“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by brevity, over-connectedness, emotionally starving for attention, dragging themselves through virtual communities at 3 am, surrounded by stale pizza and neglected dreams, looking for angry meaning, any meaning, same hat wearing hipsters burning for shared and skeptical approval from the holographic projected dynamo in the technology of the era, who weak connections and recession wounded and directionless, sat up, micro-conversing in the supernatural darkness of Wi-Fi-enabled cafes…” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Tweet

I have an embarrassing confession that I hope someone will relate to.  I’m totally happy to introduce myself to anyone randomly online through LinkedIn, Twitter, email or whatever as I always like to network and connect with like-minded marketing peeps. Then, I go to networking events, and I totally clam up.

I absolutely dread those “networking” hours interspersed between seminars. It’s weird: if someone approaches me, I’m completely friendly and at ease.  But the thought of approaching someone on my own at one of these things terrifies me. Even the thought of approaching someone I have spoken to online sometimes freaks me out.

 It’s very inconsistent with how I normally am. I was a waitress, my tips depended on my ability to schmooze…with strangers. Before I got this job, I was Little Miss Informational Interview, seeking out one-on-one conversations…with strangers. At a bar, I’m a wingman, grabbing guys and telling them to dance with my friends…grabbing strangers.

 Am I just socially awkward IRL?  Why is it that at conferences I get intimidated? Why is it that at a time when my game face should most definitely be on, I’m off?

I admitted this fear for the first time to my boss/mentor when we were discussing our networking strategy for an awards event. This bit of advice stuck: remember that everyone is there to network and talk to random people. It’s not like you’re at the mall or the gym and it’s unexpected (and possibly unwelcome) for you to go up to someone and strike up a conversation. Literally, the point of these events is to go up to people you don’t know, tell them your name, chat them up, and make a connection.

Obvious, right? But no one had laid it out like that for me before. Any lightbulbs going off out there?

Basically, this is just something I’ve noticed.  My friend’s 70-something year old grandmother is on Facebook.  She has her maiden name on there.  This is a lady who probably hasn’t used her maiden name for 50 years or so, but she’s using it again on her Facebook profile.  Same thing with my other friend’s mom, who recently added her maiden name to her Facebook profile.  I also noticed recently married peeps either not changing their Facebook names at all, or keeping their maiden names on their profiles and sticking the new hubby’s name on the end.

The maiden name debockle has long been a soul-searching situation for women, and I feel like it’s gotten more complicated over the years.  It’s gone from “what will I do with my business cards?” to “what will I do with my email?” to “what will I do with my LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook accounts?”  (And if you’re super nerdy like me, “What will I do with my URL?”) Yikes!

Obviously, the issues to contemplate transcend the importance of social media. “Do I want the same last name as my children?” and “Who am I if I am not a Johnson (insert your maiden name here)?” are thoughts to ponder. Some may say to keep your maiden name for business purposes and use your new name in your personal life.  But thanks to social technology, we live in an increasingly networked world in which business and personal relationships are harder to distinguish.

My thought is that women who are either adding or keeping their maiden names on Facebook  are doing so because they want old friends who don’t know their new last names to be able to find them.  I think the fact of the matter is (even for people who don’t work in marketing and may not give a rip about this so-called personal branding) that your maiden name is sort of like your brand name.  Getting involved with social media, whether or not you use it for business, means you have to establish or re-establish your identity to fit your social networking needs.

I think for ladies my age and up, the problem is easier to solve now than it will be for future brides.  I’m 22, and even the girls that have been involved with social media since their tween days were probably on Myspace.  They probably had really clever usernames like “BSB4Life” and such, so last names aren’t really an issue for us.  But for the Jonas-loving tweens of today, they are establishing first name-last name personal brands on Facebook at an early age.  10, 20 years from now when they tie the knot, how will they re-establish their brands on the internet?

Anyone have thoughts?

I’ve been spending a lot of time on Twitter lately.  No, I’m not stalking you (well, not that much) but I’m doing some PR research.  Sifting through profiles, I noticed something and I want to know if you notice this too.

According to their 160-character bios, the vast majority of people I came across fit into these categories:

-Marketers

-Public Relations people

-Journalists

-Software/web/graphic designers, enthusiasts…people who code.

