Using online marketing to find your dream job 
A lot of people use the internet to look for new jobs these days. It works very well, as you can investigate a company online by visiting their website, and usually check out what the position you want to apply for is all about . This is one way of getting a new job online, but why not advertise yourself so that when people are looking for the services you can offer their company, they will be able to find you.
Alec Brownstein did something like this when he placed an ad on Google Adwords when the top New York creative directors Googled themselves. When they searched for themselves on Google they got an ad from Alec asking for a job, he got interviews with most of the guys he targeted as well as job offers, he now works for one of them.
This week we are going to discuss how to use a couple of online tools to advertise yourself to companies. We will show you how easy it is to set up your own website with no web development knowledge at all. How to start a quick ad campaign on Google Adwords and best practices to get good results from that PPC campaign. We will give you tips on how to apply SEO to your website to rank higher for specific keywords. We will also show you haw you can use social media to get the attention of companies that you can potentially work for.
This is all very easy to set up and with little or even no cost at all. All that is needed from you is creativity and you need to post unique content if you are going to interact with companies and if you want them to notice you. You need to stand out and show them how good you are.
So if you really want to take a different angle to getting a job and go after the companies you want to work for, check back the rest of the week and see how you can use the online marketing strategies to land your dream job.
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Google Maps
When I decided I wanted to write something about my favourite tools many applications popped in to my head from desktop applications to web based tools. I thought long and hard about what I actually wanted to write about and finally decided to write about Google Maps, a tool I use frequently to find directions and as of recent to view places I always wanted to visit using Google Street View. I have listed some of the features and uses I like best about Google Maps below:
Directions
Do you get lost easily? Google Maps allow you to get directions (driving or walking) between virtually any two points. Just search for your start destination and end destination (point of interests or physical address) then click the “Get Directions” button. Google then generates visual directions (shown with the blue line bellow Fig 1.1) and text directions (fig. 1.2) which shows you turn by turn directions.
If you do not like the directions Google Maps has generated for you or if you would prefer a different route, simply change the directions by moving the direction indicator to suit you by dragging it to a new point.
Fig 1.1
Fig 1.2
Street View
Ever wondered what it looks like at a destination or a point of interest before travelling there? Google Street View allows you to view a point easily by dragging the yellow man to the point you want to look at. Google will then place the Street View to the closest Street View position available to the point of interest you chose.
With Google Street View you can explore your surroundings in a 360 degree angle and move to another position within the canvas just by clicking on an available position. Street View is made possible by a series of stitched photos that have been taken by the Google Maps Vehicles and is only available in certain countries/regions.
Personalised Maps with Google My Maps
It’s never been easier to create personalized maps – log in to your Google account, create a map (public or unlisted) draw lines, add markers etc. Then personalize it even more by adding photographs, video (e.g. YouTube videos) or saving existing POI (Point of Interest) e.g. your favourite coffee shop. To learn more watch the Official Google My Maps video below.
Find Businesses
To find a listed business in a certain location is easy. Google allows businesses to add their business on Google Maps. Just enter a search phrase and hit enter to see a list of businesses in the immediate area. (Left hand side) You can then click on the business to view more information on the business e.g. telephone number(s).
Websites (Quick implementation)
Google Maps allow you too easily generate a map you can use on your own website. Just search for the point on the map you want to put on your website click link (as in the image below) select the HTML code to embed on your website (you can edit the canvas size of the map by editing the html width/height parameters) and paste it into your html code of your website. It will then display a canvas on your website of the location you chose to embed.
Google Maps API (for developers: Advanced implementation)
Google Maps has a wide array of Map API’s (application programming interfaces) you can use to implement advanced map functionality within your websites / applications.
The Maps API allows you to add your own overlay / multiple overlays which can contain your own data. For example you can create your own markers to show where you company’s branches are and display it on your website to help customers find you easily. You can also customize the map colours e.g. if you want to place focus on a certain element within a map you can highlight that element with a bright colour and give all the other elements darker colours. You can also give your markers custom icons (too make it more personal).
Google is well known for creating tools that are pretty useful and Google Maps isn’t any different. I found the Google Maps tool very advanced, easy to use and fast compared to other mapping tools/services out there. All that is left to say is – Give it a try.
