We’re excited to present this video of our CEO Will Scott speaking in a panel from the Search Insider Summit 2012. Moderated by aimClear’s Marty Weintraub, Social SEO: How Search Marketers Should Think About Optimizing Social examines the increasing social aspects of SEO and how branding with these tools can grow your business. Check out the full video after the jump!
Applying for a job is something that we all have to do at one point or another in our careers – unless you won the lottery at 18, or are an heir to a billion dollar empire where you can lounge on a beach in Cabo while waiters bring you Mai Tai’s all day. For the rest of us, the job market is something we will become all too familiar with. From crafting that perfect cover email to making sure your online presence is spick-and-span, here are a few tips you can use.
Now, there are probably a million and one tips on how to apply to a job correctly and that’s why they have an entire section at Barnes and Noble dedicated to it. However, there are a few particular mistakes that seem to pop up time and time again. A few of the following guidelines will help anyone out there in this Hunger Games-style job market, where every open position seems like a fight to the death.
You want me to pay attention?
All companies have different ways of accepting resumes/applications. Make sure that you apply for the position in the way they request, whether it’s via email, within the company’s website, or through a job search hub. You don’t want your potential future employer’s first impression to be of someone that can’t follow instructions.
Polish your social media presence to a professional shine
Your online image is important, and becoming increasingly more so in the 21st century. While being asked for your login information is unethical and potentially illegal, expect that anything you’ve left open for public viewing to be perused by potential employers and prune your profiles accordingly.
That’s not how it was supposed to look!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened a resume to only see it look as if the applicant fell asleep on their keyboard, with weird spacing and columns all out of whack. There is an easy fix for this: once you have formatted your resume the way you want it, save it as a PDF. This way anyone that opens it, on any software or platform, will see it exactly the way you intended it to look.
I’ve seen this before…
Generic cover letters are fairly obvious to spot and aren’t much cared for by the hiring managers. You want them to feel as if this is the only position you are interested in. This is why you want the letter to be customized. You can do this by mentioning the company and position, where you found the ad, and what qualifications you have that meet the mentioned requirements.
What company is this for again?
We all know applying for jobs isn’t fun and can be very time-consuming. But when you are sending an email applying to a post, DO NOT apply to every position you find in one email. When employers see this, they think that you are desperate and willing to take anything. This means send a separate email per company/position.
Dear Madam or Sir
Even if you are submitting via email, you still need a cover letter. And by cover letter, I don’t mean an autobiography. Keep it to about 3 paragraphs. This should be in the body of the email and formatted with correct grammar and spelling. Showing your excitement about the job and thanking them for their time can only make you look better.
These tips may seem like common sense to some people, but the mistakes are frequently made and can lead to an immediate weed-out. By following these quick fixes, you can expect to more effectively and efficiently stand from to your competitors.
Our CEO Will Scott is among a bevy of local SEO luminaries called in by Thunder SEO to discuss the recent launch of Google+ Local.
Search Influence was named in the first Flyover 50, a list compiled by Five Elms Capital to highlight the 50 fastest-growing companies in the central U.S. 
Topping the list is Appcore, a company based in Des Moines, which provides cloud computing infrastructure. To be considered for the inaugural Flyover 50, companies applied or were nominated, and the top companies were determined by a percentage of growth in revenue.
In order to qualify, a company’s revenue must have exceeded $1 million in 2011 and be based within a 20-state area in the central United States.
The 50 honorees are invited to attend an awards ceremony at the Mid America Corporate Growth Conference in Kansas City, Mo. on Thursday.
View the complete list of Mid-America’s fastest growing companies here.
Search Influence is a national, full-service online marketing company based in New Orleans. The largest online marketing company on the gulf coast, Search Influence employs 35 full-time employees and 40 contract writers to support hundreds of direct and white label customers. Search Influence was co-founded by Will Scott and Angie Scott in 2006.
Our hardworking CEO Will Scott got a shoutout in the writeup of the Mediapost Search Insider Summit today! Click here to see what Mediapost had to say about the event and a recap of Will’s comments on retargeting cookies and social content.
– friend me (f’rend mē): “to give someone access to your profile, wall posts, information, and photos… including those pictures taken of you drunk last weekend.”
But how many friends should we have? How many people should we allow to view our profile? Recently, businesses across America are requiring more and more job candidates to provide their Facebook username and password during interviews for employment. These corporate executives want to do more than a little digging into these candidate’s personal lives before saying “you’re hired.” You know — just to make sure they don’t belong to a cult, or certain fraternity, or social group, or political party, or gang. Totally legal right? But why stop here? In addition to providing Facebook logins, should these candidates just hand over the keys to their home and give these companies copies of their bank statements and complete medical histories?
Whatever happened to references from previous jobs? When a job candidate gives a potential employer a list of references, does it give them the liberty to call and ask all the personal and professional questions needed? Yes, of course. But who needs potentially inaccurate or hard-to-get-a-hold-of references when we have the vast slew of information available in Facebook… right?
