Facebook now has 800 million global users and is a behemoth that will soon transition from private to public ownership. As a user, it can be easy to think that your presence on Facebook is a benign one, but please note: the actions you perform on Facebook today can come back to haunt you, especially as you seek full-time employment.

Let’s take a look at seven of the chief mistakes college students make when using Facebook:

1. TMI — Too much information about yourself can lead to people stalking you. If you want to put up your birthday, that’s okay. Leave off your birth year and put little else up about yourself including where you live. Stalkers prey on FB users and if you’re a pretty young thing, then you’re vulnerable to being harassed.

2. Revealing photos — Never post photos of yourself that are revealing. Sexually suggestive pictures and photos of you in a drunken state reflect poorly on who you are. You may be able to delete those photos, but if they’re are copied and tagged by others, then you have no control over what happens to them.

3. Controversial groups — Never be ashamed of your beliefs, but just know that if someone takes exception with your much publicized involvement with the NRA or support for Planned Parenthood, these choices can affect you.

4. Political leanings — It is a fact that some people are too “out there” with their political opinions and that information can hurt their chances for employment. Speak respectively of people in the public arena even if you respectively disagree. FB can become a cauldron of anger for people who don’t know when to quit.

5. Send private messages instead — Posting on someone’s wall can be fun, but do you want everyone else to read what you wrote? Even if you have the ultimate in privacy protection, your information once written can be shared elsewhere. Write it in private if at all.

6. Too many friends — How many “friends” can you reasonably stay in touch with on FB? To be socially attractive, 302 FB friends is what you should have. If you have thousands, then people will see that you go well beyond the regular contacts. Network only with those you can help and those who help you.

7. Job information — If you use FB to network for a job, you need to put your work history, education details and other resume related information in full view. You don’t need to publish your entire resume, but you should include enough information to help recruiters know more about you.

Facebook is fun and can be a part of your daily networking experience. Drawing the line and cleaning up information that does not belong on your wall is essential for your career success.

lSee Also — 10 Twitter Tips for College Students

College students love Facebook and those students who are getting ready to graduate have started LinkedIn accounts. Both social media networks can be excellent ways for students to connect, but Twitter should not be overlooked. Twitter is the ultimate short messaging service, a 140-character method of connecting with the world. Done right, Twitter can help you make contacts, possibly leading to a job offer. Done wrong and Twitter could prove to be a disaster, one that could ruin your career aspirations if not handled professionally. Indeed, you’ll want to be as careful with Twitter as you are with other sites, taking care not to post incriminating personal details that could come back to bite you.

Be authentic — Too many people use Twitter for spamming purposes, immediately relegating themselves to sending tweets only among themselves. Use your real name or a recognizable nickname and be mindful of your audience. You can have fun, but keep your jokes clean and show yourself as someone who is helpful, not harmful.

Make your profile count — Too many Twitter profiles are weak, giving little information about the user. Your profile allows you to share 160 characters about yourself, so make the most of your limited space to create a winning profile. Writing for Freelance Folder, Salma Jafri offers eight tips on how to enhance your profile including using short phrases, keywords and adding in your personality. Define yourself or risk allowing others to define you!

Retweet with care — You may find a tweet that you really like and be tempted to retweet it without further inspection. Instead, go to the provided shortened link and inspect it for yourself. Some links are simply come ons, designed to send people to advertisers or, worse, to porn websites. Remember, your reputation is on the line — retweet with care!

Bait your readers — Inasmuch as you’ll want to carefully retweet, you’ll want to give people every reason to retweet your tweets. You can do this by “baiting” your readers, through creating tweets that are far shorter than the 140 character limit, one that utilizes a URL shortener, includes popular hashtags and abbreviates terms advises marketing expert Heidi Cohen. Cohen compares Twitter bait with link bait, providing the same sort of marketing approach with either method.