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Tools to make your digital life easier
With the internet growing so fast the last couple of years, a lot of people now only use the internet as their main source of information. It is very comfortable and very convenient to get all the info you need on the internet via your PC, notebook, tablet or mobile phone. There is a problem however when we start to get all our information and communication through the internet and this is that it gets too much. You get an overload of information from a lot of different sources and that can lead to you not knowing where to start or you spend a lot of time going through non-relevant stuff. This week we are going to discuss a couple of tools to make your life easier when it comes to managing your digital life.
Staying in touch with friends, family and co-workers online has become a big part of the way communicate with each other. By using instant messaging services we can quickly chat to friends to invite them to a party or get an update on their situation. In the workplace it can be used for meetings or quickly sending files to other co-workers that are not in the same office and discuss all sorts of work related subjects.
One thing that I have found is that there are a lot of different instant messaging clients out there like Aim, ICQ, MSN, MXit and even Facebook, MySpace and Google has built in instant messaging into their services to keep you connected to all your friends. Now it is a big hassle to log into every social network which you belong to and also login to all the different instant messaging clients on your desktop just to stay in touch with your friends and co-workers.
Luckily you get tools to solve this problem for you. You can download a program like Pidgin that enables you to create accounts for all your existing instant messaging accounts and manage it all from one application, you can even install an add-on that will let you get your Skype contacts in there. There are also applications available that you can use on your smart phone to manage multiple instant messaging accounts in one.
So if you ever felt that all of these online services that are supposed to make our life easier are just making it more complicated because there is just too much to keep up with, keep watching our blog this week for more great tools and tips to help you manage your digital life.
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Old & The New
Technology today is evolving at an exceptional pace, if you look at things we take for granted today some of them didn’t even exist 10 years ago. Google the most popular search engine in the world is only 12 years old. Can you even remember how you used to find any information? It used to be quite a painful process of reading a lot of books which where probably outdated by the time you read it.
If you look at the modern day mobile phone these have really had exceptional advancements in the last couple of years. Apple really kick started this innovation when they released the iPhone. This was a phone that was in a different class, it included functionality that had never even been imagined by anybody. This also only grew as developer continued upgrading the functionality with every app they released.
Now Human nature has always been to avoid change. For some reason we have been programmed to avoid change like the plague. This however seems to be a characteristic which the younger generation has lost. Most of the young adults and younger generation are able to change the technology they are using as quickly as flicking a switch. This could probably be attributed to growing up in a environment where technology changed must faster than in the past. This has also probably driven innovation because of there being quite a big consumer group which would be willing to try new technology if it has benefits.
Now because of all the advances in technology and this human resistance to change we have seen the rise of battles between the new and old. The rest of the team will this week discuss some of the more famous battles at the moment. These include ebooks vs printed books, skype vs telephone, desktop computer vs laptops and the iPad vs laptops.
So check back to find out if it will be in with the new and out with the old. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed to stay up to date.
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Life without Search
Can you even imagine a world without search? Imagine having to find information on the internet without using the help of Google, Yahoo or Bing. That would be a very difficult task indeed. How would you have found information? Would online advertisement have been as relevant to web users as it is today? Would websites have looked differently?
Let’s face it – search engines have become a fundamental part of life in the 21st century. It enables internet users to find information quickly just by typing a few relevant keywords/search phrases. In fact I think if search engines didn’t exist, the internet and the way information is found would have looked totally different today.
Web portals would have played a more significant role. It would have been the best source to find information about various topics. Using this way to obtain information or addresses to other web pages would have been very time consuming and frustrating to say the least. There would have been a lot more printed information than there are today and conventional libraries would have been used more to find information.
Online advertising would have been limited to advertising on portals or content websites and because it would have been categorized advertisement and not keyword specific advertisement it would not have been as relevant to users as it is on search engines today. This leads me to believe that it would have been a more difficult task to convert a visitor to your website in to a lead as your bounce rate would have been much higher as a result of less targeted traffic.
Search Engine Optimization would not have existed as the optimization of web pages wouldn’t have made a difference in how people find a website. Thus the general structure of a website might also have looked different than the current one. Web designers would also have had more freedom in designing graphic rich websites as the limitations set by robots would not have limited them.
I think it’s safe to say that life without search is virtually impossible to imagine and I think search will continue to evolve alongside the internet becoming more advanced as time ticks by.
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