According to an August 2011 study by The Atlantic , 45% of employers use social networking sites to screen potential employees, with 29% using Facebook specifically and 26% using Linkedin. Funny how the statistics are higher for a social site rather than a professional site.
Many employers argue that people interact more on social networks rather than in real life, and viewing their profile will give them a better idea of what kind of person the applicant is outside the interview. Although this statement may be true, Facebook officials are encouraging job candidates to hold their ground and withhold all private information from potential employers. Even The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has spoken out saying “People are entitled to their private lives.”
In an economy where getting a job is challenging enough, should we just allow businesses to have access to all aspects of our lives, even the ones that aren’t business related? Or should employers be happy reviewing our resumes, our talents, attributes, and our contributions to their company, and leaving this privacy violation out of it?
Search Influence CEO Will Scott has a chat with our friends at BtoB featured today, covering a variety of local search topics. Check it out right here!
A member of our Account Management team, Alison Ruth is a New Orleans native and always proud to swim home. She graduated from Louisiana State University in Mass Communication and Advertising. Alison held positions in several industries from advertising agencies to non-profits to hospitality, but especially loves working in advertising and marketing. She considers herself a New Orleans food enthusiast and knows how to bake a pretty mean King Cake. 
So what do you find yourself doing around here? Any particular favorite aspects of the job?
Most days I’m fighting to cross off every line on my To Do list (it’s a pretty great feeling when I actually do!). My number one priority is always keeping our clients’ SEO services on schedule and making sure their sites are reaching new heights on Google. I sometimes have to spend my days staring at spreadsheets for hours and trying to keep from going cross-eyed. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s go to do it! Some of my favorite aspects include seeing the progression of a client’s rankings when we’ve put in the work for them, and being able to show them how valuable Internet marketing really is! Oh, and I also love the office on Fridays at approximately 5:00pm, thanks to fellow Influencer Joe Luft.
Have you done any Internet or marketing work before working at SI? How’s the transition been so far?
My education background is in advertising, and I’m a twenty-something who grew up with computers, so that should tell you something about my experience with the Interwebz. I’ve worked at small ad agencies and even a non-profit where I was the communcations manager and developed their social media presence quite a bit, so I like to think I know a thing or two about Internet marketing. SEO is definitely new-ish to me, but so far the transition has been pretty smooth. I’m learning a lot about SEO and the people here are pretty cool!
Working at SI is pretty dang fun, but be honest — what would you be doing all day if left to your own devices?
When I think about an entire day with no responsibilities, a few things that come to mind (not necessarily in this order):
1. Sleeping late
2. Hanging out with my dog, Lila
3. Facebooking
4. Baking sweet delicacies
5. Eating said sweet delicacies
6. Exploring NOLA (yes, there are things about NOLA that even us natives are still discovering)
7. Watching silly YouTube videos
8. Tweeting about said YouTube videos
9. Traveling the world
10. Enjoying the company of family and friends
11. Laughing
Last, but certainly not least — if you were a traditional NOLA landmark, what NOLA landmark would you be?
Maybe a lesser-known “landmark” but definitely a NOLA staple, I’d be Hansen’s Sno-Bliz on Tchoupitoulas Street, the creators of the first shaved ice machine. It may be November, but I’m a self-proclaimed snoball connoisseur and lover of all things sweet and syrupy year-round. I’d probably devour a snoball in the middle of a snow storm (if we ever had one of those here), given the chance.
Try one of my all-time favorites from your local snoball stand and it just might change your life:
The classic: chocolate snoball stuffed (not topped) with vanilla soft-serve
NOLA favorite: pralines and cream snoball topped with condensed milk
Search Influence IMA and Content Team member Matt Buys started out in journalism after graduating from Michigan State in 2003. Newspapers were kind enough to fund his restlessness for several years. 
He worked as a reporter/editor/page designer for the Orlando Sentinel and Rocky Mountain News before switching exclusively to freelance writing in 2008. Over the past few years he’s lived in Chicago and San Juan, Puerto Rico. He still loves to travel and discover new places, but thinks New Orleans might be a long-term home for him.
A parenthesis comes to mind. I am known to interrupt with conversation-halting, absurd parenthetical comments. What can I say, it’s a gift.
I try to fight my snob tendencies when it comes to grammar. If you ask most chefs, they will tell you their favorite food is something greasy and messy, rather than a perfectly plated dish. Sometimes a butchered sentence is the funniest thing I read all day, so I should just learn to love it. But I still have to delete it.
My family is always discussing books, so my interest was probably inherited. Studying journalism seemed like a good outlet for that passion. I think the skills I picked up at newspapers are helping me cope with the pace of work at SI.
I thought about moving to New Orleans for years, but I always ended up somewhere else. Good food and music is really all I need, so I have been more than happy here so far.
Playing the guitar, listening to music and finding new places to eat are taking up most of my free time right now. Other than that, I’m just trying to meet new friends and have fun.
Are you now, or have you ever been a contract writer for Search Influence? If you answered yes, you’re in the right place, because this FAQ post can answer any and all questions you may have. If you said no, you can read all about our guidelines for freelance writers anyway. You just might learn something.
