I’ve been an avid reader of @ExtremeJohn’s blog since I started Blazing Minds nearly three years ago and one thing I have to say before I start is that his blog is one of those that is full of information, not only business, but also social media and much more.

Over the time that I have read his blog, I’ve learnt several things to do with WordPress and also discovered some rather useful WordPress Plugins that have helped with my blogging endeavours over the years.

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Image via CrunchBase

While all advice is telling them the opposite, Britons looking for work, either because they need a new job or want to get out of their current position are failing to embrace social media as a part of their jobseeking activities.

A survey carried out by recruitment agency Kelly surveyed around 97,000 people in 30 countries and found that Britain is in the 25 place for people exploiting resources such as LinkedIn and Facebook to look for jobs. Indonesia came at the top of the table with 49% of the survey respondents saying they searched for jobs using social media. That was only 20% in the UK.

What does that mean? Well, only 1% of people in the UK have found their current employment by using their contacts on social media. The reason people are reluctant to search and engage with social media is that that are afraid of the negative effects that this activity would have on their career, according to 26% of those surveyed while one third admitted to deliberately ‘self censoring’ themselves online.

Katie Ivie, HR director with Kelly Services UK points out that: “Now is the point that candidates should be developing a stronger on-line presence on professional networks to take advantage of the opportunities they have to offer and stand out from the crowd.”

Lets hope these figures improve as the use of web version 2.0 is only going to become more important as a resource driving the recruitment industry.

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Guest Blogging has recently come around as a new technique for communicating with other bloggers and getting your word out there!  This is the most important aspect of Guest Blogging!  Now the reason that using your social media profiles is so important is because, they allow you to get better outreach!

Most Guest Blogs usually offer you a Social Media link, and who cares if it is No Follow, that’s not what it is there for!  What you need to remember is that when someone recognises your name from a series of advanced posts, it is always a good idea to link to a Twitter, Sphinn, Facebook or Linkedin account!  Interestingly, this was something that I was horribly bad at doing and I generally linked back to our site or to a clients, which although was a nice benefit, didn’t really supply me with all that much.

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