Do you Tweet? If not, maybe you should.

Perhaps it would be misleading to say that as a job searcher you MUST be on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or other social and business networking sites. But, assuming that you use social media in appropriate and professional ways, being connected and networking in these ways can only help. And, few people would argue that you shouldn’t seize on any edge that you can give yourself in a job market that is widely being called the most competitive in a quarter-century.

Twitter, for those unfamiliar, is a service that allows you to communicate and stay connected with your colleagues, current and former co-workers, friends, family, and other contacts through the exchange of quick, simple answers (140 characters or less) to the question, “What are you doing now?” While the premise is simple-so simple that you might at first question how “Tweeting” (Twitter-speak for posting an update to Twitter) could be helpful in your job search-I would urge you to take another look. Twitter has become vastly popular and you might be surprised at how many of your colleagues, friends, and even top experts in your field or profession are on Twitter.

If you are actively involved with managing your career or conducting a job search, here are just a few benefits that will justify the time you spend setting up your free Twitter account and learning how to use it:

1) Twitter can be a great tool to help you build, enhance, and promote your personal brand. Briefly, your personal brand (as it relates to your career) is what differentiates you and makes you and your contributions uniquely valuable in the workplace. As a job searcher, you can use Twitter to make your followers aware of your expertise, post links to interesting news stories about your industry, or post tips related to your profession. All of these are brand-building activities that will make you memorable to your contacts, boost your credibility, and help set you apart as a leader in your field.

2) Twitter is an extraordinary networking tool. Remember that networking is all about building relationships. Twitter helps you stay in contact with people in your network in a quick and easy way that was never before possible. It will allow you to keep your contacts up-to-date on your job search, it is a great way to learn about unadvertised job openings, and it is often an easy way to get referrals to people you should talk to. Of course, it is important to remember that networking is also about providing reciprocal help, and Twitter allows you a fast, easy way to let people in your network know about job openings you’ve heard about, or give other help or advice to your contacts when they need it.

3) Twitter provides you with a way to connect almost instantly with recruiters and other hiring authorities in your field. More and more recruiters are using Twitter and other social media tools to find candidates for job postings. Some companies are actively encouraging their employees to Tweet about (or discuss on LinkedIn or Facebook) job openings that they are trying to fill. If you are regularly Tweeting about your job search and posting other on-brand Twitter posts, it is just a matter of time before you start uncovering and being referred for attractive job or business opportunities.

Are you convinced? Even for the time-challenged professional (does that describe nearly all of us?), Twitter is easy to use. You don’t even need to be sitting at your computer as Twitter is mobile and can easily be used on your iPhone, Blackberry, or cell phone.

When you are ready to get started, here are some quick tips:

1. Sign up for your free Twitter account and fill out your profile. Remember that you will be using your account for networking and professional purposes, so use discretion and only include information or a photo that you would be comfortable sharing with recruiters, your colleagues, and the world. If you have a reason to keep your business and personal life separate, you should create separate accounts.

2. Search for and “follow” people that you know. Twitter provides easy tools and instructions for doing this. Consider friends, family, current and former co-workers, industry contacts, people you went to college with, etc. Once you are following these people, look through their contacts and selectively follow some of their contacts. Even if you don’t know someone, if you have a reason to do so, follow them. This is a way to build new relationships.

3. As you begin to build your list of people you are following, many will begin to follow you. When you are getting started, try to post Tweets daily-perhaps twice daily. Besides just answering the basic question “What are you doing now?” (always keeping in mind that your Tweets should be appropriate and follow basic rules of etiquette) try to regularly post useful, on-brand information and links.

4. When your contacts Tweet, respond if you can answer a question or have useful information or tips for them. Twitter gives you two ways to do this: direct messages and replies. Be selective about which method you use. A direct message will only be seen by the person you are responding to. A reply will go to everyone that follows you.

5. Search Twitter for keywords. This is a good way to find out what is going on and being discussed on topics of interest to you among people that you aren’t already following. You may also find interesting people that you will want to follow. The place to do that is search.twitter.com

5. Do you have a Facebook account, a LinkedIn profile, a blog, or another website? There are options to link them all and post status updates simultaneously to all of them. This can be a great timesaver, so it is worth taking the time to learn how to link them. You could also consider including your Twitter user name in your email signature files or on business cards. Doing so will quickly build your following, and the larger your following, the more beneficial Twitter will be to your job search and career.

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Pete mccauley, University of Minnesota, describes use of Skype to conduct conversations for use in podcasts.

A tutorial that explains how to use Article Marketing Automation. Curtesy of: www.adrianalexa.com Part 2 of the tutorial: www.youtube.com Read more about AMA (Article Marketing Automation) here: www.adrianalexa.com

Social media websites remain an interesting mechanism for mining marketing potential if for no other reasons than social media is so, well, social.

I came across an ezine recently that encouraged visitors to visit a celebrity social media site for an interview that was particularly compelling. Prior to posting the ezine the owner also posted several appropriate comments in both the blog and guest book. They were also listed as one of the celebrity’s friends. This may be considered groundwork for social media marketing potential.

