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The internet has brought some wonderful new tools over the last few years, that can help you to rapidly accelerate your job search through the use of social networking programs such as Spoke, LinkedIn, and others. These programs allow you to establish linkages between yourself and different people who you are associated with in business and in personal pursuits, and to also build your network forward and backward from a particular point in time, in terms of relationships that you?ve had over the span of your career history. When properly used, programs like LinkedIn can have a powerful network effect and allow you to rapidly harness the power of your network connections to enhance your career search. If you?re a sales and marketing professional at the executive or the mid-level and have lots of contacts, consider using one of these programs as one of the foundation strategies for your job search. It?s very easy to sign up for them and you?ll be amazed by the number of people in your network who already subscribe. We like LinkedIn in particular.

By using these programs build a web of connections, you can gain introductions to many people who you would not otherwise be able to gain access to. This is a very powerful tool when it comes to targeting companies and individuals that you?ll want to be approaching as a part of your overall job search.

If you are an employer and in the process of recruiting sales and marketing talent, using these programs to advertise your job postings is a wonderful way to attract top talent. We’ve successfully posted several jobs on LinkedIn and had great results, in terms of responses from people in our networks who are interested in the jobs we?re advertising for.

Other Programs such as Jigsaw also provide an outstanding platform for social networking and for developing contacts that can help you in your job search. We are a regular participant in Jigsaw and have found that a multiplier effect on our marketing efforts has been created as a result of having used this program.

So if you?re considering looking for a new career position or making a career move, make sure that you?re signing up for a social networking program. Talk to your friends to find out which ones they?re using. It will help you to greatly leverage your contacts for an enhanced career search.

About Cube Management
Cube Management provides sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results. Download the Cube Management Recruiting Guide and the Cube Management Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guide.

Do you use the internet on a regular basis? If you do, there is a good chance that you have heard of websites like MySpace, FriendFinder, Classmates, or Yahoo! 360. What do all of these websites have in common? They are known as social networking websites. Social networking websites, over the past few years, have rapidly increased in popularity, so much that many are wondering why.

If you have used a social networking website before, it is likely that you are already fully aware of their popularity and the reason for popularity. There is just something about these websites that draw in millions of internet users. With a wide variety of different social networking websites available, there are a wide variety of different reasons for their popularity. One those reasons being the ease of use.

Social networking websites are, for the most part, easy to use. Most sites are easy to navigate. In fact, many require little knowledge of the internet. In addition to being easy to navigate, social networking websites also make it easier to meet new people online. There are many internet users who would love to make new friends online; however, that can sometimes be difficult do. Without social networking websites, you would have to connect with internet users, often in chat rooms, and learn about their interests before deciding if you would like to consider them your ?buddy.? Social networking sites allow you to learn information about another internet user before ever having to make contact with them.

Another one of the many reasons why social networking sites are popular is because many are free to use. In fact, the majority of social networking sites, such as MySpace and Yahoo! 360, are free to use. Despite being free to use, many websites require that you register with them. This registration will not only allow you to create your own profile or online webpage, but it will also allow you to contact other networking members.

Although most social networking websites are free to use, there are some that are not. Classmates is one of those websites. Many of these websites give you a free trial period or a free membership. That membership can be used to help you determine whether or not the website is worth paying for. What is nice about paid online social networking websites is that many can be considered exclusive. Since most internet users would not want to pay for something that they can get for free, most paid social networking sites are limited on the number of members they have. This may work out to your advantage because it tends to eliminate those who create fake accounts or aim to cause controversy online.

Social networking websites are also popular because they come in a wide variety of different formats. Websites like Yahoo! 360 and MySpace focus on a wide variety of different topics. This means that just about anyone can join. However, there are other social networking sites out there that have a particular focus. These focuses may be on a particular religion, political following, or hobby. Most specialty social networking sites restrict the individuals that can participate in their network; thus, making your experience more enjoyable.

Finally, social networking websites focus on meeting new people, especially online, but over recent months, many have started including additional features only available to their online members. Many social networking members can receive their own free webpage, get free access to popular music videos, a free blog, and much more. Although social networking websites are popular enough to bring in members on their own, these additional features are, in a way, providing internet users with an incentive to join.

