According to Facebook, 800 million people are currently using Facebook. In addition, there are 900 million pages, groups, events, and so forth with which people interact on a daily basis. As the Facebook network continues to expand, so does the number of people who have access to our profiles and the personal information that we decide to share with the world. If you choose to keep your profile public, then you can assume that future employers will check it out.

My company recently held interviews for a new assistant and, after interviewing a number of candidates, we decided to peruse their Facebook profiles to get a feel for how they carried themselves outside of the work place. We work in a small home office, so it was important to us that the new hire be someone who was professional and capable in the work place, but also someone to whom we could relate on a personal level. Facebook profiles gave us the insight that we needed to make our decision.

The top three items that can cause employers to cross you off the list:

Research Employers

Beyond doing a Google search and checking out the website for the company to which you’re applying, see if the company keeps a Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn page. In addition to getting information about the company, checking these pages will allow you to get a feel for how big of a following the company has.  The company’s status updates and Tweets give you an opportunity to stay up to date with information that the company finds interesting and relevant. Some companies like it when prospective employees “follow” them because it shows that the candidate has initiative.  This can give you major brownie points during the interviewing process.

Join LinkedIn

I would like to give a special shout out to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is quickly becoming one of the largest networking sites for employers, employees, and applicants alike. If you keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, employers are able to access you in a bundle: not only do they see your virtual résumé, but they also see your achievements, professional reviews, and the people with whom you associate personally and professionally. You can even use LinkedIn to search for jobs and to have an immediate link to your future employer.

As I was working this afternoon I noticed a tweet come across my feed.

Without even thinking about it, I replied back.

I understand that this situation might look a little strange at first glance.  Business owner seeks to pitch a popular writer.  Yes, I get it.  In my defense, I don’t roll that way!  When I walk out the door I’m not Leif Martinez, Owner of Jigsaw Social Media.  I’m just a regular guy (I consider myself a geek) who has a passion for technology and who enjoys socializing with other geeks who share my interests.

As I pulled up to the designated location at which I was to pick up Alexia, you might think that I felt a little awkward due to the situation, but I did not.  Here is why:

1. Alexia Tsotsis is a writer for the popular technology blog TechCrunch, and I’m familiar with her work.  I read it to feed my daily geekiness.
2. I’ve seen her on video podcasts (Twit.TV) and during other tech interviews.
3. I follow her on Twitter.

Following someone on Twitter or through other social network is an act that allows the real magic to happen.  Social networks allow us to become transparent and to share our daily lives with strangers. Because I follow Alexia on Twitter, I had enough information to conclude that she would be a fun and interesting person with whom to share a drive in traffic.  After all, it can take some time to get through the traffic in L.A.

From the moment we got on the road, our shared background in the tech space laid the foundation for our conversation.  One minute Alexia was introducing me to Ligers,  and the next minute we were discussing where tweets go when they disappear from the Twitter timeline.  I didn’t know it at the time, but she tweeted the question out to her 34,000 plus followers.

Seconds later she began laughing hysterically.  I asked her what happened and she flashed me her phone.  She shared the numerous funny responses she was getting back from her followers.

At that moment, I got to witness firsthand how powerful a social network reach can be, even when one asks a silly question that calls for comical answers.

When I woke up this morning, I had no idea that I would end up taking Alexia to the airport.  I can honestly say that I would never have considered the idea had I not been exposed to her tweets.  Mom, I hope you are not reading this blog post.  Today I took a stranger to the airport and I had fun doing so!  I know you would not be thrilled with the idea of me picking up stranger, but is it okay if they are on my “friends” lists or “followers”?

My experience was quite fascinating, and it was well worth the drive home in L.A. traffic!  I can only think of a few things missing from the conversation today:  a chair, a table, drinks, and more time.

Today’s experience certainly brings up an interesting question.  Has social media extended our social boundaries?  Would you give a social media friend a lift to the airport?  You know my answer!  Leave a comment below and let me know your take on this.

Apple uses a phrase that we’ve all heard:  “There is an App for that!”  And now there is!  Kevin Rose, who is the CEO and founder of MILK.inc, and his company have created an app called Oink in an effort to solve this problem.

