What NOT to Do On Your Facebook (& Twitter) Page

I am friends with lots of careers industry folks on Facebook. Some of them (Barbara Safani, Jason Alba, Dawn Bugni, Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, etc.) do a fabulous job with their online brand.

Others, not so much. The screen shot on the left is from MJW Careers. I'm not sure who the resume writer behind this page is, but I do know that they write resumes for $50.

I am amazed they have 308 friends, since the majority of their posts are ... for lack of a better term ... spam.

For the past week or so, once or twice a day, they blast 3-4 posts on Twitter (that are automatically reposted on their Facebook page) about their cheap resume writing services. If you go back through the history, though, you find that they also apparently provide recruiting services. It actually was more interesting when they were posting "people needed" status updates for various *specific* positions versus the basic, blanket posts.

Some keys for resume writers to keep in mind with Facebook:

1) Remember the 80/20 ratio. Eighty percent of your posts should be content (resources, opinions, encouragement, links to good articles) etc. Only 20% should be promotional. And don't just rely on Twitter to update your status. Because of the way it's tagged, we can tell when it's a Twitter repost. Give us something original on Facebook every once in a while.

2) Think about your brand. For most resume writers, it's a good idea to set up a Facebook page for your resume writing business. While you can use your personal page to promote resume-related items, you're better off getting "Fans" (or "Likes") for your business page than to add friends to your personal page. You can then drive traffic to your business page by linking to items on your personal page.

3) Don't forget to have a personality. If you link to an article, provide some brief commentary. I always like hearing about resume writers whose clients are having success. But remember that -- like we advise clients -- anything you post online is totally public (even if you have your Facebook privacy settings locked down, there's nothing to prevent one of your "friends" from taking a screen shot of it.)

Best of Today: 9/22/10

Sorry. I took yesterday off from blogging. It was my birthday.

Jim’s Marketing Blog, Via Julie Walraven – “5 Ways to Get More From What You Already Have”

  --  Read the comments for even more great ideas

@DawnBugni is quoted in this USA Today article. “Job Seekers Find Success With Social Media”

Personal Branding 101 Blog “The Lady Gaga Rule of Social Networking”

Jessica Holbrook Hernandez on the Career Rocketeer Blog: “Are You Making a Tough Job Market Worse?”

– Quantity does NOT equal quality.

From Tim’s Strategy: “5 Career Networking Types: Which Are You?”

- Tim is quickly becoming one of my favorite career bloggers.

Quote of the Day

Via @InterviewAngel: “The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never scoring.” – Bill Copeland

Best of Today: 9/16/10

Julie Walraven Blog Post: "Where Did I Put That Resume?"

From Keppie Careers: Target Your Pitch:

http://www.keppiecareers.com/2010/09/16/target-your-pitch/

(via Dawn Bugni and Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter)

“Constant Contact to Help E-mail Marketers Track Social Behaviors”

I think this will be part of all e-newsletter services in the near future

Why You Have a Facebook Page But No Friends

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

@GayleHoward: #Jobseekers. The first step in any job search is having a clear goal. If you can’t describe what you’re looking for, then you’re not ready.

I’d argue any resume writer who doesn’t have a clear client goal isn’t ready to write either.

Cost of Unemployment

Lately, in the promotion of my Get Hired Now! program, I've been sharing the "cost of unemployment" with prospective clients in an effort to educate them about the real "price" of not investing in their job search, if doing things on their own hasn't worked.

The Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches had an article in their July 2009 issue that also quantified this. Worth a read!

(Thanks to Jacqui Poindexter for the excerpt and Dawn Bugni for the original tweet that drew my attention!)

Professional Resume Writers Strike Back!

In response to some rather visible attacks on the value of professional resume writers, some of our esteemed colleagues are striking back!

Here's a great post by Jacqui Poindexter, Dawn Bugni, and Jane Dominguez on Recruiting Bloggers.

They hit on all the key points: The need to identify the job seekers personal brand; the difficulty of paring down dozens of pages of information, notes, research, and job postings into a succinct document; and the return-on-investment offered by engaging the services of a professional resume writer (a couple of hundred dollars for the service vs. thousands of dollars in lost income from being out of work for weeks ... or months ... on end.)

Professional resume writers need to write more of these types of articles!

An Argument Against Accents

No, this post isn't about being bilingual. It's about accent marks, and why not to use them on your website. What's the difference between "resumes" and "résumés" online? Lots.

You'll notice that I don't use accent marks on this blog. That's because when you use the accent marks online, they can be converted into characters.

I'm going to pick on Dawn Bugni a little bit. That's Dawn's website, The Write Solution.

You might notice something interesting on this page -- The "e" with the accent marks have been replaced with question marks. That's the danger in using the accented "e" letters online.

Even worse than how it looks is that it won't be indexed by the search engines. Most people searching for a resume service won't use the accent marks -- and if you use the accent marks (even if they come through correctly), your site won't be ranked as highly as a site that doesn't use the accent marks.