Most people know that getting a referral from someone inside a company is usually your best shot at an interview.  Social media offers today’s job seeker a faster, easier and more efficient way of making those critical personal connections that will lead to interviews.

However, leveraging social media in this way requires a thoughtful, focused approach to the way you build and work your network.

Know Your Networks

You want to begin by determining where people in your industry of interest spend their time online. There are a wealth of social networks out there, some even dedicated to job seekers. But when I hear stories about people successfully landing jobs via social media, three popular social networks are always mentioned: LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Though these networks might seem obvious, one has to use these social tools in the right way for them to prove successful.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is perfectly suited for leveraging your existing personal relationships to gain access to a much wider network of individuals, many of whom probably know of job openings or are even responsible for making hiring decisions. You would be amazed at how wide your network is once you start building it out. For example, I currently have roughly 200 connections on LinkedIn. These connections consist of friends, former classmates, current and former coworkers, as well as contacts with whom I’ve done business. If you expand my network beyond my direct contacts, those which are two or three degrees removed, my network now consists of nearly 23,000 and 1.8 million individuals, respectively.

LinkedIn provides a great way to get “introduced” to these individuals. The LinkedIn platform allows you to “request an introduction” via your direct connections, meaning you can send a message to your former colleague and ask them to forward that intro onto the person with whom you’d like to talk to about open positions.

Twitter

You might not expect it, but the number of job posts that are circulated around Twitter is astounding. Both startups and major corporations are continually posting job openings via Twitter, often times before they ever post them on their corporate websites. Unlike sending off a resume to some e-mail alias on Monster.com, when you reply to a job posting on Twitter, you can be relatively certain that your message is being read by a decision-maker. The benefit, again, is that this provides additional visibility when it comes to the screening process, not to mention the person tweeting about the job will probably give you a bonus point for being “up to date” on emerging social technologies.

Facebook

Though Facebook is less likely to get you directly connected with a decision maker, it can be a great way to stay up to date on the latest opportunities with prospective employers. Becoming a “fan” of your favorite brands or places you would like to work will keep you up to date on the changes that are taking place within a company, including job openings. Reprise Media, for example, regularly updates job opportunities via Facebook.

Build a Presence

If you plan on using social media to chase after job opportunities, you first want to make sure you’ve built a solid presence for your own brand. The last thing you want to do is reach out to a hiring manager via Twitter with only one tweet and one follower to your name. Spend some time over a week or two building out presence: build out your LinkedIn network, gather a Twitter following, and make your Facebook profile interesting and appropriate.  Make sure to cross-link your profiles so that you have a network of profiles working in your favor, instead of just one. Post links to samples of your work, blog, resume, etc. Keep in mind that the same way that an employer might take 30 seconds to scan a hard copy of your resume, there is a good chance that they will only take 30 seconds to review your online presence as well—so make it interesting!

Engage

Start engaging through all your social profiles. On Twitter, for example, converse with your followers or people that you’re following. Make insightful commentary, share useful links, and overall just participate in online conversations. On LinkedIn, start answering questions in their “Q & A” section. If the person asking the question selects your answer as the best, you’ll received a nice little badge on your LinkedIn profile that says “Expertise In” and then the name of all categories that you’ve been selected as having the best answer. It can’t hurt when an employer checks out your profile and it says you have expertise in Viral Marketing or Search Marketing. The more you engage, the strong your online presence will be and the more you will get noticed.

Active Your Network

When you feel that you have a solid social network through your profiles, you can start to activate this network and have it work in your favor. Let people know what your expertise is and that you’re looking for a job. Allow others who want to help you to participate in your search with you. I know that when I see that a friend is looking for a job in NYC, I reach out to people I know to see if there are any opportunities for them.   Of course, you should always be proactive as well, doing regular search on Twitter or other networks for people posting about job openings.

Bonus: Stalk Your Future Boss

Okay, don’t really stalk him or her. But find them online and try to engage with them in an appropriate and effective manner.  For example, if you find a job posting on Monster.com and it asks you to submit resumes to “Jane Doe,” then see if you can’t find Jane doe on Twitter or another network. Chances are, a simple search of Google or Twitter will turn up that person’s online presence and give you a way to get in touch with them other than e-mail. As I mentioned before, there’s something about Twitter and other social networks that makes people more open to reading your message and responding to it. Of course, be careful because you don’t want to make a bad first impression, but highlighting the fact that you saw this posting on Monster and wanted to reach out to him/her directly with your resume probably won’t hurt and it will show how interested you really are in the job.

It’s as simple as that! Well, not really, but these tips will put you a step ahead of the rest when it comes to standing out to future employers. These techniques might not prove fruitful over night, but they will help you generate more leads and get more interviews than you might otherwise. And that’s what you’re really hoping for, right?

