I’ve made the acquaintance  of Rachel Levy through Twitter, we’ve been talking back and forth on twitter, and bouncing ideas off each other. I have the utmost respect for her and her ideas regarding social media and I’ve gained valuable insight in reading her material.  I was able to help her the other day with a formatting problem she had with a post as well, the text was not going where she was expecting it to, so I explained the <BR> </BR> to her would force a line feed where she needed it to get the text where she wanted.

We are both currently looking for work. She made a new post to her blog regarding how to syndicate your blog/website that I found interesting, and wanted to add my own ideas here as well.

Her post is located here: How do you Syndicate a blog or website?

The first thing she mentions is posting it on Twitter 3 times in a 24 hour period at different times of the day.  Her blog also has a list of applications for twitter. I’ve used some of them on the list, it is extensive, and something I’d recommend taking a look at to help make your Twitter experience a little easier.

One of the applications is called TweetLater, which I have utilized to spread out messages during the day on Twitter, even when I’m not at the computer. With as busy as I have been lately, it has been something I’ve used a bit more often.  I compose messages I want to send, even referencing older blog posts I’ve written to get people to read content that may be helpful or related to my most recent post, and also a couple just saying “Check out my new blog post @ http://martinpiraino.com/” without making reference to the specific permalink to the new post, and I’ve noticed this gets people to read more of the site than just the new post.

Along with this, I also send direct messages to new followers I get on Twitter, thanking them for following me, and just making a simple statement as above, and the response to that has been positive as well.

Her second point is to post on Ping-o-matic, I actually utilize this through Google’s feedburner,  and go into further detail about that later in this post.

I have also used Digg on my own post before, I don’t think it it something you should do too often as she also states in her blog post.

There are plug-ins for WordPress where you can add links for readers to click on to help them syndicate your posts for you, if you look at the bottom of my posts, there is a section that says “Share and Enjoy” where you can click on those links and share it on the sites I’ve selected to share it on.

She also says that you should update status on your social networking sites, and I do this regularly, with LinkedIn, even adding a short comment about what I may be doing for that day (networking, interviews, meetings, etc.)

On Facebook I also added my own blog to my profile there, you can see it following this link: http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/martin_pirainos_blog/ I then invite users in my network on Facebook to come to my blog, I have 6 followers there (including myself).  For now have to manually update and add a notice that I posted something, but if I get enough followers there, it will be following my blog feed automatically, I only need a few more users to follow it to do that.

One thing that I did add was a RSS feed from Twitter on Facebook, so when I do send a message on Twitter, it actually gets posted to my Facebook, and Friendfeed sites as well, basically making it easy for me to post in one place and it to be syndicated to other social networking sites that other contacts read.

It helps if you can use an RSS feed from one site to feed into another, or use applications on those sites that offer syndication, two sites I don’t utilize often but do pull my Twitter feed to are Plaxo, and Friendfeed. On LinkedIn they have a WordPress application and Bloglink appliction, so my network can see when I’ve either sent a twitter message or written a new blog post, even if I forget to update my status there.

Some people I know including Rachel and myself have also been in the news media in some form (News Print/TV) as some news media outlets turn to job searchers/bloggers to showcase their stories in regards to the current state of the economy.

I was actually contacted by the reporter for ABC15 a week after I wrote an email to him asking if I could link to a story he had on the job fair I attended. I never imagined that one email would get me the exposure I’d gotten, but I’m glad it happened.

I have links to the ABC15 story on my sidebar on my blog so that users don’t have to search for the blog post I wrote about it, and even now three weeks later I continue to get hits off that story directly, but for people reading my blog for the first time, I also direct traffic to the video interview and story on the ABC15 site, my being on a taped/televised interview, it gives people an idea of who I am and what I am passionate about with my blog as well.

When Rachel and I were speaking on Twitter on Monday March 9th, she asked for other ideas for syndication, Along with some of the ones I’d mentioned previously here, I thought of one that she hadn’t mentioned and that was to create a sitemap if she hadn’t already, I utilize the tools on my web hosting account to do just that, created in XML markup, and update it at least once a week, letting it find new URLs by my server logs or by what I post, update it, and push it out to Google.

The following is from a Google press release “Major Search Engines Unite to Support a Common Mechanism for Website Submission”

How Sitemaps Work
A Sitemap is an XML file that can be made available on a website and acts as a marker for search engines to crawl certain pages. It is an easy way for webmasters to make their sites more search engine friendly. It does this by conveniently allowing webmasters to list all of their URLs along with optional metadata, such as the last time the page changed, to improve how search engines crawl and index their websites.