Use a Twitter client — The more tweets you offer up, the more likely you’ll get noticed. But tweeting all day long can be frustrating and time consuming. Instead, you can use a Twitter client such as TweetDeck or HootSuite to schedule your tweets. Instead of tweeting one post after another one, you can schedule your tweets to appear throughout the day. This method keeps you active online, but allows you to do something else. Importantly, by sprinkling your tweets around the clock, you’ll reach people in different time zones including folks who are on the opposite side of the world. Who knows, but that Singapore container company may find you and seek you out for an internship or full-time position.

Be relevant — One certain way to drive your Twitter followers crazy (and cause them to quit following you) is to post information that is not relevant. Leave out the Foursquare updates and be careful not to publish information that some might consider inflammatory. You might want to consider opening up a second Twitter account for your “fun side” and leave the main account for business contacts. Twitter doesn’t limit the number of accounts you can open although you’ll need a separate email address for each one.

Participate in Twitter chats — If you want to build authority, then participating in Twitter chats is the way to go. Such chats focus on a specific topic and usually meet at an appointed time once a week. You’ll exchange information and share specific points about the topic at hand, connecting with people just like you. This can be a great way to connect and learn. Check out this Google Doc for Twitter chat groups and schedules.

Twitter is certainly different from Facebook and LinkedIn, but can be integrated with the latter. By synching Twitter with LinkedIn, people who use LinkedIn can see your Twitter updates from that platform, enabling you to expand your reach accordingly.

Fly Thanksgiving Morning – In 2011, the busiest days to fly will be Friday, November 18 and the Monday and Tuesday following the holiday, Nov. 29 and 30. The slowest day will be on the holiday itself, therefore if you can get a flight before the crack of dawn, you can arrive home just in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Plan your flight back early Sunday morning and you’ll avoid the worst crowds, giving you 2-3 days to spend with family and friends.

Travel Light – If you can’t carry it on, then don’t bring it with you. Most airlines allow for one carry-on plus a laptop or purse. That means you must stuff whatever you have in these two bags or risk paying $25 or more each way per bag, killer fees for the budget-minded traveler.

Check Website Specials – Travel consolidators such as Hotwire.com may offer the lowest rates, but those rates are often just as low right on the airline’s website. If you need to fly from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Chicago and can leave the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving, you can fly for as little as $99 one way, plus fees. Return the following Tuesday and you can pay as little as $69, plus fees. Your total cost for this round-trip visit home is $207.

Research the Consolidators – Just in case, keep an eye on the consolidator websites to keep tabs of fairs. If a flight isn’t full at a very much off-peak hour, the airline may be willing to reduce the price of its open seats to fill capacity. Last minute booking may work to your advantage here.

Cash in Those Points – Not every credit card or miles club will black out important holidays. If your parents have the points, you may be able to snag a free ride home for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas break. Contact your airline for restrictions.

If you’re flying coast-to-coast, your best bet could be a red-eye flight that takes you from the west coast to the east coast overnight. Those flights often have seats available, with discounting possible even during major travel periods.

See Also — SayFunTravel.com: Search for the Lowest Fares

If you’re looking for way to increase your Twitter following without attracting spammers only, there are five steps you can take to ensure that you’re worth following:

1. Offer Information — Your profile should say something about you and include keywords that can help people find you. One of the most important words or phrases is the name of your school. Mention your school, your major and some of your interests, and find or make a background image that tells people something about you. For example, if you’re an astronomy major, a solar system background can help you get noticed.

2. Offer Advice — How much advice can you offer with just 140 characters to play with? More than you think! You can split your advice up into segments and post these one right after another. Not at once so that people take you as a spammer, but 1-2 minutes apart. Use a desktop client such as HootSuite to schedule your tweets, allowing you to collect your thoughts before uploading your tidbits. Be interesting — if you have unlocked the secret code to your favorite XBox game, then let people know how you did it.

3. Offer Assistance — Twitter is a community of people who tweet, but also retweet messages. Retweeting is important, because it shows that you care about what other people say and have found their tweet or link to be of value. People will follow you if you actively give and take with Twitter, and help you gain access to their followers too. Who knows, the H.R. guy at the company you like could be one connection away from someone you helped.

