The Good, The Bad & Social Media

As a graduating college senior enthralled in all things social media I began to wonder if I could use my social interests to my advantage. Turns out you can! All the time I spend updating my #Twitter and stalking Facebooks pages can actually help me develop my life in the "real world" a.k.a. get a job. It is just all a matter of what type of content you produce. Here are the suggestions I felt were most helpful:

Twitter:It is not just for sharing what you ate for breakfast or how you feel about the weather, it can be used as an effective networking and job search tool. The CEOs, HR reps, and recruiters of all your favorite companies are on Twitter and communicating with them directly is at your finger tips!

1. Friendly and Professional Profile - don't use your old aim snfrom middle school where you were "HoneyBun101" (that was not mine, jfyi) and don't put music lyrics in your biography section (unless, maybe you work in music). Use the bio section to tell the twitter world what you do and what your goals are. You want to be easily found and followed by people that share your interests
2. Following and Followers- Use Twitter to find and follow new people. It is very easy for them to follow you back
3. Posts - Make your posts public, there's no use in using twitter as a tool is important people can view your posts. Be consistent; post often and about interesting (and appropriate) information. Use hastags, # on key words like #job, #jobsearch, or with the company's name your trying to work for "Looking for an amazing and fulfilling #internship. #bgsd, do you have anything available for summer?".
4. Link your resume to your Twitter - in the website section place the link to your online portfolio or resume. If your like me and haven't created one yet, use the link to your public LinkedIn profile.
5. Promoting - this is a tricky one, as much as you want to promote yourself first, it is best to promote others before yourself. In return they may do the same for you!

Facebook:

Now, we all know Facebook is the best/worst culprit of prolonging procrastination in students and today's youthful workforce. There is just so much to look at and so many people to "creep" on. I never would have guessed it could be used to help find my next job, but some sources say if you play your Facebook cards right it can. I'm not completely convinced I should mix my Facebook life with my professional one, I like to have a little separation, but here's the how-to.

1. Follow Co.'s Facebook Pages - this can give you more of an idea of the company's personality and culture. They sometimes post job listings as well - be the first to see them!
2. Contact Employers Directly - Facebook, like twitter, puts you on a level playing field with employers. Using Facebook you can directly message them, instead of just being another resume that is submitted online.
3. Job-Proof your page - Let your network know you are on the search for a job. Make sure your job search information is available to everyone and everything else is only available to your friends. Make sure to fill out your employment history. If you have a professional site you'd like to share it can easily be added to your information field, and some application, like Slideshare now even let you showcase past work.
4. Other suggestions I haven't played around with: Consider using Branchout to professionally network with Facebook friends. Another idea is to utilize Facebook Ads to target and gain attention from certain employers.

Hope these help!

If you have any questions you can find me on twitter @_sadiesades

~Sadie (Ad Intern)

Tips from an Ad Intern:

On poster distribution and hanging

This post is not so much about the art of taping up a poster, although I will touch on that. It is about my experience distributing promotional posters and flyer all around San Diego. These tips I learned fist hand from my biggest task off the #bgsd campus yet- distributing the Seaport Village's Busker Festival promotional material. The event is next weekend April 16 and 17.

It looks REALLLy cool.

Tip #1: Choose the best locations to reach your audience.

It's tough these days to find space available for public postings, but I had pretty good luck focusing mainly on cafes and small shops. The cafes that were targeted were both small privately owned coffee shops and large chains like Starbucks. The shops that were chosen were a mix of salons and clothing stores with customer bases that seemed to fit the demographic of people interested in a busker festival.

This array of location choices should give us a good mix of people being exposed to the flyers. A wide variety of people frequent these locations; families, singles, college kids and people interested in the arts and community.

Tip #2: Google maps is your new best friend.

Not only can you add multiple locations to your route, but you can also rearrange your different locations to create the most efficient path.

Step one; organize your locations by zone in the city. For example my selected areas were Little Italy, Downtown, Hillcrest, and North Park.

Step two; plug in all location you wish to visit, chose your mode of

transportation (bike, foot, car, public transport), and then click and drag your via points to create the best route.

And your done, Tah-Dah!

Tip #3: Park efficiently.

Chances are even if your locations are in walking distance from one another; you'll need to park your car. Don't always pay at the first lot you see, especially in the downtown area. The prices can range from $5-12 an hours sometimes. If you spend an extra few minutes driving around you can usually find a 30 min spot, or at least a metered spot that you can pay $1 to for an hour and use up some of that change weighing down your purse or pockets.

Tip #4 and #5: Be prepared and smile.

People react more happily towards happy people! It's science. Be polite, seem interested and always ask questions with a smile. Storekeepers will want to help you out more if you seem interested in your product and care about their company.

Shop owners also appreciate you coming prepared with scotch tape and thumbtacks. The only surface I wasn't prepared for in my distribution path this week was magnet boards. All of the Starbucks in San Diego that I went to had "community boards" which was amazing, but they were all magnetic. This only caused problems when there were no open magnets, but they did allow me to move things around in order to post my flyer.

Best of all, I got to see parts of the city I'd never seen before & enjoy a few beautiful days.

~Sadie :)