newmediaMike

Using Social Networking to Find a Job

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The statistics are getting grimmer by the day it seems. Unemployment is at levels not seen in 30 years. Banks have crumbled sending white collar workers scrambling looking for work. The auto industry is battered and suppliers are shutting down factories with blue collar workers hitting the bricks to find work.

Intellectual industries are not immune; every major media company in Canada has announced layoffs in the last 60 days. It’s a scary time to lose your job. These tough economic times call for new and innovative means of job hunting. Social networking is one of the latest methods of extending a job hunt.

You do have a social network, don’t you? If you don’t you need to join one NOW and start networking. I am a social networking junkie. Every time a new network pops up I join. Not so much to participate but to squat on my name, newmediaMike.

When I found out at the end of August my position was being eliminated I came up with two plans of action. My main plan was to find a full time salaried position to replace the one I had just lost and my “Plan B” was to freelance as a consultant, in one of three areas. SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Social Media or Web Video. My company, Videozine was still operational and fortunately I had some small jobs coming in as I always had. Never enough to live off, but enough that it made it worthwhile to keep the company open.

My main plan was to find a project management position in new media. I have many years of producing interactive projects and I thought it’d be a snap to land a job. A sub-set of the main plan - not quite plan “B” but a fall back plan was to find a sales job. After all I have been in sales for the last 20 plus years.

To find the jobs I was interested in, I subscribed via RSS to all of the major job boards and MediaJobSearchCanada (MJSC) as I wanted to stay within the media production industry if I could. I also signed up for Friend Feed and HelloTxt, two means of distributing the same message over multiple social networks. I then started sending out resumes to positions I was finding on Workopolis, Monster, kaboom and MJSC. Fulfilling the main plan was my ultimate goal but I knew I also had to keep working on Plan B.

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Tags: economic times, job hunting, layoffs, social networking, unemployment

5 Easy Steps to Getting Started in Social Networking

This may seem basic for some, but with social networking still being such a new/novel concept, what you and I may take for granted, others my not even know.

I decided to write this post as a prelude to another piece I’m working on - Using Social Networking to Find a Job. As I was writing that post, it occurred to me, not everyone is a part of a social network, so I decided to lay out my …

5 Easy Steps to Getting Started in Social Networking

1. Register

I know this is basic, but as they say, every journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. There are hundreds of social networking sites out there; I would recommend you ask your real life friends which worked best for them, especially when they were still newbies. I am a member of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Plaxo and LinkedIn to name a few.

2. Set-up your profile.

Now that you  have registered it’s time to let the social networking community know you better. I recommend picking one name and sticking with it for each network you join. You can find me on most networks as “newmediaMike”. (Some require you to use your real full name and not a nickname). Let them know what your interests are, your hobbies, and your favorite books. Depending on the network, you can also include your skills, your field of expertise, or the kind of business that you are in to. Adding photos and videos would also make your profile page more interesting.

3. Build your network of friends.

Start building your network by adding friends that you already know, and then add your friends’ friends. I joined Facebook after I heard a radio DJ mention it. I found her profile and she became my first “friend”. It was a thin connection; I once shot an underwater video for her as part of a promotion - 12 years ago! From there I looked for former classmates and for people that I have lost contact with over the years, and I invited them to become a part of my network of friends. I also searched for people that shared the same interests as me. Former co-workers are also a very valuable resource. Don’t be shy about asking, everyone likes to have new friends. This is the start of building your social network.

I build my Twitter network by seeing who is saying interesting things on Twitter and then following them.

4. Send messages to your network of friends.

Strengthen your connection with your burgeoning network by sending each new friend you add a message, and start a conversation. Even if it’s just a “thanks for the add”, Check out their profile to know if you have common interests and you can begin the conversation from there. These people are also inclined to answer questions, especially if they are related to how the community works.

5. Participate in your community’s other activities.

Most social networks have other activities such as forum discussions, blogging, posting bulletins, and groups of similar interests. Join in. This will make other members feel that you really are interested to be a part of the community, and they may even invite you to become a part of their network of friends.

Social networking can be a lot of fun. You will get to meet a lot of new and interesting people who share some common interests with you.

Networking can also be used for practical purposes too. My next post will be - Using Social Networking to Find a Job.

Tags: build a network, community, facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, social networking, Twitter

Facebook introduces embeddable videos - update

This post should have a musical theme song playing in the background while I write this. I’m thinking … The Who “Won’t get get fooled again”. Yep, I came across a few posts yesterday about Facebook and embeddable videos, so I leapt onto the bandwagon before I even bothered to check to see if there were any horses pulling the damn thing.

This afternoon on Facebook my cousin posted his recent commercial, (my cousin is music video and TV commercial director Don Allan). I went looking for the embed code because I wanted to do two things:

a) demonstrate the new Facebook embed code and
b) promote Don’s video

But unlike YouTube or any of the other video sharing sites not anyone can grab your code to embed it elsewhere. I verified this by looking at one of my own videos and discovering this. So, Facebook’s embeddable videos get 2 thumbs down from me for not being truly embeddable and I take back what I said about Facebook becoming competition to YouTube or MySpace TV.

Tags: facebook, MySpace, video

Facebook introduces embeddable video

Look out MySpace and YouTube you may have competition.

Facebook has introduced embeddable videos. Facebook has always had video, it’s that tiny link in the sidebar of a member’s homepage you barely notice. Then there are the random videos from friends that pop up in the news feeds. A lot of the time these videos are from YouTube, but more and more are hosted on Facebook itself. 45 million videos have been uploaded to Facebook since the video feature was launched last year. Around 100,000 are added every day.

Facebook is making improvements to its video service which will turn it into a true video-sharing service. The quality is being bumped up to 720p. PLus, and this is of course the big news, the videos are now embeddable on other sites. This is old hat of course to YouTubers and fans of MySpace TV. One major difference is Facebook is adding a privacy provision which allows you to determine who can see any video you upload. Those privacy settings are maintained across the Web. Anyone can watch your public videos. If you set the privacy so only your friends can see it, the video won’t play unless they are currently logged into Facebook.

If you look at the size of Facebook’s audience, making videos embeddable will more than likely give its video efforts a boost, this is particularly true if people just embed public videos.

The question is though, will it be enough for Facebook to close the video gap with MySpace, and maybe even nip at YouTube’s heels?

Tags: embeddable video, facebook, myspace TV, YouTube