And of course, don’t forget that Reprise Media is hiring! If you have an interest in search or social media, we want to hear from you. You can find all job openings on the Reprise Media Career’s Page. And feel free to “stalk” us via this tour of some of Reprise Media’s most active Twitterers.

Do you have any other tips for how someone can use social media to find a job? If so, let us know in the comments.

Today, I thought it would be helpful to point to some tools that can streamline this process, and can provide overarching business intelligence for your company. The following are my top five picks for the most valuable tools that can help your company gain valuable business intelligence from Twitter.

1. TweetScan: When it comes to business intelligence, your first priority should always be to know and track what is being said about your company. TweetScan is a free service that will monitor a set of keywords, such as your company name or industry, and automatically send you E-mail alerts whenever somebody “tweets” about those terms. Think Google Alerts for Twitter.
2. Twist: Smart companies stay ahead of their competitors by keeping on top of trends. Twist is a great tool that lets you quickly compare the frequency of conversation around selected terms, allowing you to see what’s hot and what’s not.  Furthermore, if you notice a spike in conversation on a particular day, you can drill down and see the actual “tweets” that make up the surge.  In short, Twist is a great way to analyze trends.
3. Twellow: If your business markets to a particular vertical, than it is important to find, follow, and create relationships with people in that industry segment. Twellow is a search directory that goes one step further by slotting individuals and businesses on Twitter into industry verticals/categories. Twellow is one of the best ways to find individuals in your target market.
4. Monitter: If you’re interested in comparing your company, product, or services to that of your competitors, Monitter is a great tool. Enter 3 keywords, such as your company and two primary competitors, and Monitter will show you a streaming real-time list of what people are saying about you and your competitors. If your company has multiple products, you can also use this tool to see how various products are viewed compared to one another.
5. Bit.ly: Though not a Twitter-specific tool, Bit.ly lends itself quite well to Twitter. This URL shortening tool, which helps you keep your “tweets” to 140 characters, also provides interesting link-analytics. If you’re interested in tracking and analyzing how well your links (to your company’s products, services, etc.) perform when you seed them in Twitter, this is the tool for you. Bit.ly allows you to track the number of clicks, referring sites, clicks by country, and more. The end-goal should always be to determine which of your links are performing well and why.

Once you add these Twitter tools to your company’s arsenal you can begin to leverage Twitter for critical business, competitor, and industry intelligence. If you have any questions or comments, or you can think of additional tools that your company uses for business intelligence, feel free to send them my way on Twitter @mcancino.

While Flickr’s SEO benefits decreased several months ago when they decided to add “nofollow” tags to picture captions and comments, the site still allows for a number of ways to boost SEO. First of all, Flickr has not added nofollow tags to discussion boards, groups or personal profiles. Flickr has an awesome, active community with a wealth of conversation taking place on discussion boards around photography and other topics. If you have content on your site that is relevant to a discussion, including a link back to that content allows you to benefit from the substantial “link juice” that Flickr can provide. The same applies for personal profiles and group pages. And of course, don’t forget to embed those links in keyword-researched and targeted anchor text.

This leads to another relevant topic beyond groups: How can you optimize your company’s dedicated Flickr page? The following is a short rundown of things you should consider:

- Profile ID: If you haven’t done so already, make sure to secure your branded Flickr URL as soon as possible. For example: http://flickr.com/photos/reprisemedia/

- Photo Titles & Descriptions: As is the case with any SEO project, you want to begin by researching the keywords people are searching for. Use high volume, relevant keywords to title and describe your photos.

- Tagging: Tagging your photos with relevant keywords is crucial to helping users find you in Flickr’s internal search engine as well as Google, Yahoo, etc.

-Group Participation: As I mentioned above, joining and participating in Flickr groups and adding relevant comments and links can help you benefit from the link juice that Flickr provides.

Each of these steps can help you or your company show up higher in search engine results pages when people search for you. Remember that just as your webpage or blog acquires link equity by being properly optimized and receiving links coming in, so too can your Flickr profiles and groups. The key takeaway here is this: Do not overlook the integration of Social Media when it comes to your SEO strategy. Now get out there and Flickr Optimize!

It appears to me that the single biggest factor contributing to Twitter’s impressive SEO is the fact that Twitter profiles/status pages are sub-directories of Twitter.com (i.e. http://twitter.com/searchviews), as opposed to sub-domains (http://searchviews.twitter.com). Whatever SEO benefits Twitter receives is passed to it’s sub-directories (this is not the case with sub-domains.) In other words, it’s Trickle Down Twitternomics.

Some of the recent controversy over “no follow” instructions in Twitter profiles shouldn’t diminish the real benefits of Twitter in getting found through organic search. The only thing that those search engine bots are avoiding are the links in the biographical information field — everything else is fair game.

