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Linked In Career         As competition grows everyday with respect to all fields, it becomes more and more necessary that we fully understand the resources at our dispersal. With almost all of us having a Facebook account and a majority also having a Twitter presence, it is also needed that we understand the immense prospects LinkedIn reserves for us. Described as the Social Media Platform for entrepreneurs, business owners and industry professionals, it also stands as a good opportunity for students to connect to experts in their fields of interest and start getting an idea about the corporate industry, even before they leave college.

With the advent of Social Media, connecting has never been easier and it is important that professionals, and especially students understand the chances available to them. LinkedIn, helps connect to a wider professional industry by helping you connect to people, ask recommendations and join groups of interest so as to take part in discussions and improve your credibility.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind while updating your LinkedIn profile:

Make Your Elevator Pitch Catchy

LinkedIn is basically about branding. Branding either your company or yourself. Focus should be given on what you hope to accomplish and not what you are now. Recruiters will often search for a specific job title when looking for potential candidates. And include keywords into it because that’s how people find you on LinkedIn. Keywords that are related to your field of interest. This doesn’t mean you just go berserk over the results of Google Ad Words Keyword Tool! Be concise, discrete and to the point. Be focused!

No Spelling or Grammatical Errors

There is no need to specify about how much important first impressions are when you meet someone. Same goes for online media too. Your profile is your impression and you should make it good. Real good in fact. That means no SMS language, no spelling or grammatical errors. Make sure your profile is concise and articulate. In almost all cases that gets the job done.

URL’s

LinkedIn gives you an option to display links to other websites, in your profile. Make sure that this is, as much as possible, linked either to your personal/company website. Or to your online profile at either Twitter, About.me or Gravatar, to name a few. Try not to include your Facebook profile. Doesn’t give much of a good impression.

Connect Up Other Social Networks

LinkedIn can be used to connect up quite some of your social network presences, like WordPress, Slideshare and Twitter, to name a few. With the LinkedIn apps, you can connect your profile to such accounts. This again helps in increasing credibility about you and your work.

Ask For Recommendations. But First Give

LinkedIn displays recommendations very prominently. Take the time and ask your friends and colleagues to recommend you on LinkedIn. Recommendations add colour and depth to your profile. And if you have worked with anyone, make sure you offer to write a recommendation for them first.
The best way to build great connections is to always be the first one to give. Always have a helping hand ready.

Update Regularly

Keep your profile regularly updated. Not with posts about your graduation party or a trip to Disney Land. Be specific to your field of interest. If you are a student, would be useful to put updates about topics in your field that interest you and can even ask professionals in that area to give you advice or clear your doubts with respect to that. Professionals could also share important and interesting information and even tell people what you have achieved over the course of your normal work day- maybe a new client win or an award for best employee! Recruiters look out for people who are active and have an up to date profile.

Join And Take Part In Group Discussions

This is by far one of the most important things that should be kept in mind. Join groups that interest you, listen to the discussions that are going on and when possible put in your worthy suggestions or any doubts you may have. Group discussions become an important place where you can make new contacts and then carry on the acquaintance forward. Also, further down the line, groups are a good place to showcase your talent and knowledge about your field. After you have been identified as a power player in your field, people will come to you for answers.

And Finally

And finally make sure your contact settings are set to include career opportunities, consulting offers, job inquiries and likewise if you’re looking for a job and DO want to be found. No use if a potential employer is impressed by your skills but is not able to find from your profile whether or not you are interested in new career opportunities!

Well, feel free to comment if you feel any important point has been missed out. Meanwhile, leave you off with a quote from BC Forbes–

Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiseling and scraping and polishing.

Other articles in this series include-

  1. How  To Effectively Use Social Media To Land A Job
  2. How To Use Facebook For Your Job Search
  3. How Optimizing Twitter Profile Can Help You Land A Job

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Social Media       Almost all of us have some or the other form of social presence nowadays. Whether it be Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. But how many of us have actually seen them as a means to help us land a job??

Whatever your answer be to the above question, what I plan to share here are a few tips on how having an effective social media presence can positively impact your networking activities and also tag into the hidden prospects of the job market that aren’t made as obvious.

Create An Effective Profile
How would it feel if your prospective employer visited your Facebook page and saw photos of you getting drunk at last Saturday’s party, or saw your tweet with a sentence full of “censored” words? Bad right!!
With the social world growing day by day, the concept of online privacy is becoming lesser. That is the reason why we have to be discrete and biased about what we post online because it can actually decide or at least influence a lot of decisions for us.
If you are serious about getting prospective employers to find you via the internet, first and foremost make sure you have a “clean” social profile. That doesn’t mean no family photos or photos of your dog licking you. Just keep such stuff private and not open to public. Make sure you post appropriate content related to your field of interest. This gives an impression that you’re focused about your goals and interests.

