Do your social profiles affect your job prospects?

In an information rich world where data capture and analysis of everyday people is of paramount importance, recruiting companies are more and more inclined to do as much research on potential candidates as the potential candidate does on them.

With information about people and their habits, their friend circles, their weekend antics, all-visible for potential employers to see, it becomes more and more important to portray a more upstanding demeanor, even on your private profiles. Unfair as it sounds your, Social and digital footprint needs to be relatively clean.

With sites like Linkedin, which are in my opinion, glorified online CV databases, being used to assess your commercial specification, it is also important to make sure that your digital profile, especially within more commercial sites is up to date and comprehensive.

It’s also important what others say about you, and that it is aligned with what you’re saying about yourself too. The sad truth is everything you do can be monitored, and count for or against you when it comes to a potential job.

Your best bet, keep it clean, tidy and up to date, because that job you really want, well they’re looking at you.

So, it’s time to get involved with social media – where exactly do you start?

Different views on this, even within the Puma Social office – however two main themes are emerging.

School of Design – Social media engagements need to have great creative concepts, innovative design features and need to stand out from all the rubbish being flaunted on various networks.

School of Insights – Social media engagements need to be insight driven, have base data at the core of all decisions and ongoing reporting to tweak and refine campaigns

Which ones right?

Well in ways, they both are!  – Yes you need creative design, there’s nothing like a well planned out and shot video to send across your message, get consumers engaged and grow your following.

But… Without key insights on demographics, a good understanding of your client base and most importantly knowing what will pull them in, all the best creative heads in the world cannot help you!

The only way to make sure you are on message with your great creative is to first make sure you have succinct accurate data and analytics, whci will then provide you with the correct touch point for your great creative to evolve.

Theres an App for that…if you have the money.

What is the wild, wild west of advertising…? That would be mobile.

With processes being put in place for most of the medium that is digital advertising, it seems the only real unknown (until the next big thing) is Mobile. From App building to rate cards for advertising, the price differential is colossal.

Mobile as an arena for social is massive. With Geo tagging apps like Foursquare, and Facebook’s check ins, its very apparent that there is a big emphasis on Mobile tech when it comes to Social. In-fact people use Mobile devices to check their social networks more that they use a computer. This being the case, if your buying advertising within social platforms, surely they should appear within both mobile and computer based pages. They don’t.

So the question is; Will there be a happy medium, and will prices level out when it comes to Mobile advertising and development?

Simply put, yes there will be. History has shown us that new media platforms have always arisen and then found a formula which is fair for both media owner and customer, and as mobile tech evolves, so will the need to regulate the industry when it comes to advertising and development.

The only thing we know for sure is that Mobile is going to be a strong communication tool, and one that cant be ignored by brands if they want a succinct all encompassing marketing plan. It should be noted that pressure should be applied so that Mobile and computer based social platforms should have a joint offering.

Without Mobile companies and brands will be missing a huge market, thus rendering their marketing massively flawed, so unfortunately we have to bite the bullet and continue to make the business bank balance slimmer.