By Lindsey Pollak

In recent years, social media has transformed from a convenient way for college friends to stay in touch to an essential tool for professional networking and personal branding. In her new book, Social Networking for Career Success: Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand, career expert Miriam Salpeter shares the ins and outs of social networking.

Miriam was kind enough to answer some of my questions about how young professionals can maximize their professional use of social media.

LP: What does social networking have to do with career success?

MS: In a competitive market, success seekers need to do what they can to differentiate themselves and highlight their value propositions. Social networking is an amazing tool to do just that. Here are two major reasons why: 1) social media offers users a chance to share their expertise and 2) using these tools can connect them to people they would probably never otherwise know; those people may be exactly the ones to introduce careerists to a targeted contact.

LP: How can people use social media to illustrate their expertise?

MS: All of the networks I highlight in the book, especially LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and blogging, make it easy to let your network know what you do and how you solve problems. Sharing expertise can be as easy as sharing a link to a relevant article along with a smart comment on Facebook or Twitter. It’s as simple as answering a question via LinkedIn with insight and expert information. Don’t underestimate the potential these connections may offer.

LP: What’s the best social network for job seekers?

MS: The first place job seekers should spend time is on LinkedIn. It is the go-to hub of professional networking and continues to expand the ways it allows job seekers to connect and extend their networks, especially via the Answers section and by using Groups.

That said, my favorite network is Twitter, because it is so open, and allows users to find, follow and interact with people they otherwise would never know. Once users find a community of people in their field to follow and communicate with, Twitter can provide a constant stream of information, professional development opportunities (right on your desktop), information about specific jobs and the chance to connect directly with colleagues, mentors and prospective bosses.

LP: Most young professionals are primarily active on Facebook. Can that site be used in a professional way? If so, how?

I admit, I hesitated at first to suggest using Facebook for professional reasons. However, when you think of the sheer number of people using Facebook (so many more than any other network), and the fact that 27% of firms locate hires via personal referrals from employees, it makes sense to “be where they are” and consider how to harness Facebook’s power for job hunting.

I advise readers to do a careful audit of their Facebook profiles and to remove anything a potential employer may consider objectionable. This includes photos inappropriate for professional environments, “trash-talking” comments, excessive negative comments (no one wants to hire Debbie Downer) and memberships in groups such as “I hate Mondays” or “Working is for suckers.”

I advise setting privacy settings for “just friends” for everything except for “About Me” (write a professional bio), “Education and Work” and “Contact Info.” Opening these sections to “everyone” helps recruiters using Facebook find you and also allows various Facebook applications, such as BranchOut, Jibe.com and SimplyHired.com’s Facebook tool to connect you with potential opportunities.

LP: You say social media can connect people to others they’d otherwise never meet. How can that help a young job seeker?

MS: Any job seeker or business owner’s goal is to be found. Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, outlines how important it is to broaden your network – to meet and connect with “weak ties,” people who previously had no direct relationship with you – in order to find contacts who can help. Touching base with people beyond your immediate network may be just the thing you need to connect with someone who can really help you propel your plans forward.

Another thing many not already involved in social media don’t realize: online connections have a tendency to be extremely generous and willing to help. The book is full of stories of people who received crucial help from strangers online.

By Lindsey Pollak

For those of us who live in cold weather climates, turning the calendar page to April is a glorious moment. Although it’s still cold outside, you know that spring really is on the way.

If you’re like me, that first whiff of warm air also gives you the decluttering bug. That’s right — it’s spring cleaning season.

While most of us do some spring cleaning in our homes and offices, today I’m going to talk about spring cleaning online. These days, our computers and databases and social networking profiles can become just as cluttered and musty as our closets and garages and desk drawers.

If you feel as if your LinkedIn experience could use some sprucing up this spring, try implementing these 5 tips:

1. Kick-start your keywords. If you’re not attracting a lot of interest to your LinkedIn profile, take a look at what words you use to describe yourself. They might be doing more harm than good. Last month, LinkedIn released a list of the top 10 LinkedIn profile termsthat are most overused by professionals based in the United States. According to LinkedIn data, those terms are:

1. Extensive experience
2. Innovative
3. Motivated
4. Results-oriented
5. Dynamic
6. Proven track record
7. Team player
8. Fast-paced
9. Problem solver
10. Entrepreneurial

To read the rest of this article, visit the LinkedIn Blog.

