Be Nice

Santa is not the only one looking to mark you naughty or nice, and in business it never hurts to be nice. It can be easy to put on the nice face for clients, customers, and bosses; since they are recognized income. It can be harder to be nice with coworkers, employees, secretaries, and sales representatives (especially when you have had a bad day).

Some say you need to be a shark to get ahead, but I find that being kind has better results. The advertising world in a mid-sized city is a small market, and eventually you will need something that another agency, former employee, or ect. If you played nice people often happily will find a way to fulfill your request, rather than avoid your calls or flatly refuse to help you at all.

Coworkers and employees need you to be nice because you spend at least 8 to 9 hours, 5 days a week with these people (that is more time than I spend with my spouse). The more positive work place that you create for yourself means happier employees and working environment. When you are happy with your work environment it increases your happiness and stress level in your home life as well. Coworker bonding is essential for keeping the workplace happy, productive, and enduring. a bad work environment typically leads to high turnover and hurt feelings (with someone you will most likely work with sometime down the road).

So say a kind word, ask about their life, and give praise when someone has done a good job!

Social Media Chaged the World

In the past year I have doubled my social media outlets, and I am not the only one. Most people check facebook, twitter, blogs, and ect. multiple times a day. Social networks are a great way to stay connected with friends and colleagues and provides quick and easy ways to share ideas and information.  Social media often leads to a disconnected analog world as well exposing more of ourselves than is wise. Social media is being utilized by business to attract new clients and developing personalities and a brand. With the right methods social media is a great place for customers and brands to get a long and stay informed, but social media is easily falls prey to over-zealous posting and bland personality that can alienate customers even further.

1) More Connected: Getting reconnected with old friends and distant family draws most people to social media. Different networks are adding diverse tools to help you share thoughts, images, videos, and more to keep your friends to connected to your daily life and big events.

2) More Disconnected: Sitting at a restaurants I was looking around and noticed that about 20% off the customers were bending over and entranced with their mobile phones. My own husband was taking a photo of his beer to post on facebook. Because we are busy letting a multitude of online friends know what were are up to, sometimes we are neglecting the friends and family who have come to see us face-to-face.

3) Easier to gather and share information: My new favorite social network is Pinterest. It is a great spot for me to shave images of interest, recipes, and design inspirations. (They need to work on an app for android since not everyone has an iphone!) Social networks have coded in ways for the community to share links, images, and videos so that we can organize our ideas and share them instantly. Which can be good and not so good.

4) More Exposure (Good): Social media sites such as LinkedIn can be a great way to get noticed whether you are a company or a potential employee looking for hire. The other sites are well used by business to build on their customers basis because their current customers have friends and they might become customers too.

5) Over Exposed (Bad): Social media has lead to a large epidemic of verbal and visual diarrhea. We are sharing more and faster than we ever could have in the past. I still have not discovered the point of Foursquare except to let people know you are not at home, and could rob you right now. Also letting out details of your life makes it easier for hackers to steal identities and personal information.

Social media can be a great tool, but you must use it wisely. Oh, and Happy New Year!

Social Networking

Maybe its because social media has been quickly changing over the last few years, but no one at my school told me how important social networking could be. It can be difficult to network in a distant city. I experienced that myself at the end of my college career. I knew I would be headed back to Wichita, but did no know anyone in my line of work except the design studio I had interned at the summer before. Perhaps if I had learned about tools like linked in and behance sooner I would have been able to utilize those sites to my advantage.

Social networking can be a great tool, but it cannot beat meeting people face to face. Using social media can help you get that foot in the door, as long as you are representing yourself in a positive manner. Potential employers are going to google you so you should make sure there us nothing that degrades your digital appearance. Also making sure you have a uniform look and style at all your online media will help to brand yourself. Using a blog can be a great way to show a lot of personality and knowledge in your line of work. It helps if all you'd social tools link back to one another to help create connections and can simplify the steps a potential employer has to take as well as help design their experience.

Self Promotion

The Wichita had an interesting article this morning, about branding yourself in order to help you land that desired job. http://www.kansas.com/2011/03/31/1786918/selling-yourself-tips-on-developing.html

Brands are not just for products and companies any more. They are about making the employers feel a certain way about you. You cannot make up a person’s mind for him or her, but you can help guide their attention in the right direction. This article can help you initiate a plan for your brand and some online marketing tips for yourself. With 8-10% of the public without a job, branding could be crucial get the leg-up and land that job. You can do most of what is necessary for free, which is great if you have been out of a job for awhile. Utilizing tools that you probably already use: facebook, blogs, twitter, linkedIn (similar to facebook but more professional).

If you are going to start using social media to market yourself, make sure you clean up your act. Get rid of questionable photos or posts that might make you unpalatable to a new employer. You should do that anyway, because whether or not you are prepared for it future employers are looking at social media to find out more about you.