Advancing Your Career Through Social Media

Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networks are not just for making friends; they're also great tools for advancing your career. Social media tools allow you to connect with professionals in your industry, giving you valuable contacts for future job searches. If you haven't been using social networks to their full advantage, here are some tips for incorporating Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter into your networking strategy.

If you don't have a LinkedIn profile, get one. More than 90 percent of recruiters use LinkedIn to gather information about candidates. It's also one of the best social networks for people who want to make business connections. You don't need to spend a lot of time updating your profile, but you should make sure your profile contains a summary of your professional skills, a list of past employers and a high-quality photo. Once you have a LinkedIn profile, use the site's built-in search tools to find past colleagues and ask them for endorsements.

Interacting with other people is one of the most important aspects of using social networks to advance your career. Instead of hounding people for job leads or endorsements, however, you should be interacting in a way that demonstrates your writing or critical-thinking skills. If you find an article that would be of interest to someone in your industry, post a link to the article and open up a discussion with your contacts. Sharing links to your professional blog helps demonstrate your communication skills and ability to stick with long-term projects, especially if you have maintained your blog for several years.

Using relevant keywords is also important when using social networks to build your career. Keywords are the phrases recruiters and hiring managers use when they want to identify people with a particular set of skills. If your profile doesn't have the right keywords in it, using social networks won't benefit your career much. Look at the job advertisements in your local newspaper to see what keywords you might use in your social media profiles. An accountant might use keywords such as "accounts payable," "bookkeeping," "auditing" and "financial compliance."

When you interact with other people in your social networks, make good manners a priority. You wouldn't wait two or three weeks to return a phone call from a professional contact, so don't let messages pile up in your LinkedIn or Facebook inbox. If you send an invitation to connect with a former colleague, personalize the invitation instead of sending a generic form letter. Post articles that are of value to the people in your network.

Using LinkedIn and Facebook can help you build a strong career, but only if you follow the rules of networking etiquette. If you decide to use social networks as a career tool, make sure you set up detailed profiles with relevant keywords and high-quality photos that make you look like the professional you are.

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