You can get much more from social networks than just a chance to show your mettle. SoNets are a great source of education. Other users can help you solve problems, point you to tutorials and other resources, turn you on to industry news and events, even hook you up with contacts.

“Okay, I get it, give a little, get a little, put my best face forward. But where?” There is no right answer. If I was talking just to 3D artists, I’d suggest niche sites like CGTalk.com. You’ll have to spend a little time Googling to find the best niche networks to get involved with. For SoNets that aren’t so niche, a good place to start is our old friend Facebook. FB has a great many groups, some as random as My Name Is Durwin (of which I am a member of course), or as obvious as Design & Typography. Professional groups aren’t just on Facebook though,MySpace and others have some worth joining. There are a bunch of great sites dedicated to professionals only, chief among them, LinkedIn. If you don’t have an account here, you’re, quite frankly, nuts. Talent Zoo is a great site for job searching. Not only does it offer great articles (feel free to agree below) and job boards, but also gives you a chance to interact with colleagues and potential employers.

If you have a unique interest, alot to say, or ADD (all of which I’m very proud of), consider subscribing to or starting a blog. There is no end to the number of general and niche industry blogs, from technology to job hunting, advertising to life hacking. Got something on your mind? For free you can create as many blogs as you like with sites like WordPress, Blogspot, to name a few. It’s as easy as using Word. Much more than an online diary, it’s a great way to discuss your ideas and get feedback from readers. If you want to develop a larger social network, consider using Ning to launch a blog that can turn into a fill-fledges, multi-member social network. D.C. Insider Ariana Huffington turned her blog into a multi-author, political blog network worth millions.

Of course, everyone is talking about Twitter now. It has actually become my #2 news source, after CNN and tied with the Huffington Post. I’ve made tremendous contacts and learned an enormous amount of helpful and professional facts, as well as a tremendous amount of inane and personal facts! “Isn’t that where geeks go to talk about their latest podcast and what happened on Heroes?” Of course it is. But it’s much more. There is nowhere that the conversation is more raw and to the point than Twitter. In 140 characters, you’ll get everything from Red Sox plays to the latest on the McCain and Obama campaigns, behind-the-scenes images and commentary from industry events. You’ll also get help with technical problems, employee referrals, heads-up on new products, new sites and new jobs. There is a fun movie on Twitter.com that explains the service. Your best bet would be to begin by following some people whose user name you know (like mine) and see who they’re talking to. Pick the ones having interesting conversations and follow them, then see who they are following. It’s as exponential as it is experiential. Twitter isn’t just for online chat. I’ve met dozens of the people I converse with everyday at industry events. As a matter of fact, that’s how I found out about the event in the first place. Even out-of-town Tweeps come into town; they get treated to a Boston Tweet-up!

Twitter is not a place to join and start begging for jobs, or beating people over the head with your CV. LinkedIn is not the place to start Friending everyone at a company you’ve never worked at in hopes of getting an inside referral. In any social network, just like when visiting a foreign country, get to know the local customs. See how people interact, what they are interested in. You may find it’s not the right place for you. But, don’t worry, there are so many social networks, you’ll very easily find one that suits you whether you are job hunting, trying to change careers, or looking to hire.

The convergence of PR and social media is inevitable, and the ways in which those of us in the industry use social media continue to expand. One area that has seen some interesting changes is recruiting, and the role played by social networks. Nearly everyone is familiar with LinkedIn, a very conventional yet very useful tool for both the recruiter and the professional looking to make a career change now, or just interested in building out a network of people in the industry. Facebook, too, which in 2007 opened its doors beyond its college/university roots to professionals is finding increasing adoption among recruiters.

More interesting still is the use of what I would call emerging tools, either newer social networks or social media tools that might not be immediately associated with a career search, but which you might want to look into any way.

Lately, I have been spending a lot more time on Twitter, which can best be described as a global instant messaging system. I won’t offer a Twitter tutorial here, but here’s the quick downlow on it. Twitter was launched in 2006, and in 2007, after winning a high profile industry award, the service really began to take off and soon became a phenomenon. Twitter comes under a new social media heading called “microblogging,” tools that let you blog simply, quickly, and tersely. Twitter is basically IM, limited to 140 characters. Like most social media, Twitter is free. You sign up, establish an identity and then add people that you are “following” on Twitter. Twitter describes its various features and actions in a very unique way, which might be part of the “bad press” it has received. Your posts are called “updates” or “tweets.” You are “following” the people whose updates you add to your “timeline,” and the people who add you to their timeline are called “followers.” (If you want to see what Twitter looks like in action, just go to the home page and click “Public Timeline.”)

For a long time, many people criticized Twitter as an endless stream of narcissistic and mundane chatter. Recently, however, as people have learned to adapt Twitter to more important tasks than communicating that you have just fed your cat, the service has begun to see a number of interesting commercial uses.

Many recruiters are now using Twitter to better connect with candidates. A search on the term “recruit” on Twitter’s home page returns 87 people somehow associated with recruiting. (Not all of them are recruiters. Check the user profiles for more information on each person.) Among these is Lindsay Olson, PRJobs on Twitter, a public relations recruiter. I “met” Lindsay through Twitter. I was impressed by how she uses Twitter. Lindsay “converses” with people on Twitter in a very natural way, letting them see the daily worklife of a recruiter. In this way, Lindsay develops credibility, and builds friendships with a large number of candidates and connections to potential candidates.

I interviewed Lindsay by email on how she uses Twitter. She confirmed my view, which is that any “commercial” use of social media requires an understanding of the etiquette and unique attributes of the medium, and a willingness to downplay hype and conventional marketing tactics:

“As a recruiter and business professional utilizing social media technologies in my business, I think the single most important way of communicating this way is by joining the conversation as a peer, and interacting on a personal level. If you are just throwing links to your jobs and your business out there, your followers get sick of the shameless self-promotion. I think the day in the life of a recruiter is somewhat of a mystery to many people, especially potential candidates, and have found Twitter to be an excellent tool to share my profession. I feel that sharing my successes, failures and experiences in recruiting is helpful for people to understanding how to better interact with a recruiter as well as potential hiring companies.”

Many recruiters, and business people in general, have been reluctant to use social networks for commercial purposes due to privacy concerns. In fact, I contacted one recruiter, who uses Facebook and LinkedIn but not Twitter, and she agreed to speak with me for this piece, but only as an unidentified background source.

I asked Lindsay about this and she said that it is not “a concern as long as our clients’ and candidates’ confidentiality is respected in public,” which she makes a part of the rules she holds herself to in her use of all social media.

I strongly recommend looking into Twitter and other “alternative” social media as part of your career networking plan. The world of Web 2.0 — blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networks, etc. — is a highly connected and visible one. This high visibility environment has its etiquette, and brings with it the learning curve of any new technology, but the rewards of being so visible and so well connected to the right people can far outweigh the effort required to get up to speed.

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