4. Offer Friendship — Social media seems to be so unsociable, at least when it comes to face to face contacts, right? Yes and no. It is easy for some people to hide behind a social media wall, but it is just as easy to reach out and befriend someone. Do so without an ulterior motive — demonstrate that you care and value this person’s Twitter activities. As far as face to face meetings go, that may come later when you both appear at the same social media convention.

5. Promote Thyself — Take care of the first four steps and you’ll have much more liberty to promote yourself. At this point, you’re a known quantity and just the person others are following and will recommend to their friends. Go ahead, send out some tweets to let people know that you’re looking for work. Or, wanting to meet up at a football game. Or, whatever. Your credibility allows you to push the envelope, provided that you avoid spamming and know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em.

Once you’re established on Twitter, don’t forget to move over to LinkedIn and update your information there. To add your Twitter account to LinkedIn, visit “Edit My Profile” and click “Add Twitter account” next to the Twitter field. Twitter will ask you to verify your account name and password. Once the account is verified, you’ll be asked how you’d like to share your tweets on LinkedIn. Once your accounts have been joined, you can make changes by clicking on “edit” adjacent to your Twitter name.

Resources

10 Twitter Tips for College Students

Do Your Professors Use Twitter?

Using Twitter to Land Your Next Job!

There are some excellent and highly useful ways for you to make Twitter work for you this academic year including the following:

1. Find a reference — People tweet about anything which means that someone, somewhere may be discussing Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution. Plug in select key words and see what pops up. Chances are you’ll find a link to an article or view someone’s profile who is also an expert in what you want to know.

2. Keep in touch — Tech savvy professors love Twitter and some encourage their students to stay in touch by tweeting. This can be a good option if you need an appointment with your prof and haven’t heard back from him by email. PM your prof and see how quickly he responds to your request.

3. Learn about cancellations — If class is canceled, how will you know about it? Ask your prof to keep everyone informed if a weather delay, sickness or a cancelation changes plans. Avoid the trek to school by being notified instantly.

4. Share stuff — Use a URL shortener to share links with people in your circle. This can be helpful if you’re working on a group project and need everyone’s input. Drop in a link, leave a note and check back for responses. Your prof might allow you to do this in class too as a way to share ideas.

5. Track deliveries — A Twitter tool, TrackThis (usetrackthis.com), makes it easy for you to track the delivery of the books you rented this semester. Follow your package as it makes its way from the warehouse to your house or dorm, knowing precisely when it is was left at your front door.

6. Update your profile — Your profile gives you 160 characters to tell everyone about you. Put in college related data to find your class mates as well as others who attend your college.

7. Create a list — One way to certainly follow the people you want is to create a list and put in everyone from your class who tweets. Your prof may already be doing this — are you following everyone you need to follow?

8. Follow the pros — Particularly helpful for upper classmen is to follow professionals including those people you would like to work for some day. Chances are they have too many followers to pay you scant notice, but one of their operatives may find out about you and your interest in the company. Update your profile to professionally reflect who you are. Provide a link to your LinkedIn resume.

9. Block spammers — Twitter can get crowded out by spammers which means you must find ways to keep your account under your control. Simply block spammers and update your account regularly to avoid such relentless bilge.

10. Schedule tweets — Tweeting on the go is what most people do, but scheduling your tweets can be helpful too. For example, if you’re planning to watch the big game on a Saturday afternoon at 3, then tweet “I’m watching my school take on Big U. right now,” and set the tweet to appear at the appointed hour. You’ll be sent a notice to your email and other accounts reminding you to drop everything and watch the game.

Twitter’s usefulness and reach seems without limits which means you can reach up and reach out to people around the world. Use Twitter to communicate with students across the globe, making a difference one tweet at a time.

