Marcus Hamaker is The Sleepy Geek

A study recently released by CareerBuilder.com has plainly laid it out for job seekers – as much as 45% of hiring companies will seek out information on candidates from social networking sites.

This should be a warning for all of us. It’s hard to remove pictures and text from the web once it is there. As a member of the professional community you need to be careful what you put up online. There are a lot of things that we would share with our friends but wouldn’t share with an employer and it should be thought of that way when online. Services such as Flicker that host your pictures can be quickly checked by anyone online.

“Social networking is a great way to make connections with potential job opportunities and promote your personal brand across the Internet,” said Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder. “Make sure you are using this resource to your advantage by conveying a professional image and underscoring your qualifications.”

Haefner recommends the following DOs and DON’Ts to keep a positive image online:

• DO clean up digital dirt BEFORE you begin your job search. Remove any photos, content and links that can work against you in an employer’s eyes.
• DO consider creating your own professional group on sites like Facebook or BrightFuse.com to establish relationships with thought leaders, recruiters and potential referrals.
• DO keep gripes offline. Keep the content focused on the positive, whether that relates to professional or personal information. Makes sure to highlight specific accomplishments inside and outside of work.
• DON’T forget others can see your friends, so be selective about who you accept as friends. Monitor comments made by others. Consider using the “block comments” feature or setting your profile to “private” so only designated friends can view it.
• DON’T mention your job search if you’re still employed.

Very good suggestions i nmy books but I think there are a few more that I would take into consideration:

• Check all the privacy settings for social sites such as Facebook, make sure that only you and your immediate friends can see your profile
• Review your friends pictures to make sure that they have not posted something of you that you find distasteful
• Most of all – if you think that it could be interpreted negatively then don’t post it online at all

Do your best to remain true to yourself but keep it clean and inoffensive, then…

Geek on!

I am finding it increasingly difficult to find direction in the 2.0 or Social Media world. I have been working on a blog for quite some time and still have a quite low readership, or a least much lower than I would like. My question remains “Where do I spend my time and how much time is needed to make an impact?”. There are parts of me that think it will be impossible to make inroads in the social media world without being laid off from my 9-5 job.

I do work hard at my day job but I have never let it spill over into my personal life unless there is some sort of special project that needs tending to. I have a wonderful family and after doing all the normal family things after getting home from work it is already 9:00pm. If I don’t want to get sick due to a lack of sleep, the most I can spend is a couple of hours a night in my home office writing articles or working on my site’s back end.

It simply doesn’t feel like enough! My main goal is to have enough readers and viewers to sustain quality content through their interaction. I would simply like to be available for people who need guidance or support with their technology needs. The problem is when you have a small amount of time available to invest in your own branding, building up an audience is very difficult.

So the original question remains. How much time is enough and where is that time best spent? Up until now I thought it best to concentrate on my blog posts or updating my website. I am not sure that is the best way to spend time anymore. There are hoards of people that are moving away from their personal blogs and spending time on Twitter or Friendfeed, most notably Robert Scoble. This definitely will get you noticed but it seems that you need to spend 10 hours a day for real recognition. If your main career is not fed through social media then you won’t have 10 hours a day, you might not even have 2.

As I write this article I continue to come up with new strategies for myself and then find ways to break them. The video/stream portion of my website is really what interests me because it is what gives me the instant feedback that I like. I wonder if you can really support a video stream and gain viewers simply by being active on twitter. For some reason I don’t think so.

I am starting to believe that there is no way to obtain my true goals by only spending 10-12 hours a week on my blog/stream.

I would really like to spark a discussion with this article, please comment away!

I have been waiting for Chris to release his new social media theme called WicketPixie for a couple of weeks and it looks like he might have to put that off for a bit while he helps out his folks. So try and get something working that looks a little nicer than the plain one I had installed, I went searching :)

I came across a theme called CorporateID and the basic colours made me look twice. So I have taken that and made a few minor changes to make it something more me. I have put back the TheSleepyGeek picture at the top, a shot from the balcony at the cottage. Then I removed some images that are the background of the sidebar titles. They were too flashy for me.

So there you have it. Until Chris has the time to work on the final versions of his theme, I think we are sticking with this.

Comments?

Now that I have the comments working (the problem was caused by the theme I was using) I now have installed a really cool little plugin. It allows you to login to the site with an OpenID to post a comment. Many of us have an OpenID thought a service that we already are a member of. Most notably are Yahoo, AOL and Flicker however there are many more on the list.

I encourage you to register locally on the site if you wish. That feature is working and even preferred so that I have a more complete profile of you. That’s nice when looking at comment posts.

If you decide to use the OpenID approach, please have a look at your profile before posting. Some OpenId providers such as Yahoo will give you a name about 3 characters long full of gibberish. It doesn’t look nice and I can’t credit you with comments if I need to.

Now the next step in this process is to get the theme fixed. I am really torn because I love the theme I was using but don’t really want to invest much time in repairing it. I plan to use Chris’ social media theme that he is working on for his site. At this time he has said that he plans to make it free for everyone’s use.

I was poking around and noticed on twitter a mention from ponzarelli about a new IM client called Digsby. I am always looking for something since the promises of Trillian kept falling short. I don’t even know if they have released Trillian Astra which would be the predecessor to v2.x.

So I downloaded Digsby, fairly small download and very easy installation. The setup wizard is very easy. If first will prompt you to choose a username for their service and then ask for a couple of personal details. Once done, then it’s as simple as adding all your IM accounts to the interface. This process is also very easy through their main account window.

What is amazing about this IM client is that it is so much more than simple IM. It is a client for e-mail, twitter, facebook, myspace and a number of other things. It allows you to link to more than just your IM accounts in a sort of ‘social utility’. I think I need to coin the phrase *wink – wink*. We have so many social links and they are in varying forms that a utility like this is going to be critical.

I really like the user interface once you are in the program. It is clean and user friendly. The lists can be organized as most other IM programs allow and you are able to use most of their features.

I suggest that you head over to the website and take a look at their product. Unfortunately there is only a Windows version, but they have plans to release for Mac and Linux. They seem to have started something that I think will take off with other programs. We will see integration a lot more in the future. People are starting to need to bundle all their external connections together because they are becoming too many and thus segmented.

I am always looking for good plug-ins for WordPress. I have been using WP for a long time to blog and have tried to keep it simple because I am of the opinion that “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. I have been talking with some colleagues and fellow bloggers and one of the things that people are looking for is a way to share the content of a site with friends.

I have been looking for something simple yet still very powerful to perform updates to social networks and also allow article emailing. I think I have found it in ShareThis.

An excerpt from their site:
ShareThis makes a WordPress plugin that provides an unobtrusive way for your visitors to post your site content to various social bookmarking sites, or send a link via e-mail & other communication channels (like Facebook and MySpace) to a friend.

You will notice on my website a new link at the bottom of my posts that has a rotating icon and link called “ShareThis”. That will link my article to their service and then allow you to share it by means of a number of avenues.

If you have a personal blog and are able to install your own plug-ins, I would suggest giving this one a try.