Steve Jobs said: “Don’t Live Someone Else’s Life.
Find Your Own Dream.” Need some help?

2WayResume Iphone App

We want to help you get ahead of the crowd into a prospective employer’s searchable data base with powerful keywords that will help you stand out.

80% of companies prefer plain text resumes that can go directly into a searchable data base to cut down processing time by about 3 weeks.

2WayResume will get you a polished but plain text resume, coupled with its very attractive twin, a .PDF version, both with your accomplishment-driven resume, loaded with powerful keywords. The plain text resume can go instantly into your employer’s searchable data base , eliminating any further processing which adds weeks to the time it takes to get into the system.

Your cover letter will be distilled into a pithy sentence, embedded in your email subject line, removing the final barrier to getting into the system immediately.

In essence Mike is recommending to put your focus and your energies on your own website first, your social marketing second. As he puts it:

“Online marketing has two goals: engage and convert. The social side of the Internet encourages engagement, the search side focuses more on user intent and ultimately conversion of that intent into a sale.

The many elements of an online presence can build on each and can work together for a business. The process is best done in an environment with more control rather than less. Because of the changing nature of the Internet, a SMBs ( Small, Medium Business) marketing investment should always reinforce and strengthen the elements over which they have the most ownership.”

We couldn’t agree more. Tip of the hat and thanks to Mike for the thoughtful visual and insight.

Web Equity by Mike Blumenthal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.blumenthals.com.

Image via CrunchBase

I was just delving a little deeper into new and useful tools on the horizon for social media marketing when I stumbled upon Flowtown.  Luckily, I also stumbled upon an in depth review by a woman with impeccable credentials, including an MBA from Yale School of Management. Devon Smith, the author,  decided to dig deep to discover the value of Flowtown, which has also been discovered by such stalwarts as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Fast Company and Inc.

As Devon tells us in Flowtown: Worth it? “Flowtown helps you discover & manage the social side of your email list….The steps are pretty simple: import your email list (whether via csv, manually, gmail, campaign monitor, iContact, or Mail Chimp) and Flowtown will tell you which of (at least) 50 different social media profiles (although I only found Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, StumbledUpon, Amazon, Pandora) is linked to each user. Or rather, to those particular email addresses. It’ll look like this (with emails erased to protect the innocent in this case):

As you can see, social media icons pop up next to each person. ”

Devon goes on to explain further:

“Who are These People?

Here’s a sample of each profile that’s created for an email entry. Now imagine this handsome young gentleman was on my list of small time donors and I’m trying to find out if he’s capable of giving more. Flowtown has handily provided me the tools to infer (new job + an MBA + shares connections with me online = big score!). Especially for younger donors, who may not yet own property or be written about in the Times (can you tell I previously lived as a prospect research stalker?), this is awesome information to be able to track down.”

This is a very full, robust, but to me and other social marketers, I would say fascinating study and overview of the nuts and bolts of  a tool that can provide an social media entry point  or multiple entry points to enable you to build a relationship witn your potential clients or prospects.  Devon walks you through the steps of how you can take your email or Facebook list, put it through the funnel of Flowtown and come out with hundreds of new Facebook and Twitter prospects for very little money and even less elbow grease.

Recommend you give both the article and Flowtown a try.  I am.

9 Dynamic Digital Resumes that Stand Out From the Crowd

It’s all about standing out from the crowd when you’re trying to get someone’s attention and get them to focus on you and your abilities.  What better way, then to show off some of your skills or your ingenuity and drive by presenting a more polished and graphic presentation of who you are.  Sharlyn Lauby writing in Mashable.com shows us several eye-catching ways to do that:

1. Give the Reader Your History

Michael Anderson’s infographic resume turns his employment and academic history into a colorful visual journey.

And, jumping ahead:

3. Make It Personal

Traditional resumes can be “humanized” by a well-written cover letter. Graphical resumes can add a whole new dimension by visually introducing the person behind the experience.

Federico Moral went with an anthropological theme, placing his skills into the timeline of human evolution.

