social media

When you’ve got a job it can be quite hard to find another one. Recruiters call in the middle of the work day, prospective employers invite you into interview without enough notice and it’s likely that you won’t want your current employer to know you’re looking to leave so you’ll have to be sneaky about the whole thing.

Social media is a great tool to use in your job search, you just need to be a little bit clever and discreet about it if you’re not able to be open about looking for new opportunities.

There are a huge number of social media platforms out there currently, but the ones I’m going to talk about below are the most popular.

Twitter

Use Twitter well and you can build your personal brand and demonstrate your knowledge in your field. If you’re looking for a complete change in career, Twitter could be a really good to way to show your enthusiasm.

Curate content to build a community of likeminded people

Share interesting articles, but don’t just use the pre-filled in tweet. Add your thoughts to your tweet, or perhaps ask your followers for their opinions. Make sure you @ mention the source of the article to give them a hat tip. This can be a good way to engage with an influencer.

Take part in Twitter chats

Usually these are guided discussions using a predetermined set of questions. The person hosting the chat will post the questions and chair the conversation. You follow along with a hashtag.

Twitter chats can be great for networking. If you want to connect with someone further after the chat, follow them and make an effort to follow up. Perhaps visit their blog and leave a comment. Or engage with a tweet of theirs the following day. There are chats that cover all sorts of topics from internal communications to weddings. This list of Twitter chats is pretty comprehensive, although most of them seem to be based in the US, there’s a number of British chats included. Engaging with people within your industry (or the one in which you want to work) can be a great way to learn about possible job vacancies, which companies are recruiting and just generally enjoy the conversation.

You can also use Twitter to physically look for jobs. Some Twitter accounts act as job boards and tweet out vacancies. Most job centres have Twitter accounts as do regional and local recruiters. You could also follow the companies for which you aspire to work as they may tweet about vacancies. Some large corporations may have dedicated careers Twitter accounts. Be careful not to follow too many recruitment accounts at once as it may look a bit suspect if someone you work with notices.

Don’t just follow the accounts but actively engage. Respond to tweets, comment on articles shared, and so on. Get your name known but make sure it’s for the right reasons. Always be polite and don’t harass the poor people running the social media accounts.

Another way you can look for vacancies on Twitter is to search for hashtags, such as #jobs. You could also search by job title and/or location, for example, a search for “#chef #Exeter” brought up this tweet as one of the results:

Afternoon #Exeter any #chefs out there? We are looking for a part time #chef for our busy #kitchen. Drop in a cv or give us a call.

— Milkmaid Restaurant (@Milkmaid_Exeter) March 2, 2015

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is probably the first social network that people think of when they are looking for a new role. However, if you’re already in a job, you probably aren’t going to be able to change your headline to reflect your job search. However there is still a lot you can do:

• Ensure that your profile is up to date and comprehensive – think of it as your online CV.
• Ask for endorsements and recommendations.
• Connect with people who have careers you’re interested in, striking up a conversation with someone doing the job you aspire to have can help you understand how to get your foot in the door. Perhaps even arrange to meet them face-to-face.
• Connect with recruiters. LinkedIn is a favourite with recruiters, many of whom contact potential candidates through the platform.
• Share content – LinkedIn gives you the option to share content just like many other social media platforms, which gives you the chance to look knowledgeable (even if you’re not!).
• Look at the job board to find vacancies you might be interested in.
• Follow companies you might like to work for.
• Highlight your achievements outside of the workplace, for example, voluntary/charity work, personal projects, certifications and training courses.
• Join professional groups and take part in the discussions.

Facebook

Strange as it may seem, you could also find work through Facebook. Many companies have business pages on Facebook and post job vacancies. If you’re liking company pages and engaging with potential employers it’s vital to check your privacy settings. You might want your work and education history set to public but those bikini-clad holiday snaps are not what you want your future boss to picture in their mind when you come in for interview.

Pinterest

OK, let’s be honest, Pinterest probably isn’t going to help you track down a job vacancy. But what it can do is to give you inspiration for an amazing CV, inspire you with #girlboss quotes and help you to put together a kick arse outfit for your interview. Take a look at the Chapterthirty for some ideas.

Share your top tips! How have you used social media to find a new job? Leave a comment below.

Gamers all over the world are getting excited about the September release of the latest in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, GTA 5. The first gameplay video released by Rockstar Games on 9th July got everyone hot under the collar. So you’re probably wondering why on earth I’m blabbering on about GTA 5. Well you might think it’s a pretty long leap but the game’s three main characters actually reminded me of search marketing!

In the new Grand Theft Auto 5, there are three main protagonists and players can jump in and out of each of their lives in order to play all sides of the game’s story. These three guys, Michael, Franklin and Trevor, have their own unique skills that are brilliant on their own but together it’s a tour de force. Franklin is a street gangster searching for ways to make some serious money. His special skill is being able to drive in slow motion. Michael is a family man/”ex”-con who can move in bullet time. Trevor is a maniac drug addict who was Michael’s best friend back in the day. Players can unleash his ‘frenzy’ mode for extra damage.

So I’m not saying that SEO, PPC and social have the same characteristics as these three guys, that would be pretty insane , but the idea of having to combine forces to get the result is definitely true in search marketing. Search is a mission and you see a bigger impact when you use all three search channels together.

Using social to power SEO

Businesses can use social to do some competitor analysis, which can help form your search strategy going forward. You can also find out what questions people are asking. For every one person publicly asking the question, chances are there are plenty of others thinking the same thing. You can create content on your site to answer those questions and hopefully those pages will start to rank.

SEO and PPC are best buddies and pack a punch together

With SEO, and the use of Analytics, you can learn which search terms people are using to find you. You can then build those keywords into PPC campaigns and write content around those topics. One statistic that proves how well SEO and PPC work together is that when you run campaigns on both channels simultaneously businesses can see a 22% increase in performance, and of course having both an organic listing and a paid ad on the search engine result page is going to improve your chances of customers coming your way.

Using PPC for keyword research forms the basis of any SEO campaign

PPC obviously has to be paid for but it’s quicker to respond than the other channels and you can use the insights learnt to feedback into your SEO and social campaigns. PPC can be used for A B split testing to find out which landing page performs best. You can run the same ad but send half the traffic to one landing page and half to the other. Once you’ve learnt which page converts best you can send all the traffic to that page and adapt your SEO pages using what your findings. PPC is ideal for keyword identification. You can choose broad match modifiers in your PPC campaigns so that your ads appear to people who have searched for terms similar to your chosen keywords. These might actually be better keywords than the ones you’ve chosen so you can add these into your SEO strategy. PPC is great to use right at the start of any search marketing campaign because you can use it to inform longer term channels.

Worked example – integrating PPC, SEO and social

To explain how all three channels can be used together let’s pretend that we’re launching a new product. We’ll start with PPC and create some ads to drive some traffic to our new landing pages. Once the PPC is underway we can start to build some SEO content around popular terms that our customers are actually using to search for our product rather than terms we think they might use. We can then write some blog posts using the keyword research and use social media to talk about the new products and link to the blog. Within the blog article, we’ll link back to our SEO page.

Just like Los Santos, the internet is a big place. Try as you might, one channel is unlikely to reach everyone but by combining the special powers of all three you can become a force to reckon with.