Monday, July 4

100 Great Social sites to Boost your Career and Brand

2 comments

100 Great Social Sites to Boost Your Career and Brand

However gifted, intelligent, hard-working, or creative you may be, success is seldom found without someone else's help. Fortunately, the art of networking can be learned, so get started today by perusing these great sites.
Social Networking Social networking isn't just for kids anymore: it's extremely important for building up your professional contacts, snagging job opportunities and boosting your brand.
  1. Plaxo: Plaxo tunes you into the stuff your friends are doing on sites like Flickr, YouTube, Digg and more.
  2. MeetUp: Use this site to network in-person and online with professionals and friends in your city.
  3. Twitter: Twitter is a great microblogging site that helps with branding, showcasing your stuff online, and meeting people in your industry.
  4. Facebook: Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. With an estimated 250 million users, Facebook offers countless networking opportunities.
  5. SocialVibe: After joining SocialVibe, in addition to creating a personal profile, users are asked to select their favorite cause to support and to choose a sponsor. Once they have done so, they can earn points, which can be redeemed for a variety of different perks and money for their respective charities. The more a SocialVibe user's networking site is visited, the more points they are able to earn.
  6. SocialGo: This is social network builder that allows users to build their own online communities based on common interests and professions.
  7. Myspace: The pioneer of social media Web sites. College students seem to have migrated to facebook.com, but Myspace is still a great place to find friends and endorse your brand.
  8. College Tonight: This social networking service is for U.S. college-aged students, graduate students, and alumni. It focuses on social opportunities on and near college campuses.
  9. Exploroo: Exploroo is a one-stop networking website for everything travel related. People can add friends and send them messages, and can also add travel stories or videos and review photos and articles about worldwide travel. Travel agents can also join and connect with travelers. Great for learning about other places and cultures.
  10. Bebo: Bebo is an acronym for "blog early, blog often." It is a popular social networking site that combines community, self-expression and entertainment, enabling you to consume, create, discover, curate and share digital content in entirely new ways.
  11. Playboy U:Playboy U members can post a personal profile, photos, videos and blogs, and participate in forums and clubs. As on other social-networking sites, members can add friends and extend their networks. This site features listings of parties and on-campus events.
  12. Squidoo: Squidoo is a community Web site that allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest. Squidoo is in the top 500 most visited sites in the world, and in the top 300 most viewed in the United States. It’s a good way to network with colleagues and professionals in your area of study.
  13. Alumwire: A career network for college students and alumni.
  14. Blogspot: Blogspot might require a little more effort than other networking sites, but it provides the unique opportunity to be heard while remaining anonymous. Read others’ blogs or establish one of your own. Better yet, do both.
  15. The Quad: Stay informed with interactive campus and community event listings and excel in scholastics with study forums, privacy-protected group work and calendar management.
Professional Networking Take advantage of these great career-minded sites to connect with other professionals in your line of work.
  1. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a very popular social site for professionals to network and collaborate on projects.
  2. Ryze: Ryze is a professional-oriented social networking site that lets you share events, find jobs and more.
  3. Xing: Xing is a networking site that brings together professionals from around the world.
  4. Ziggs: Here you can expand your network, search for jobs, join groups, manage contacts and more.
  5. Fast Pitch: Business professionals market themselves and their services on this social networking site.
  6. Yorz: Find jobs through this networking community.
  7. Meet the Boss: This is a business networking tool for business executives around the world, across all vertical industries. It facilitates secure video conferencing, IM, email and SMS between members. Members have individual profiles with listed business interests.
  8. italki: Chinese and American entrepreneurs created this language learning social network to help people learn the idiom of their choice. Select one (or more) of the 100+ languges available on the site, then pick a language partner and get to work.
  9. Scispace: Designed specifically for collaborating researchers, this network builds on many of the tools found in standard social network service and elearning sites, such as the use of blogs, tags, comment walls, and profiles. However, unlike many of these sites, privacy and fine-grained access control is of paramount importance.
  10. Yammer: Yammer is a microblogging service. Like Twitter, it allows users to post updates of their activities and follow others' updates. Unlike Twitter, Yammer focuses on businesses, and only individuals with the same email domain can join a given network.
  11. Brazen Careerist: Create a profile on Brazen Careerist that showcases more than just your resume, because your ideas matter too. Then, follow real-time updates from your favorite members and begin to build a network through conversations.
