Social Media Tips For Job Hunting Graduates

Membership in the major Social Networking sites continue to grow — Facebook (one billion active users worldwide), Twitter (over 500 million) LinkedIn (180 million). Looking at the range of some of its business uses – sales and marketing, customer service, thought leadership. one sees its enormous potentials.

Most recently, I have been reviewing the values of social media as a job searching tool for graduating college students. Although this list is incomplete, here are some ideas on the subject.

Thoughts On Amazon, Apple and E-Books

If you had been a e-book reader, didn’t it really rub you the wrong way when you saw the price of e-books rise to the same cost as hardcovers? It sure as hell grated me. Wasn’t it cheaper to produce a digital book than its paper counterpart? And wasn’t distribution, catalog availabililty and storage issues now less expensive?

Well apparently this happened because Apple got serious about digital book distribution and was giving the publishers a more comfortable payment model than the competition, Amazon. Learning about the Department of Justice lawsuit against Apple and the major publishers was a surprise to me and then again, it wasn’t.

A New Tablet In Town

I’ve been holding back on discussing tablets, if only because no effective competition to the iPad has appeared.  But this week something significant occurred —  we learned of the Kindle Fire, with a 7“ color  touch screen, web browser and cloud storage, which will give the consumer access to Amazon’s book, music, game, movie and tv content.  The iPad is no longer the only tablet in town.    

How Health Insurance Can Use Social Media

Everyday, more medical insurance companies are begrudgingly beginning to integrate social media as elements of their marketing strategies. This probably would not be happening but for the fact that for years, many of their members have been using online communities and blogs to discuss healthcare issues. Some suggestions for the uninitiated:

1. As smartphones continue to proliferate and people have the ability to carry more information in their pockets than ever before, health insurance companies have an opportunity to create two distinct mobile apps. One, to give customers easy access to claims, plan details, network providers, drug prices, etc. and the other to provide lifestyle information on diet, exercise and healthy living.

Social Media and the Supermarket

With their own established customer communities, who more likely than not shop at the same location on a regular basis, supermarkets are naturals for utilizing social media as a marketing and sales tool. Some thoughts…

Thoughts on Recent Publishing News

The New York Times announced their pricing model last week, to take place at month’s end. I have no issues with their minimum free content, 15.00 and 20.00 per four weeks (not monthly) subscriptions and am glad that they won’t be making an effort to prevent Twitter and Facebook from linking to their content.

Regarding the book publishing industry — Did we really expect that the major publishing houses would price their electronic books at a minimal discount from their paper counterparts? Other than major bestsellers, Kindle savings are minor. Let’s see if we have to pay sales taxes on digital downloads!

I’m as disappointed as I am glad that a federal judge denied Google’s plan to digitize every book ever published. There will be time to come up with a settlement. No one should be in a hurry to have Google become the world’s bookstore.. .

How Social Media Works For Human Resources

Despite our current unemployment malaise, job hiring and hunting remain inexact sciences. “Good people” (whatever that is supposed to mean) have always been difficult to find, no matter what size the talent pool. Savvy human resources departments have been steadily familiarizing themselves with the abilities of social media to assist in the process of finding and attracting new talent. It’s a natural fit – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, et.al, are all communication tools of transparency, interaction and engagement based upon a foundation of truth — virtues that any HR department should aspire to. Current uses of social media by HR include: