Are you on a bunch of social networking sites? If you are, then odds are you are getting bombarded with information. Eventually it all just becomes noise. How useless is that? I’ve gotten tips from people and have come across tactics that work. It’s simple and easy to implement! Keep a look out for tips and tricks coming regularly on Connecting Redefined!

Too Many Friends?

As an avid Facebook user, you may have friends totaling in the hundreds or more, fans of way too many pages, applications up the ying yang, causes, and the list goes on! Facebook can be a hugely powerful source of knowledge. People can lose sight of this when being flooded with Farmville updates.

What To Do

Let’s get back to basics. How can you filter out this noise? Here’s a few suggestions:

• On your Facebook home page, you can hide updates from friends.
• When you add new friends, you can choose to include them in your status updates.
• Tired of Farmville or Mafia Wars updates? Hide them from your status updates feed on the home page.
• Disable notifications from applications by blocking them.
• Don’t become a fan of too many pages. You won’t be able to keep up with the really important ones.

What is the Facebook generation (a.k.a. Generation F)? This is the new generation of people who live, learn and laugh using social networking sites. Facebook is one of the more well known social networking communities where people are connecting, sharing and exchanging knowledge all around the globe.

The Generation F Personality

What does Facebook (and social networking in general) have to do with learning? Plenty! Let’s start with some general personality traits of Generation F:

• Likes working independently (telecommuting huge draw for this talent)
• Works in spurts to accomplish tasks instead of dedicated 8 hour day (flexible work day a must)
• Drawn to and can learn new technology easily
• Wants freedom of choice (prioritizing their own days, working on projects that ignite their passion)
• Collaborative and self-directed (let the team assemble and run relatively autonomously, see what shakes out)

Preparing for Generation F

How can a learning professional prepare for Generation F? Professional development is a big part of keeping these talented resources engaged and happy. Training and development has its work cut out for them. Here are some suggestions on how to prepare for Generation F in the learning arena:

• Beef up your self-paced learning offerings (this generation will eat up online courses)
• Virtual training instead of classroom based courses (they will like the convenience of taking training virtually)
• Good variety of professional development (offer lots of topics in professional development, survey employees and give them what they want)
• Train management to engage Generation F (communicating with, motivating, and engaging this generation is different than others. Give management what they need to be successful.)
• Collaborative learning is huge (Generation F learns as much from others as from a course. Give them the opportunity to share knowledge with each other in an online setting.)

Meet the Needs of Generation F

It’s no surprise that many will ask “why must we do this?” Bottom line, Generation F will be in the talent pool in full force before we know it. It’s important to keep them satisfied, well-trained and have no thoughts of leaving the organization. Their knowledge and skills will go right out the door with them. Here’s a few facts to show what companies will be facing:

• The top 10 most in-demand jobs 2010 did not exist in 2004.
• Students in 2009 are preparing for jobs that don’t yet exist.
• According to the U.S. Department of Labor will have 10 to 14 jobs by the age of 38.
• 1 in 4 workers has been with their current employer for less than a year.
• 1 in 2 workers has been with their current employer for less than 5 years.
• 59% of the U.S. workforce is either ready to leave or “stuck” in a job.  Only 14% of employees are completely engaged.

What does all this mean? Companies will be fighting more fiercely than ever for skilled talent. If investing in Generation F’s professional development and future keeps them, it’s a win-win for all!

If you, as a small business owner or entrepreneur, question the value of using social networking to promote your business, Adore de Salon’s story is one to admire. I had the unique pleasure of meeting and interviewing Lisa Cordero and Michael Nunez. By the way, Lisa is fantastic! She has a client for life now.

At any rate, Adore de Salon caught my attention on Twitter. I was very impressed with their use of social networking for their business. After some investigation, I found their website and Facebook page. We started communicating back and forth and before I knew it, I was at the salon getting my hair done while interviewing Lisa and Michael. So on to the interview…

Q) Tell me a little about the salon. What made you decide to open your own business especially in such a rough economic environment?

A) I (Lisa) have always wanted to open my own salon. I love doing hair because it makes people happy. My goal is to get it right every time! This builds relationships, which are so important to me. Opening my own salon allows me the freedom to offer great services at a price that is fair. Regardless of the harsh economic times, I do not worry. Doing what I love and providing my clients with the ultimate customer service is what means the most.

Q) What made you use social networking to promote Adore de Salon?

A) As an Internet marketer (Michael) and truly understand the value of social networking. It is such an under utilized form of promotion that is utterly inexpensive to use. Instead of spending a large chunk of money on more traditional forms of marketing, like direct mail campaigns or magazine adds, online social networking provides an avenue to reach a vast audience while building relationships within the Central Florida community. I am surprised more businesses have not started using online social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Our website is even a Wordpress blog. I found a template that Lisa and I loved and the rest is history!

Q) How did you come up with the logo and branding?

A) There is a great site called 99 Designs. We simply signed up for $200 and got our logo. The whole premise of 99 Designs is to solicit input from thousands of designers, in the form of a contest, and people vote on the favorite design. It’s a great way to get your entire corporate branding very inexpensively.

Q) What are your plans in the future to use online social networking for the business?

A) The sky is the limit! To start, we are building Adore de Salon’s following on Twitter and Facebook. We encourage interaction from our online friends! LinkedIn might be our next target since we want to reach the professional women out there (talks of offering free WIFI ladies which is great for those of us who can’t stop). Lisa is very excited about the idea of getting a blog going with tips, photos and videos of hair how-tos. We, are also thinking about offering different types of classes, like proper blow drying techniques, taping them and putting it online for all to see.

My experience at Adore de Salon was a fantastic one. Lisa and Michael were so unbelievably cool, smart and easy to talk to, especially considering how long curly hair like mine can take to blow dry. Bottom line on this savvy business couple, they are unique! From the salon design to business philosophy to use of online social networking, I am completely satisfied and floored! Lisa has herself a client for life.

Thanks to Twitter, I have the wonderful opportunity to interact every day with one of the most progressive CEOs I have ever met, Tony Hsieh of Zappos. Tony (I think if I called him Mr. Hsieh, he would tell me that’s his father!) kindly agreed to let me interview him on the importance of social networking to Zappos’ corporate culture.

If you haven’t heard of Zappos, the company is an online retailer who staked it’s claim to fame by selling just about any type of shoe you can think of. Zappos is to shoes what Amazon is to books. As an HR and training professional, I truly appreciate their corporate culture. Zappos is all about loving what you do and not being afraid to show your enthusiasm.

It’s no surprise that a company this progressive uses social networking in its every day life. Employees are encouraged to engage over the Internet, with each other, customers and the general public. This is not your daddy’s corporate culture!

So on with the interview:

Q) How engraved is social networking technology in Zappos’ corporate culture?

A) We have a presence on Myspace, Facebook, YouYube, but we are most active on Twitter. We have over 400 employees on Twitter, so it’s definitely part of our corporate culture: http://twitter.zappos.com/employees

And we’ve created a page that aggregates all of our employees tweets here: http://twitter.zappos.com/employee_tweets

Q) What social networking tools or platforms do you use at Zappos?

A) In addition to the social networking sites mentioned above, we also are very active in our blogs: http://blogs.zappos.com

Q) What do you use social networking technology for at Zappos?

A) We use Twitter as a way to connect in a more personal way with both employees and customers.

Q) When did you realize that using social networking technology would benefit Zappos?

A) We’ve always been interested in connection in a more personal way with both employees in customers. That’s part of the reason why we have our 1-800 number on the top of every single page of our web site. Twitter was just another great way of connecting with people, and we introduced it to the company in Spring of 2008.

Q) How do you train people to use the social networking technology?

A) Everyone hired into our headquarters goes through 4 weeks of training when they first start, where we cover customer service and company culture. Part of the training includes introducing employees to Twitter.

Q) Do you use social networking technology to train your employees at all?

A) No.

Q) Do you monitor communications sent by Zappos employees on social networking sites?