Mentioned above were a few of the most popular social networks that could be found online. Those networks included MySpace, Yahoo! 360, and Classmates. If you are looking for additional social networking websites, you should easily be able to find some by performing a standard internet search.

A great thing about the likes of my spave and Nutubes is you can link them back to your websites ,so use them as another way of driving traffic.

Graeme Jarry

www.nichementor.com/v5.html

www.nichementor.com/createyourownebook

www.graemejarry.com

Recently, a lot of people have been feeling the pain that is social networking. By pain, I am referring to losing many freedoms that come with having a social networking profile.

Let’s take for instance the average social networking website, you signup, make a profile, add some friends (people you may or may not even know), and then you are connected to this huge community (schools, cities, sometimes the entire network).

This information is all logged in most social networking websites, thanks to web crawlers, advertisers, and many other spammers. Your own social being is threatened, and your privacy is threatened as well. Can you escape the grasp of a social network after you leave it? In most cases, it is more difficult than you think.

Not to mention the flaws of identity theft in social networking, picture stealing, and all kinds of other serious flaws with social networking.

I too have had a less than pleasant experience involving social networking involving people stalking me, and the deletion of an account that never actually really got deleted, also, the constant influx of seriously disturbing messages and random rants of people you care less about.

I have been involved with several social networking sites personally, as a user, and I have to admit that most of them are less than par.

What should social networking be? I have worked to try and figure out a system that would be an optimum system of social networking, and it does fall quite a bit away from the current spectrum of social networking.

Social Networks: In the past they have always been developer created. You were either forced into a group, that may not fit your best interests or you were placed in a network that wasn’t verifiably something that you wanted to be part of.

I mean do you really care that you can chat with a million people that you will never be involved in? I didn’t think so.

What they should have been? A complete user defined network, where the person creates/joins a network of their friends/acquaintances, and your friends will invite their friends, and it would grow from there, so you would mainly be talking with/communicating with ‘trusted’ individuals that are friends of friends, or people with some relation to you through friends.

Meeting random people off the internet is not what many people are about, and if people are looking to do that, then there are thousands of other sites were you can do exactly that.

The following is a great example of what I am talking about: http://epicka.com/how.html

Preferences: Most current dating/networking sites leave a lot of security unaccounted for. They let your profile visible to be logged by bots (record everything about you for search/advertising purposes) logged by advertisers, logged by spammers, and in many cases: direct spam directly through your profile. This isn’t good. Having to worry about possibly getting spammed and your privacy threatened. This wasn’t what I signed up for when I signed up for social networking.

This is your life we are talking about and the security of your profile and everything to do with the profile should be completely in regards to you. You shouldn’t be told what you can/can’t share, what you can/can’t add, and it should be as completely open or closed as you want it to be.

It is your social network, so you should be able to make it your network.

Features: Right now there are quite a few strict things that you can do on a social networking, and it is pretty much limited to a few things. You can do the following on almost every social network:

* mail people

* post comments

* post pictures

* chat in forums

* chat

That’s basically the most that I have found of use on social networking, all other features: blogging, playing games, posting bulletins, posting in classifieds.

I have found much better places that I can do all of these things, but the thing is when I social network, I can’t really ’share’ what I am looking to share with my friends because too many random people will have access to the things that I want to keep private from others.

After researching and doing a lot of digging, I have been developing a site that implements all these features that I have found that are really significantly needed in a social networking site. I am working to develop not only these things, but a ton of other things that you can do with your social network, which includes just a hint of what I am thinking of developing:

* File sharing with friends.

* Your music sharing with friends. Your music. Your movies. (Think video sharing on a closed network for just you and your friends, and also having your bands music posted for your friends)

* Info Exchange, working on projects for high school, college, university, work, life, and want your friends input on what you should do, they can help you and you can help them through the network to conspire and get amazing grades.

* Global and your network news aggregation, got some amazing news that you want to tell just your friends, or the entire world? You can post it.

* User defined search engine, users submit the sites, vote on the sites, and the sites are adjusted for your preferences.

