Chapter 21

Ten Common Mistakes People Make When Using Social Media

In This Chapter

Recognizing mistakes to avoid in your online life

Discovering how to make the most of your online networking efforts

Staying active online, even after you get the job

Social media is probably one of the most hyped-up technologies today. And often, things that get a lot of hype also come with a lot of misunderstanding. Companies, as well as individuals, have made some very damaging mistakes because they didn’t take the time to really understand social media.

In this chapter, I share with you the ten most common social media mistakes so that you can learn from them and avoid them. I want you to be comfortable with social media and have the confidence to be authentic, be yourself, and grow a powerful network that propels your career to new heights.

Forgetting That Social Media Is Just a Tool

Social media has a lot of excitement around it today, making it easy to believe all the hype and success stories and expect those same successes to happen to you instantly. New users of social media can sometimes think these tools are magical — but they’re not.

Treat social networking as you do in-person networking. Build your relationships over time and with care. Social media is just the tool; you still have to use that tool wisely and effectively.

Failing to Think of What Hiring Managers Need to See

Successful people on social networking sites don’t overly obsess about how spiffy their profiles look or what they’ve done in the past. Masters of social networking have good-looking and well-worded profiles, but they focus their time on interacting with potential employers and talking about how they can help them.

Learn from these masters. Focus your messaging on solving other people’s problems and explaining how you can help their business, their career, or their life.

Taking Before Giving

You may have people in your social media network who you met once, months or years ago, and then rarely hear from. Then, out of nowhere, they send you (along with hundreds of other people on their list) an e-mail with their résumé attached, asking for job opportunities. It’s not very compelling, is it?

To avoid being seen as someone who takes without giving back, keep in contact with your network and try to be of service to others. Here are some helpful ideas:

Write someone an unsolicited recommendation; try doing this once a week.

Share interesting and helpful articles with your network via status updates on a daily basis.

Connect two people with similar interests without being asked.

Make exceptions to your rules; for example, if you connect with only people you’ve met in person, break that rule every once in a while when someone seems to really need help.

Keep an eye out for job opportunities and send them to people in your network who may qualify.

Take someone under your wing and mentor him. Yes, even if you’re early in your career, you have something to offer.

Being Inconsistent

Many recruiters and hiring managers have told me that any inconsistency in a candidate’s application raises a red flag and winds up in the maybe pile at best. Inconsistencies to watch out for are saying you do one thing on your résumé and something else on your LinkedIn profile.

More subtle inconsistencies can happen in your personal image. Perhaps you look nice and professional on your LinkedIn profile picture, but a simple Google search reveals your Halloween party bender where you’re taking beer bongs with Viking horns while wearing a toga.

Here are some ways to improve your online consistency:

Plan out your personal brand before filling out profiles and résumés. Decide up front who you are and how you want to look to others. (Turn to Chapter 4 for advice on crafting your personal brand.)

Post to your networks on a regular basis. Having a consistent and regular voice online can help bolster your personality as perceived by others.

Ask for feedback from friends and colleagues/professional contacts. Sometimes what may be perceived as an inconsistency may just be a mistake or even a personality quirk that can be hard to spot. Getting outside feedback can be valuable. Perhaps you only wear jeans and T-shirts but are an executive at a company. Although you may not be willing to change your style, you can play it up as a personality trait.

Having an Incomplete or Outdated Online Presence

If you’re going to explore other social networks in addition to LinkedIn, such as XING or Brazen Careerist, don’t do it halfway. (I go into detail on other social networks in Chapter 14.) Decide to join a network and then do whatever it takes to complete a profile. Putting your best foot forward is a must. If you aren’t prepared to give it 100 percent, then don’t open the new profile in the first place.

Having an outdated profile out there means you risk looking inconsistent. As your personal brand changes and evolves, your newer profiles begin to differ more and more dramatically from the old ones that aren’t being maintained, and it just looks like you don’t care. Nothing is worse for your personal brand than a Twitter account with only three posts from two years ago!

Revealing Too Little Personal Information

Revealing a vast amount of personal information isn’t always going to help you in your job search, but leaving out all personal information can really hurt your chances of standing out in the job market. After all, the name of the game these days isn’t just what you can do but who you are and what makes you different.

Including a few well-chosen items about your personal life can do wonders for rounding out your image. By opening up about yourself, you make it easy for others with similar interests to relate to you. For example, my friend’s son included on his LinkedIn profile that he’d hand-crafted a guitar over the summer. The hiring manager for an internship he applied to turned out to be a guitar enthusiast. Guess who was chosen for the most competitive internship that year!

Not Understanding the Etiquette of the Networks They Use

Not having a good understanding of the rules of one social network versus another is a major mistake because what’s acceptable on Twitter may be considered a faux pas on LinkedIn. So listen to and watch other people engage in each social network first before doing so yourself. Sometimes, of course, you may have a message that’s appropriate on several networks, but for the most part, interacting and engaging with your audience in the way each individual network expects is the best option.

Avoid services that blast out the same message to multiple networks at the same time. You wouldn’t show up at a friend’s house for beer and pizza and start passing out your résumé, would you?

Not Knowing Their Audience

Make sure your messages are appealing to the people who read them. For example, some people still think blogging is writing personal information about your life for the whole world to see. When, in fact, the best blogs are written for a very specific reason and for a well-defined audience.

As a job seeker, your audience will likely be other professionals in your industry and potential employers. As a general rule, these people don’t want to see your political views, religious views, or anything else that may cause controversy. Instead, focus on what makes you different, the value you can bring to the table, and your level of understanding and motivation about a field.

Failing to Keep Up with Their Networks When They’re Employed

The average time for keeping a job in the United States is two years, which means you may be packing up and looking for a new boss every couple of years. In the traditional job-search paradigm, you’d simply restart your networking, résumé writing, and other job-hunting efforts at each interval. However, these days, such a start-stop approach is inefficient and impractical.

Just because you have a job doesn’t mean you can slack on networking and maintaining your outgoing professional image. You may need your network before you know it. I cringe when I see incomplete LinkedIn profiles because one day those people will need a strong network to catch them. Neglecting their profile also means they haven’t extended themselves to help others in need. One day they will seriously regret the oversight.

Following are some tips to help you keep up with or expand your network, whether you’re employed or not:

Update your network regularly, either with LinkedIn status updates, Facebook posts, or occasional e-mails. These updates can be as simple as sharing links to articles you’ve read or news about your professional life.

Keep your online profiles current so your network knows what you’re up to. Doing so is just a common courtesy that you probably also expect from others.

Continue to invite new people to connect with you. As your network grows, so does your influence and value. If you’re employed, use your status to help others find work or make connections.

Ignoring Face-to-Face Networking

The technology world is not only unpredictable but also volatile. Every connection you have online and every e-mail communication you send via a social network is owned by a company. If you aren’t taking ownership of your connections and communications, then you risk losing them later on if that company goes out of business.

The highest impact you can have communicating with someone else is face-to-face, not e-mail. Strive to conclude every online communication with a call to meet in person. Also seek out in-person networking opportunities in addition to the virtual ones. (Besides, you can always follow up from a day of traditional in-person networking by inviting your new friends to connect with you online.)