One click on their photo and the visitor who came to find out more about the celebrity can find out more informal information about the business and the owner that originally sent them to the social media site.

This savvy business owner comes away from this gentle nudge to a celebrity social media site inextricably linked to the celebrity because of a few simple posts. Some visitors will likely view the site owner in a different light (for better or worse).

The combination of uses for social media sites is astounding. If there were no marketing potential in social media why do you find so many record labels, book companies, recording artists, authors and comedians with their own unique social media site? Many of these sites will also include video streaming to further interest the site visitors.

It is a unique twist to discover a link based on little more than inference (i.e. this celebrity is my friend) and the marketing potential such inference suggests.

Social media sites can become a bit like online play areas, but they can also be presented in an attractive way that is informal enough to be inviting without being so formal as to be detract from the playful nature that is suggested by the term ’social media’.

If you can develop a popular social media site you will be pleased to see how many links visitors access and how often your blogs are replied to. There also remains a very real potential for friend requests (additional links back to your social media page – then to your primary website).

It may be advisable to at least do a cursory check on any and all that submit a friend request. You don’t have to know everyone who is on your friends list, but there are some good reasons to do a bit of investigating. Some who ask to be your friend may be a business that is in direct competition with you or it could be individuals who have an agenda that may only become evident through guest book posts.

If you ever become uncomfortable with someone you have welcomed as a friend you need to know that most social media sites allow you to remove a person from your friends list and even ban them from posting on your social media page. This may be important to know if you ever see material that is offensive or derogatory.

Social media can be an important marketing tool. Make sure to monitor your social media site and proceed responsibly.

Why are so many people using Twitter? Why would more 3 million people visit this website? Why are so many technology companies taking advantage of it?

This is really two questions: First, What is Twitter? And second, how do people use it? Here’s a short list of the top benefits of using Twitter.

These updates or tweets known as Twitter, provides the users the benefits to the users for sharing the messages,status updates, what they are doing to anyone who has decided to follow each tweet and really connect with the people who follow them. The members can get these updates through the twitter website, an RSS feed, text message, email, numerous applications including other blogging, social media websites and more.

Twitter: What’s the Big Attraction? (or as my Sig-O says, “Why on earth would total strangers care what you’re up to?”)

Networking: A great way to meet people. If you are in a business with a niche market, you can discover new people that have similar interests to yours.

Marketing: It’s not just about big companies like Dell, Comcast, etc. It’s about connecting with your audience and having a real presence on Twitter. I find that I get business by just having that more personal face to my company on Twitter, and engaging the community.

Stream of Information: I seem to be getting breaking news and information on Twitter before most news sources. A great example was when the last earthquake hit the Bay Area. It was all over Twitter a good 10 minutes before CNN had it as breaking news.

It’s great! People from all over the planet use Twitter. You can always find someone who shares your interests and wants to chat.

If you haven’t checked out Twitter you should absolutely take a look.  It’s a very simple, straightforward site. There are many ways to “cross post” which means typing a single status message and have it show up in other social networking sites (not to mention any names).

geeks.pirillo.com – http – Beth Kanter is a trainer, blogger, and consultant to nonprofits and individuals in effective use of social media. Her expertise is how to use new web tools (blogging, tagging, wikis, photo sharing, video blogging, screencasting, social networking sites, and virtual worlds, etc) to support nonprofit. She has worked on projects that include: training, curriculum development, research, and evaluation. She is an experienced coach to “digital immigrants” in the personal mastery of these tools. chris.pirillo.com – http Distributed by Tubemogul.

Social media is a completely different layer that has been added to the web, hence the web 2.0. Social media is becoming mainstream and in a couple years we won’t even be able to imagine a time when we couldn’t interact with all the screens and mobile content surrounding us. It is indeed a misnomer, but to suggest that the platforms that enable conversations between people and between people and brands are not viable ad opportunities is ludicrous. Social media is all about sharing and connecting. It is the use of technology combined with social interaction to create or co-create value. Twitter is just one of these web 2.0 Twitter is a perfect platform for micro blogging. Allowing you to post comments with just a few words. Ping.Fm another great tool that allows you update your post to all of your social networks at once. Social Social media provides the tools for people to collaborate and get around barriers for communication, build trust. Social Media is a collection of online tools and sites that function on the premise that people are interested in talking to and engaging with other people. The fact is that social media tools differ significantly based on culture, Internet access and online behavior. Community Community members respond quickly to request to test new tools. Community members provide reflections on their activity, which stimulates change within the group. If you use monitoring to discover a real community, perhaps one you didn’t know existed, then you’ve found a treasure trove of real opinions, reactions, reviews, etc. Social Media IS NOT SEO, but search engines DO look kindly upon blog posts/community comments/online noise. Conversation Conversations in these types of communities tend to be regulated by the needs of the community’s creator or sponsors, they are less transparent, and less valuable to the participants at hand. The ability to actually listen in on market conversations made possible by social media will drive a sea change in the market research industry, one that today’s early adopters are starting to understand. When you engage in conversations in social media it may seem overly labor-intensive compared to launching an ad campaign. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge. I can meet many real people and have real conversations, but it will go nowhere if we don’t connect. Relations Social media needs to be all about relationships. Which in business terms, translates to turning relationships into clients or resources. Most association executives and show producers have realized that relationship building is their greatest priority, few have tapped into the power of social media or adopted a practical plan to incorporate these solutions. Some companies will be hard pressed to understand that its more about relationships and intangible aspects of SM rather than the numbers. Social Media is not just another media. Social media is defined by the act of sharing content in and between social networks regardless of the content type….. For more information about Using Social Media to build your online business Visit: http://www.newsynergyonline.net Blog: http://www.newtrafficbuilder.com