  12. FD Career: From researching company profiles, asking questions about interviewing tips, to doing quests that help you grow towards your career goals, FD Career helps you level up in real life in an engaging and interactive manner.
  13. Jigsaw: An online business card networking directory for users to establish contacts with each other. Each business card is listed with an email id and a contact number.
  14. Konnects: Konnects enables members to create their own professional networking communities.
  15. Spoke: Spoke offers access to business network of over 40 million people worldwide.
Cultural Networking Don't let the idea of a worldwide network overwhelm you. These smaller sites allow you to establish yourself in your comfort zone, based on ethnicity, nationality, and language.
  1. Bigadda: India's most popular social network.
  2. BlackPlanet: Events and topics in the African-American community.
  3. Cloob: Mostly popular in Iran, but serves English-speaking communities as well.
  4. dol2day: This is a platform for politically interested German-speaking people. Dol2day is the abbreviation for "democracy online today." Most of the members are college and university students, and young professionals, in particular from Germany.
  5. Faceparty: Faceparty is a UK-based social networking site allowing users to create online profiles and interact with each other using forums and messaging facilities similar to email.
  6. Friendster: Friendster is a privately owned social networking website. The service allows users to contact other members and share online content and media with those contacts. The site is primarily popular in Southeast Asia.
  7. Internations: Through this online platform, people living and working abroad, their partners and others with a strong interest in international relations and international business can interact through forums, newsgroups, a private messaging service and various common features of online networks.
  8. Kaixin001: Kaixin001 is the phoenetic spelling of the Chinese word that means "happy net." The site grew to entertain 8 million users within five months of its 2008 launch, and it remains popular throughout China.
  9. Odnoklassniki:Odnoklassniki is a Russian social network service for classmates and friends.
  10. Nexopia: Users are able to create and design their own profiles on this Canadian networking site, as well as manage a friends list, blogs, galleries, articles, and forums. Interaction is accomplished through an internal personal messaging system, and public user comments on profiles, blogs or through threads and posts on the forums.
Reputation Management Build and monitor your personal and professional reputation with these sites and tools.
  1. Letter to Fall Recruits: Clean Up Your (Cyber)Space: This article directed at law students emphasizes the importance of removing incriminating or embarrassing pictures and blogs online.
  2. Digg: Bookmark, rank and review articles on this site to boost your popularity with other users. Just be careful what you digg, and make sure it's nothing obscene or offensive.
  3. Gather: Build up your reputation as a knowledgeable expert who reaches out to the community by keeping up with the discussions on Gather.
  4. Furl: Share useful websites to make connections and establish yourself as a go-to person for your industry.
  5. Board Tracker: Get directed to the discussion boards that mention you or will provide an opportunity for you to contribute using this tool.
  6. Technorati: With Technorati, you can monitor which blog posts mention you, your industry, or your company.
  7. Google Alerts: Set up an alert for yourself and your company to find out what others are saying about you online.
  8. Ning: Once you have customers, contacts and associates, create your own social network just for your group using Ning.
  9. TweetBeep: Make sure your brand is receiving positive feedback on Twitter with this tool.
  10. FriendFeed: Create an account on this community site to save a portfolio and share meaningful information with friends.
Blogs Shoot for the moon (and reach it) with the help of these expert career blogs.
  1. Lindsey Pollak: Lindsey Pollak is a bestselling author, speaker and consultant specializing in Generation Y career and workplace issues. This blog is dedicated to teaching young professionals how to build successful careers.
  2. Career Doctor: Each day, this blog features a question and answer from The Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD.
  3. Resumes and Cover Letter Tips: Tips for effective resumes and cover letters.
  4. Water Cooler Wisdom: A career advice blog from the author of How'd You Score That Gig and They Don't Teach Corporate in College.
  5. Resume Hell: Although this blog is not updated as regularly as readers would like, its archives include hilarious and useful posts about the "dumb stuff" an anonymous job recruiter reads on resumes.
  6. Some Assembly Required: blog from author Thom Singer (Some Assembly Required: How to Make, Grow and Keep Your Business Relationships, The ABC's of Networking, and Some Assembly Required: A Networking Guide for Women) about networking.
  7. The Big Time Blog: Receive career advice and insight from this blog by Spherion, a major staffing company.
  8. Courting Your Career: Shawn Graham created this blog and the book that shares its name to help job seekers boost their brands and find the perfect jobs.
  9. A Storied Career: A blog from QuintCareers Associate Publisher Katharine Hansen, Ph.D. that reveals techniques for career advancement.