Before the advent of the Internet, it was often difficult to find in-depth information about what college life was really like for students. Of course, it was easy enough to ask the college for a curriculum guide. Students could find out about the acceptance rates, the number of students at that school and other boring academic information, but this didn’t always give students sufficient information to make an informed decision.

It was left to the student to actually visit the school and speak to other students or graduates to learn a little more about the actual reality of life at that school. Questions like what the food is like, or what the weather might be like, or even the nightlife, student accommodation and parking situation. These things count to a student considering spending four years of life somewhere away from home.

These days the Internet makes it much easier to find the right college to suit any student’s needs. Social media sites now give students access to speaking with previous students of a particular school to learn about student life, the college in general, or even learn more about available accommodation nearby.

So here are the top 7 ways to use social media to find the ideal college:

1. YouTube

YouTube has a very helpful Education section that is a great option for students wanting to see videos from various universities, colleges and schools. It’s easy enough to search for interviews with current and previous students of that school, various amenities around campus, and even videos of actual lectures from classes.

This is an extremely cost effective way to get a real view of what life is like within a particular college you’re considering, as you won’t need to worry about the potentially high costs of traveling to a school some distance away.

2. College Prowler

College Prowler is a college reviews site written by students specifically to help out new or potential students. Search for only the aspects that interest you, or cross-reference your selections with tuition costs and surrounding amenities. This is a great way to compare options.

There are almost 7,000 schools listed and ranked according to various parameters, plus thousands of reviews and student editorials for each. Some of the ranking parameters include academics, campus housing, nightlife, diversity, campus dining and more. It should be much easier to narrow down your choices and come up with the ideal school to suit any student at all.

3. Communiversity

Communiversity is a social media site dedicated to allowing students to share their experiences of campus life for the benefit of others. Students are encouraged to enter photos and videos along with textual accounts of their school lives.

The site is set up using a familiar ‘Wiki’ format, so most students should find it very easy to get around and find exactly the information they’re searching for. It’s also very easy for past students to log in and edit existing entries, add more in-depth information or correct any incorrect entries.

4. The University Review

The University Review is a very useful review site that allows students to rate and rank various schools across 10 different categories. Some of the categories include academics, campus & facilities, dining, housing, parties & nightlife, Greek life and more.

There is also an option for students to comment about the school using a ‘Pro’ or ‘Con’ commenting style. Users can opt to leave a positive, negative or neutral comment that allows the database to come up with a rank and a score for that particular school.

5. StuVu

StuVu is another site featuring college campus reviews written and submitted by students. Where this site stands out above the rest is the attention to detail.

The site allows users to view at a glance the actual stats for graduates, financial costs, programs or majors, enrollment numbers and level of financial aid received by current students. A separate tab shows reviews submitted by college students at that school, but it’s the video section that really helps a potential freshman to understand far more about campus life.

6. Campus Buddy

Campus Buddy is a social media site that allows high school students to connect with current college students at schools they have an interest in. The site uses an extension of Facebook to connect students together.

Students are encouraged to link a Facebook account to the various colleges they’re interested in. Once this is done, it’s quite easy to visit the pertinent pages for each of the schools being considered and view rankings and reviews from current college students.

7. Unigo

Unigo is another site dedicated to student reviews and ratings for various colleges around the country. Designed to make it easier for future freshmen students to make an easier decision about which schools to consider, the site covers quite a lot more than most others in terms of ranking categories.

For example: along with most other sites of its kind, Unigo offers reviews on academics, campus life, night life, tuition costs and other aspects you’d expect to find. What makes it stand out is that it also includes reviews on aspects of college life not often talked about, such as the drug and alcohol culture at that school, any political activity and how accessible various professors are.

Author Information

Lior Levin is a consultant to an MA in Israel program for political science studies and also works with an MA in security program at a Tel Aviv university.

Twitter is one of the most popular social networking websites, with tens of millions of people using it to advertise their businesses and for linking up with others socially. There are certain Twitter tips that you can use to enhance your experience, allowing you to utilize 100 percent of your Twitter account.

