We are all über-connected. For most of us, it’s completely expected that our potential bosses are going to look at our Facebook photos before the job interview [note to self: un-tag all those pictures from last month at Final Friday], read our Twitter feeds for potentially alarming overtones, and Google us to find that terrible, terrible editorial we wrote for the newspaper in undergrad. The more savvy of us, of course, have figured out that if we’re active on the Internet - blogging, tweeting, Tumbling, Facebooking, Favring, Flickring, and Digging - we can harness the power of organic search to become a recognized Internet presence, and hopefully garner the attention of a firm that we love and we want to work for.

But it’s a seductive game, one in which you have to pick your battles wisely. Here’s a list of things to consider when

  • What is everyone else doing? This can be a double-edged sword, because it’s tempting to make a direct web copy of a web idol’s presence and expect to have the same result. But it’s useful to look at the people who are successful where you’d like to be successful, and look at what’s worked for them. Havi Brooks is a professional coach/yoga instructor/business advisor, but her blog is filled with anything but normal business-speak [just look at her business partner]. Nubby Twiglet, an amazing Portland-based graphic designer, maintains a blog filled with design advice and samples, but also photos of her outfits and her exploits traveling around with a a posse of other fashion bloggers. In both cases, their blogs show that they’re very, very skilled in their fields, but that they’re also not robots - they have personalities and interests outside of work that end up making them better at what they do.
  • Consider your input/output ratio. What do you put into it, and what do you get out of it? How is it likely to help you, and how much can you use it to help others? Web 2.0 newbies might want to jump in headfirst, putting a ton of energy into barraging the Internet with how awesome they are via tweet, tumblog, and bookmark, but they’ll soon find that most of the valuable networking contacts they get and maintain come from only one or two channels. Figure out what those channels are, and then capitalize on them. I’ve met some of my clients through Twitter and my own blog. A good friend of mine who does video art and installations meets almost all his collaborators through YouTube and Delicious.com. And an acquaintance back in New York whose Tumblr is utterly fantastic ended up getting a full-time job - as a Tumblr staffer.
  • How much of a web presence can you reasonably maintain? Remember, web 2.0 is all about the exchange. So if you’re spending your web time yelling as loudly as you possibly can, people may notice, but they’ll do their best to ignore you. On the flip side, though, if you use the web to maintain an engaging exchange - giving as well as taking - your presence is a lot more likely to benefit everyone, including yourself. So if you don’t have the time or the patience to maintain a dialogue via blog or YouTube or Delicious, consider something more minimal like Twitter or Tumblr.

Do you use web 2.0 to get gigs or promote yourself to employers? How do you do it? What works? What doesn’t?