  10. Brandtelling: This communication strategy blog explains the art of brandtelling: make your brand desirable, make it clear, make it relevant, make it real, make it memorable, make it repeatable, make it rewarding.
  11. Personal Branding Blog: Dan Schawbel, the leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y, created this blog to teach you how to create your career and command your future, using the personal branding process, as outlined in his book, Me 2.0.
  12. JibberJobber: Dive into some serious career managment with this blog, written by today's most successful tycoons.
  13. Personal Brand Awards: Get inspired by these award winning personal brands.
  14. Women Unlimited: Learn how you leave a fingerprint on others through this blog post.
  15. The Brand Called You: Fast Company explains how to take a lesson from the big brands when developing your personal brand.
  16. Develop Your Personal Brand-Twelve Tips: Here you'll get 12 tips for your personal public relations.
  17. Sarah Lacy: This syndicated blogger explains the mystery of making money off your brand.
  18. Elements of a Personal Brand: Chris Brogan breaks down the important parts of personal brands.
  19. Daily DIY: Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape: You'll find great advice and tools for using social media to build your personal brand.
  20. Three Key Steps to Developing Your Personal Brand: Erik Folgate's post explains how to make personal branding work for you.
Contacts and Communication Lose the Rolodex; use these great sites to keep your contacts current and organized.
  1. Campfire: Campfire is a team-building tool that features real-time chat, so you can hold meetings from your home.
  2. Gmail: Use Gmail to search your contacts, save addresses, access email from a web browser, chat, and more.
  3. Pidgin: Chat with users from all kinds of instant message accounts from one spot with Pidgin.
  4. Highrise: Manage communications with your business partners and clients, track new leads, get instant reminders via e-mail and text, keep an address book and more with Highrise.
  5. Famundo: Keep your calendars, files, and projects organized on this shareable site.
  6. 30 Boxes: This tool helps you remember important dates and contact information.
  7. WhosOff: Keep track of who's out of the office and who's available with this tool.
  8. Central Desktop: Share files with this collaboration tool.
  9. Loose Stitch: Keep meetings fun and easy when you use this tool for remote access collaboration.
  10. Ubernote: With ubernote, you can send e-mails, make a new Tweet, maintain contact information and more.
Miscellaneous Networks and Tools By the time you've reached this section, you will likely have found all the help you could need. But if you need an extra boost or want to join another community, visit these domains:
  1. Crazyegg: See who's reading your site and what they think about it with this tool.
  2. Upcoming.org : Check out upcoming events and add some of your own to this networking Web site.
  3. Wordpress: Offers free blogs, much like Blogspot.
  4. YahooGroups: Join or create groups, forums, clubs, and communities.
  5. Radian6: Radian6 provides the social media monitoring platform for marketing, communications and customer support professionals. The company's flexible dashboard enables monitoring all forms of social media with results appearing in real-time.
  6. Flogblog:This Facebook application allows you to add RSS items to your Facebook profile, displaying the headline and lead sentence, lead paragraph, or a set number of characters. Posts as displayed in your Facebook profile can either link to your blog itself or to the Flog Blog application's "canvas page," within Facebook.
  7. WebsiteGrader.com: Make sure your site meets readability and marketability standards with this tool.
  8. Flikr: Essential for photo sharing.
  9. Youtube: Essential for video sharing.
  10. Del.icio.us: According to its Web site, "Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet."
  11. YouNoodle: A social networking site designed to connect people involved in university research. Includes tools that calculate the potential value of an invention or business after a given number of years.
  12. Takkle.com: This site offers student athletes the chance to interact with college recruiters and ask questions regarding college sports.
  13. Sodahead: Get answers to your biggest questions about money, music, schools, and research. The site also lets users share news stories and voice opinions.
  14. Diigo: This social tool saves research, highlights, and annotates bookmarked pages; you can also share content with others in the network.
  15. Fark: A social bookmarking and social networking site with sections for sports, business, celebrity gossip, politics and more.
  16. Cramster: This site offers help with math problems, answers to textbook questions or study help. Their premium service makes experts available to answer random questions.
  17. Internshipratings.com: Internships are career launchpads. Before you apply, find out if a particular company is the right fit for you with these online reviews.
  18. Zimride: This carpooling and cab share networking site can save users thousands in fuel costs every year.
  19. Box.net: A social network site that allows users to upload files they can make available to other members. Great for group projects or parties.
  20. Gradefund: Students with excellent grades can create their own accounts where sponsors pay money for academic accomplishments.
If You Enjoyed This, Take 5 Seconds To Share It

2 comments:

  1. This is a great list. I am honored to have my blog included with so many FANTASTIC sites! thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank You Thom for a great article!!

    ReplyDelete