If you’re searching for your new Ideal Job, or looking to kick of your entrepreneurial business, you’ll be hearing lots about ‘creating a personal brand’ online.

Mari Smith was labelled the “Pied Piper of Facebook” by Fast Company magazine. Here is an interview we did with Mari to discover her top tips for ‘Everyday People’ using Facebook to create a successful online personal brand.

We recorded this interview using Skype whilst we were in the UK and Mari was somewhere on the West Coast of North America, so there are a few glitches in there – it isn’t your audio going wild! It is nearly 2 years old and Mari is no longer travelling the US in her RV – even with the speed that Facebook has changed and grown, her advice in the call is still highly relevant!

P.S Here’s another very useful post on Mari’s website Simply Facebook and Twitter with the ABCs of Social Media

There’s a good chance you haven’t found yourself in your dream job, yet. If you have – then you’re one of a very few lucky folk. But if not, you don’t need to give up.You may already be actively using social media tools in your job search. If you aren’t, then we’d urge you to start getting involved.

We did an Internet search on “using social media to find a job” – and there was an amazing 106 million results! Nobody has time to trawl through all of them, so we did it for you, and eliminated the wheat from the chaff to put together our top 8 articles from the search query.

Here they are – and we’ve extracted a key point from each to give you maximum value;

1. It wouldn’t take you a long time to find this post - but we have to include it, because it totally deserves its top search billing:

7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media

Key Point “the traditional approach most job seekers have taken in the past is no longer viable”

2. Chris Brogan is something of what they call a social media “rockstar”. But there’s good reason for this label, and this post is one of them. Chris has produced a free ebook on how to use social media in your job search:

Free eBook- Using the Social Web to Find Work

Key Point: “You need authentication in a network. Start with a blog as a home base.”

3. This post on Time magazine uses a real life example of a modern job search. It demonstrates there’s no silver bullet – but a combination of tools and techniques will provide the result you want:

Time Magazine - Using Twitter and Facebook to Find a Job

Key Point: “Because for all our technology, the best way to land a job is still by having someone who already works at a company mention your name.”

4. This next post is from entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki about how to use Linkedin for job hunting:

Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job

Key Point: “Don’t wait until times are tough to nurture your network.”

5. Another guide to using Linkedin in your search for an ideal job, this time Dave Taylor provides a step by step guide, using a real example to make the whole concept a little more tangible:

How Do I Use Linkedin To Find a Job?

Key Point: “it’s the human connection that gets you work much more than the “database query” of searching job listings.”

6. Another platform specific post, this article demonstrates how Twitter can be used most effectively for job search. You will also be able to see how you can drill down specifically to find the contacts you need.

[How To] Find a Job Through Twitter, the easy way!

Key Point: “Your Twitter account is one of the most effective tools to promote your expertise and skills on your chosen field of work.”

7. This is a series of 5 posts, each with a set of “Action Steps”; Have A Personal Website Or Blog – Make Yourself Seen Online – Expand Your Network Before You Need It – Connect Offline – Help Others Get Jobs:

How To Use Social Media To Find A Better Job Series

Key Point: “You can make or break your own success by how you use or don’t use free online tools to get the edge on your competition.”

8. This final article is quite short and to the point, but after all the advice telling you what to do, it was important to also link to someone who gave you some insight to what NOT to do! Look, I’ll be honest with you, and tell you just to use your common sense. We so often talk about transparency and authenticity in social networking and social media, but you’re not going to act the same in an interview as you would at home in front of the television. The same goes for social media. Respect yourself and others, and apply your best marketing tactics – but don’t sell a product you’re not proud of!

Social Media No-No’s

Key Point: “If you post it, someone will read it. That’s a guarantee.”

Talking of social media – have you connected with us? We’re on Twitter, Facebook and You Tube – We’d love to see you there!

As a philosophy, we believe that one should alter the environment to suit one’s individual personality, instead of bending the individual out of shape to suit the environment.

This could be a work environment, a home environment, a romantic environment; it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that to be productive, to be inspired, to be happy, to be successful,  to be at your best, you need to be operating in an environment compatible with your personality. We need the world to relate to us – and communicate with us in a personality centric way.

Is this unrealistic and idealistic? Surely its more unrealistic to hope that an entire workforce will conform to suit an employer’s environment – and still perform at their best?

People are not machines, so it’s time we stopped behaving as if they were. People use logic – but they are not logical, they are emotional. They are made up from that cocktail of introversion, extraversion, task and feeling and every one of them is complex and unique.

Of course the problem is complex but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it and hope that someday soon people will perform just like machines. No, there are two stages to this problem and most of us never even resolve stage one!

1. What is my personality and what are my ideal environments?
2. How can my environment be adapted to be more compatible with my personality?

If you look at any organisation you will see huge efforts going towards getting the people to adjust to the environment. Perhaps it would be easier the other way round? It would certainly be more productive!

PeopleMaps champions “personality centric living”, for it benefits everyone. On a personal level it shapes our opinions about work, about school and about pretty  much everything. It should be the bedrock of all personal development, of all coaching, of all business development. We live in a world of one size fits nobody and we are all bent out of shape as a result.

And where does the internet come in to in all this?

The internet is changing our environment in a significant way. With the likes of Google we are being increasingly given a personalised experience – and increased choice. We no longer have to settle for one size, one colour, we can get it exactly the way we want it. This new world experience is on a collision course with the old world. Humans cannot be treated as unique in one world and treated like a machine in the other.

(excerpt from the PeopleMaps Philosophy)