Spotlight for Career Services Professionals

The “Career Counselor's Guides to Social Media in the Job Search” were originally written and have been recently updated by Kevin Grubb of Villanova University, Shannon Conklin of Temple University, and Megan Wolleben of Bucknell University. The updated guides are available at www.naceweb.org/knowledge/social-media/career-counselors-guide.aspx. Following is information from “The Career Counselor's Guide to Blogging.”

When done strategically, blogging can offer students a unique way to network and connect with others.
Most blogging platforms (Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr) have easy ways to interact that can prove useful in making connections and building one’s network. Blogs allow students the opportunity to follow professionals and professional blogs, and build connections by reblogging, liking, and commenting on others’ content.

To grow their blog presence, students should:

• Encourage interaction—Within posts, students should encourage interaction and get people talking on their blog. Students can ask readers to add their comments, feedback, or responses to various posts. It would be good to suggest that they respond to people’s contributions to help build a community.
• Comment—Students will want to make sure that they are writing about things that get people talking and that it is easy for others to comment. Students should also comment on others’ blog posts or articles when relevant to their interests or personal blog topics. Most of all, advise students to be positive online with their comments. There is often heavy criticism and sometimes negativity in blog comments, and it’s best not to go far down that path.
• Follow—Make sure students provide an easy way for people to follow their blog, even if it’s just links to the RSS feed. And most importantly, remind them to add in other social media so that readers could follow them on other social media, too.
• Get social—Connecting posts with other social media will amplify the reach of each post and draw in new followers, making for potential new connections. Remind students to test everything first and make sure they know how the automatic updates and tweets will look so they are happy with the way things are being posted.
• Link to other, credible sources—Encourage students to link to other, credible sources and blogs when they write posts. The authors of those posts will notice this link, and may be more inclined to comment or connect with the student.