-Self-proclaimed “social media gurus,” “digital natives,” and “experts” who may or may not know what they are talking about

-Boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, and wives of avid Twitter users. Significant others introduced/suckered into micro-blogging who probably still make fun of it but are secretly addicted.

Follow me for a moment into the idea that we are at least in part defined by our occupations.  Sure, there are nurses and teachers and lawyers on Twitter.  There are tons of politicians and entertainers on Twitter, but I think we can argue to some extent that they too are using Twitter as marketers.  I’m concerned that a huge portion of Twitter isn’t so much this even playing field of Common Joes, but more of a media-infatuated, geeky, techy clique.  When we the marketing/PR types get excited about “putting the public back in public relations” and encouraging our clients to engage in conversation with consumers – who are we telling them to talk to?

Don’t get me wrong: I love me some Twitter.  I just wish it was more diverse.

I can’t begin to tell you how incredibly proud my parents must be.  They spent all that money on a big, fancy college education and the culmination of all this knowledge is a 22 page paper about Twitter.

This “twpaper” is about @CoffeeGroundz, a coffee house in Houston, TX that uses Twitter to connect with customers.  I wrote it for my senior seminar class, which is the capstone communications course at my college.  I went through the class kicking and screaming, but I’m happy to say that I learned a lot from this project and found the research to be fascinating. I would like to thank everyone who helped me with this project, especially @coffeegroundz, @keithwolf, @cwelsh, @toadstar, @mikedaniel, @lfarnsworth, @gdruckman and @jgrassman. I was touched by your generosity.

I did a case study that involved a content analysis (stalking) of the @coffeegroundz Twitter traffic and interviews (the email kind) with several customers/Twitter followers.  I originally wanted to do a paper about social media and ROI, but then I realized that #1 it’s Pandora’s box and #2 qualitative research on the topic is more within my time-frame and skill set.  The paper touches on the topic of ROI, but looks at it more in a cause-effect sense and not straight metrics or anything like that.  The first part of the paper has some more general information about how businesses use Twitter, then there’s some heady discussion about theories and previous research, and then the fun part (pg. 12) with the research findings and interviews is at the end.

So, here’s the paper.  Enjoy all 31,985 delicious characters of social media marketing goodness.

[scribd id=14596673 key=key-277pbsm1fwu6nc0z7a7d]

I’ve been wanting to write about Facebook and the job search for a while now, but I wanted to take an angle that wasn’t completely about my personal experience and wasn’t just rehashing the issues other people have so eloquently written about.  Here’s a quick recap of what other bloggers and reporters have said:

• Hiring managers look at your Facebook
• Use privacy settings
• For heaven’s sake, keep your clothes on.

This is all great stuff, and I wanted to jump a little further into the topic and ask the numero uno question at stake.

• Should hiring managers look at your Facebook and make decisions based off of that?

The article “Employers: Get Outta my Facebook” in Business Week takes that first point to task and dissects the pros and cons of the topic.  Is it an invasion of privacy when companies look at Facebook?  The one side says that Facebook isn’t private.  Even if you say that what you do in your personal life is your personal business, it becomes public business when you post on Facebook.  Therefore, it’s fair game for HR. The opposing viewpoint suggests that Facebook profiles aren’t resumes, and that what people do in their personal time is irrelevant for most jobs.

I think the struggle for college kids is that when a lot of us started Facebook it was something just for students.  We posted whatever we wanted and didn’t imagine there would be future implications with the job process.  The grown-ups weren’t on there yet.  For some, it was like a digital bookmark for college debauchery.

Now your dad has Facebook.  Your professors have Facebook.  Your prospective employer has Facebook.  A transition needs to take place.

De-tag all you want, but know that somewhere out there in the infinite “social utility” abyss are those pictures from that night.

The topic of privacy and Facebook is an interesting one.  If your profile is public, then what you post there is well, public.  I would argue that if your profile is public and you list your company on your profile, then the personal stuff you post there is relevant to your job.  Say you have a bunch of pictures tagged of you at a strip club – then have it listed that you are an Account Executive at (insert your favorite PR agency here) on the work section of your profile.  In that case, you are representing the company in a public environment.  If you are looking for a job, a hiring manager may be valid in wondering: If this is how she represents her current employer, how will she represent us?