Oink is a mobile app that allows you to rank, compare, share, and discover things rather than places.  Oink combines mobile, social, and geolocation to provide you with quality results that help you find the things that your peers love, like, dislike, or that might interest them.

How does Oink work?

Check out this video in which Kevin Rose introduces Oink.

(For an in depth introduction to Oink, have a look at Kevin Rose’s keynote at the 2011 Web 2.0 Summit.)

Thoughts about Oink

Since Oink was launched last week, I’ve been excited to play with the app to find out if it will solve the recommendation problem.  From my experience thus far, I can say that it will!  Here’s why:

Oink allows you to create to-do lists by flagging items to add them to your list of things to do.  Oink puts a geo fence location around each of your to-do list items and notifies you when you are in close proximity to a particular thing or venue.  How cool is that?  (Update, the geo fence notification is currently not active yet, but should be coming very soon.)

Because Oink has the potential to include so much information about things, it can be used as a powerful business tool.

Forget about trying to get your signature pizza rated the best in town.  Remember that you can’t control the Internet.  Instead, focus on the social aspect of the app.  

Since its release, Oink has been embraced by the tech community, and that is a promising sign.  A strong and growing community will make or break the success of any social community, especially one that relies on user-submitted content.  Like most new apps, Oink’s shelf life will depend on whether it is adopted by iPhone market users before an Android version is produced.  Only time will tell.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on Oink.  Give Oink a try and leave us a comment.  I’d love to see the things you’ll be Oinking!  (is that even a word?  I guess it is now!)  You can follow me on Oink under my user name:  Leif.

If you’ve seen the movie “The Social Network,” you know that Facebook started out as a website exclusively for college students. When I was 16, it broke from requiring a .edu email address, and became available to all users. My friends and I quickly jumped on the social networking bandwagon. We were MySpace junkies aching for a fix of something new, and Facebook was just the place to find it.

As our familiarity with the website expanded, the site itself did as well. Soon, not only were we using Facebook to leave each other random comments or tag each other in embarrassing pictures, but we were using it to ask each other questions about our homework, get in touch with our teachers (the ones that were daring enough to friend their students anyway), and when the chat function was introduced and we could do all of the above while talking simultaneously, our minds were blown.

Time passed and high school came to a close, with our major milestones validated by the new photos and friends we had on Facebook. The site had proved itself to be more than just a newer, cooler MySpace; it was clear that, like a modern day hope chest, Facebook would be taken with us and used throughout college. Nearly four years later, the presence of social media in my life has exploded tenfold. Not only do I use it to keep in touch with friends and family scattered across the world, but the introduction of websites like YouTube, Twitter, Yelp, blogs, and others have revolutionized the college experience.

Social Media and the Student Body

Social Media in the Lecture Hall

While the student body is using social media as a means to promote its agenda and maintain social connections, teachers also have embraced its potential as a means to communicate with and engage students. I took a class once that was largely discussion oriented, and the professor created a Facebook page for the class, encouraging us to post questions and discuss topics that we didn’t have time to get to in the allotted time on campus.

UCLA gives each course its own web page that comes with sections for discussion and announcements already, but it has been my experience that these are rarely used – except when required for grades. Normally when a professor announces that discussion in these forums is required, the lecture hall filled with 200 people erupts in groans detesting the inconvenience that has just been thrust upon them. But in this class, it was different. Many of us were intrigued by the fact a professor had embraced our Facebook addictions, and was asking us to use social media in this new context. Sure we had all seen and used YouTube videos in class presentations to illustrate topics, but never had we used a Facebook page as a discussion forum.

Social Media and the University

On a larger scale, many schools are beginning to incorporate the social space into their disaster plans. Most universities send out mass texts and emails whenever an incident occurs on campus, e.g. a fire, lockdown, or assault, but now students are finding status updates and Tweets alerting them to the fact that a disaster has occurred on campus. In early October, Sacramento State students were notified of a campus fire via status postings on the school’s Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as on the school’s homepage.

“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” 

Of course, the intertwining of the social space, the college campus, and the student body also comes with a price. Students must be increasingly aware of their Internet presence. Comments regarding cheating or other unacceptable behavior can spread like wildfire through the social space, and if brought to the wrong person’s attention (or right person, as the case may be), it can have detrimental consequences. Admittance to cheating on exams on Facebook comments have led to referrals to the Dean of Students and expulsions from campuses, and offensive YouTube videos can turn an entire community against a single person.

