Online Career Tips

Get to know and love your privacy settings, readers.  While they’re not an excuse to post inappropriate content, they will help keep your profile out of the wrong hands (eyes?).

Login to your Facebook account and click “Account” in the top right-hand corner once you get to your homepage.  A drop-down menu will appear, scroll down to “Privacy Settings” and click it.  That should take you here:

From this screen, you can customize your privacy settings (as I’ve done), or you can choose one of Facebook’s presets: Everyone (anyone can see your info), Friends of Friends (only friends of the people you’re connected to can see your info) and Friends Only (only your friends can see your info).

I prefer custom, so that I can tailor my content toward different users.

Do this.  Seriously.  Especially if you’re job hunting, you need to make sure that you present yourself in a way that you would be proud of, so if there is any questionable content on your page, remove it or adjust your privacy settings accordingly so that it doesn’t come up when your next potential employer does a search for you!

By J. Mason
Online Career Tips Staff

For those of us that interact well with our peers in the office, and turn into wallflowers at conferences and networking events, here’s a great tool to get you off the wall and interacting. It’s an app called Sonar. Mashabledescribes it as a “Shazam” for people; Shazam is a music app that when started will let you know what music artist, album and song you’re listening to. Sonar is said to help you scan the room at any event to let you know who  it is there that you’re connected to through social media.

Read the full story

Scene from 1999 comedy Office Space

By: Matt See
Online Career Tips Staff 

There is a new battle within social media. 

No, this battle doesn’t have to do with the Winkelvoss Twins. The battle is whether employees should be allowed to be on social media sites during work hours. 

Many managers shutter at the thoughts of their employees posting on Facebook all day. What if they spend all of their time on the site and never accomplish any of their tasks? What if they are posting negative things about our company? These are all scary thoughts to any manager, but after today I hope to show you that the benefits outweigh the risks. 

See my five ways to set your employees up for social media success in the workplace: 

1. Your Employees Are Your Biggest Asset – Empower your employees to be your voice. Your employees can help build your fan base and strengthen your company’s loyalty and voice in the social media space.    
2. First Thing’s First, Set Expectations – How do you want your employees to interact with your company via social media? Ask your employees to help you build your social media presence online. Growing a brand via social media is the latest and hottest trend. Good employee involvement will help you catch fire and grown your brand via social media. Ask your employees to tweet or post sales, events and promotions.
3. Guarantee Freedom – Let your employees know right up front that when commenting on your business you will not be hovering over their shoulders 24/7. A good manager won’t analyze every comment etc. Treating your employees with respect. You would like for them to present the company in a good light. If they don’t want you to see their personal photos etc., that is fine. Just have them update their account settings.  
4. Assign Responsibility – Empower your sales and marketing teams to attack Facebook and Twitter and other new and upcoming social media sites. Have these employees create events, promotions, communicate with fans etc. This is one way to actually give your brand a voice. Also make sure they always respond to fan inquiries in a timely manner.  
5. Draft a Policy – Put a social media policy in place. Employees do well when they know what is expected of them. So let them know what is expected of them when it comes to social media. Don’t want your employees uploading personal photos all day? Then tell them in the policy. Are you afraid they will spend most of their time on Facebook or Twitter? Then only allow access to these sites in areas like the break room. This will cut down on abuse while they are to be working.  

Empower your employees to be your brand’s voice on social media. It is a win/win situation. 

[Extend and Expand Your Role] 

Stay tuned for more management tips from me on our new feature, Manager’s Desk. 

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