Here are 5 tips you can use to help make Twitter a great tool for your marketing efforts:

1. The use of hashtags – Including a hashtag (#) on a comment or status which you have posted that relates to an ongoing event or a popular topic will ultimately make the status appear on the search results of anyone who searches for that topic. Hashtags.org helps track the frequency with which a hashtag is used, informing you of how popular a hashtag is.

2. Delete tweets that you do not need – You should always remove tweets that you accidentally posted, but did not want to post or simply wish to have removed fro the Twitter stream. This can be done by clicking on the image of a trash can that is on your homepage on top of your update.

3. Utilize the Twitter customer service tool – Twitter is one of the best and most effective ways to communicate to others if you have a complaint or a comment about any business. Most medium and large organizations look for tweets about their operations and if you mention what problems or experiences you had with them; you just might get a faster response by tweeting your situation.

4. Make your URLs short – Because every one of the 140 characters that you use counts, it is advised that you make your URLs shorter to leave more room for your message. There are third party services like Ow.ly and Bit.ly that can shorten your URLs accordingly.

5. Avoid broadcasting your location every time – It is understandable that you would want to share your tweet location especially when you’re visiting someplace fun, but only do that on occasion. Click on your profile tab, choose “edit your profile” settings and then check the box for “tweet location” to allow your tweets to identify where you’re tweeting from.

These five Twitter tips should enhance your experience and help your followers, allowing you to maximize your influence with this giant social networking website. Twitter is favored by many college students and is a tool you can utilize on behalf of your company.

Deal of the Day

For those of you not familiar with Groupon it is a “deal of the day” website that launched in November 2008, serving more than 300 markets and 35 countries as of March 2011. These deals are targeted locally which means that if you’re in Philadelphia, the deal is for your area only and covers such bargains on places to eat, entertainment, things to do, places to go and the like. A dazzling price is dangled before Groupon faithful daily, but it goes beyond a bargain: it has to be a great product or service as stated on its website.

Admittedly, my use of the website has been more recent and I haven’t bitten…yet. Oh, the temptation is there especially when I find a 52 percent discount to the “North Carolina Museum of History” being touted. Yes, I can get in to this museum for free, but with this offer my family gets into ticketed events for free. Moreover, we’re eligible for discounts on museum store purchases and on museum sponsored trips, tours and camps.

Major Discounts

And that is the remarkable appeal of Groupon: discounts of 50 to 90 percent on quality products and services.

The Groupon model is worth exploring from a business angle as it offers protection for retailer and consumer alike. Just one coupon is provided locally daily and everyone can come out a winner. The way it works is simple too.

For example, a theater may want to ensure that opening night is a success thus it offers its best seats, retailing for $100 for just $40, representing a 60 percent discount. On a predetermined day, the offer is emailed by Groupon to everyone in proximity to the theater and posted on Groupon’s local site. Word spreads virally as people forward the email, post the information on Facebook and Twitter or through other social media websites.

Although the “deal of the day” may only be featured for one day, deals are usually available for a few days or until the allotment has been filled. Let’s say the theater makes 100 seats available — people are given a certain amount of days to make a purchase before the offer is completed or the seats are sold. Groupon and the theater split the $40 and opening night is packed with people who enjoy a huge discount and, hopefully, raved on and on about the show.

Cashing In

Groupon customers cash in their deals by printing out a voucher or by bringing it up on their mobile devices, presenting it to the business when they want to redeem it.

Is there a catch? Just one: a minimum number of sales need to be made before everyone can enjoy a discount. For example, if the theater absolutely must have at least 30 seats sold, then the discount won’t be offered if just 23 people show interest. Of course, that is what makes Groupon special: interested users will spread the news to everyone so that they can get a discount. Mob or mass appeal is what Groupon is all about: explain that to your psychology professor and see what she has to say.

As for deals for college students, you may do as well if not better by flashing your student I.D. If not, you have Groupon to go to the next time you want to order $40 worth of pizza for you and your friends and get it for half price.

