Guerrilla Marking for Job Hunters 2.0 - Jay Conrad Levinson [78]
So what if you have someone’s name and want to learn more about them? Try using a social network aggregator: these are sites that gather profiles from many social networks and let you search all of them from one place. Examples are 123People. com, Wieowie.nl, Pipl.com, Spock.com, Wink.com and—a nice twist for network monitoring—Spokeo.com lets you aggregate all your friends’ (personal and/or professional) sites into one location so you can stay up to date with all their events.
It’s Time to Reach Out
Now that you’ve found lots of interesting people, reach out to them—at first, with a short message, and not with a desperate plea for job help. Focus on reciprocally beneficial networking. Say you found them on “X” site, they seem knowledgeable/ interesting in your professional area of interest, and ask how you can help THEM. Yes, you heard me right: instead of being like every other job seeker who wants something, you’re offering something instead. Like honey, this refreshing approach attracts more bees.
Use whatever tools the community offers to communicate: sometimes e-mails or instant messaging (IM) addresses are displayed, or you may have to use their internal message system. Don’t send your resume, but it’s fine to include the Web address as a link at the end of your message.
Share Your Expertise, Build Your Personal Brand
Don’t stop there. These communities also give you the opportunity to convey your expertise. This is the “personal branding” concept that career consultants advocate nowadays. You can put that on steroids using Web 2.0: answer questions posed by others in your industry that show you’re knowledgeable, and append your auto-signature to each post (include that resume link again!) so it’s easy for the reader to reach you. LinkedIn Answers (www.linkedin.com/answers/) lets you search through questions and answers and automatically links your responses to your profile.
The 2 largest sources of these niche discussion groups by industry subtopic where people are asking questions and (relative) experts are answering are Google Groups (groups.google.com) and Yahoo Groups (groups.yahoo.com). At these sites, type unique keywords/phrases to find people talking about your subject matter. For example, if I were a quantitative investment guru, I might type “equity derivatives.” This will lead you to posts within particular groups. Join relevant groups, see what people are saying in their posts, contact the interesting/knowledgeable ones (they can help you find a job, too), and reply to a discussion thread when you have something useful to say. Another way to find free discussion lists by topic keywords is Catalist (www.lsoft.com/lists/listref.html).
Blogging Enhanced by Web 2.0
Also start a blog—a type of online diary—most social networks have blogging tools built in. To see what others are doing, use a blog search tool like Technorati.com, IceRocket.com, or Google blog search (blogsearch.google.com) to find relevant posts and people. Some blog search sites are even industry-specific (e.g., legal blogs via Blawgsearch.com), but with the right keywords you can narrow your results on any of them.
A good way to stick your toe in the water is to respond to others’ blog posts by typing a comment: under each post, click the comments link or type in the box provided. Say something complimentary and/or semi-intelligent (constructive contrasting opinions are also fine), and you can’t go wrong.
When you’re ready to start posting to your own blog, don’t waste your posts talking about restaurants or what you cooked for dinner (unless you seek a job as a chef!). Focus your opinions on what’s happening in your industry (positive or