are accessible from at least one simple text link on another page. This is a very good practice and assures that all pages on your website will be crawled by the search engine bots. Generally, the best way to perform this is to create a SiteMap of your website which can be easily accessed from a text link on your home page.
The easiest way to imagine how the search engine bot actually “see” your website is to think of it as text-only browser. If you are Unix/Linux user you can simply use a text browser via your shell such as Lynx (http://www.google.com/search?q=lynx+browser). However, if you are a Windows user you will need a text only browser or program which can visualize your website in order to get a general idea of how the bot “sees” your pages.
You can use this online tool which provides this service for free.
Basically, this website works as web proxy but provides only the text output. In order to use this website, however, you should create a simple file called delorie.htm under your public_html directory. Be advised that it can be just an empty file – it is used only to verify that you are the owner of the website and not a bot that uses the proxy service.
As soon as you have the file created type your domain name and click on “View Page” button. You will be displayed a text page with the text content of your website. All information that can not be seen via this proxy most probably will not be crawled by the search engine bots – this includes any flash, images or other graphical/dynamic content.
It is important to mention, however, that some search engine bots recognize graphical and dynamic content such as Flash, AJAX, etc.
Possible workaround
Still, it is hard to avoid using dynamic pages when you are creating a modern-looking website, thus, you will need some workaround in this matter in order to assure that the information is properly crawled. A possible solution is to create a text only duplicate of your dynamic page which will be readable by the search engine bot. This page can be included in your SiteMap and in this way all of your information will be read by the bot.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) target paid listings. In general, the earlier (or higher on the page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a website web presence.
When you build your website
It is important to understand that nowadays SEO literary can be called a science, just like math and physics for example. Due to the fact that it would be almost impossible to cover all the points which make one website well search engine optimized, we will provide you with some basic guidelines how to improve your website and certain things that should be avoided during the web site creation process.
Content and title
Whatever design you decide to make for your website the most important thing for your website will be the content itself. So, providing high-quality, useful, full and accurate information on your website will definitely make it popular and webmasters will link and refer visitors to your website which is one of the key factors of site optimization.
Most crawlers have very sophisticated algorithms and can recognize natural from unnatural links. The natural links to your website are developed when other webmasters include in their articles or comments links to your content or products and not just including you in the blogroll, for example. If a certain page is considered as “important” by a search engine and there is a natural referral link to your website content most probably your page will be also crawled and marked as “important” if the content is relevant to the topic of the original page.
Another important subject that should be considered while creating your content is the title of your pages and articles. Please note that we are not referring to your URLs and links here. You should carefully choose your posts, articles, pages and categories titles in order to be more search engine friendly. When you are creating a content regarding a subject, think what words a potential visitors will use in the search engine websites when they are looking for this information and try to include them in your title.
For example, if you are writing a tutorial about how to install WordPress it will not be suitable to name it “Configuration, adjustment and setup of WP”. That is because people who are looking for this information will use more common words in order to describe the information they need – “How to install Word Press”. Think about the phrases that users would use to find your pages and include them on your site – this is a certainly a good SEO practice and will improve your website visibility in the search engines.
In addition to your title and key words another important part of your page are the meta tags. They are read by the search engines but are not displayed as a part of your web page design. For more information regarding meta tags and meta tags optimization you may refer to this URL.
Dynamic pages issues
People like eye-candies, bots do not. Yes, indeed, people do like colorful websites, flash, AJAX, javascript and so on, however, you should know that these technologies are quite difficult to be assimilated by the crawlers because they are not plain text. Furthermore, most bots can be referred to another page only by static text link which means that should make sure that all of your pages on your website are accessible from at least one simple text link on another page. This is a very good practice and assures that all pages on your website will be crawled by the search engine bots. Generally, the best way to perform this is to create a SiteMap of your website which can be easily accessed from a text link on your home page.
The easiest way to imagine how the search engine bot actually “see” your website is to think of it as text-only browser. If you are Unix/Linux user you can simply use a text browser via your shell such as Lynx (http://www.google.com/search?q=lynx+browser). However, if you are a Windows user you will need a text only browser or program which can visualize your website in order to get a general idea of how the bot “sees” your pages.
