We know how social networks have changed our lives. Led by Facebook, they crawled in and conquered us. How many of them do we know now? How many of them do we use? Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google +, and it goes on. Each of these social networks satisfies a specific group of individuals, I believe.

For instance, Facebook is for the general public, who want to share their pictures and videos and want to know what is happening with their friends. Twitter is for celebrities and large organizations to immediately share their important news with the followers, and also for latest news on civilian emergency response. LinkedIn is for anybody to boast about their career and business plans or to interact with others in the same industry. Google + satisfies website owners and authors.

The social media job revolution began when Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar), CMO and Chief Customer Officer for Enterasys Networks, a wireless networking equipment provider, tweeted this:

I am hiring social marketers and I am not accepting paper resumes – recruiting exclusively via Twitter. #socialCV #ibmconnect
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) January 28, 2013

The position to be filled mentioned by Vala Afshar is a six-figure social media job. For this specific job, there are a few requirements, such as a minimum Klout score of 60 and Kred Influence score of 725.

Marketing and Communications company, Commpro has shared these statistics:

• employers using social networks: Linked-98%, Twitter-42%, Facebook-33%
• LinkedIn is the favorite destination for recruiters. 48 percent of them exclusively use this social network, and an average recruiter probably has over 600 connections on LinkedIn, while they have only 245 on Facebook and 37 on Twitter.

This is one of the indications of how the industry is progressing—especially the tech industry. These tech giants already know how social networks can influence growth and sales. Only a dumb-ass CEO won’t open a social media profile for his company. Even the big corporations at the top of the industry have their own profiles in competing social networks, don’t they? Here’s Google’s Twitter page, and here is Facebook’s YouTube channel.

Klout and Kred Influence

These job offerings based on social media probably require you to have a killer profile—one that really talks about your interests, plans, achievements, and level of influence. If you are really keen about getting a job through your social media profile, you should immediately rethink the way you use it. Not just Twitter, but Facebook, LinkedIn and any other social network you are part of.

LinkedIn assumes special importance, as it is the largest professional network in the world. Within LinkedIn, people make connections with their coworkers and contacts from other companies, rather than their college buddies. Hence, pay attention to how you represent yourself on this network.

A starting point would be how to be smart on Facebook. That article discusses about various things that you should be doing in order to have a good Facebook account, such as sharing the stuff that matters, and refraining from liking everything you come across.

Klout and Kred Influence are two services that measure your social media presence. These platforms let you connect via various social networks you have—Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, etc. Here, my Klout score right now is so low, but it’s okay since I am not actively trying to get recruited through social media at this point.

Klout scores you between 1 and 100 based on various factors—actually Klout says nearly 400 factors. The tweets you make, the topics you are interested in, retweets, mentions, votes that others give you, etc., all factor into your final Klout score.

Klout also gives you actual perks for growing your social profile. Interestingly, there were a number of giveaways, such as a Chevy Volt driving experience, Windows Phone to try out with 3 months of service, AMEX 25 dollar gift cards, etc., are some of them.

It goes without saying how important it is to maintain a good standing on your social profiles.

Kred is another platform similar to Klout that measures your social standings. We were unable to test it out fully as the email confirmation system was not working properly.

Social Media Tips

It just doesn’t mean you will get a job as soon as you have a huge number of friends and followers. You really have to have influence on that group of people. There are a number of spam services in the social media world that can give you a huge number of friends and followers in very limited amount of time. Most of them work through a point-based system in which a user is given points to share another user’s Facebook profile, and the user can then spend these points to promote his own profile. In essence, it is a mutual-promotion system.

There are huge downsides to this kind of spam. Even if you manage to gather a huge number of followers, none of them may be actually interested in the stuff you share. All of your followers may have huge number of people that they follow themselves, making it difficult for anybody to share anything valuable.

In essence, it is always best to gather followers and friends naturally. Here are a few tips you should follow on your social media profiles to make it more attractive to employers.

1. 1. Information you share should be correct and verifiable. You should not create fake profiles and share incorrect information. This also does not mean that you should share personal information. Share what you would not mind others to see, and make sure they are correct information.
2. 2. Do not try spamming activities. If you would like to meet a specific person, do not be persistent. Try to send a message through whichever social network you are using and seek whether it is possible for you to network with that person. Within LinkedIn, you can make connections, and if the other person doesn’t know you and turns down that connection, that is a negative point for you.
3. 3. Share only valuable and interesting things. Really put a check on what you share with your followers. If you find a dishonest marketing gimmick from the social media profile of a company, do not share or comment on it. Do not even like it. Anything you like or comment on, may appear on your timeline, appearing on your friends and followers. In essence, don’t be stupid.
4. 4. On Twitter, do not follow too many people that you cannot manage. Follow only a few important accounts that can update you on the things that matter. Do not follow another account just because that other guy has auto-follow turned on.
5. 5. When you are tweeting, do not simply post a link and a comment like “I like this” or the title of the story. Try to capture your observation into that tweet. Make it something like “CNN published this story <link> and I couldn’t find any evidence of <something> happening”. Make it stand out from the rest of the updates. A lot of people have Twitter updates turned on, on their smartphones. They will see your update and read it. You really want to design how you appear to them.
6. 6. Make your Facebook timeline clean. You could turn on a specific feature called timeline review. This will help you review anything that you are tagged on before it appears on your timeline.
7. 7. Be active!

Conclusion

Remember your credit score? You build a horrible credit score and you end up not being able to get a loan anywhere. A social media profile is almost the same. You post a number of spammy entries, and the Internet always has someone watching and keeping track of them. Keep your track clean and you should be good to go.

[Image: Bufferapp]