* Personal preferences that let you keep your words private, just for your network, or the entire world? You can pick them.

This is only a short list of some of the projects that we are, and will be working on. There will be lots of new projects that we will be adding in the coming months.

Please visit us at http://www.epicka.com and signup for a free account.

http://www.epicka.com

The top online article submission sites on the Internet have hundreds of thousands of articles online and they range in a variety of topics across the spectrum of human interests and endeavors.

One of the most popular topics and subjects for online writers and readers is the Internet, which makes sense because that is the medium in which these online amateur authors and professional writers post their articles. Sure, some of the articles make their way into print mediums and trade journals and that goes without saying, yet most are indeed used in Ezines and as Internet Content.

The articles written about the Internet span a broad spectrum of topics. There are articles about business on the Internet such as; Web Hosting, Design, Development, E-Commerce, Online Auctions, SEO Writing, Domain Names, Selling E-Books and Internet Marketing.

There are articles on how to get the customers there and make money while they are and thus topics on; Affiliate Revenue, Site Promotion, RSS, Traffic Building and PPC Advertising.

Then security is an issue so there are Internet Security Topics and there are bandwidth issues and thus categories of Audio and Video Streaming and even Podcasting. Internet viewers may not be satisfied with this alone and so there are articles on Bloggin and Internet Forums.

Email marketing is also a way to make money on the Internet and yet it has been abused by some so there are articles on; Email Marketing, Spam Blocking, Spyware, Autoresponders, Ezine Publishing and proper etiquette in email list building.

Yet in all of this not one; including the number one online article submission site with over 28,000 authors and almost 300,000 articles has a special category of the hottest new trend on the Internet; Internet Social Networks. So if someone was truly progressive and on the ball out there then their website would include a sub-category of Online or Internet Social Networks. Consider all this in 2006.

‘Lance Winslow’ - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington

Social networks are getting a lot of attention these days including Wikipedia, del.icio.us and MySpace. Along with the buzz, these sites are also generating a lot of traffic! How can you integrate links for these types of social network sites into your search engine marketing program? While there are an increasing number of social networks, this article will stick to the above as they are kings of their domains so to speak.

I recently had the opportunity to attend Search Engine Strategies in New York City this past February, 2006. While attending a session in regards to community marketing tactics using both Wikipedia and tagging, the panel asked the audience, “Who here knows what Wikipedia and tagging are?” less than half the room raised their hands.

Let me give you an overview of these concepts.

Wikipedia is a free community content driven encyclopedia. I have included an excerpt about Wikipedia from their about section:

“Begun in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet. The content of Wikipedia is free, written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This website is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia, simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor exceptions such as protected articles).”

Your benefits of using Wikipedia as an online marketing strategy are various. To begin with, your submitted content about your product or company may be very short and simple to begin with. As your content ages and more members view and contribute to your content with edit revisions, your content submission will grow and grow. For example, your submission may start out as a forty word brief that may turn into a multi-page article. Additionally, Wikipedia has a good Google Page Rank of 9 which will help boost your website’s PR with a quality backlink from your submitted content. Finally, using keywords that relate to your site in your contribution will assist you in controlling more space within the search engine results’ pages for your particular brand, product or name. For example, doing a Google Search for the term “Microsoft” returns a Wikipedia content entry about Microsoft in the tenth position of the Google SERP for “Microsoft”.

You should only submit content about a famous person, a patented product your company invented, a trademarked brand, famous places, etc. When you write your content you will want to write from an extremely neutral viewpoint. Don’t write all sorts of features and benefits; write more factual based information related to your subject. Your focus needs to be the community and not your subject. Tread lightly, the community is helpful to assist you in producing additional content, but be careful of keyword spamming and link spamming.

Although there are many benefits to using Wikipedia for SEM, there are also just as many caveats to using it. Submitting content to Wikipedia is a double-edged sword. You will only want to contribute to Wikipedia if your product or service is of relevance to the community. Using spammy techniques in your content or submitting an entry that has no real value such as “another affiliate website” could have the opposite of desired effect by producing negative feedback about your brand or product from the community.

