There is so much more to finding employment and creating a career today than many people realize at the get go. While many people no doubt find positions by sending out their resumes and custom tailoring their cover letters, today’s tech centric-society lends itself well to new and more appropriate forms of self-promotion. Blogging has become a hobby, career, and tool for thousands and thousands of individuals around the world. Using a personal blog to essentially brand yourself and market your skills to the professional world has fast become the approach in today’s harsh job market. Follow these four blogging tips and self-marketing basics to create a personal blog that sells your best professional qualities and helps potential employers gain special insight into your abilities.

Simplicity and Clarity

The key to a successful website of any sort is simplicity and clarity. This is true for most things, including marketing. You want to be clear and direct with your intent and purpose. With your personal blog, you should create something that carefully communicates what you wish to tell. Your writing style should be clear and to the point. Tell your readers up front what your interests are, what the purpose of your blog is, what your accomplishments are, and what you wish to gain from them reading your material. There’s no point in using fluff language or fillers. Just tell people exactly who you are and what you are doing and see how they respond. Of course, I mean all of this directness to be done in a professional manner. You must sell yourself through your blog. Be clear and simple in your intent. 

Be Forward

This concept goes along with simplicity and clarity, but is slightly different. You want to be forward and up front. Self-promotion can only be successful if it is seen. Direct potential professional contacts to your blog page, so they can see your qualifications and potential. Having this blog can demonstrate to potential employers your perseverance to finding a worthwhile career and your thoroughness. Creating and maintaining a blog requires a significant amount of dedication and effort. With any type of marketing you have to put yourself out on the line. Be bold. Reach out to your desired audience and make them look at your blog.

Looks Matter

As any marketing professional would tell you, it really is all about looks. The way things are visually presented to you make a difference. Looks influence the way people feel about something and how they perceive that thing. If you are using your personal blog as a way to communicate and connect you’re your professional network, you must pay close attention to the appearance of your site. Make sure that the information is easily navigable and the site is uncluttered. Websites online that look outdated or busy always serve the opposite purpose they intend. You want your online resume (which is essentially what your blog will act as) to be clean, clear, and professional looking. Add some of your own personal style touches, but don’t overdo the pages and muddle the site’s purpose.

About the author

This is a guest post by Eliza Morgan who is a full time blogger.  She specializes in writing about business credit cards. You can reach her at: elizamorgan856 at gmail dot com.

Google’s long awaited social network project, Google+, has been recently released to lucky few, while the rest of the world willing to try the “not Facebook but like Facebook” new kid on the social front are bound to wait. While in most cases restricting your beta release to a restricted group might be a bad idea, in Google’s case it seems to be working great.

Browsing my Google Reader today (yes, my online life is completely dependant on Google), I saw a quite a lot of stories on how to get invites faster, news roundups including the Google announcement, reviews, good or bad, and everything in between. While some proclaim Google+ another failure at getting the social concepts right from the search giant, others are already focusing on the features and how to leverage this new networking channel. Bottom line, the Google+ project keeps getting lots of coverage. 

Even if some were not that interested in trying a new social site after finally getting the hang of Facebook and Twitter, the fact that they can’t just access it at will does spike their curiosity. If you’re like me and want to try something before deciding if it works for you or not, then you’re probably also looking forward to getting  to play with Google+.

One secret of social media sites is that while some fail and other succeed, they all attract Internet users who want to test them. People are looking for a shiny new toy or a new way to promote their business, but regardless of their reasons, they will try a lot of new comers. I know I tried FriendFeed, Plurk, Reddit, Mixx and other such websites when they showed up and never used them or stopped using them along the way. And there were hundreds of thousands like me.

Google is Google. We love to hate them and keep a close eye on everything they do. So launching something new that a lot of people do want to try (just for kicks or because they secretly love to hate Facebook just as much) and then restricting access is a plan bound to make people anxious and eager to get access even more. Sure, some will be alienated, but when the secret society turns into public access for everyone and anyone, there will be hordes rushing in to try it. Maybe more than half will call it quits after a few days, maybe they’ll stay. The initial strategy still works!

A five-part series on online branding for businesses by Ryan Chaffin

1. What’s in a Name? Everything
2. SEO: Marketing in the New Millennium
3. PPC as a Model of Smart Advertising
4. Social Media: Highly Accessible Advertising
5. Freshening Up: Maintaining Your Brand Image

Social media is taking over. Blatant and bold as that statement may sound, it is the truth. You can either hop on the bandwagon or stay behind and figure out how you are going to catch up once the dust settles. Don’t believe me? Simply type the word “blog” into any search engine and tell me how many hits pop up. Facebook currently has over 400 million (!) active users. Twitter, a relatively new player in the social media field, has over 75 million users. Simply looking at those numbers and denying the prevalence of social media is willful ignorance.