Adv. — For more deals, visit nBuy Shopping Plaza where more than 5,000 retailers are open for business.

Literature has given us one of our most adept “wiggle out” role models…Tom Sawyer. Learn from his example how to get out of doing things that are less than thrilling.

1) When you are faced with an unpleasant task sometimes convincing somebody else that it is not so bad and maybe actually fun is a great tactic.

The “misery loves company” approach serves a two-fold purpose. When the burden is shared the task is diminished and the time passes faster. Often the draftee will be so engrossed in the project that they will not even notice that your participation is somewhat less than active.

Even if you can not totally wiggle out, at least having someone to talk to who can also get the job done is a double bonus. It’s worth a try. Bribery works too. You can offer to keep them company on the next project.

2) Stand your moral ground. If you really don’t believe what you are being asked to do is in your best interest or your regular comfort zone, don’t be shy about expressing your reservations. People will respect someone who has firm beliefs and stands by them (or at least make it sound good).

3) Use psychology. Tap into a reason you are sure the requesting party will understand and use it to get your “get out of jail free” card.  For example, you can’t go to that business meeting due to illness in the family or a prior commitment to do volunteer work for a worthy cause. If your excuse seems to come from a good place, rather than a selfish one you stand a better chance at escaping unscathed and in good graces.

4) Use the barter system. Trade your time for a friend’s time. There may be skills that come really easy to you that a friend finds a real struggle and vice versa. Often a chore that seems positively heinous to you might be something that is actually quite enjoyable for your friend. If you can’t barter time and skills then you just might have to find it worth your while to actually pay somebody to handle it for you.

5) Confess and be vulnerable. Explain with conviction why you really don’t want to do what is being asked of you. Many times your candor can make quite an impression and elicit a sympathetic response that would not occur, should you just come off as selfish or lazy. When you appeal to somebody’s sense of understanding and compassion it’s like the old adage “you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar” (not that anybody in their right minds would want to attract flies, so I don’t know where that came from!)

6) Leave town!! You can deal with the fallout when you get back.

Author Information

Vincent King is a ghostwriter who excels at helping others wriggle out of their most dreaded writing tasks. You can follow him and the rest of the Ghostwriter Dad gang on Twitter!

Public domain photo obtained via Wikipedia.

Time is most definitely of the essence for high school seniors who are preparing for mid-terms and the last leg of their education. At the same time, college bound students still have some preparation to do if they are to attend the school of their choice this coming fall:

1. Winnow the list — Early admission students know where they’ll be going next fall, but the majority of high school seniors still have their options open. That’s not a bad thing and given how competitive admissions at some schools can be, having strong second and third choices is necessary. Now is the time to rank your top choices and move the rest of the schools to the back burner. Plan to write essays and make your final visits well in advance of your application deadlines.

2. Finish your work — You may have an important senior project hanging over your head, something that isn’t due until the final weeks of school. Instead of adding more pressure to you this spring, use the next few weeks to get your project started and on the road to completion. Besides, you’ll want to spend extra time hanging with your friends who you may not see again until your 10th anniversary reunion if ever again.

3. Volunteer some more – Do you have time to take on one more assignment? Maybe not. But, if you do, use that time to volunteer at school, at your church or in some other capacity. Volunteering builds community mindedness and is a good thing to include with our college application.

4. Attend the prom — You’ve been thinking about attending the prom this year, but just aren’t sure. Date or no date, just go…this event can be a real memory maker, something you’ll look back on with pride, with no regrets, years down the road.

5. The bucket list — From the movie of the same name, there are at least a handful of things you want to do before receiving your diploma this spring. Make up a list of fun stuff including pulling pranks (did I suggest that?!), ask someone out — rejection be damned!, write an article for the school newspaper, go on a school trip… Why am I thinking up things for you?

Lastly, prepare to have everyone sign your yearbook and leave sweet comments on your class’s Facebook page. Facebook may not be forever, but as for your yearbook? Yeah, that will get you noticed when you hit 50.