As a spokesperson for LinkedIn, I’m in the midst of a fun tour of college campuses to launch Career Explorer, LinkedIn’s forthcoming new tool for students and recent grads. Universities I’m visiting on the tour include NYU, USC, BYU and University of Illinois. If you’re a student or alum from one of these schools, please drop me a note or check out my event photos on Facebook. (p.s. recommendations of the best cupcake spot near each campus are always appreciated!)

In this blog post, I’ll be sharing information about Career Explorer and some other new features of LinkedIn that can help you in your job or internship search and your overall career development.

Promote Your Certifications, Publications and Fluency. One of the most frequent questions I hear from students is, “What should I include in my LinkedIn profile?” The answer is to include any info you would put on your resume, plus additional information such as campus leadership roles, volunteer activities, examples of your work (by sharing web links or by posting documents to the SlideShare or Box.net apps) and incorporating keywords that a recruiter might use to find someone with your skills.

Now, LinkedIn has added more opportunities to promote your skills with new profile sections. Click on “edit profile” and you’ll see areas to promote publications (such as articles you’ve written for the campus newspaper or blogs you write), language knowledge (be careful here — don’t claim fluency unless you’re actually fluent), additional skills, formal certifications you’ve attained and even patents if you have any. It’s no secret we’re in a super competitive job market right now, so take advantage of these new opportunities to promote any differentiators you have.

Follow Companies. Another new feature added to LinkedIn in the past few months is the ability to follow companies. With this tool, you have the opportunity to receive regular updates on the activities of any organization you choose to follow. This is absolutely essential information to have for the companies you hope to work for someday, so I recommend following any and all organizations on your prospect list.

Simply visit the Company Page of any one of over one million organizations on LinkedIn, and click “follow company” in the top right-hand corner. Once you’ve done this, you’ll begin seeing updates, job postings, employee movements and any other news from that organization appear on the newsfeed of your LinkedIn homepage.

Coming Soon! Career Explorer. Currently in beta testing on 60 college campuses (contact your career center to learn if your school is on the list), Career Explorer is a brand new, free tool that LinkedIn has created, with the sponsorship of PwC, to help students navigate LinkedIn and figure out their potential career paths. I’ll be sharing more about this tool in the future, but here is a brief introduction:

To use Career Explorer, you’ll need to set up a LinkedIn account if you don’t have one already. Next, you’ll log in to the tool and enter your major and desired industry. Career Explorer will then guide you to 1) learn about different industries and potential jobs, 2) map out a potential career path (or multiple paths if you’re undecided) and 3) find and build connections with the people on LinkedIn who have taken similar paths and might be good for you to know.

Expect a rollout of Career Explorer to all universities in the coming weeks.

Have questions or comments about using LinkedIn as a student or recent grad? Please post below!

In this free, 60-minute training webinar, I’ll be sharing the strategies and best practices to leverage LinkedIn at every stage of your job search. Discover how to:

• Build an online profile that attracts the attention of recruiters and hiring managers
• Expand your professional network to drive more opportunities your way
• Use LinkedIn to find job leads and get your resume to the top of the applicant list
• Access the benefits of Job Seeker Premium, a brand new LinkedIn feature
• Find expert answers to your questions about LinkedIn

Register now at http://learn.linkedin.com/jobseeker!

Alas, I am inside at my computer, occasionally staring out my window at the bright blue sky. And, after I finish writing, there is more inside work to be done today. I’ve just received a delivery of three brown boxes filled with file folders, storage bins, crates and plastic hangers. I have a stack of garbage bags at the ready. There are fresh batteries in my label maker.

That’s right; it’s spring cleaning time.

The truth is that I absolutely love organizing, filing, folding, purging and alphabetizing (my accountant told me I am her only client who color-codes my tax documents). Yes, I am a Virgo.

