One of the big trends in resumes is to use bullet points. Used sparingly, they can help attract eyes to key points. But unfortunately, too many resumes suffer from bullet point overload.

Using bullet points in every section, including profile, skills, education, certifications, job roles, etc., etc., is a sure-fire way to confuse eyes and create visual fatigue fast.Your page can quickly look like it’s promoting polka dots instead of you.

Start counting your bullet points on your resume. If you have upwards of 35 to 50 you are at risk of resume death by bullet point. You absolutely must limit bullet points to key information on your resume, rather than every bit of information in your resume.

So, how do you avoid Death by Bullet Point in your resume? It begins with style variation. Start by using different techniques to make information stand out.

• Perhaps a table can be used to highlight your skills
• In sections where you are highlighting job postions, use a subhead below the position title to emphasize a key component of that job role
• Consider using a different dingbat symbol (a diamond?) for areas such as Certifications, Training, etc.
• In areas featuring Education, try to eliminate bullets altogether. Use a combination of regular and italics fonts (School in regular, Program title in italics, etc)

With a little work, you can reduce your use of bullet points to about 15. Your revised resume will finally have fewer but key eye-catching bullet points that stand out!

Gregg McLachlan is a CPRW (Certified Professional Resume Writer) and a member of the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches. Learn more.

Traditional media advertising (newspapers, magazines, radio) is about push marketing. It’s all one way. Unfortunately, many businesses attempt to transfer this approach to social media.

Social media isn’t about push advertising. It’s not meant to be used for only tweeting about open time slots for a hairdresser. Or only tweeting about real estate open houses. If these are all you’re using Twitter for, you will end up with few followers. If I’m not interested in making a hair salon appointment, or visiting a real estate open house, I’ve got no reason to follow you.

Stop trying to have your Twitter stream duplicate your Friday print ad in the newspaper about weekend real estate open houses.

Now, change your Tweeting to be about your interests outside of work, your thoughts on customer service, or sharing events and tidbits about our community and you’ll have a much chance of engaging me (and many others).

Of course, tweeting about available timeslots for hairdressers, or real estate open houses can work if they represent a small fraction of your overall tweeting. But when they dominate your Twitter stream it’s a fail.

Twitter isn’t about being self-centred and self-serving. Stop pushing your business agenda. Start pulling us in with conversation.

It’s interesting that many of the best and most effective businesses on Twitter rarely push followers to visit their stores. Followers want to do that naturally because these stores are so darn engaging on Twitter.

I hear it almost every day. Organizations and businesses say “We need to start doing social media!”

Ugh. That sounds like you want to join a stampede-like crowd akin to the wildebeest migration across the plains of Africa. “Everybody’s doing social media, so we need to, too!” Stop looking at social media as doing. Start thinking in terms of what it truly represents. Here’s what you should be thinking when considering social media . . .

We need to be social on social media!

Approach your social media use this way, develop a plan and you’ll be on your way. It all starts here.

Just talking in terms of doing is so robotic and crowd-obsessed. Forget about doing something just because the crowd is doing it. Using social media to be social is why you want to jump in with both hands typing.

It’s a dreaded question. It makes any communications professional shout UGH! (silently, of course!).

Here’s the question: “Do I work for free?”

Here’s my answer: “Sure, I can do communications work for your business for free, as along as I can come to your business and get all kinds of stuff for free too.”

That usually ends the conversation. It appears that some business-to-business people only see ‘free’ as working one way. Funny, eh? Not really. Not if you’re in the shoes of a professional.

Here are 10 reasons why I don’t work for free:

1. When I do work for you, it’s designed to help your business market itself, increase sales, or any thing else that represents ROI. That’s my sweat and time to help you increase cashflow or look great. There’s a cost to doing that.

2. I complete exams, certifications and training to keep my skills fresh so clients benefit. I read books and have professional memberships too. These are all personal investments. Just like you, I require ROI too.

3. I write a blog. I tweet. I post on Facebook. I post on Pinterest. That’s where you’ll find my free stuff.

4. I run a business. Running a business costs money.

5. Long ago I learned that tired refrain of “We don’t have any money!” really means “We have money, we just don’t want to spend it on (fill in the blank).”