You, on the other hand, recognize the significance of social media, and understand how they can benefit your company. A snappy logo or updated blog can help your business like no other form of advertising can. Think about it: if you are searching for information about Boston restaurants and you come across a blog written by a chef in Boston who adds entries regularly, discussing the newest foodie trends in the city, chances are you will search out your restaurant and give them your hard-earned cash in exchange for food that you trust (based on what you read on their blog) will be good. As a business owner what could be simpler or more satisfying? You get to talk about your passion and advertise your services at the same time! As a customer, you get in-depth knowledge of a product or service before you try it out for yourself. If there ever was a textbook example of a win-win situation this is surely it.

Social media is also an advantageous route to take because one properly placed video, slogan, or commercial can spread like wildfire, turning into a much talked about meme overnight. If you can plant the seeds of your services or products on a social media website and then let the users of the website spread that idea then you have effectively marketed your product while at the same time saving yourself thousands of dollars in advertising money. This is every advertiser’s dream: a self-replicating ad campaign that is spread mainly through the mouth of the customer.

Advertising your business using social media is a no-brainer. Once you have learned about the techniques and seen the results you will become a believer because there really is nothing like sitting back and watching your idea spread throughout the Internet on a wave of positive inertia.

About the author

Ryan Chaffin is currently a college student majoring in Business Marketing. He loves anything technology, internet, and social media related along with sports and health & wellness. Ryan currently specializes in search engine optimization (SEO), blogging, and social media and believes in achieving your fullest potential on and off the web. You can also find Ryan on Twitter (@ryanchaffin).

Guest post by Lauren Horn

Twitter presents the opportunity for you to connect with leaders in your industry, your peers and your target audience, while generating exposure and making connections. You have not only created your account, updated information, customized the look and feel of your page, but also begun tweeting up a storm. At this point, your following base should be through the roof, but you’re not seeing the results you anticipated, so now what?

So now, it’s important to remember that your page is just another marketing tool which ultimately needs to be promoted. Step back and first reassess your content and your purpose. Are you only tweeting about your product and services? Is your messaging consistent? How involved are you in the community? Are you following your target audience? Do you engage with your current followers? Are you listed? Do you utilize hashtags? These are just some things to consider. However, there are several ways to actually build a following. Below are some tips and tricks of the trade.

Network with Other Platforms

Where else are you present on the web? I’m sure you have a corporate website, but do you have Facebook and a blog? It’s important to integrate these mediums so they work together. Include the Twitter logo or a widget on your website in a location that’s visible to your audience. Utilize your Twitter handle (URL) on Facebook. Consider writing a blog post about your Twitter account and what value you bring and how it benefits your audience.

Invite Your Email Subscribers

I hope over the years you have captured an opt-in email list. If so, great! If not, please do! This list is critical and a great way to send an invitation and/or announcement to your subscribers via email. Simply write an encouraging message about why they should follow you, much like your blog post. Also, make sure to include the logo in your HTML newsletters. If you’re a cell phone provider, consider writing something such as “tweet us your favorite app!” instead of “follow us,” in hopes that your subscribers go directory to your page, tweet, and follow.

Add to Your E-mail Signature

Consider updating your email signature to include a link to your social media page(s) and website(s) in every email you send. Wisestamp signature add-on is used for web-based email accounts and is simple to download and create a customized stamp.

Update Your Press Release Boiler Plate

The boiler plate is the last paragraph in your press release, containing valuable company and product information and web address, where the editor or reader can go for further information. Perhaps yours currently states, “For more information, please visit www.companyname.com.” Update that portion to read, “For more information please visit www.companyname.com, www.Twitter.com/username, www.facebook.com/username.” This too, will also be helpful if you submit your press releases through online distribution services, greater optimizing web presence.

Perform Specialized Searches

Execute a search within Twitter using your company’s keyword and/or product or service category, preceded with a hashtag (#) to group users. As you review the results, consider following or replying to other users’ tweets so they know you exist and may offer further information regarding that topic in the future. Also perform searches for target media outlets and target authority spokespersons, etc. to follow. In doing so, they will receive an alert and hopefully reciprocate the follow.