College campuses are known for spearheading movements and inspiring innovation. Social media provides a space for this to continue in a modernized fashion. While once students took to their college quads and student unions to hang out, study, and rally, students today are abandoning their picket lines, throwing away their protest signs, and picking up their laptops in favor of heading online to let their voices be heard.

A shift in media is taking place in our culture.  This shift is changing the business and communications world as we know it. Phone books, the Yellow Pages, radio, and even desktop computers are becoming things of the past. Media is shifting to the digital space, and technology and consumers are the drivers behind this change.

In order to reach your customers, you have to be where they are. Whether it’s a laptop computer, Tablet PC, or a mobile phone, this is where today’s consumers are researching businesses in order to satisfy their needs.

Because customers are spending more time online, and because technology is continuously advancing, how can you best reach your customers today? The answer can be found in one word: online.

Reaching Customers through Company Websites and Social Media

Two very common approaches that businesses take to reach their customers in this age of technology include:

1. building a user-friendly website
2. using social media sites

A business’s website is the central hub to which all online activity should be directed. Business owners who realize this have sought the help of social media consultants and search engine marketers to gain more online visibility.

Social media marketing is becoming more widely known as an opportunity for businesses to communicate with their customers while also being leveraged for business. Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin are all very popular social media channels that businesses use to reach out to and connect with their audience. This is helpful because it fosters transparency and online visibility.

While social media marketing is helpful in the process of building loyal customers and online visibility, it doesn’t guarantee that your customers will find you.

Gaining Online Visibility through Search Engine Marketing and Optimization

Search engine marketing and search engine optimization are ways that businesses are gaining more online visibility with today’s consumers. Many businesses are seeking out the help of local search engine marketers to help them draw in more targeted website traffic that will convert into business. This involves first figuring out how customers are searching for your business.

One simple form of search engine marketing (SEM) is pay per click (ppc) advertising. Pay per click advertising features paid advertisements at the top of the search results for the keywords that you choose to bid on. This type of search engine marketing is a quick and easy way to get instant traffic to your website. Although it is much quicker than search engine optimization, it doesn’t work as well for all types of businesses.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is thought of as a more long-term approach to online visibility. SEO is done in order to bring your website to the top of the search results with non-paid (organic) optimization. Businesses do this in the hopes that they will be able to draw in their target audience when audience members are searching for the type of business and its services. The desired result is that you can turn these audience members into lifetime customers.

When all of these elements (social media, ppc advertising, and SEO) are combined into an integrated marketing campaign, you are able to better reach today’s digitally savvy consumer at every possible touch point instead of by using just one potentially unsuccessful marketing channel.

I recently read the book The Now Revolution, in which authors Jay Baer and Amber Naslund list over 20 ways to measure social media activity. Instead of listing all twenty different ways, I’m going to share with you my three favorite ways to measure your social activity from the book. This will be based on the idea of starting a new company.

Start Listening
My first recommendation is to start listening. Specifically, listen for questions and conversations regarding your company. This will allow you to get an idea what people are talking about and can open the door to engage in the conversation.

One tool you can use to listen for online chatter about your company is SocialMention.com.  Social Mention shows you who, what, where, and when, and it also measures your brands sentiment across the Internet. Social Mention aggregates user-generated content from across the web into a single stream of information. You can also set it up to send you alerts for keywords you would like to track.  Best of all, it’s FREE!

You may also want to explore with Google Insights, through which you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, or time frames.  Google insights can help you answer some of your questions, such as how many people are searching for my brand? Did I mention that this service is also free?

Implement Google Analytics
My second recommendation is to implement Google Analytics on your web site. Google Analytics allows you to measure the digital footprints leading to your site, the keywords that were used to find your site, pages visited, and much more. Google Analytics will become your best friend because it works 24/7 to provide you with rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. If you are running a WordPress site you can install a Google Analytics plugin right into your site’s dashboard. There is no good reason to put off installing Google Analytics on your site, especially when it’s also free!