There are also other things I’ve noticed in how traffic has come to my site through searches, people searching for particular tags or people I’ve mentioned in my blog posts. I’ve made it a habit to tag the names of people I talk about in my posts, and that too has brought some traffic to my site as well.  One of my last posts was indexed rather quickly on Google when I mentioned “Sean Connery” at “Austin’s Who’s Who in Arizona”, which pushed it to the top 2 pages in a search on Google.  It is worth it to pay attention to what search terms are bringing visitors to your site, and to work on different words to tag to help in that.

Another way to help syndicate your blog/website is to participate in other blogs, commenting on them, providing trackbacks to posts you reference in your own writing, as I’ve done here with two of Rachel’s posts.

I’ve also added google feedburner links on my site for the RSS feed, and the ability to subscribe to my feed by email, as someone had asked me about that recently, they preferred to be subscribed by email to my blog.

Another option in feedburner is under Publicize is called PingShot, where you can have it notify other services when you post a new message, the following is my list:

When I publish new content in my feed, notify these services…

• Technorati — Technorati is the authority on what is going on in the world of weblogs
• My Yahoo — a customizable web page with news stock quotes weather and many other features
• Bloglines — helps you subscribe to and manage lots of web information
• Ping-o-matic — Pinging lets dozens of services know you have updated your site and increases traffic to your blog
• Newsgator — tracks it all and brings the web pages to you

… plus up to five additional services.

• TailRank
• Blog Buzz Machine
• FeedBlitz
• Google Blog Search Pinging Service
• Alexa

Lastly, one other thing you can do to help get the word out, is to add your blog/website to your email signature, and have it on every message you send, my email signature consists of my name, email address, web site (this blog) and my LinkedIn public profile page.

While I’ve discussed ways to syndicate your blog online in this post, word of mouth is another very simple way to get more readership, adding your blog/website to a business or networking card is another way to get the word out with people you meet and network with face to face.

Happy Reading!

-Martin

I was going to embed the video  of the story here, however after trying it and doing a preview without publishing, it would do a continual loop, playing without stopping, so I am posting a link to the news article instead, it has a link to the  edited video interview that aired last night: Valley blogger shares job hunting experience, helps others

For those of you that came to my site from that link initially, thank you But for those of you just coming across this now, it’s a link to a story and video clip of my job search and networking.

I started a dialog through email with Chris Sign last week after the Jobing.com Career Expo, because I wanted to link my blog post about my experience at the job fair to a story he wrote about it.

I sent him an email and asked him if I could use the link to pictures and the story in my blog post.  He responded, and said yes, and I told him I’d let him know when I posted the story I was writing.  I shot him a quick email after that, letting him know I’d published my blog post.

I never imagined a week later I’d get an email from him saying:

‘I would like to do a story about your blog and experiences involving the job search’

I got the email  about an hour after after he sent it as I hadn’t been checking my email often, I thought about emailing him back, and asking more information, but he did give me his cell # in the email, so instead picked up the phone and called him and I am glad I didn’t miss out on the opportunity.  Chris said they were doing a quick interview in North Scottsdale, and he would like to come over after that to interview me.

I figured I was one of many they were interviewing for this story, and it would be fun to get out there, to have a little clip or comment on the news.

He asked me a question during the interview which I’m paraphrasing here as I don’t recall his exact words, “What would you say to people who may be afraid of or unfamiliar with the technology?”, and my comment about “You can choose to embrace it and go with it.” was part of my comment that made it on the air.

There was of course things that didn’t make it to the edited version which runs a little bit longer than a minute 30 seconds, I mentioned several other important groups and sites in the unedited interview that are a part of my job search efforts:

1. Scottsdale Job Network – SJN (www.scottsdalejobnet.com)
2. St Patricks Employment Support Ministry (www.stpatrickscottsdale.org/W2/ministries/)
3. Health care network group meeting (currently no active website, but hope I can help with that soon)
4. Jobshouts  (jobshouts.com) @jobshouts on twitter
5. JobAngels (www.jobangels.org) @jobangels on twitter

There are other resources I also didn’t mention in the interview and off camera that I will be sharing as I start to write more, as well as sharing more of my experiences since the story aired.

I will be adding a page to my blog with contact information soon, so anyone wanting to contact me off the blog can do so, but please feel free to post comments to my posts.

I have also tagged names of people who are part of the above mentioned groups and will write about the people and their relationship to each group at a later time.

Look for more coming in the next few days.

Happy reading!

-Martin

Having been laid off back in September 2008 and still looking for work, I attended the Jobing.com career fair held in Glendale, Arizona at University of Phoenix Stadium on 2/11/09.