So put your profile to private, list your company, and keep whatever information you want on there because it’s your private space for you and your friends to connect.  The current limit for Facebook friends is 5,000.  Sure, it’s just between you and your friends – but you and your 5,000 friends?  At which point is your personal network large enough to be considered public?

With so much talk about the negative implications of Facebook, I feel us getting paranoid.  I see people listing only their first and middle names on their profiles so that possible employers can’t search for them.  I see people creating separate accounts for their personal and professional lives.  People leave all the information blank on their profiles because they don’t want to express an opinion that might not line up with the viewpoint of a prospective employer.  We’re having an identity crisis.  Who is the professional, public me?  Who is the personal, private me?  Who is my Facebook, and should that be public or private?

We forget that Facebook is there for us to connect with friends new and old.  We can’t connect with each other if we don’t share anything about ourselves. You should be proud of who you’ve become and share that with your Facebook friends.  You probably have cool hobbies, great friends, a nice family, a cool job, ect.  Share it!  Social media didn’t get to be this huge because everybody put the proverbial whitewash on all their accounts.  It’s because people talked about stuff and posted photos of stuff and poked each other that these websites grew and grew and grew.  I say let’s be smart about what we share and we can all have fun with Facebook again and stop worrying about what someone we haven’t even met yet is going to think of us or how the new layout looks like Twitter.

There is a difference between sharing and over-sharing.  Sharing is a picture of you sitting at a bar with a drink in your hand. Over-sharing is a picture of you blacked-out and slumped over a toilet.

The answer to the numero uno question at stake: Regardless of whether hiring managers should look at your Facebook – they do. It’s better to disagree with it if you do and keep your profile private and your postings within reason than to stubbornly hold on to the albums of your drunken escapades and lose out on a job because of it.  Be pro-active about maintaining your profile.  I’m no Facebook expert, just a job-seeker who feels like she found the right blend of personality/”wouldn’t panic if a future employer saw this” in my own profile.  Here’s my take:

• Use friends lists. Facebook lets you customize which friends get to see which content with friends lists.  Check under the Friends tab.
• Post your own pictures.  If you are always relying on your friends to tag you in things, you are playing defense because you have to de-tag yourself  from anything you don’t want on your profile – like fat pictures.
• Be who you are, just be smart about presenting it.
• Take the driver’s seat with your online reputation.

It was a long one!  I hope this sparks some conversation.  The comments are yours.  As always, feel free to disagree (or agree) and thank you for reading.

A few weeks ago, Jason Falls wrote a blog post about why social media won’t help you find a job during a recession.  The basic sentiment is to use Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. but “know and understand that all the on-line, behind-the-computer, cyber connections in the world don’t beat a hand shake, a smile and a chat.”

So last week, I kicked it old school and met up with some PR and marketing people—(gasp!) in the flesh—during a one-day whirlwind of a trip in Boston.  I had three interviews, two of them informational and one for an internship.  I wasn’t all that shocked to learn that there were hiring freezes and no positions open for me.  However, and this could just be ego, but it feels really great/comforting to hear someone who has a job you want tell you that you’re doing the right stuff to get there.  I didn’t leave with a job (and I didn’t expect to) but I left with many more connections and information that will help me get one.  And recession be damned, I’m getting one.

Highlights:

• “Twitter levels out the networking playing field.” My new friend Rebecca (@repcor) said it best.  It gives you direct access to people who work at, own, or know people who work at the companies you want to work for. Because of my connection to her and Justin Levy (@justinlevy) I got to watch a taping of Hubspot TV, take a little tour of the office, and chat with Mike Volpe (@mvolpe) about a social media paper I’m writing in school.  Connections connections connections.

• I wrote a blog post about my trip, and a few days later I got a lovely email from Alexa Scordato (@Alexa) inviting me to a girls night with her friends.  So I ended up having a lovely dinner with Alexa, Rebecca, Maria Thurrell (@MaThuRRell) and Nidhi Makhija (@kaex88).  We even got a surprise visit from Todd Van Hoosear (@Vanhoosear).