Build Strong And Trustworthy Connections
One of the biggest benefits of social media lies in the fact that now it isn’t tough to get in touch with people who share your interests or are from the same industry as yours. It’s now easy to grow your network by adding friends or following people with common interests, participating in chats, discussions and forums or send personalized messages to people you would like to connect to. But at the same time make sure that the connections you build this way are trustworthy and that you maintain these connections throughout.

Search For Opportunities
Rather than just broadcasting stuff related to your industry, social media is about pursuing and networking with people who are more influential than you. As a job seeker it’s not every day you would get an opportunity to interact with the CEO or top brass of a MNC. Use this opportunity to your advantage and connect and engage with the companies and people you want to eventually work with.

Be An Influencer
One important thing that you have to keep in mind is – Personal Branding. Just like companies brand their products and services you have to learn to brand yourself. Refine your personal brand. A great way for this would be to have a personal blog about the industry you are most interested in. Not only will this help you establish yourself as an influencer in the industry but it’ll also eventually turn you into a trustworthy source. This will help you spread your name in the industry and at the same time spread your content in social media.

Be an Offline Networker Too
After you have built trustworthy connection online, make sure you try to extend them to offline too. Attend conferences and meet-ups which help you meet the person in real and build stronger connections. Or maybe just invite someone over for coffee.

These are a just a few points based generally over social media. For more read on articles focused on the top 3 social networks, you might want to follow the links below.

  1. How To Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile For Job Search
  2. How To Use Facebook For Your Job Search
  3. How Optimizing Twitter Profile Can Help You Land A Job

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Seems Christopher Nolan has a real knack for online marketing techniques. Especially stuffs that go viral. He started off with the viral “Why So Serious” campaign in May 2007 for The Dark Knight,  that was to be released in July 2008. And he has done it again this time too with The Dark Knight Rises. For a movie that is to be released in 2012, they have started the viral marketing well in advance and that too in style.

On December 7th in Wired.com and on December 9th in EmpireOnline.com were released two images separately and exclusively that caught the media and public unawares as to what was the whole deal about. Exactly the beginning of a viral marketing campaign!

The images are shown below.

 

The first sniff of all of this started a couple of months back with a campaign that eventually lead to the unveiling of the first picture of Bane, the villain in the movie. Media experts and Movie critics caught its scent then and there itself as the beginning of another viral marketing campaign from Nolan’s team. With the arrival of the fake CIA Transcripts, as shown above, at Wired’s and EmpireOnline’s office, TDKR (The Dark Knight Rises)  has silently announced that they plan to better the marketing campaign of its prequel – The Dark Knight.

The Dark Knight too boasts of an amazing and hugely successful marketing campaign that was partly responsible for the huge success of the movie at Box Office. The other reason because the movie itself was fantastic. In May 2007, they began the viral marketing campaign of the  movie utilizing the “Why So Serious” tagline with the launching of a website, and also a fictional political campaign of Harvey Dent, with the caption – “I Believe in Harvey Dent”. They also established a ‘vandalized’ version of the Harvey Dent site, called “I Believe in Harvey Dent Too”, where e-mails sent by fans slowly removed pixels, revealing the first official image of the Joker. Amazing idea!

And the story continues with TDKR. When the movie’s website was launched, originally, it was just a black image with some really weird chanting. A fan took a look at the visual spectrum of that audio file, and in it was – a Twitter Hashtag! The hashtag when tweeted, slowly revealed, pixel by pixel, some kind of image on the site. The final image revealed, was also the first image of the movie’s villain – Bane.

 

The “CIA Documents” released, focus on the profile of a man named Dr. Leonid Pavel, a Russian Nuclear Physicist and another document on a conversation between the CIA and the Militia who are protecting him. Reading the documents it’s hard to find out the connection with TDKR but well, maybe that’s the whole point of it all!

The last of the images was posted by TDKR’s viral Twitter account – @thefirerises.

TDKR in fact sets scope for an example of good marketing done to the very best, if history is to be considered with respect to The Dark Knight. For marketers who have long spent millions and innumerable hours on the drawing board trying to come up with the secrets of viral marketing, here is something to learn from. With a good and solid start to its marketing strategy, let’s hope TDKR doesn’t let us down. Neither as a movie, nor as an epitome of viral marketing. Because if they carry on their strategy with the same intensity and creativity, at this time next year, all the Marketing honchos would be writing and reviewing about what a perfect example of viral marketing success The Dark Knight Rises has been.

Till then, let’s wait for Summer 2012 when the movie releases. I leave you off with the Official Teaser Trailer of the movie.