My friend at GEICO has a cool opportunity in waiting...

Social Media Marketing Specialist

Entry level, 1 – 2 years of experience

Chevy Chase, MD (Washington, D.C. metro area)

GEICO – one of the nation’s most well-known and reputable brands – has a fantastic, entry level career opportunity for someone interested in Marketing, Social Media and Community…

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For this post, I am going to talk about the overall philosophy I have about social media. This is the direction I believe social media and communication is heading and my personal goal, through this rapidly changing world, is to hang on the the spirit of the philosophy, since rules, procedures, what's hot and what's not changes daily.  With that boring…

Lead the people with administrative injunctions and put them in their place with penal law, and they will avoid punishments but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence and put them in their place through roles and ritual practices, and in addition to developing a sense of shame, they will order themselves harmoniously.

-Confucius (Analects II, 3)

A new scientific truth does not as a rule prevail because its opponents declare themselves persuaded or…

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Do you need to increase sales? Do you think you have exhausted all your good leads? Then it is time to shift your focus. Dig in to your current customers, you know, the ones you have already sold. But you sold them already, right? Can you up-sell them? Can you sell them an add-on? Can you extend the contract? Did you ask for a referral? If you answered "no" to any of…

These words are now forbidden.  Those who place them on their resume will be quizzed as to why they are on your resume. It will not be a pleasant quiz.

1) "Vast"

This word means nothing. It's meant to imply that you have a lot of experience.  You don't. You may have dabbled in many areas, but if you've dabbled in enough to have vast knowledge, you only touched the service.  Do you really want to tell potential employers that your experience is deep?  Do you know who has…

  I had the pleasure today to speak with Johanna Lack at Taste of Temecula, an online magazine dedicated to spreading the word about what a fabulous place Temecula, California is.  I have been promoting a "tour" of Temecula wineries which I plan to play music at this summer.  Johanna contacted me and inquired if I would be willing to write about it for Taste of Temecula.  Now I…

In my previous post in this series, I discussed how blogging and tweeting were key elements to sharing my expertise on intranets. Additionally, I discussed the value of spending time outside of my “day job” exploring social networks, developing ideas about how they could be useful in business, and volunteering on the social media committee at my company.…

When people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a Director of Social Media for a digital agency, they usually respond with 1 of 2 questions:

1) Does that mean you get to play on Facebook all day?

-or-

2) How did you get that job?

While the answer to the first question is simple and a resounding “No!” (see this infographic on A…

As the Social Media Headhunter, you can imagine that I get a lot of calls from clients looking to hire social media experts.  I also get calls from people not sure what they want to hire, or who are looking for alternatives to full-time employees.  And sometimes they just don't have six figures to spend, or don't see the value. 

That's where you come in.  I direct them to this site, and tell them to find good talent, but for that strategy to work, you've got to be describing…

cross-posted at Social Media Headhunter. 

Michelle Magoffin is the Director of Social Media Programming for Edmunds.com.  Her unique background and high profile fit closely to the types of candidates I like to profile on…

Hello everyone!

I haven't seen any articles on here about Twitterfeed, so I'm going to write about it. I can't even remember how I ended up discovering it, but it's great thing to add to your list of Social Media skills.

Twitterfeed basically lets you create an RSS feed from any website you have where you or other people are posting new content on a consistent basis. The service lets you automatically "tweet" what's happening on your website.…

Wow, I can't believe that it's been more than two months since my last blog post.  Over the last 2 1/2 months, I've been pretty busy with a social media strategy and implementation project forRuby's Diner - a…

Companies are hiring in the social space.  There's no question.  Looking for people with a minimum of three years of experience in the social space, the job postings are realistic, funded, and ready for talent. 

So where do you stand?  And more important, how do you go about getting those jobs?

Here is some advice I wrote for social media candidates about…

When business is priming for social media, they need to consider the psychological aspects of entering into this open arena of thought and interaction.  For any business using the social media, there is no real road maps of thought leadership and success. First, a business needs to focus on whether this new Internet marketing concept fits into their marketing plans and their company's personality. If it does, start planning. If it doesn't, consider improving and…

I'm a Gold Badge member of the Techdirt Insight Community, and they regularly put out cases where you theorize how you would help a company with a problem.  The problems range from technical to marketing to social, and I've really stretched myself over the years to imagine solutions to problems. Yes, we're giving away some secrets, but this happens in a closed…

I'm opening up a GoTo Meeting today to answer questions about getting a job in social media.  The webinar is open to everyone, and it's just  a way to give back to the community, so if you have questions, now's the time to ask them.

Oftentimes there isn't enough bandwidth for me to answer questions individually for those looking for work, but I thought this might be a may to get involved and help out.

Details below.

1. Join my meeting,…

I just approved a member who has the picture perfect resume for a social media consultant.

6-10 years of Marketing and/or PR experience

5+ years working internally with a company

2-3 years of familiarity with social media tools

Positive online profile

A "frame of mind" that is clearly laid out in social media forums (blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn).

The reason I bring this up is because so many companies are…