Interact

Be actively engaging with other Twitter users. Perhaps you want to ask someone a question, comment on their latest tweet, or provide advice. In doing so, make sure when responding to another user to include the symbol, @, preceding the username, i.e. @Username, so they receive a notification. Hashtag anything you feel a majority of people would be discussing, such as #interiordesign, #marketing, #products, etc.

Try these tips and I’m sure you’ll see an increase in followers before you know it!

About the author

Lauren Horn serves as a Digital PR Specialist at ProspectMX, an internet marketing company in Lancaster, PA. Her professional background also includes several years as a traditional publicist with some concentration on social media for residential and commercial clients at another marketing communications agency. Lauren is highly interested in the latest trends both online and on the runway, exhibiting a passion for anything related to fashion, including everything from styles and colors to accessories.

Guest post by Ben Johnson

When internet became popular, we heard people made millions online. When social media become popular, we heard it’s a new way of meeting people, establishing your credibility and increasing your sales. Just as people earlier wanted to make millions online after reading the success stories of others, the same way people now also want to utilize the power of online social networking to give a significant push to their business and enjoy financial freedom.

Why is Online Social Networking Popular?

Well, because it allows you to meet new people from around the world without even leaving your chair. You can talk to your potential clients, stay in touch with your existing customers, interact with new people, build your business image, create awareness about your products and you can do tons of other things as well.

One Important Thing to Remember:

However, this can’t be done overnight. You need to be patient and grow your business gradually and in a realistic way. Remember, businesses that succeeded via online social networking didn’t become successful in a day or two. Consequently, do not rush and ensure that you don’t ruin your reputation on social media by getting labeled as ‘spammer’.

Now, let’s discuss the top 5 ways to prosper in online social networking:

1. Communicate as a Human Being, Not Content Posting Machine:

Let’s say you are hanging out with some friends and having good time. But, what if one of your friends doesn’t participate in conversation and whenever he says something, it’s always about his business or products. The worst part is he is trying to convince you all to buy as well. Chances are you will stop communicating with him. See, when you send unwanted promotional messages to your network of friends online, you do the same thing. Thus, your network will find you irritating.

Don’t make yourself notorious as a spammer. First thing you need to do is to become familiar with your online network. Only then it will be appropriate to post your offers from time to time.

2. Take Part in Conversation and Listen to Your Friends:

Now, it’s time you start communicating with your network. For example, when someone shares their family photos, make sure that you view them and write nice comments. Social networking is all about caring and communicating. If you care about them, they will also take notice of you. So, get involved and start communicating.

3. Start Sharing:

Other than leaving your comments, you should also share nice and interesting stuff with your network. If people like funny videos in your network, then do not hesitate to share your videos with them. This way, you will invite them to communicate with you by leaving their comments.

4. Offer Help:

When you see that someone is asking a question, then you must not miss this great communication opportunity. Try to answer their question and offer good and valuable advice. This will help you win their trust and they will know that you are a caring person and not a spammer.

5. Promote Your Business and Products in a Nice Way:

After you get to know your network and manage to win their trust, you may now strategically promote your products and services. If you have built a good reputation, you will be surprised to see that your network will share your products with their friends as well. This will undoubtedly give you a huge exposure worldwide.

And Remember, Don’t Rush…

If you really want to succeed in online social networking, then you must not rush. Make progress gradually but effectively after taking into consideration all the powerful tips mentioned above.

About the author

Ben Johnson is the Alliance Manager at Logoinn, a custom logo design company. He writes about the effect of design on marketing and brand identity and helps small businesses find design solutions for effective marketing.

There’s been so much virtual ink spilled on building relationships on social media sites that one needs to be blind not to run across one article giving a few tips on the matter. Yet some still try their own obnoxious techniques that don’t work anyway.

One trend that I’ve recently notices and got an “oh, really?” from me was the following: add a friend, wait a bit for them to follow back and if they don’t, send them a message saying you’ll unfriend them if you’re unwilling to return the favor. Now how does that threat work? Simply put, it doesn’t.

The reason to friend or follow anyone is that you somehow find them interesting enough. If you want to get their attention, start a conversation with them, ask the right questions to get their attention and make them feel valued and interesting. They then might return the favor.

But if you act like and impatient, self-absorbed nuisance,  they will at best ignore you. Or choose to block you all together or report you. Why risk that when you can spend 5 minutes forgetting about what you want and think of what other people need. They will definitely respond in a much more pleasant manner than they would in the case of virtual blackmail!