You can use this online tool which provides this service for free.
Basically, this website works as web proxy but provides only the text output. In order to use this website, however, you should create a simple file called delorie.htm under your public_html directory. Be advised that it can be just an empty file – it is used only to verify that you are the owner of the website and not a bot that uses the proxy service.
As soon as you have the file created type your domain name and click on “View Page” button. You will be displayed a text page with the text content of your website. All information that can not be seen via this proxy most probably will not be crawled by the search engine bots – this includes any flash, images or other graphical/dynamic content.
It is important to mention, however, that some search engine bots recognize graphical and dynamic content such as Flash, AJAX, etc.
Possible workaround
Still, it is hard to avoid using dynamic pages when you are creating a modern-looking website, thus, you will need some workaround in this matter in order to assure that the information is properly crawled. A possible solution is to create a text only duplicate of your dynamic page which will be readable by the search engine bot. This page can be included in your SiteMap and in this way all of your information will be read by the bot.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) target paid listings. In general, the earlier (or higher on the page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a website web presence.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The Growth of Social Sites in India....
The following chart represents the growth of various social networking sites in India during the past year. The dark bar represents the total number of unique visitors for a site in Nov '09 while the lighter bar represents the same number for Nov '10.
As is obvious from the chart, Facebook experienced enormous growth in India, rising to the top spot, while previous market-leader Orkut has more or less stagnated in this period. LinkedIn and Twitter have also managed to nearly double their audience in a year.
While most old-time Orkut users may have migrated to Facebook, Orkut numbers have not declined because the site is still hugely popular in Tier-II and Tier-III towns of India.
BY Joydeep Das
As is obvious from the chart, Facebook experienced enormous growth in India, rising to the top spot, while previous market-leader Orkut has more or less stagnated in this period. LinkedIn and Twitter have also managed to nearly double their audience in a year.
While most old-time Orkut users may have migrated to Facebook, Orkut numbers have not declined because the site is still hugely popular in Tier-II and Tier-III towns of India.
BY Joydeep Das
The Social Network.....
How to use social media to look for – and get – a job...!!!
Networking has always been a great way to seek and gain employment. While attending industry events and engaging your friends and family are still valuable in the hunt for work, however, modern-day networking often means using social media – websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – to take your job search to the next level.
By Joydeep Das
Just make sure you’re doing it right.
“Because social media and online job-searching components are now part of the norm, candidates need to know how to benefit from the use of these tools in order to be successful in their search,” states Bernadette Kenny, chief career officer at Adecco, in a Holloway Schulz & Partners report entitled Job hunting in the digital age.
“A job seeker’s personal posts on social media outlets, as well as their overall ‘persona’ on the Internet, can harm their hunt for the perfect job – or they can turn it around and use these same tools to help them land a great position.”
Angela Crocker, a social media trainer with Beachcomber Communications, agrees. “We’re in a new age of job search [where] everything you’ve ever done online now has the potential to work in your favour or against you,” she says.
Crocker’s recommendation for any job seeker hoping to make a positive impression online: “Do a Google search for your own name and see what comes up in the first few results. Is that you? If not, then could the person be confused for you?”
Indeed, a study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that “one in 10 employers will use social networking sites to review a job candidate’s information, gaining access through the public Internet domain into a person’s private life. More than 60% of employers who review the sites say that the information they glean there will have at least some influence on their hiring decision.”
This, says Dayna Chambers, a staffing consultant at Randstad Work Solutions, makes maintaining a positive online persona particularly important for job seekers.
“Remember, what goes online stays there forever, so represent yourself appropriately in your profiles and communication,” she explains. “Make sure others see you in the way you would like to be considered.”
For more tips on using social media to get a jobKeep reading for more tips from our experts, scroll down (that’s social media speak for read on).
FACEBOOK
Employers today know that, when they want to get a good, honest look at a job candidate’s character, Facebook is one of the best places to start.
“Every potential employer looks at your Facebook page when they do a search for your name, so make sure it’s locked down from a security perspective,” says Chris Breikss, president of 6S Marketing Inc. in Vancouver.