Measure User Community Participation
My third recommendation for measuring social media ROI is to measure your user community participation. This is easy to do on Facebook via a tool called Insights, which allows page owners to view valuable metrics around their content. Insights offers real-time analytics about how people interact with the content on your web site. Page owners can benefit by understanding and analyzing trends within user growth, demographics, and consumption of content.

I recommend tracking your monthly fan growth, number of Likes, number of comments, and the number of people who unsubscribe. These metrics will prove to be valuable data and will help plot your social media engagement progress.

Although I would love to cover all the new features of Insights, I will have to save that for another post. If you would like to learn more about all of the new features, you can read about them here. And yes, it’s also free!

You remember that little blue icon we now see on almost every website with the word “Like”. When you feel it’s relevant, please tap that bad boy, because you are doing your friends a huge favor! Little did you know, you are an unofficial Facebook employee doing your due diligence; by cleaning up the crap results that pull up when doing an online search. And don’t think of calling Facebook HQ and asking for a paycheck either, the last time we checked Facebook was FREE!

So what’s the deal with the “Like” button? Well, when you combine Microsoft Bing and the juice of the “Like” button you get some really amazing results!

Those amazing results are a by-product of your Facebook friends clicking on the “Like” button. This in turn, displays the content that your Facebook friends have “Liked” in the top search results of Bing! And the really cool factor- it shows you a small thumbnail picture of your friend that has liked the page! Don’t your friends influence your buying decisions? Isn’t that why you were clicking the “Like” button, to tell your friends?

Don’t you think it’s time to install the “Like” button on your business website? If you’re customers aren’t “Liking” you, who is? Are you ready to make the switch to Bing?

We are so excited about launching our new and improved website! The goals were to keep it simple and easy to read, make it more interactive and showcase our portfolio, of course

Unfortunately, there were some sacrifices! The Blog comments and Facebook Likes on our original blogs did not make the trip to our new home. It was so sad to watch them fall off the back of the truck on the way to our new digs.

In celebration of our new site, we would love your feedback! If you could leave a comment on one of our blog posts as well as “Like” your favorite post, we would be thrilled!

Kindly,
The JSM Team

In order to understand how special this story is you need to have an understanding of the LFA. The LFA is a supercar that Lexus has spent the past ten years perfecting until they created a car enthusiast’s masterpiece. Lexus only produces about twenty LFAs per month. They are all hand-built and will only be producing 500 of these vehicles globally. At a price tag of $375,000.00 and with a limited production, most of us won’t ever see this supercar in real life.

Meet Lois Holakeituai, she is a huge Lexus advocate and supporter. She drives a Lexus IS and has been a Lexus fan since she was a kid. One of her dreams when growing up was to one day buy a Lexus… mission accomplished! She can be found online interacting and engaging with the Lexus brand and fans across Facebook and Twitter. She has built her online reputation as a true Lexus supporter and is known by the Lexus online community as the “IS Girl”. Lois defines the word fanatic when it comes to her passion and love for Lexus.

So how did Lois make it behind the wheel of the LFA? Lois started by building an authentic connection with Lexus and some of the people behind the brand using social media.

“I saw how lots of people connected with companies using Twitter and I really wanted to be connected with Lexus,”

says Lois. Her passion for Lexus extended beyond the brand, and over to the real people behind the company. Michael Ludwig, an online customer service specialist for Lexus (also a twitter follower of Lois) went as far as sending Lois an email thanking her for her brand advocacy and loyalty along with a personal invitation to an LFA viewing event closed to the public. “It was nice to meet some of the faces behind the brand that I have grown to love.” says Lois. Later that evening Jim from @LexusMagazine invited Lois to get behind the wheel of the LFA supercar. A dream came true for Lois!

Five years ago it would have not been possible to reach this level of intimacy with a company, much less be able to interact and engage with the real people behind a company. In today’s business world, more companies are starting to see the real value in the openness and transparency behind connecting to its customers and fans. Lexus is another example of companies pioneering the power behind social media.

Does social media work? Why not ask a company like Lexus, who is not only listening to what is happening in the social media space, but is also participating. Through this simple practice, and better than any Super Bowl commercial, they now have the best form of marketing…a word of mouth recommendation from a loyal customer. If you are still in doubt, don’t ask me, just ask the “IS Girl”.