I’m sure you’ve all heard quite a lot lately about VIPs joining the Twittersphere. I’m also sure a lot of you (out of curiosity or expecting to see something different) also started following some of said stars. It’s fun if you’re already on Twitter and you want something of a different flavor than your usual. But did any of you like what you saw? I for one read the articles, saw the profiles and drew my own conclusion.

Want to hear it? Then get closer! I’ll share a major secret with you. Stars and VIPs are the worst teachers you could ever get if you want to learn some valuable social media skills. And here’s why!

1. They are oblivious of conversations

Yes, they are! They simply broadcast. And they seem unable to join a conversation or start one with their followers. Take Oprah for example. Do you see any replies, retweets or anything there? If you look really hard, you’ll see some replies to Demi Moore.

2. They really are royalty

That means they are exclusive. They only talk to their own, see the above example. Should you hold it against them? Well, let’s say you have 1 million followers. Say a big chunk of them are spammers. Say 30% reply to something you said. How long will it take to reply to them? How much time that’s better invested somewhere else? Sure, they could hire someone, but we’re all here to see them!

But if you’re looking to reach out to people, build relationships with them that are valuable and rewarding for both parties, you won’t have the “I’m busy” excuse.

In all fairness, it seems the longer they are on Twitter, the more they seem to get the dialogue part of it. Check out the Kutcher couple! They actually reply and retweet a lot! Different story from when I first saw their profiles.

3. There was an important rule about giving…

Oh, true, there is! The first rule of social media is to first give and then ask for something. Well, they only had to show up to get thousands of raving fans follow their every online move. Even when they were making no moves to begin with. Do you really think that would work in your case? I dare you to try! See if you can get anything valuable out of it! Yes, I’ve seen the profiles with no updates and hundreds of followers. But I could point to the fact there’s a quality of followers to think of. And if you started posting spammy tweets, I can guarantee those followers won’t stick around for too long.

4. They’re online for different reasons

Yes, they’re there because it’s trendy. Because it’s another means to plug their projects and brag about them. They’re not there to meet interesting people, develop business opportunities or get back in touch with old friends. Remember reason number 1? They’re on social media sites to broadcast. Just as they will never reply all fan emails, while you simply have to reply all your work emails, friends’ emails and family messages.

5. Really, it’s not feasible

Tweeting twice a day, following almost no one, not joining any conversations, do you really see yourself doing that and reaching your goals? I very much doubt it.

Remember! There are exceptions and there are things to be learned while following the stars on their journey through the social world. But if you’re looking for highly effective, genuine and real social media lessons, there are so many other people you should pick as role models. Maybe learning from the best will change the general view on Twitter (and sometimes the entire social space), that it’s a place for attention whores and people who are already famous.

The golden rule to follow? Join, listen, connect, add value to ongoing conversations, start your own dialogues. That’s what I do and that’s why I am on Twitter. And I get friends, knowledge, inspiration, fun and also business out of it!

I love reading SEOBook and from the SEO perspective, I think Aaron Wall is quite the guru. I also think he’s got very cool marketing and business development insights to share. But it seems Twitter is where our opinions start to differ. According to his post about Twitter, this microblogging platform is a big page rank waster, mostly because of the no follow links. True. He also seems to think there’s little to gain from using Twitter. Aaron also quotes Seth Godin on the fact that, just like the phone, Twitter is only a connecting medium, not a marketing medium.

My question to you is: if you could (legally ) listen to people’s conversations on the phone, hear them when they mention your product or service, if you could start your own conversation with them, wouldn’t you be all over the phone? I know I would!

Twitter might be nothing more than a connection between many dots, but it’s an extremely transparent one. You can literally watch thoughts spread through word of mouth. Tweets and retweets and the circle keeps growing.

And don’t forget the ROI you get from investing in relationships! I’ve seen this idea in the post’s comments, but I feel it needs to be stressed out. Twitter is a great place to meet interesting people. You might have hobbies, passions, causes or business in common, no matter which, this limited characters outlet is a great place to build a meaningful relationship.

Does it generate value for your business? Let’s see, you learn new things, you meet key people, others spread news, reviews and quick notes on your products or services, you interact with business partners and potential clients. Isn’t all this valuable?

I’ll use myself as an example: I’ve found inspiration for my business blog on Twitter, I’ve found resources I would have otherwise missed, I’ve been exposed to innovative ideas and picked up some new tricks on the way, I’ve met some potential clients, but most of all, I’ve built relationships with truly amazing people.

Yes, Google ranks might suffer because of Twitter. But is rank the only thing that matters? I think I’d take a few people talking about the services I provide and driving new customers my way over half a point of Google PR any day! Especially if those doing the tweeting are key influencers for my potential customers.