Francis Homo turns his own silhouette into a frame for his achievements.

Brandon Kleinman adds a really creative twist by making a short presentation out of his Facebook photos.

You get the idea.  Make it interesting, make it compelling, make it fun. Show employers you are not only smart but creative and a bit driven, willing to go the extra mile.  That should at least take you a long way down the road to your next great opportunity.

For the complete article go to 9 Dynamic Digital Resumes that Stand Out From the Crowd

Related articles

• Beautiful Visual Resumes (labnol.org)
• When a Contact Invites You to Send a Resume (money.usnews.com)
• A Facebook Style Resume [PIC] (penn-olson.com)

If the following infographic seems too feather light and bubble gum oriented for your taste as a serious career woman or tech star, send us your own to publisher@advancingwomen.com, and we’ll display the best of your own woman exec influencer flow charts.

Via: Wpromote

by Gretchen Glasscock

In many ways, today’s web is all about moving beyond our own websites, getting out of our own skins and connecting with others. At the same time, you are connecting on Facebook and tweeting out your 140 characters on Twitter, you also will be checking Twitter or  geolocation apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, and Loopt to see where your friends are and what they’re up to. You will be frequenting sites like Yelp to check the reviews that folks in your ‘hood are giving to local restaurant and services.  It will be a connected world and, to stay in the loop, you have to do your part.  You have to be churning out tweets like the rest of us.

By now, those who work on the web, or are dependent on the Web for their business, understand twittering is no idle pastime. For some of us, it is an essential business activity. And probably for most of us, it should be.

All of us who are web savvy know we should be twittering and building our social media profile, 24/7. We should be working our  Facebook connections, polishing our LinkedIn profile, or writing our blog and building our following on a continuous basis. Unfortunately, we can’t.  There are only 24 hours in a day and we can’t be working all of them.  Even if we could, we couldn’t use all those hours to enhance our social media standing.  Here’s the bare minimum of social media we should be constantly expanding and enhancing:

• Twitter – for real-time news, trend spotting, shout outs, communication, and learning via TweetDeck and search.twitter.com
• Facebook – for keeping up with old friends, meeting many new ones, knowing what’s going on and trending and learning more about your favorite brands ( who knew Coca Cola was so creative & how about that Starbucks?)
• LinkedIn – the number one resource for executives on a talent hunt, so a good place to network. Bait for the big fish. Your LinkedIn Profile should be as fresh and up to date as fresh squeezed orange juice. And packed with Vitamin C.
• WordPress – to deploy attractive websites loaded with plug ins and widgets to enable them to do heavy lifting on their own, with occasional but diligent monitoring and supervision

So , what to do?

Given the enormous commitment of time and energy it takes to maintain an interesting and robust website or blog , I’ll take all the sophisticated, tech-savvy help I can get. I’m a big believer in automating as many tasks as possible on a website. That’s what plugins and widgets are for: to free you up for the big thoughts, the hot trends, the strategic processes.  And for me, that’s where Twitterfeed comes in.

When you start with Twitter I think you have to learn the pace , the quick tempo, trending topics and how to retweet, ie. pass on someone else’s interesting tweet, perhaps adding your own thought to it. Long ago, I used to wonder what was up with Twitter. But, once I got into Twitter, I found it addictive for several reasons. #1: Thought leaders in the Internet space were constantly telling me what they were thinking and what was the newest and the coolest. And #2.  I didn’t need a ton of bricks to fall on my head to see what an incredibly powerful marketing tool Twitter could be.

Once I got started, I realized the need for constantly updated information.  I also realized one could automate this process, using my blog to feed my twitter account. You just go to Twitterfeed, set up an account, then paste your blog’s feed URL into the text box provided to set up a new feed.  You can also set up feeds for thought leaders in your field.

I keep a keen eye out for those “widgets” or “gadgets” as Google calls them, those tiny pieces of automated code that you can install on your page to work tirelessly behind the scenes. If you create and install a Twitter widget on your home page, you will constantly have a stream of fresh and updated content to draw users to your site.