Tagging on the other hand doesn’t have quite the negative drawbacks as posting to Wikipedia.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site where members contribute links based on tags that anyone can search. I have included their about page found at del.icio.us/about below:

“What is del.icio.us?

del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else’s. Use del.icio.us to:

• Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, restaurant reviews, and more on del.icio.us and access them from any computer on the web.

• Share favorites with friends, family, and colleagues.

• Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favorite - they’ve already done the work of finding it. Explore and enjoy.”

There are a few simple techniques for commercial tagging through community type sites such as del.icio.us: create bookmark worthy content or link bait, get your tags in front of the right people or choose the right category, give your created tags only one self generated bump in del.icio.us, rinse and repeat about once a month. Below is an excerpt from del.icio.us to help you answer what various parts of tags are:

Posts

When a user saves an item on del.icio.us, it is posted to the front page as well as the tag page for each chosen tag. A sample is below explaining the various information pieces:

Here is a del.icio.us example listing under the tag “web 2.0”
O’Reilly — What Is Web 2.0 save this
by Scottcard to web2.0 oreilly article reference … saved by 2938 other people.

You will first notice the title with the link to the site, next is an option to save the link to your tags. Secondly, you see a Username Scottcard. Here you can click the username to see Scottcard’s tags. Next you can click on the next links to see other related-sites within those tags. Lastly, you will see a highlighted link where you can view the members who have saved this site.

The good and the bad of tagging is that you will receive good quality backlinks to your site and increase visibility. The bad is that the majority of the time your tags will be removed from community members because the members are technically savvy and intolerant of any type of commercial push. Choose your keywords wisely and make sure your tag is in the right place and contributes to the community. Other tagging sites to consider are: Technorati and Digg. There are many others, but these are the ones that matter.

I see tagging or social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us gaining in popularity within the next three years as blogs did two years ago. Yahoo has already taken notice by purchasing del.icio.us and flickr. Digg and Furl are also making headway. Other sources to consider are the social network sites for developing a web2.0 SEM strategy.

MySpace is the current king of social networks, as it is literally a social-space network with 2.5 times more daily users than Google (psst, this is a huge untapped market). The domain dates back to 1999 where it was originally an online hard-drive of sorts. The current rendition took hold in 2003 making MySpace barely three years old. The main demographic is made up of teens to 20-somethings. The music industry is currently using MySpace as a marketing tool, not the labels themselves, but the bands. For example, Pearl Jam is announcing their upcoming release for May with sample songs and concert date announcements. One of their sample songs from their upcoming albums is one of the most played songs across the entire MySpace network. Independent film makers have also taken notice. In February 2006, amateur filmmaker David Lehre released a short film called MySpace: The Movie. This short film has quickly become a hit, registering over six million views following its release.

Benefiting from MySpace traffic is pretty straight forward. You will want to create a user profile and post links to your company or websites such as blogs, feeds, etc. Profile note, you can post html code in any field regarding your profile. Next, create your social pipeline of users and keep the demographic inline with any product or link you wish to shamelessly promote in the future. You don’t want to get spammy here either. The downside would be getting your user profile terminated from MySpace or members posting negative comments within your profile. Again, tread lightly by thinking neutral and keep the benefit of the community in mind.

The opportunity costs associated with community based SEM are very high. However, tagging in particular may be time prohibitive for most organizations as it requires a lot of trial and error. Tagging can seem like a waste of time as most tagging submissions will be removed by community members who find your submission “spammy”. Time spent on tagging isn’t a problem for most sole proprietors, but can be costly to your employer who is left with little equitable return to show for your time spent.

Utilizing Web2.0 sites such as Wikipedia, del.icio.us and MySpace, will prove effective for your business if done properly. Remember to tread lightly, don’t use “spammy” techniques and stay neutral keeping the benefit of the community at heart in your content development. Doing so will help your business to avoid a negative backlash toward your brand from the community you are developing content for.

Bill Younger writes for Elixir Systems, a full service search engine marketing company specializing in organic search engine optimization services, online public relations management and paid search or PPC management. For more information visit http://www.elixirsystems.com