8. Get tweeting Careful with your user name Be inventive with your bio Be smart about your location Use the entire page Link to your blog Keep your content interesting Contribute to conversations and communities
11. Blogging “ Content Rules” by Handley & Chapman. Seminar work Speak human not academic Show stories – Don’t tell boring 400 words max Leave white space Add Links (seo) Finish on a question
12. Other internet options Podcasts Videos Slideshare Online presence = ‘online CV’ http:// www.celineislookingforafashionjob.com /
13.
14. Nationally CIMarketing CIPR CIManagement Lincoln Business Club Lincoln Business Networking MarketingWeekly, PRweek etc.
This is going to be a quick presentation on the practical tips and ideas we’ve seen, heard about and used over the last three years.
This is quite an obvious one but is probably worth getting up and running early on so it’ll be easier to keep adding to. Any good piece of uni work you do can easily be chucked up over the years. You want to build an online portfolio.
Key tips: Use a free-site that allows you to manage the content. (i.e. don’t bother getting it web-designed by someone else. Do it yourself, its simple) Use it to show some personality. Keep on-top of updating it! (especially if blogging) You’ll meet someone important, they’ll check out your website that night and you wouldn’t have changed anything in three months. Create the equivalent of a ‘press area’ i.e. an ‘employer’ area where you can put your CV, a reference list with contact details(if apropriate) and those types of things.
Vistaprint do free ones... Include full name Positon you hold (if any) What you are studying, the year you graduate and the university’s name You can have custom ‘pretty ones’ – but be sensible, show some personality but without making them ‘silly’ (ie, if you want to go into marketing, don’t put a picture of your pet dog on the background, you might think it’s cute, but the MD of a company won’t care…) Easy way to get your name about, looks professional, shows you’re taking your future seriously ‘come prepared’
Should already have a profile, if not. Get one going and use sites like toplinkedin.com www.networkingcoach.com to make sure you’re going about it correctly. Follow networking etiquette, don’t act like a fool and go and add the marketing manager of amazon. You haven’t met this person, it’s not a real connection. Participate in the group discussions, you are ‘an expert’ in your field now. Ask, Give and Thank – the golden triangle of networking. Ask for recommendations (if you do add a lecturer, ask them (in person) to write a nice little recommendation about you and then remind them online. Link your profile to your blog, and all your other online accounts (more about that later) Use the amazon Book list to show that you’re reading up on everything you should be + it gives others a possible ‘entry point’ to conversation. IF you know someone, that knows someone. You’re best off not asking for a direct introduction – instead ask for their advice and they’ll organically suggest the connection hopefully.
Top three are more like blogs and just helpful hints. Ecademy is a linkedin alternative. Lots of extra features. More of a social-business networking. Hellotxt is just a way of linking all your accounts with the same status update. Xing is another social-business-network but with a lot of smaller european businesses using it. (useful if you’re bi-lingual) Viadeo again, (business directory) with a large amount of users in China – this may be useful for those of you looking to go away. Ning – where you can create your own social networking site.
Your username is how people will search for you so be sensible. – Remember twitter search engine is exact. When making your bio – either go for the “2 phrases and a joke” rule. i.e. marketing student, social media specialist & general book-worm. OR if you’re willing to keep it upto date every new project. You could base it on your project you’re working on. i.e. “Tweeting my way through third year at Lincoln” As we are all the way up here in Lincoln and you’re all probably dreaming of London. You may wish to take the ‘location’ out of it. It may limit opportunity. Get a decent twitter background. Use the same branding you did with the website. Twitterpatterns.com or grungetextures.com give you the right size/shape but it’d be better if you know someone that knows how to play on photoshop. Google for the dimensions. Once you’ve started blogging, take 5 points from those blogs and write tweets about them. Keep your work industry-relevant. Perhaps ‘tuesdays 10 tips for sponsorship’ linking separate parts to your blog.
Tweetree – embeds the urls of links, with a mini picture so you don’t have to guess what tinyurl is going to take you to. Tweetvisor – you can control multiple accounts, its an AJAX system so no need to refresh Itweet – powerful search options, open peoples bio’s on the same page. Hootsuite – manage multiple accounts, control the timings of your tweets, add separate users to the same account. Twitree – good for finding new friends as it opens up people rather than tweets. i.e. click on one person and then see their networks latest tweets.
Bloggin can be a brilliant way to show your knowledge once you’ve left Uni. By then you will have 2 maybe three years worth of blogs around the core subject you’re studying. An instant expert in the eyes of an employer. The key is to use your seminar prep in a new and interesting way. Make a story out of it. Content is all about stories. Speak in human-tongue rather than Academic craziness. For it to be read by the industry you’ve got to be exciting, perhaps funny and definitely useful. Don’t just re-write somebody elses words. Take a theory ‘maslows hierarchy of needs’ and put that theory into a real situation, with real people. Make the story something that will be read, enjoyed and passed on. Use this blog as a platform for something to link your tweets to and to put on your website.
Create a podcast instead of a blog? Or as well as but keep the information relevant yet different. Create an RSS feed to use like twitter and only link it to your own content? It’s an online CV with portfolio included within it. Video yourself. Do a youtube CV. (much easier to link it to) be creative and do something like the chin-chronicles, or the writing on the board and keeping it going. Or an animation if you’ve got a secret skill. Post your presentations online, add documents. Just think ‘differently’. More personally and specialised. Alec Brownstein in the US bought the google adwords for 5/6 marketing managers – when they googled themselves they found that an advert from him asking them for a job.
Get accreddited and involved in the local authorities of your interests. They hold networking events – get your name known! Go to the local networking events, practice your approach and learn about the local businesses. Make sure you’re buying the necessary literature and checking the websites you need to. Set them as your homepage.
Look for opportunities –don’t wait for them to appear! Even if you get knocked back, keep looking, there’s more out there. Before the interview, or while tailoring an application research everything – the job role, the department, the company, the sector the company is in. Especially if you’re unsure of what you want to go in to, try to get temporary experience in different fields – without doing it, you won’t know what you enjoy. Some full-time placements offer the opportunity for time in different departments too. If you enjoy it and prove your worth, temporary work can lead to a full time position. Some good advice given to me – treat every day as an interview: be punctual to arrive and when meeting deadlines, dress smart, be confident, work hard, always go the extra mile, make people aware of the work you have done for them, but avoid seeming arrogant, get to know the other people within the company – it’s good to be ‘one of the team’ and you never know when they might be useful contacts in the future, and don’t be afraid to ask questions about the company or the work – you’re better off asking a silly question and getting it right, than not asking the question and doubling your workload!