I won’t deny it, it’s easy to get lost on Twitter at times, it’s hard to keep it strictly business. It’s better defined as chit chatting with friends, plus some other benefits.

What do you think? Can Twitter create enough value for you business, to be worth integrating Twitter strategy in your overall business and marketing plan? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section!

I can still perfectly remember the first comment on my blog. It’s not about what the commentator said, it’s not about the fact that I was a great fan of the first person commenting, it was about receiving the first comment to something I had written and sparking a conversation. I was so thrilled!

Writing was a daily habit for me at the time. Be it novels, stories, essays, articles and projects for school, I have always enjoyed putting my thoughts on (real or electronic) paper. And I have always enjoyed having people read it and give me their feedback. So the part about having an outlet for my thoughts was not what hooked me to blogging. It was the comments, the conversation and the almost instant feedback. What kept the addiction going was the great number of friendships that resulted from my casual chat with fellow bloggers.

Some of the people I’ve met online have quit blogging, some just are in a different place right now, where we’re no longer able to connect. But what I’ve learned, the feeling of a geographically ignorant circle of friends stayed with me and are now stronger than ever.

Of my oldest friends, Sarah and Bart are still around. Bart has actually become one of my closest friends and a second father to me (if his daughters weren’t enough trouble ) and has supported me through painful breakups, career issues, health issues and shared lots of fun and amazing times with me. When it comes to online friendships, a lot of people say that real life meetings are disappointing. Never my case! Not with Bart, whom I visited together with my fiance, not with my big sis Trisi, not with Zu, or any other person I’ve met through my blog.

Since that first comment, I started meeting amazing people. Powerful, inspirational, funny, supportive, innovative, extremely bright. Mig, Joanna, Bogdan, Deb, Ali, Haal, Mohammed, Liz, Lou, Brad, Karen, Alex and so many more it’s impossible to mention them all and not remembering a few more names every other five minutes. Some of them are listed here, others are listed in my Google Reader (I’ve got about 300 subscriptions). If I wanted to write a personal thanking note to all of them, it would probably take me weeks and I’d get lost in the forest of memories quite soon after starting.

People talk about networking, making connections, I like to say I try my very best to build meaningful relationships through my blog. I don’t care nearly as much about rss subscribers, daily visits and ranks, as I care about the number of people I can call my friends and the impressive number of memories and experiences we’ve shared. Investing in such relationships does entail impressive ROI. Probably not the kind of ROI you might think of at first, but definitely more than you could ever wish for!

This is my contribution to and the official launch of the “Blogging and Relationships – Write about the wonderful people you’ve met!” Group Writing Project. In case you’ve forgotten the rules and prizes, here they are:

• Publish an original article on your blog before February 28
• You may only have one entry per blog. If you have more than one blog, lucky you
• Link to the post announcing the group writing project
• Comment on the announcement post, just to make sure I don’t miss your entry, we can’t always rely on trackbacks!

And the prizes:

1. A copy of IttyBiz’ SEO School
2. Depeche Mode – The Singles 86-98 in mp3 format (I love them and this particular collection holds all my favorites)
3. A copy of Lillie Ammann’s “Dream or Destiny”
   

Additionally, along with these prizes, you’ll get 2 hours of free PR consulting from yours truly.

As for the jury I’ve told you about, the parts have been given to: Loredana, Alex and little old me.

Good luck everyone!

P.S. If you’re not among the names I’ve mentioned in this entry and feel you should be, you probably should And I did think of you when writting this post!

What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

Welcome to a new edition of our Monday link list, showing you articles you should definitely read.

Last week brought me across one of the best post for new bloggers: a collection of categorized tips and resources from Joanna Young. Any young blood in the blogosphere should read this.

Networking is far more than exchanging business cards and it rarely happens on events only. Barbara Gibson of Connecting the I’s has done a great job at presenting networking as a way of life .

Being a guru is not always about dominating a room, a conversation, a group. It’s mostly about having the knowledge and graciously sharing it with other, while being modest. An entry on the value of modesty from PR Squared aimed at making us think about what’s really valuable.

Karen Swim makes it her business to have the humanity and relationships build through the internet stand out. As she says, business done over the internet needs not be impersonal, on the contrary!

Ivana Taylor of Small Business Trends identified the top ten SMB marketing trends for 2009. The first three are authenticity, do it yourself marketing and tech driven word of mouth marketing.

That’s all for today. Feel free to add your recommendations in the comment box and see you all next week with a fresh list of interesting reads.