Devon Jordan Gives Advice on Social Media and Branding Yourself Online.

Devon Jordan is a continuing student and member of the Entrepreneurship Society at CSUF, and gave a presentation about social media during Business Week. He teamed up with Gregg Champion of OneCubicle.com to talk about branding yourself online. Champion owns a social media company and Devon writes a blog about social media, together they spoke with students about the importance of social media as a branding frontier.

Social media is bigger than it has ever been and continues to grow every day. It is a moving train that any competitive company, or person for that matter, would be a fool to ignore. Eighty percent of companies now use LinkedIn.com as their primary hiring source. “The paper resume is dead…” says Devon, “… and Google killed it.” Social media content often pops up when someone Googles your name. Eighty-three percent of recruiters Google your name before making a decision, so what are they going to find? Will it be your LinkedIn resume or those spring break pictures of you on your friend’s Facebook page? As it turns out, 43 percent of recruiters deny people jobs because they don’t like what they see on the applicants social media profiles. So, is this fair? Fair or not, this is reality and you can’t afford to lose competitive ground in today’s job market. “Google has become your resume and your business card,” says Devon, “You can say a lot more with a few links than you can with a resume.”

So the trick is to have a strong and positive internet presence, and this requires active involvement. Devon writes a blog about social media, where he offers advice on how to create and market an online identity. His blog also sports links to other sites, like Facebook or Twittter, so people can repost blogs that they find interesting right from his page. More links in more places can directly increase traffic to his site, and increase hits on Google. It all comes back to Google; your resume, your business card, your poster on the side of the bus. You want your name floating around, in a positive light, when people conduct a Google search. This is your online identity. Devon lists five features of a great personal brand; the first three are passion, practice, and specialized skills. The fourth is failure. Nothing will ever go perfectly to plan, and just like with anything else it is important to not let failure get you down. Mistakes should be treated as learning experiences. The fifth feature is a good mentor. A mentor is someone who has it together that you can look up to and emulate. They have a lot of experience, so you can learn from their mistakes instead of making them yourself. Devon’s Mentors include Ryan Rancatore and Brand-Yourself.com.