From an SEO standpoint Twitter still has a lot of link value. Whenever I tweet something, this content is displayed on each of my followers pages. As a result, the more followers I have, the more inbound links there are pointing back towards the content I just posted, including links. Additionally posting a link on your feed makes it available to others to post on their blogs and to vote it up on sites like Digg as well as increasing traffic back to the landing page you are linking to. It can also be worthwhile to do some keyword research for your Twitter posts, like you would for a blog.

Remember – just because you have 140 characters doesn’t mean that you can’t tell your story and have it be optimized too.

This concept isn’t revolutionary; Google, backed by MySpace and Yahoo, launched OpenSocial last November to provide an open platform for cross-network application development. Facebook, on the other hand, has notoriously been viewed as the “walled garden” of social networks, due to Facebook’s refusal to collaborate with other platforms. Thus, the switch to open source, though clearly reactive to Google, is significant, because it eliminates any competitive advantage that OpenSocial (and Google / Yahoo / MySpace) might hold over Facebook.

Given Facebook’s “walled garden” reputation, however, several key questions arise. For example, how truly “open” will the platform be? Which open source license will Facebook choose?

The answers to these questions hold huge implications for the potential value of an open Facebook Platform: the volume of people using an application, the potential demographic behavior collected, and the means by which users find applications may all significantly increase from cross-network distribution. For advertisers, that would mean better conversion rates and prices. For Developers, it means better application visibility and utility. Finally, for users, it would hopefully mean an end to applications that are meaningless outside of Facebook. That’s right, you heard it here first – SuperWall, SuperPoke RIP.

Social networks like Facebook receive over 100 million unique visitors a month (eMarketer, 2008) – thus one would think that marketers would give social profiles the same attention as their other creative media. Surprisingly, however, many companies are developing branded social profiles without regard for some of the fundamental tenants of online marketing.

Take Coca Cola’s Super Bowl YouTube channel: Despite the fact that the channel itself has received over 56,000 views and its most popular video has received 2.2 million views, the page looks like it was created in 5 minutes. Or, check out FedEx’s Facebook page – a minimally branded, incongruent placeholder that offers no unique content to users.

For marketers seeking to avoid Social Network Shame, here’re five seemingly obvious, but incredibly important, tips to make the most of your social profiles:

1. Brand Your Profile: Make it clear to the user that this is an official corporate profile. A visitor shouldn’t have to guess whether the profile was created by an everyday user or the corporation itself. The Semi-Pro Movie does a great job of this with their MySpace Page.

2. Link to Your Corporate Site: You would be amazed at the number of corporations that fail to link back to their official websites. Linking to your corporate website increases the profile’s authenticity and can be a significant source of traffic for your main site.

3. Include Unique Content: Provide visitors with something they can’t find anywhere else – unique content, such as short-form videos, widgets, games, photos, etc, gives consumers a reason to “friend” your profile and to return to your page.

4. Develop Interactive Content: Find innovative ways to encourage users to engage with your page. Interactive content, such as games or widget applications, offer consumers a utility, rather than just a branded message. Semi-Pro performs well in this category, offering E-Cards, video clips and audio clips, official downloads, forums and more.

3. Own Your Brand’s URLProtect your brand and make it easy for consumers to find you in social media by occupying your URL (Ex: MySpace.com/YourBrand). Companies that fail to secure their branded sub-domain leave it open to occupation by consumers or competitors who may create pages that promote a negative brand perception.

These five tips are just a first step towards leveraging social media as a powerful marketing tool. By optimizing your social profile, you can avoid the pitfalls many marketers succumb to and ensure that potential customers engage with your brand.

These impressive figures speak to the growing importance of online advertising and the continued recognition of the internet as a key medium through which marketers can reach target audiences. According to Pete Petrusky, Director of Entertainment, Media & Communications at PricewaterhouseCoopers,

The Internet is well established as a key media distribution channel for driving advertising. The recent results demonstrate that advertisers recognize the continued growth in the online audience and the growing opportunity to target and monetize that audience.

What’s more, a breakdown of the different types of internet advertising revealed that search marketing remains the greatest revenue generator. Search accounted for 41 percent, or $4.1 billion, of 2007 first six-month revenues. Though a modest one percent increase over the same period last year, this figure represents nearly $900 million in new revenue. Thanks largely to the growth in search, performance-based ad deals (CPC, CPA, etc) surpassed CPM ad buys by 3% during the 2Q of 2007.

“[FriendFeed] gives you a snapshot of what people you know think is interesting. It’s kind of a blog that writes itself.”

FriendFeed currently supports 23 social web services, including Digg, Flickr, YouTube, and Last.fm. Users create their own network of friends whose activity updates can be tracked in a continuous stream of notifications. The streaming content can be embedded within user’s Facebook pages or their personal web page or blog. FriendFeed also allows users to comment on postings and carry on online discussions of shared material.