Some photos from ABC15 are posted here. The entire article on the event written by Christopher Sign is posted here: Thousands circle Valley Stadium looking for work.  (linked with his permission)

To give you a little more of a background story about what’s been going on with me,   I had made a connection on Twitter back on January 30th to a guy named Greg Scott, who is co-founder of Jiibe.com, we exchanged messages, connected on LinkedIn, and continued to communicate.

I Emailed him back in response to his “how’s the job search going?” question he asked, and a day or so later he asked if he could use my email on his blog.  I agreed and said yes, but asked that he please remove references to the place I lived, and companies I spoke about to protect my privacy.  I followed up with him several days later to find out if he’d ever blogged about it, and he gave me the link, which I am sharing here:  “A personal letter about a tough job search – can you relate?” (Yes, I am the “Steve” in that blog post)

When I got to the arena a little before 4 pm the line was wrapped half way around the building and back again to the entrance. I immediately started networking with those around me, asking things like “What kind of work do you do?” and “What kind of work are you looking for?”,  “How long have you been waiting in line?” and struck up conversations with several people, one response I got a lot to the second question was, “anything, I just need to get some money coming in.”

There was a guy in line who was looking for any kind of work, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, though his most recent experience had been in construction.  People talked about the possibility of losing their homes unless they were able to procure some kind of work to pay the mortgage or rent.

While my unemployment has only been a little over 5 months there were some in the crowd who have been unemployed for almost 2 years at this time.

With unemployment rate in the state of Arizona hovering at 6.9 percent as of December, it’s no wonder the turnout for this four hour event was so huge.

Outside and almost immediately when I got there, I ran into Zach Hubbell co-founder of  pursuethepassion.com handing out the program listing the employers attending inside. We chatted briefly as I’d met him on at least two previous occasions, one being a SJN event where Zach and Brett Farmiloe gave a presentation recently, and prior to that was at the last Jobing.com career fair in October 2008 at this same location, they are great guys with a passion for what they do as well, seeking to interview people who are passionate about their careers, check out their web site for more information on who they are, and what they are doing in this on-going project. I recommended one of my friends be interviewed for their project and need to follow up with Brett about it soon. Brett also blogged about the job fair prior to it happening and that can be found here: The Great Recession

It took me about 30 to 40 minutes before I was finally down on the field level inside the stadium, and one thing I recommend for these types of job fairs, is to register online if possible, Jobing.com had a ‘quickpass’ when you register, which I printed out and took with me, so instead of having to walk through their registration on-site, I handed them my quickpass and was on the floor immediately. I had checked the program on my way down and knew which employers I wanted to get to in the short amount of time I had left.

I waited in some short lines, and some longer lines. Some of the longer ones were with health care companies, and I did wait in a line for Triwest Healthcare, the gentleman who stepped up behind me in line was clean cut, very short hair, and very personable, we started talking and I found out he was in the military, and looking for any kind of work, the lady standing in line in front of us heard part of our conversation and turned around asking, “Did I hear you say you were in the military?” to which he said yes, and she shook his hand and said, “Thank you for serving our country.” I gave my network card to both of them letting them know that I had some networking resources I wanted to share with them, and to contact me soon.

As the event was coming to a close I had been standing in line to speak to someone at the Casino Arizona booth, and once again I found myself networking with those around me, there was a gal who was laid off recently, who  had just bought a house and lost her job, the closing was coming up within a couple of weeks, and she was in desperate need of work.

There was another gentleman in line I talked with, by the name of Bhawani Baral.   I gave my card to him, and out of all the job seekers I’d talked with he is the only one to respond in kind, while he didn’t have a network or business card to hand me, he did the next best thing, he handed me a copy of his resume, which had his contact information on it.  I plan on following up with him, and blogging about his experience at a later date.

The day after the event I made the acquaintance of Alison Doyle with About.com on Twitter.com when she sent a message out about her blog and job search tips asking for input.  I told her about my networking efforts and wrote up a little something about my networking efforts to share with her. The blog she specifically mentioned can be found here:  Best Job Search Tips and it includes some very sound and good advice from other experts, and people like myself who are looking for work.

Also in my networking efforts I’d talked with Michael Prahl a few days ago prior to the job fair, who is a member of the board  at SJN, about how this form of social media (blogging) may be utlizied in the efforts of the outreach of SJN to the community at large in conjunction with face to face networking, and had I thought of the opportunity before I attended this job fair, I would have asked the board president and founder of SJN, Chris Vacari for some of their business cards to pass out along with my own.

I’ve also been attending another networking group at St Patrick’s Church in Scottsdale, which will be a topic of another blog post soon.

My next post will be a continuation of this and the feedback I’ve gotten since the event on Wednesday.

Permalink: http://martinpiraino.com/2009/02/13/career-fair-day-jobingcom-phoenix-21109