“Also, your friends of friends may not have their security settings set as high and people might be able to view pictures of you through others’ profiles,” he continues. “As a rule of thumb … try and remove any potentially objectionable content anyway.”
Adds Crocker: “Do the five-year-old drunk college photos on your Facebook profile represent who you are today? Are your [updates] filled with slang and profanity? Depending on the employer, this can work against you.”
Erin Gray, office manager at Wolfgang Painters, says it’s critical to “be aware of your online image and what it says about you to people who don’t know you.”
“If the company you’re looking at [joining] is advertising on Facebook, be mindful of your privacy settings when you are applying to it,” she explains. “If you can find them there, they can find you there.”
The fact that more and more companies (i.e., potential employers) are leveraging Facebook to spread the word about their products or services and build a fan base creates a new set of social media job search rules.
Breikss says you should “use the Facebook ‘Like’ button to like companies that you want to work for. You can also comment on posts that they make on their wall.” However, warns Crocker: “Only leave comments when you have something meaningful to say.”
TWITTER
Twitter, according to Lana Bradshaw, is a great way to follow staffing firms and “potential employers or companies you want to work for.” Just remember to keep your interactions professional (i.e., “no smiley faces”).
Chambers has some timely Twitter tips, too: be sure to have a professional profile and photograph; tweet the fact that you are looking for job opportunities; and search the site to find what you need.
“You can use visit search.twitter.com/advanced to search for jobs in your area and language,” she says. “Also check out third-party Twitter services like www.twitjobsearch.com.”
As a job seeker, it’s really important to take an active approach to your Twitter activity. “Twitter is best for contacting a company directly and asking if they have job postings or asking for clarification on job postings, rather than just combing their tweets,” Gray explains. “Use it to have conversation with people, rather than just as a broadcast tool.”
Breikss agrees. “Make positive comments on tweets by replying to them and asking questions,” he suggests. “Showing that you’re active and supportive will get their attention. However, you can’t build relationships overnight, so this type of strategy requires time and patience.”
LINKEDIN
When it comes to employment opportunities, Gray calls LinkedIn “by far the best of the big three to try and find a job.”
“LinkedIn is used by the HR departments of most organizations and is also popular among recruiters,” Breikss reveals. “It’s essentially your professional public resumé, and you should make sure that you fill it out well with previous work and school experience. Try and add contacts and ask colleagues for endorsements to improve your profile and leave a good impression.”
Bradshaw has some additional advice on leveraging LinkedIn for your job search:
join industry-specific groups, which usually include job boards with postings;
follow the human-resources staff of potential employers, who often post jobs; and
contact recruiters and try to set up a meeting to show them your resumé – even if they don’t have a current position, it helps to stay in touch.
Staying in touch on LinkedIn means “updating your status with news of your job search, changing your preferences to communicate with visitors to your profile that you’re interested in job opportunities and getting proactive by conducting an advanced search … for people, companies, jobs and groups,” says Chambers.
“Ask for introductions to friends of friends, and be careful not to have more than five requests to connect refused – otherwise your account will get blocked as a spammer
Networking has always been a great way to seek and gain employment. While attending industry events and engaging your friends and family are still valuable in the hunt for work, however, modern-day networking often means using social media – websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – to take your job search to the next level.
By Joydeep Das
Just make sure you’re doing it right.
“Because social media and online job-searching components are now part of the norm, candidates need to know how to benefit from the use of these tools in order to be successful in their search,” states Bernadette Kenny, chief career officer at Adecco, in a Holloway Schulz & Partners report entitled Job hunting in the digital age.
“A job seeker’s personal posts on social media outlets, as well as their overall ‘persona’ on the Internet, can harm their hunt for the perfect job – or they can turn it around and use these same tools to help them land a great position.”
Angela Crocker, a social media trainer with Beachcomber Communications, agrees. “We’re in a new age of job search [where] everything you’ve ever done online now has the potential to work in your favour or against you,” she says.
