Hey Everyone!
This week I focused on Chapter 4 of David Meerman Scott’s, The
New Rules of Marketing and PR. This
chapter is titled, Social Media and Your Targeted Audience. There were so many good topics in this
chapter so it is hard to pick one that really stands out. I think it is important to review Scott’s
definitions of social media and networking and then focus on the points he made
about how to use social media for job searching.
Scott starts out by briefly mentions all types of social
media sites, all of which we are most likely familiar with at this point (2013). He makes it a point to mention; social
networking, blogs, photo sharing, chat rooms, wikis, mobile applications, etc.
(Scott, 2013). He defines social media
as a way for people to share anything from their ideas to their relationships
(Scott, 2013). Social media allows
people to interact on a different medium than was ever done in the past. A point that I found particularly interesting
is that Scott differentiates social media and social networking. In my experience the two phrases have been
used interchangeably. According to Scott
social media is defined as, “…how we refer to the various media that people use
to communicate online in a social way (2013).”
This is referring to all of the sites I previously mentioned. Social networking is, “…to refer to how
people interact on sites (Scott, 2013).”
He believes networking occurs when people develop their own pages and
begin to share information with each other (Scott, 2013). We see how quickly these pages can grow and
create interaction with Scott’s example of the Singapore tattoo show. Due to the Facebook page that was created for
this tattoo show, it had three times the amount of people come than were
expected (Scott, 2013). People with
similar interests become instant friends on sites like Facebook and allow
people around the world to connect.
Scott then goes on to teach us how to use social media for
job searching. Social media allows for
us as job seekers to interact with potential employers, something that has not
been done in past years (Scott, 2013). LinkedIn
is one of the business oriented sites that allows people to directly connect
with other business professionals. Scott
gives advice that I find particularly important, “Create information that
people want. Create an online presence
that people are eager to consume (2013).”
He is not asking you to be something you are not but more so to put your
best foot forward. Scott mentions two
different people that used social networking professionally and succeeded. One of his mentions even found a job through
Twitter that had not officially been posted yet (2013). This is the power of social networking. You can put yourself out there and people
will come to you.
As a side note, I found this book, at right, Job
Searching with Social Media for Dummies, that I thought tied into Scott’s
chapter this week. I did not know this
book was out there and it is amazing to see that there is a whole book
dedicated to helping people use social media to find a job. I thought that this was an interesting fun
fact to add to this weeks discussion.
Any other thoughts on this chapter?!
-Michele
Works Cited:
Scott, D.(2013). The
New Rules of Marketing and PR. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, John & Sons,
Incorporated