Last weekend I spoke at the Doster Leadership Conference with Shama Kabani. Shama is the President of the Marketing Zen Group, an international public speaker and a best selling author of The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz and Increase Revenue.
Here are some notes from her presentation about social media and online branding for recent graduates and job searchers.
10 ways to improve your online brand:
- Listen to what is being said. Set up google alerts for your name and monitor what is being said. Always be honest online because it is so easy for someone to find what you said online. Use socialmention.com to search within networks and comments. Respond to what is said about you on the web. Also, monitor what is being said about your industry online.
- Clean up your profile. Download the simplewa.sh app on Facebook which will tell you what to clean up on your Facebook account. Make sure you change the app settings so that your friends can’t see what you do on your app.
- Claim your Google+ page. Since Google+ is owned by google, it gives their social networks a boost in search rankings. You want to own more real estate on the first page of Google for your brand as possible. You don’t have to devote time to Google+, you just want to create an account because age gives you credibility.
- Twitter hashtags>followers. Hashtags are now more important than followers because people want to look at topics they are interested in. Check out tweetchats in your industry because every industry has a tweet chat. Find yours and engage.
- Embrace online video. 64% of people will finish watching a video but only 24% of people will finish reading an article online. Use video to your advantage online.
- Have a strong LinkedIn profile. Employers are going to LinkedIn. Ask professors and co-workers for recommendations. Some employers won’t even need to call your references because they can already view them on your LinkedIn profile.
- Branch out. Use vizify.com or visualize.me to make your resume more visually appealing.
- Manage your online reputation. Use Brandyourself.com, an online reputation management system that will tell you certain things that you can do to push good pages up and bad pages down on google searches.
- Create an editorial calendar for yourself. Have a calendar that shows when and what content you are going to share strategically.
- Optimize with the right tools. Be strategic about your messages that you want out there. Use Postling.com to post updates across all social media platforms. Since only 5-10% of people see your posts, use bufferapp to tell you what the best times are to post your important content. This tells you when to post so it will get the most views. Ifttt.com (if this, then that) is a tech recipe for how to optimizing certain things. For example, every time you change a Facebook status it changes your LinkedIn status. If you post photos on Facebook, then it makes sure your computer backs up your photos to Dropbox.
91% of employers use social media to screen candidates. EVERYONE is watching you online so make sure that you use these tips to create the best online brand that you can! If you want more social media tips from Shama, check out her videos at Shama.tv. Great meeting you Shama!