I’m not trying to name drop, just giving credit where credit is due.  Everyone was so sweet and welcoming to me.  If I wasn’t convinced that Boston was the place for me before, the generosity of everyone I met really made me fall for Beantown and showed me exactly what that city has to offer.

I don’t think I will get a job directly from social media in that I’m not expecting someone to randomly Facebook message me one day and be all, “Hey, want to be an account coordinator?”  But in my case, I think it is really valuable to use it to make out-of-town connections, and I actually believe I will get a job from one of those.  I think if you plan to stay in the area you went to college in, it’s easier to make those connections the “old way” through PRSSA or AMA conferences and you may not have to rely on the internet so much.  But even in that case, following the local pros on Twitter couldn’t hurt.

Everyone tells me that “networking” is so important in job searching, but not that many people explain specifically what that means.  I hope my experience helps do exactly that: explain specifically what “networking” means.  It’s basically just talking to people who have jobs you are interested in having, talking to influencers they talk to, asking LOTS of questions, being gracious, being friendly, and building relationships.  I recently said that diplomas aren’t magic wands, and Twitter isn’t a magic wand, either.  If you click the mouse and follow someone it isn’t like ABRACADABRA (poof!) you’re hired.  But if you DM them, email them, meet them and offer a firm handshake and a nice chat—then maybe they can direct you to a friend who has a friend who has a job for you.

In conclusion, I just want to sincerely thank everyone who took the time to meet (or chat on the phone with me).  I didn’t mention everyone because I wasn’t sure if it’d be weird to publicly write the name of your company and put down that I had an interview there, but I really appreciate your advice and your time.  Check your mail.

Until next time:

Make friends.  Just keep swimming.  Don’t stop believing.

JNA

I’m coming to Boston on Friday, February 27th!

I had a great conversation about jobs, PR, and life with my professor last night. (Thank you!!!) His advice was that I make use of my spring break travel plans and stop in Boston if I get the chance. There’s always an open invitation to crash on my best friend’s futon at BC, I’m going on spring break with her anyway, I love that city – so why not? Moreover, I realized that it was important for me to learn more about the city I want to work in and get some face time with some people who work there. In conclusion, I’m hoping to set up some informational interviews for that Friday.

Do you know any PR people in Boston that would have 20 minutes to sit down with me and my portfolio and tell me honestly what I’m doing that’s great and what I could do better?

If so, please don’t hesitate to email me at [email protected] or message me on Twitter. (@janetaronica)

Thanks!

Like most college seniors, I joined Facebook freshman year of college. My very first Facebook friends were people from high school and the girls that lived on my floor at Verder Hall at Kent State. I was in it for purely social purposes. I didn’t see it, or sites like it, as something that could potentially play a significant role in my career.

Freshman year (fall of 2005) was also the first time I heard about blogs, during Intro to Mass Communication class. There, I – along with 400 of my “classmates” – heard my professor lecture about the incoming threat of the DUN DUN DUN – Citizen Journalists! Run for your liiiiiivvvvessss. The BLOGGERS are COMING!

The topic of blogging was explained very much in terms of how newspaper and magazine journalism majors better beware, because the bloggers are here to take your jobs.

Throughout college, Facebook remained a place for casual conversation, and albums of some now-deleted pictures. (Like that picture of your passed out roommate spooning the inflatable you-know-what she gave you for your 21^st birthday? Yup. Delete those, kids.) It was a way for me to keep in touch with friends, especially when they studied abroad and it wasn’t as easy to just send a text or make a call. (Mark Zuckerburg, I’m thankful for that.) Then came the newsfeeds, and then the grown-ups joined Facebook, and then the applications were added. Now, any business willing to give five minutes to creating a page can have its own place/idenity in the social medium.

I didn’t care about blogs until I had to search them for Kodak coverage at my internship last summer. This prompted me to discover different blogs that I could read on my own. As an infamously reluctant waitress, angry server blogs – most notably, Waiter Rant – profoundly resonated with me. I also discovered Culpwrit (a great source of advice for PR students) around that time.

Fall of senior year, I took a class called Introduction to Digital Media. Inundated with blog, wiki, podcast, Flash, and Second Life projects up to wazoo, I felt both overwhelmed and intrigued at the vastness of the social media environment. I began to see how drastically and quickly the flow of information was changing. However, it took a riveting personal experience for me to comprehend the change.

