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If you read a lot of social media blogs you have most assuredly come across posts telling you how to get jobs in social media like this recent post on Mashable, 7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media. Advice is great, but let me give you a real life example of how I actually GOT my new job at HubSpot using social media.

The Background Story

My name is Kyle James and I was the Webmaster at Wofford College, a small liberal arts college in South Carolina, for the last two and half years. I've been reading blogs for years but as part of my New Years resolution for 2008 I decided to actually begin blogging on my own. Being a knowledge junkie and perfectionist and getting into something like blogging, I had to know absolutely everything about it. This included SEO, Analytics, Social Media and marketing.  I knew from running a college website that I needed all these things if I truly wanted to succeed. 

So back in January 2008 I founded .eduGuru, a blog about internet marketing for higher education. Higher education is a very specific niche that requires a unique marketing skill set. At the time, there were only a handful of truly excellent blogs out there on the subject, so the market was perfect for a new blogger. I spent many long days and nights those first few months learning everything I could about any and all subjects to make the blog successful. There are a lot of truths, but one I have firmly come to believe is that you have to write a hundred crappy blog posts before you finally figure out how to write a good one with proper semantic markup, clean urls, the right mix of keywords, and lots of other optimization factors. I also committed to getting out there in the social media scene to promote the blog by leaving comments on other blogs in the industry, engaging users in higher education social media and continuing to give back.

Getting a Job at HubSpot

Around late April I was reading a post on Marketing Pilgrim about their latest job postings and took a look. There were a lot of listings, but the one that stood out was the Marketing Maven position at HubSpot. I had been using Website Grader and reading their blog for months and those guys absolutely got it. I knew they got it because the advice they were giving worked and I knew it worked because it was helping me be successful on my own blog.
Things were worked out and I began doing part-time work for HubSpot by the end of May and became a big contributor in the customer forums and headed up running and supplying Links.Hubspot.com with content.  I also continued to grow .eduGuru and have since added five outstanding writers to the staff and become a prominent speaker at national Higher Education conferences including eduWEB, HighEdWeb, and Stamats. When I finally announced that I was coming on full-time with HubSpot, my fairwell post on .eduGuru provided another nice unexpected boost when it was picked up by ReadWriteWeb's Jobwire and really spawned the whole idea for this post. I felt completely unworthy, but through blogging and social media, things were really happening!

This week I started working full time for HubSpot and I'm very excited to be onboard in a full-time role. Although relocating almost 1,000 miles from South Carolina to Cambridge, MA was intimidating, social media came through again. I already have a network of people in the Boston area that I met through social media and keep up with on Twitter. My girlfriend and I were able to tweet the whole relocation process on Twitter using #kj-boston for a hashtag so our family and friends were able to keep up with us. We could also post pictures and events to my personal blog so I feel like I've been able to stay connected with everyone through the entire process.

What a crazy amazing time we live in. The world truly is flat!

What's Your Story?  Looking for a New Job?

So that's my's story. What are you doing through social media to advance your career? Leave a comment and tell us your story.

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