Crocker’s recommendation for any job seeker hoping to make a positive impression online: “Do a Google search for your own name and see what comes up in the first few results. Is that you? If not, then could the person be confused for you?”
Indeed, a study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that “one in 10 employers will use social networking sites to review a job candidate’s information, gaining access through the public Internet domain into a person’s private life. More than 60% of employers who review the sites say that the information they glean there will have at least some influence on their hiring decision.”
This, says Dayna Chambers, a staffing consultant at Randstad Work Solutions, makes maintaining a positive online persona particularly important for job seekers.
“Remember, what goes online stays there forever, so represent yourself appropriately in your profiles and communication,” she explains. “Make sure others see you in the way you would like to be considered.”
For more tips on using social media to get a jobKeep reading for more tips from our experts, scroll down (that’s social media speak for read on).
Employers today know that, when they want to get a good, honest look at a job candidate’s character, Facebook is one of the best places to start.
“Every potential employer looks at your Facebook page when they do a search for your name, so make sure it’s locked down from a security perspective,” says Chris Breikss, president of 6S Marketing Inc. in Vancouver.
“Also, your friends of friends may not have their security settings set as high and people might be able to view pictures of you through others’ profiles,” he continues. “As a rule of thumb … try and remove any potentially objectionable content anyway.”
Adds Crocker: “Do the five-year-old drunk college photos on your Facebook profile represent who you are today? Are your [updates] filled with slang and profanity? Depending on the employer, this can work against you.”
Erin Gray, office manager at Wolfgang Painters, says it’s critical to “be aware of your online image and what it says about you to people who don’t know you.”
“If the company you’re looking at [joining] is advertising on Facebook, be mindful of your privacy settings when you are applying to it,” she explains. “If you can find them there, they can find you there.”
The fact that more and more companies (i.e., potential employers) are leveraging Facebook to spread the word about their products or services and build a fan base creates a new set of social media job search rules.
Breikss says you should “use the Facebook ‘Like’ button to like companies that you want to work for. You can also comment on posts that they make on their wall.” However, warns Crocker: “Only leave comments when you have something meaningful to say.”
Twitter, according to Lana Bradshaw, is a great way to follow staffing firms and “potential employers or companies you want to work for.” Just remember to keep your interactions professional (i.e., “no smiley faces”).
Chambers has some timely Twitter tips, too: be sure to have a professional profile and photograph; tweet the fact that you are looking for job opportunities; and search the site to find what you need.
“You can use visit search.twitter.com/advanced to search for jobs in your area and language,” she says. “Also check out third-party Twitter services like www.twitjobsearch.com.”
As a job seeker, it’s really important to take an active approach to your Twitter activity. “Twitter is best for contacting a company directly and asking if they have job postings or asking for clarification on job postings, rather than just combing their tweets,” Gray explains. “Use it to have conversation with people, rather than just as a broadcast tool.”
Breikss agrees. “Make positive comments on tweets by replying to them and asking questions,” he suggests. “Showing that you’re active and supportive will get their attention. However, you can’t build relationships overnight, so this type of strategy requires time and patience.”
When it comes to employment opportunities, Gray calls LinkedIn “by far the best of the big three to try and find a job.”
“LinkedIn is used by the HR departments of most organizations and is also popular among recruiters,” Breikss reveals. “It’s essentially your professional public resumé, and you should make sure that you fill it out well with previous work and school experience. Try and add contacts and ask colleagues for endorsements to improve your profile and leave a good impression.”
Bradshaw has some additional advice on leveraging LinkedIn for your job search:
join industry-specific groups, which usually include job boards with postings;
follow the human-resources staff of potential employers, who often post jobs; and
contact recruiters and try to set up a meeting to show them your resumé – even if they don’t have a current position, it helps to stay in touch.
Staying in touch on LinkedIn means “updating your status with news of your job search, changing your preferences to communicate with visitors to your profile that you’re interested in job opportunities and getting proactive by conducting an advanced search … for people, companies, jobs and groups,” says Chambers.
“Ask for introductions to friends of friends, and be careful not to have more than five requests to connect refused – otherwise your account will get blocked as a spammer
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