In November, my friend died in a tragic accident. She was walking down the road and got hit by a truck. For me, the news of this accident was met with unexpected devastation. We swam together in middle school, and I hadn’t spoken to her since high school. Nonetheless, I was blindsided by grief. I’m not a crier, but I wept for days, fixated on news updates of her condition.

She lingered in the ICU that weekend, and the local news reported her changing condition with statuses that were both vague and cliche. “Seriously injured” and “critical condition” were among the updates. I will note two important things about my experience in searching for information about her status:

1. The most up-to-date information was on a Facebook group created to promote a candle-light vigil in her honor. People who had actually visited her or talked to people who had visited shared what information they knew by writing on the wall for the group. As opposed to waiting another ten hours for the next news story – wall posts were made sometimes within just minutes of each other. They weren’t journalists, they were friends, and that made a difference in how their information was perceived.

2. The interactivity of regular news revealed a nasty side to Web 2.0. People who never knew her freely commented on the situation beneath the news stories on the website. She died on a Sunday night, but people starting posting “RIP” things on Friday morning. Now, as you can see with this news story, someone moderates the comments and deletes those reported as “abuse.” But gems like this comment feed continue to flow through cyberspace. Some of these comments make me sick.

This event shook me to the core, and inspired to me to reconsider many things in my life – including but hardly limited to my ideas of what news is. I recognized once and for all that media had changed. Gone were the days when just the reporters had the authority on information. Comment posts held an authority all their own, and information was taken out of the headlines and put back into the conversations exchanged between friends.

If the media changed, I realized PR had changed. And if PR had changed – I had to stand up and face the fact that my career was going to look a lot different than I anticipated.

Since November, I’ve embarced on a personal journey through social media. I began by re-activating my Twitter account (I did it in Septemeber for maybe a week, but didn’t initially see the appeal) and reading a variety of PR and career-advice blogs (especially Penelope Trunk!) This post from a PR pro at Schneider Associates is a great example of a lot of the consensus that I’ve run into, which is that social media is and will be an integral part of my PR future.

I’ve joined a wide variety of sites to experiment and get a feel for what is out there. To be honest, this is one of those self-guided tours, and I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth a couple of times. But I’ve never been afraid to make mistakes, to allow myself to have unintentional experiences that teach me something. I take responsibility for what I put out there. I like to, well, JK JK a lot – but don’t be mistaken: I do take this seriously.

I’ve read that when it comes to Twitter and blogging, you should not only consume information, but contribute it. As a social media newbie, what do I have to say that people will get some use out of? Now don’t get me wrong, I promise to share to share only the top echelon – the most valuable – of LOLcat photos and FAILblog posts with my legion of loyal followers. But other than that, what do I have to say about PR, social media, internships etc. that will actually be worthwhile?

How worthwhile this is, that is for you to decide. But after the experiences I’ve had, I feel confident enough to share a conclusion I’ve come to:

We are citizen journalists. As a former newspaper journalism major, I’m happy to say that I’ve reclaimed my own job and found my own place with blogging. Ethics is a strong focus in traditional journalism, and I think that we can and should begin to apply those ideals to what we blog, comment, post, tweet, tag, etc. Nobody’s perfect. But we can try…harder.

I don’t think that how we edit ourselves should be simply a matter of PG-rating, personal branding and etiquette. Based on my experience, that isn’t necessarily enough pressure or accountability for many people contributing their two-cents on the internet.

Don’t underestimate yourself. People are reading, and the comments you make on news stories, the posts you make on Facebook – have consequences. As a journalist, would you publish something inaccurate on the front page of your paper? No. So as a citizen journalist, maybe it’s not the best idea to blog, comment, post, tag, or tweet information that is inaccurate, particularily when it’s regarding a sensitive topic – for instance, the death of a beautiful, smart, athletic, funny, talented young girl.

Groups like the Society of Professional Journalists have a code of ethics helping support and direct the moral compasses of reporters. Together, citizen journalists must continuously work to establish a standard of what is right.

So until next time,

Become an organ donor. Learn something new. Write what you feel even when it hurts.

JNA