But I know that spring cleaning (or any-time-of-year cleaning) is not easy for everyone. It can be hard to let go of the old and make room for the new. But it must be done, and spring is a great time to refresh and renew every nook and cranny of your home, office, garage or any other space that needs sprucing up. It’s also a great time to spring clean your career. Here are three important ways to do that:

Clean your career (literally). When was the last time your organized all of your career documents, both on paper and on your computer? Take time now to toss or delete outdated versions of your resume, file past cover letters, put company information you’ve gathered into marked folders and organize that rubber-banded stack of business cards you’ve collected over the past several months. (Hint: if there’s a card whose owner you can’t remember, Google that person or check out his or her LinkedIn profile to see if you can jog your memory. If not, toss the card.)

Clean up your online image.  According to a recently released Microsoft survey, 85 percent of HR professionals responding said that positive online reputation influences their hiring decisions, and 70 percent said they have rejected candidates based on information they found online. Make no mistake about it: your online image will affect your job search and your career. If you haven’t already, set up strict privacy settings on all social networks (often, including on Facebook and the new Google Buzz, the default setting is for all of your information to be public, so check every setting!), take down any inappropriate pictures or content, set up a 100 percent professional profile on LinkedIn and Google, and think twice before posting any new content on Facebook, Twitter or a blog.  In many recruiters’ minds, you are what you post, so keep it clean.

Clean out your to-do list. One of the biggest concerns I hear from students and young professionals is about how outrageously busy they are.  Between studying, working, volunteering, socializing, texting and occasionally eating and sleeping, it’s amazing you have any time to think! Take time this spring to sit down and analyze your time commitments. What’s really enjoyable to you? What work is most fulfilling? What activities do you dread attending? I challenge you to delete anything from your calendar that is not either totally necessary or totally enjoyable. Spring is such a glorious season — don’t miss it because you are too busy running yourself ragged.

What other tips do you have for spring cleaning your career? Please share!

Image: ApartmentTherapy.com

In our first five-minute segment, we’re answering viewer questions about finding jobs on Twitter, connecting professionally on LinkedIn and surviving when you move back home with mom and dad (hint: lay off the frozen yogurt).

Watch the video here.

Have questions you’d like us to address in future CareerTV segments? Please share in the comments section below!

LinkedIn has also launched a great resource for graduating seniors (and all college students and recent grads), the ’09 Grad Guide and a discussion group featuring helpful articles, job postings and Q&As.

Here is an excerpt from my guest article, “Stop Job Hunting Like It’s 1999: Dos and Don’ts for ’09 Grads”:

Job hunting is a journey, so I’d like to begin this post by paraphrasing from my favorite movie about a journey: The Wizard of Oz: We’re not in the 20th Century anymore, Toto.

This is the sentence I find myself thinking whenever a college student says something like, “I’ve sent out, like, a hundred resumes and I still haven’t found a job!” Emailing out resumes and waiting for a response used to be a perfectly decent strategy for finding a job. Not anymore. Today’s job seekers, especially ‘09 grads job hunting in a recession, need to be more creative, more proactive and more tech savvy than ever before. We are blessed to live in a time when there are so many new job hunting tools and techniques. Take advantage!

Here are some tips: Click here to read the rest of this article on the LinkedIn Blog…

A few months later, you might have come across a group of job-hunting, 20-something recent graduates promoting their skills though sidebar advertisements on Facebook and links to their online resumes.

What intrigues me about these methods is not just the guts these job seekers displayed. It’s the different generational approaches to self-promotion. The baby boomer gravitated to in-person, face-to-face networking; the Millennial went right to the Web.

If you are looking for a job in the current recession, my best advice is to borrow from the playbook of both of these self-promoters: combine “old-fashioned” methods with new technologies. Diane K. Danielson, my colleague and co-author on the book The Savvy Gal’s Guide to Online Networking, calls this a “clicks and mix” strategy, and it’s an important marketing strategy if you’re looking for a new position.

Here’s why: Young adults are competing in the job market with much more qualified people who have been laid off and need to find any job they can. At the same time, older professionals are competing with younger workers who are willing to be hired for less money and security. And, in this economy, every job seeker has to try every job-hunting method available.

Here are some self-marketing tips for job seekers of all generations: click here to read the rest of this article on ABC News on Campus…

Job Action Day, started by Dr. Randall Hansen of Quintessential Careers, is a day of empowerment for workers and job seekers — a day “to put your career and job in the forefront, making plans, taking action.”

