http://www.graduatejobtips.com

2

So what is this eGuide about exactly? Firstly, the “Social Media for Job Hunters” eGuide is designed to be focused around three social media platforms:

These are presently considered to be the three most important platforms within job-hunting today, and should form the core of every job hunters social media plan. Each of the platforms has an important role to play in creating a powerful personal online brand. The blog is your knowledge base, LinkedIn obviously is your CV archive, and twitter is the promotional conduit through which you promote your blog, your CV and lastly your thoughts and opinions. This eGuide looks at each of these three platforms individually and gives you the hottest tips on how to maximize your presence and impact through these platforms. This is not say that other social media platforms are irrelevant and should be ignored. In many cases they complement the above three social media platforms, and can often come in very handy. Well, enough mumbling………

LETS CUT TO THE CHASE………

Blog LinkedIn Twitter

3

Leveraging LinkedIn

1) Summary Make sure you fill out this section with lots of ‘beefy’ information. Provide a comprehensive summary of your work and educational experience. It is also very important to put down a list of specialties in this section. These will serve as keywords that will be associated with you when a recruiter searches LinkedIn for prospective candidates.

2) Personalize your URL

This will help when it comes to indexing your name in the search engines and the therefore give your personal brand greater visibility. Go to your ‘edit profile’ page and scroll to the ‘Public Profile’ section. Click ‘edit’ next to the URL to choose the new one.

3) Get recommendations

This is must done to get your profile complete. Your aim should be to get at least three recommendations. Insider tip: the best way to get recommendations is to give recommendations.

4) Join groups and connect with those outside your network

Select the ‘groups’ next to the search box, and start searching for groups, which relate to your field of interest. The best thing is that once you are a member of a particular group, you can make connections with people that fall outside of your network without having a premium account.

4

5) Become a guru on LinkedIn’s answer section

There is a section on LinkedIn where people can ask questions, a bit like Yahoo Answers. Simply make the effort to answer questions, and you could be featured as an expert answerer. You will then be issued with a star that will appear next to your name, which of course will add loads of credibility to your profile. The criteria to become an expert are as follows:

Find questions in the areas you know Browse questions to find categories familiar to you

Answer those questions Remember, private answers won’t help you earn expertise

Every time the questioner picks your answer best, you gain a point of expertise The more points of expertise, the higher you appear on lists of experts

Becoming a king on Twitter

1) Write a bio which grabs a new followers attention. The key here is to get people to pay attention to who you are. Read other peoples twitter bios’ to get an idea of what good copy looks like. Tell people about yourself, and also add in something quirky. This quirky comment will create intrigue, and people will follow you just for this reason.

5

2) Always include your blog/website URL in your bio.

3) How do I get more followers? The million dollar question

Firstly, lets look at why it is important to have a large group of followers. If you want to develop a presence on twitter and actually get people paying attention to what you are tweeting, and consistently grow your follower base week-on-week, there are three critical things that need to be in place:

I. You need to have over a 1000 followers.

II. You need a follower surplus. In other words if you have 1000

followers, you should not be following more than 1000.

III. You should be consistently making at 3-4 interesting tweets per day.

By fulfilling the above three points, there is a much greater chance of you being perceived as a thought leader in your particular niche, and therefore a lot more attention will be paid to what you are tweeting about. There are two main ways to do this: organically and non-organically. Which route you pursue all depends on what your goals are within Twitter and within social media in general. Organic growth The way to achieve success this way is by tweeting quality information in a consistent manner. For many it is becoming a thought leader or authority within a particular field/niche. This can be difficult, as competition in many niches can be tough, and always having the time to allocate to this can be challenging. That why there is option two…… Non-organic growth This is a euphemism for buying followers. This can from a variety of sources. It wall really depends on the quality of followers you want. If you are content with getting any old followers, and your prime objective is just to get the numbers up, then you can use a service like fiverr.com. On fiverr there many people offering the service of getting you more followers, and yes, you guessed for only $5! The number of followers varies from anything between 500 and 2000. If you are want to get targeted followers, which are all real people (yes a lot of the followers that you’ll get from fiverr will be bots), then I would recommend

6

paying a bit more using the services of buytwitterfollowers.ws. The great thing about them is for $19.00 you can get 1000 REAL followers.

4) Encrusting the crown

Now, that you have a large number of followers in place, here are a few more tips to continue growing your followers numbers.

Retweet as much as possible. This encourages the person you have retweeted to repay the favour at some stage, and therefore give you exposure to their audience.

Max out on the 140 characters. Be as descriptive as possible, as this creates more engaging tweets

Reply to Key People of Influence. If you are following some “big dogs” like Bill Gates, Adele, Snoop Dogg, reply to their tweets as if they were your mates. This will make you look like a big fish in a big pond, and others will follow you.