But even if you tweet ceaselessly, which you can now do by following the steps above, it is still important to find time to post to your own website or blog and to develop the right mix between blogging and tweeting.

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t put out a blog ( or in my case, several blogs), manage several websites, keep up with the social media and work with clients if I didn’t have lots of help from fast, efficient online tools and services which speed up the process and make it more effective.  One of my favorite services is Zemanta which is co-pilot of my blog, offering relevant links, suggesting keywords, providing related articles, in case I want to poke around the blogosphere a bit, and, usually, providing a pretty good graphic I can append to give a little pop to the story.

Adam Singer of  TheFutureBuzz.com reminds us “ you’re essentially contributing to someone else’s network on Twitter” rather than building your own website or blog following.  And , on your blog, “Old articles are valuable and still read years later, given infinite life by the engines.  Old Tweets live in archive purgatory where a majority will never be seen again.”

So do both:  Twitter, Facebook, social media and your own Blog, which you are building for yourself and for the future.  Just find the right balance.  And all the tools you can find to help you along the way.

Related articles

• How to Use TwitterFeed: Consistent Twitter Presence (growmap.com)
• How to Make Money on Twitter (thesocialmediaguide.com.au)
• 20 Easy Ways to Promote Your Blog Across the Social Web (performancing.com)

Content Management Systems (CMS) are powerful tools which allow you to make frequent updates to your website.   CMS free you from dependence on a web master to make changes and save you money in the long run.

How do I know if I Need CMS?

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I want to add announcements or news of my business or other enterprise?
2. Is there any part of my site that should be updated on a regular basis?
3. Would I like a photo gallery on my website?
4. Would I like an events calendar on my website?
5. Would I like to change the look a little for various holidays or other occasions?

If the answer to any of those questions is “Yes” you should consider getting a content management system.  You still have the option to pay a web master to make those changes for you, but that will add up to a lot of money in the long run.

But I’m not “technical”

Some people are a little afraid of computer software.  If you have the computer skills to have found this blog, then you have enough computer savvy to use some CMS.  Or, if someone else helped you find this blog, you have someone who can help you learn a CMS.

Want some help?

If you want to visit by phone or email, just to get some feedback on what you might consider or general guidelines or what is the difference between Joomla and jellow… call us, or email.  We’ll be glad to give you some battle scarred advice from decades of experience. And we promise not to speak “computerese”.  Call (800) 816-1561.  Or….

Email Us awj2@advancingwomen.com

Or visit Do I Need a Content Management System?.

New Study Shows the Mobile Web Will Rule by 2015 [STATS].

“Devices such as the Kindle, the iPhone () and other smartphones, web-enabled tablets, GPS systems, video games and wireless home appliances” are driving exponential growth of the mobile web. At some level, we all already knew this, but Morgan Stanley has now documented the trends, forecasting that by 2015 the mobile web will outpace the desktop Internet.

“The mobile wealth creation/destruction cycle is in its earliest stages. The proliferation of better devices and the availability of better data coverage are two trends driving growth; having better services and smaller, cheaper devices has led to a huge explosion in mobile technology that far outpaces the growth of any other computing cycle.”

Another factor, I believe, is driving growth of the mobile web is the proliferation of apps.  You’ve heard it.  Whatever you want to do, the common refrain is “There’s an app for that.”

Apps make the mobile web a more personal and integrated experience where you, the user. are in control of much of it.  There’s a big difference between sitting in front of a screen and consuming media, and actually hurling yourself in the middle of the creation process which is what you’re doing when you tweet an event or take a photo and put it on Flickr. Even when you set up Mint or Bill Minder, or refer to First Aid or Kayak or Urban Spoon, you’re using immediate, personal and portable technology to put yourself in control.  And who doesn’t like to be in control?

For the full story and other fascinating graphics and stats, go to New Study Shows the Mobile Web Will Rule by 2015 [STATS].