When Barack Obama, the elected President of the United States of America, last posted on Twitter on November 5 he had over 90,000 followers, come the New Year though that number had grown to over 150,000 – despite the man not posting a word since election day!

It seems like everybody is “Tweeting” – even the most powerful man in the world.

NASA, 10 Downing Street, BBC News, Steve Jobs from Apple corporation and John Cleese are all happy “Tweeters” and post regularly.  Between them alone they have over 40,000 followers on Twitter – users who receive every one of their regular posts.

There are over 4 million users on Twitter with these 4 million people sending nearly a quarter of a million messages between themselves every month.

For a service that started in the Autumn of 2006 this really is astonishing growth, and it’s all the more amazing when you consider that a post on Twitter can consist of no more than 140 characters.

Links to other website are allowed, but considering the craze for Flash-dominated, Javascript-heavy, all-signing, all-dancing websites, Twitter’s growth is extremely surprising.

For its very limited and minimalist approach, the service came in for a barrage of abuse when it first came to the attention of the world’s bloggers. A couple of years down the line, and nearly all those bloggers that initially criticised it now have their own accounts and are “Tweeting” like a happy canary.

Even established BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones declared his admiration for the application in May 2008:

“I was beginning to think Twitter – the micro-blogging service that’s all the rage amongst the technorati – was just another fad for people who want to share too much of their rather dull lives. Until this morning.

“When I logged on to my desktop Twitter application (sad, I know) it was alive with Tweets about the earthquake in China. Most of them were from the celebrated technology blogger Robert Scoble, who is famous, perhaps notorious, for receiving a Twitter message every second of the day.”

It has been used not just as a news service, but also as a means of fundraising, covering live events and campaigning.

As a news distribution system, it first came into its own in the autumn of 2007 during the seasonal Carolinian fire outbreak. “Tweets” were sent around users and filtered out into the wider net community. It was news from dozens, if not hundreds of people on the ground where the action was taking place.

As a means of distributing information, NASA grabbed hold of the new media application and used it to distribute the latest updates about its recent exploration to Mars using the Phoenix Mars Lander. Amazingly, the world was first alerted to the presence of water on the red planet, not on the BBC, Fox New or CNN, but on Twitter!

With this exciting development it was only a matter of time before a press release service began using Twitter to distribute items, and free press release service Press Release 001 has stepped up to the plate.

Launched on January 1, all the major categories of Press Release 001 are now also transmitted to the world via Twitter, although, of course, in a condensed version of no more than 140 characters.

It’s too early to tell yet just how popular this new type of free press release service will be, but if it is anything as popular as other news services then it will surely play a part in helping to change the strategy of online public relations.

Having a press release published in your local newspaper or trade magazine is one of the best (not to mention cheapest) methods around of publicising your business. But press releases can also be used to drive traffic to your website. Here’s how:

What is online press release distribution?

When you write a press release, your main objective will probably be to have it published – either in a newspaper or magazine, or perhaps online, on a website relevant to your industry. In order to do that, you’ll need to distribute your press release to a carefully targeted list of journalists and publications – the ones that are most likely to want to print your story.

There is, however, another method of distributing press releases. News wires are organisations which “blast” your press release out to their own list of media contacts. These are journalists, editors and webmasters who have signed up to receive press releases on specific subjects.

What’s in it for you?

When you distribute through an online newswire, your press release won’t just be picked up by the media. In theory, it could be picked up and published by anyone with a website. If you’ve included a link to your own website in that press release (and you should always include a link to your website in your press release!), that means that your link will appear on all of those sites. Because the likelihood is that anyone choosing to publish your press release will be running a site to which that release is relevant, you gain valuable inbound links, from relevant websites. And you get them for free.

Press release distribution case study

As an example of how well press release distribution can work, we recently prepared a press release for http://www.thefashionpolice.net on the topic of The Oscars. Because the subject of the release was a topical one, it was immediately picked up by a number of relevant websites (including Google news), resulting in a large increase in the site’s traffic and revenue.

How to distribute your press releases online

There are a number of different online press release distribution sites which will distribute your release for free, or for a small charge. Custom-Copy.com is just one of them. Here are some others:

http://www.prweb.com

http://www.prfree.com

http;//www.free-press-release.com/

http://www.prleap.com

http://www.pressbox.co.uk/

http://i-newswire.com/

Each of these sites offer a free distribution option, although many also allow you to “upgrade” your press release for a fee.