5) Maintaining your follower surplus Just because you have boosted your number followers into the k’s does not mean that you can sit back and relax. You need to keep pushing. The best way to do this is to set aside 30 min on a Monday, and follow 50-100 people. *Tip* If you want to find relevant followers, find one of your followers who is in the same niche as you, and simply follower his followers. I suggest doing this at the beginning of the week. Once you have done this, use this awesome little tool to see who follows you back: manageflitter. I would recommend giving the new people you have followed 3-4 days to follow you back. Therefore, on Friday, log in to manageflitter, and simply unfollow all of those who are not following you back (Apart from Key People of Influence)

7

Blogging

I have left this until last, as it requires a little bit more time. A blog provides the backbone to LinkedIn and twitter. It can serve as a platform, which showcases your real talent. It can convey your passion about a particular topic to a prospective employer, and most importantly differentiate you from other candidates both pre and post interview. Having a blog these days, is merely just an extension of your CV, and therefore it is fast becoming something recruiters ask to see rather than are surprised to see from a candidate. Many people are put off setting up a professional type blog, because they think it is a complex, long-winded process, which costs money. The latter is true, but the costs are very low. Hosting can be bought for as little $8 a month! There are two different types of blog, a hosted blog and self-hosted. The two main differences between the two are that with the hosted one, you will not be able to choose the domain name suffix (dot com, dot net etc). Its will simply carry the suffix of the company that is hosting it (dot blogspot, dot Wordpress etc). The second difference is that a hosted blog prevents one from operating as a commercial entity. There are also many different blogging platforms. Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr and Posterous are some of the more well known ones. Undoubtedly I would recommend Wordpress. It is the most dynamic, comprehensive and easy to use. For the above reasons I will be showing you how to get a self-hosted blog up and running.

1. I recommend using a hosting company that allows you to seamlessly install word press into it. At the moment I use Dreamhost, because it is a one-stop shop. Dreamhost integrates domain names and blogging platforms with ease, and for novices like myself, this made things a whole lot easier to begin with.

8

2. Search for your desired domain name:

Then proceed to buy the domain name.

3. Next, you must choose your hosting plan. I would recommend going with

a shared hosting plan. I have been on this one for the last three years and have no issues thus far.

4. Now you officially have a registered domain name which is hosted. The

next step is to install Wordpress. You should see a list of options on the left hand tool bar. Under “Goodies” you will find the “One-click-Installs” option.

9

You will need to then select Wordpress and the domain you wish to install it on:

It will then ask you for the database and database host details, so it knows where to store your blog posts. Just put in the name of your blog and do the same for a new MySQL for the new hostname.

5. After 5 to 10 minutes, you will receive an email that tells you that your blog has been setup. Now go to the web address.

6. When you visit the address, there will be a message from your blog. Click the “install.php” link.

7. You will be asked for a blog title and your email address.

10

8. The screen will tell you if the setup was successful and show you your temporary password (this will also be emailed to you). This password can of course be changed

9. After logging in, you will be taken to the Wordpress Dashboard. This is

where the fun begins! You are now free to build, customize, and design a bespoke blog. In order to get acquainted with Wordpress in as little time as possible, check out the great a little course on it in the “Bonus Tips” section below.

Connecting the dots

Now that you have LinkedIn, Twitter and a Blog all setup, its time to create connections between these platforms. You should be tweeting about every new blog post, and you should link your blog to feed into LinkedIn. Simply go to the “more” tab on the LinkedIn home page and select “Apps”. You will find a Wordpress app in this section. As said before, make sure your Blog URL appears on your twitter bio.

Bonus tips: The top 3 of each

Top 3 books for Job Hunters:

Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters – The best unconventional job-tips book out there right now

How to get a job in a recession

The Graduate Jobs Formula

11

Top 3 courses for Job Hunters:

Job Search Support. If you are looking for a course on the A-Z of finding a job, then this is one. The creator, Denise Taylor has over 20 years of experience as a career coach and a chartered psychologist, has recently brought this course to market.

Microsoft Excel Course for Beginners and Intermediates from Udemy. Having a strong command of Excel is known to enhance your CV, and becoming a master in data analysis can often prove pivotal when looking for a graduate job these days.

Build your own Wordpress site from Udemy. This course will get you up

to speed with Wordpress within a few hours, and before you know it you’ll have your personal blog up and running.

Top 3 Guerrilla tactics for Job Hunters:

Advertise on Facebook. More and more people are starting to do it with proven results. Here is $50 credit to get you started: T5V6-1JKV-TNH9-2MRH

Interview the person you want to work for. Even if you don’t get the job, at least you have had the opportunity to find out first hand what exactly they are looking for in a candidate

Spark a debate/conversation with companies that you might like to work

for on LinkedIn and Twitter. Get your name out there, and ask challenging questions. Kyle Lagunas from Software Advice wrote a great article relating to this here

12

About the Author

Disclaimer: No part of this publication shall be reproduced, transmitted, or sold in whole or in part in any form, without the prior written consent of the author. All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing in this guide are the property of their respective owners. Users of this guide are advised to do their own due diligence when it comes to making personal decisions and all information, products, services that have been provided should be independently verified by your own qualified professionals. By reading this guide, you agree that I am not responsible for the success or failure of your personal decisions relating to any information presented in this guide.

CREDITS:

Input, advice and support:

Howard Kingston and Nuria Nonell

Photos:

theimaginedlife.wordpress.com, thewayiseeitaly.blogspot.co.uk, ynaija.com

Marc Bromhall is the founder of the blog Graduate Job Tips and works for a technology startup in London He currently lives on a boat on the Thames, and enjoys cycling, skiing and tweeting @GraduateJobTips His ambition is for Graduate Job Tips to become the authority in providing unconventional job tips to Graduates