FriendFeed is not the first social media site to allow users to distribute their internet-activity with friends. Similar services like Kaboodle (shopping) and Google’s Shared Stuff have already carved a niche in this voyeuristic market. FriendFeed is hoping that their simple and effortless sharing process (users don’t have to do anything to share updates) will lead to the site’s success. Writes the New York Times,

“The creators of FriendFeed say their system is intended to be as simple as possible. ‘I like this because it doesn’t require me to do anything new,’ Mr. Taylor said.”

Though a compelling concept, FriendFeed’s automatic updates could provoke privacy concerns among wary users. Unless FriendFeed implements comprehensive privacy settings for their site announcements, I doubt many Feeders will be eager to ‘automatically’ broadcast their personal information.

Several firms are trying to parlay [the discovery of YouTube] into a hiring tool, creating recruiting videos and Web sites with the look and feel of YouTube. The firms hope to persuade students that their lawyers, and by extension the firms, are young-thinking and hip.

While the attempt by these firms to embrace the social media movement is admirable, I question their use of YouTube to portray their firms as the “hip place to work.” Social media is founded on a philosophy of transparency and full disclosure. It’s a two-way conversation wherein users are able to question and challenge the marketer – or, in this case, the potential employer’s self-representation. After all, having recently spent a year with a the District Attorney’s Office, I can assure you that young associates and lawyers do not spend their days bouncing around on “hop balls” as one firm’s video depicts.

A more effective use of these firms’ time and money would be to embrace social media in a different fashion. Rather than trying to paint a rosy picture of a work environment that may or may not exist, law firms would be wise to create an honest dialogue between potential candidates and current summer associate (or new hires). For example, what if a firm sponsored a Q&A forum moderated by current summer associates? Could they create a Facebook/Myspace group created for the sole purpose of bringing together new and potential hires? Or, how about a “Day in the Life Of” blog written by a recent hire?

While potentially more “risky” to the firm’s reputation, I’m certain that quality firms would shine by embracing these forms of social media. The conversational nature of forums and blogs not only offers a less contrived representation of a firm’s culture, it gives applicants a point of contact (the author or moderator) to ask real questions about recruitment. This, more than videos of bouncing balls, will help weed the preliminary applicant pool in order to attract more quality applicants and lower attrition.

Though the thought of your grandmother on Facebook might seem like an unlikely (and even uncomfortable) scenario, in the eyes of investors and entrepreneurs this segment of the population provides a potentially golden opportunity. So what makes the elderly so attractive? For starters, there are currently 78 million of them. What’s more, this portion of the population possesses a unique “stickiness” that has bypassed younger generations. To quote a recent New York Times article:

“Teens are tire kickers — they hang around, cost you money and then leave,” said Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and author of the blog “Infectious Greed.” Where Friendster was once the hot spot, Facebook and Myspace now draw the crowds of young people online.

“The older demographic has a bunch of interesting characteristics,” Mr. Kedrosky added, “not the least of which is that they hang around.”

In addition to being “sticky,” baby-boomers also have time and money. Sites like Eons.com and Rezoom.com are hoping to capitalize on these demographic advantages by creating networking sites that appeal to older generations. These sites aim to create more comfortable, albeit less “hip,” environments in which older generations will feel safe discussing issues that are of concern to an older audience, like retirement, aging, and health concerns. If baby boomer-oriented networks achieve even a fraction of the boomer population, they have the potential to eclipse youth-oriented social networks like Facebook, by providing advertising opportunities for companies that have until now felt social networking to be beyond the scope of their target market.

So, the question remains, could you see your grandmother surfing the social net?

Personally, I have a tough time doing so. Most social networking sites grow through word-of-mouth evangelism that is bred in condensed social environments, like high school or college campuses. Is this WOM effect likely to occur within an aging population that doesn’t live within the same condensed of environment? Current statistics suggest it’s not – In a recent study, Forrester estimated that 70% of Seniors (65+), 61% of Older Boomers (51 – 61) and 54% of Younger Boomers (41 – 51) are “Inactives” online. In other words, well over half of this audience has never had contact with social activities online – perhaps because the barrier to entry for many boomers is higher than merely visiting a web address.

Nevertheless, Eons.com and Rezoom.com have both made compelling cases for the future of boomer social networking. If baby boomers are as “sticky” as the venture capitalists claim they are, it’s not the short-term prospects that they’re concerned with. Venture capitalists firms such as Shasta Ventures and VantagePoint Ventures and are willing to put their money where their mouth is, investing $4.6m and $16.5m, respectively, in social-networking sites aimed at older generations. With this level of capital on the line, one has to imagine that at least some venture capitalists believe in the adage, “If you build it, they will come.” Only time will tell.