In the spirit of action, my post today focuses on five actions you can take right now if you are looking for a job (or suspect you might be job hunting soon). I’ve also included links to some additional career advice blogs and job hunting resources so you can find even more tips.

1. Get organized with a job search notebook. This will be your one and only place to keep track of to-do lists, ideas, company research, notes from workshops and interviews, advice from career advisors and other important information. From this point forward, keep your job search notebook with you at all times.  You never know when you might think of a new idea or hear about a company or program or person you want to look into.  By keeping all of your notes in one place, you’re less likely to lose any data and more likely to keep focused.  If you’re really hard core, you can even keep the notebook on your nightstand, in case you have any great career brainstorms while you’re dozing off to sleep at night.

For more advice on organizing a job search, check out: JibberJobber.com.

2. Call your alma mater’s career services office. Almost every college and university career services office will provide free (that’s right, free) job search support to alumni. Services that can cost hundreds of dollars in the “real world” are available at no cost from the college you attended. This includes career counseling, resume editing, interview prep, exclusive networking events, access to alumni databases and much more. If you’re not working with your college’s career services office, you are missing an enormous opportunity.

3. Set up news alerts for any organization you’d like to work for. The biggest complaint I hear from recruiters is that job candidates, especially young professionals, don’t know enough about the companies to which they’re applying.  It’s crucial to be extremely knowledgeable about any company you want to work for. This shows that you’re genuinely interested in the organization and that you’re ready to hit the ground running on day one. To make sure you never miss a thing, set up Google news alerts for any companies on your target list.  You’ll then receive an email whenever that company appears in a news article, blog post, press release or anywhere else.  This will keep you in-the-know about new products or services, company announcements, industry issues and, of course, job opportunities.  This is also great info to have on the tip of your tongue while networking in your industry.

4. Join LinkedIn and use it every day. Many recruiters, headhunters, small business owners and corporate hiring managers are now recruiting solely through LinkedIn, so make sure you are taking advantage of every aspect of this social networking site. For many tips on how to stand out and get a job through social networking, check out my post on making the most of LinkedIn.

In addition to LinkedIn, lately I’ve been receiving a larger number of connection requests to other professional networks, such as Plaxo, Doostang and Keith Ferrazzi’s Greenlight Community. I don’t see any reason not to join several sites if you have the time to maintain an active presence on all of them. A job opportunity may pop up anywhere, so you want to cast as wide a net as possible.

5. Call or email 5 contacts every day. Often the job goes to the person who is in the right place at the right time.  Stay on recruiters’ and networking contacts’ radar screens by regularly reminding them of your availability and your fabulousness.  Some ideas: Check in every week or two with an additional idea for what you can contribute to the company, drop a note when you see the company or person mentioned in a news article (see #3 above), attend live events where you are likely to run into your contacts, comment on a person’s status update on LinkedIn or Facebook and check in whenever you have a new accomplishment to share.  Just be careful to remain polite and relevant: You want persist and stand out, not pester and stalk!

Click here for a list of other career experts blogging in honor of Job Action Day.

We’re doing lots of activities online that we once did in person. Shopping? Sure. Paying bills? Of course. But professional networking? You bet – and with some great advantages. Finding a job still is all about whom you know. After making a few online connections, you can multiply your network a lot faster than at a local business meeting.

Las year, I joined LinkedIn, but I didn’t really become active until a few e-mails hit my inbox – requests from colleagues asking me to link to their profile, which is a sort of on-screen résumé. After linking to only 12 people, I gained about 238,000 people in my network. Sure, they don’t actually know me. But I can easily search information about them and ask to virtually meet them through my 12 contacts, much like I would call “a friend who has a friend” to help me land a job.

I didn’t have to work hard to add 12 people; in fact, I’m only getting started.

Lindsey Pollak, speaker and author of Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World (HarperCollins, 2007), says the real benefit kicks in at about 50 contacts. LinkedIn stops counting at 500, says Krista Canfield, the company’s public relations manager. “It’s not a popularity contest.”

Read the rest of “World Wide Network” here.