A) We don’t have a formal monitoring system in place. We just tell employees to be real and use their best judgment.

As you can see, Zappos is quite extraordinary. But I do have one remaining question for Tony: Are you hiring? I work for shoes!

Facebook for business? Believe it or not, many people do use the popular social network for this purpose. With over 150 million active users, adding at least 6000,000 daily, Facebook is a prime place to reach a targeted market. The best part is most of it is free!

How do you take advantage of Facebook for your business marketing efforts? There are a few different ways do this successfully.

1. Create a profile. It all starts with a strong profile. Search the social networks for existing profiles to use as examples. It should reflect your purpose for being on Facebook.
2. Build your network. Search for existing friends, people from school, former colleagues and join groups and networks that interest you. The vaster your network, further your message will reach.
3. Create a Facebook Page for your business. This provides the ability to create a separate entity for the business that can be attached to your personal profile.
4. Create events, discussions, and use whatever other features that are purposeful on the Facebook page.
5. Do you have a blog? Link it directly to Facebook. This can be accomplished using Facebook Applications.
6. Create a group on Facebook. This is another way to gather a following.

Facebook has a fee based option that allows you to have paid prominent advertising on the social network. The great thing about this feature is how simple it is to use and you can target your audience very effectively. Once you build and establish your network, you might be surprised that people you know are advertising this way as well.

Not only is this good for businesses, but non-profits can benefit from using Facebook too. Considering there is no cost to joining Facebook and using its functionality, except for the advertising feature, this is a budget friendly way to market your organization.

With the economy in the state it’s in, we have more and more job seekers on the hunt for the next career opportunity. It’s officially become an employer’s market.

With competition being fierce for the available positions, job seekers need to be extra judicious on presenting the cleanest professional image possible. In turn, being in as many places as you can be at once is crucial to success. So how can this be accomplished? Social networking!

Social networking is becoming mainstream as a job seeking and recruiting tool. Information is easy to come by, which can work to your advantage or detriment. With a solid strategy and a few tweaks on existing web presence, wielding social networking can be one of the most powerful tools to lead to ultimate success.

So job seekers, here is a list of the top ten things you need to know about social networking:

1. Are you on any social networks? LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, just to name a few. If you aren’t, get a profile and start building your network.

2. You are what you write! If you’ve got some posts that do not hold you in the most favorable of light, get rid of them. If friends have shared funny pictures of that night out on the town, ask them to consider taking it down.

3. Guess what, your friends aren’t the only ones who can see your content on your profile! Many make the mistake of thinking that when they post content or pictures online, that only their friends in their network can see it. This may not be the case. Double check all of your privacy settings on your profile.

4. Have you Googled yourself lately? Do a quick search on your name (full, maiden, partial) to see what is out there.

5. Your online user names, are they professional? This can include email, profile IDs, or just about anything electronically related. Hot2trot probably is not a good idea! Keep it clean.

6. Do you have a blog? This is a great way to establish your professional credentials. Focus on your passion and post content that truly reflects your knowledge and experience.

7. Have you expanded your existing network? Reach out to new people. Ask your current connections to facilitate introductions. If someone posts a blog or comment you like, take a chance and reach out to them. You’d be surprised at the relationships you can establish.

8. Ask for endorsements. On several social networking platforms, you can ask for recommendations or have folks post favorable comments that can be attached to your profile. Ask your connections for viable endorsements that helps establish your professionalism.

9. Just because a company may not have a position posted on a job board, it doesn’t mean the door is completely closed. Use your network to do some recon. Find the person you need to speak to about the company and obtain info you can’t find on a website or annual report. Your resourcefulness can be a great asset on a first impression.

10. Always nurture your network, not just in tough times. Put the offer out there to help others. Post a discussion on some useful information, answer a question on your social network, or simply send a note to say hello. Networks take time to build and strengthen. Do your best to give this important resource the attention it deserves.

It’s no question we are in the midst of hard times. Let’s help each other out. Leave a comment with your tips on using social networking in the job hunt. You never know what may come of it!