6. Just like you put a pricetag on everything you sell, I put a value on everything I do.

7. I’m not a big fan of ‘insult’ comedy.

8. Google can handle all your free needs.

9. I’ve spent a long time working on what’s inside my head. So, yes, it costs money to pick my brain.

10. When I do work for your business, it’s customized for your business. I invest my time to learn about you and your needs. Then I invest my time to create things tailored for you. All that time means you benefit big time in solutions that aren’t cookie-cutter in nature.

Most organizations build email and traditional mail marketing lists. But fewer organizations build social lists. It’s time to rethink your list building in the social media era.

Twitter is an ideal platform to build social lists. You can make your lists public or private. And you can build as many lists as you like.

Building social lists enables you to listen in to what users in that list are tweeting about. It’s this listening component that makes social lists so important. You can also use these opportunities to get involved in conversations. The brilliance of social lists is that you can get people to follow you back. Try doing that with a traditional mailing list. You likely won’t get many return letters….. OK, perhaps bounced emails!

You can build lists across demographics, supporters, politicians, colleagues, and industry professionals.

Keep in mind that the big difference between traditional mailing lists, email lists and social lists is that the latter is really better defined as a listening & conversation list.

If you haven’t started to check out Pinterest, I highly encourage you to take a peek. I’m sure you’ve already heard that Pinterest is visually-oriented. People are putting it to all kinds of uses to ‘show’ with images rather than ‘tell’ with text.

I don’t proclaim to be a Pinterest expert (actually, nobody can really call themselves an expert on this newbie social media platform just yet). But I can definitely see its value for sharing content.

Check out the various boards I have started on my Pinterest account, and especially my growing collection of social media infographics.  P.S. Pinterest is still by invite only. If you’d like an invite, just leave me a comment on this post!)

When was the last time you did an audit of the communications effectiveness of your Facebook fan page? Organizations and businesses often go to great lengths to create and maintain a fan page. Yet most overlook one important aspect: Can your fans, non-fans or potential supporters/donors/customers easily reach you?

The answer is often no. Sure, your fans can post on your wall and comment. And you’ll get a notification. If they dig around your fan page under your Info tab, they may even find contact information. But seriously, this all adds up to far too much clicking and too much searching.

There is a better way.

One of my favourite Facebook apps is Contact Me. It’s simple and free. Best of all, it places a Contact Us tab and professional contact form directly on your page. You can even customize the form with your own logo.

Non-fans can then easily see this tool and contact you. Fans can use it too.  But, most importantly, people don’t have to be logged in to Facebook to use it. It makes connecting with you easy. And that’s a big part of effective communication.

A contact form is a crucial aspect for most websites. Yet on social media like Facebook, it has become a forgotten must-have tool. It’s time to change that.

Facebook has announced that its new Timeline will be rolled out for pages (brands, companies) effective March 30. You can actually play with your existing page in the Timeline format now, but not publish it until you’re ready.

Most importantly, Facebook has issued its guidelines for what you can do with your cover image on your new Timeline page. There are restrictions, sorry to dash your hopes that you will soon be able to publish big ‘SALE’ graphics on your business or organization Facebook page.

Here are Facebook’s new cover image guidelines for Timeline pages for brands:

“Use a unique image that represents your Page. This might be a photo of a popular menu item, album artwork or a picture of people using your product. Be creative and experiment with images your audience responds well to.

Cover images must be at least 399 pixels wide and may not contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

All cover images are public, which means anyone visiting your Page will be able to see the image you choose. Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property. You may not encourage or incentivize people to upload your cover image to their personal timelines. “

Holding a media conference immediately sounds cools. And, hey, it seems so simple. Announce a date, time and invite the media. But I’ve attended many poorly staged events over the years, and listened to countless reporters return to the newsroom and describe a particular media conference as a big waste of time.

Before you ever begin to schedule a media conference you need to consider the pros and cons. Is a media conference right for your announcement / event and your organization? Today’s podcast takes a closer look at what you need to consider BEFORE you move forward.

There are a ton of differences between reporters in small and large markets. Here are the nuts-and-bolts quickie differences:

Small-market media reporters are jacks of all beats.

• They juggle multiple beats every day
• They typically produce more than one story per day
• They can typically react faster to story requests. This is because they are often pushed to produce content volume in newsrooms that are short-staffed
• They are also more likely to do rewrites of press releases because they simply don’t have time to do more thorough reporting
• Generally, small-market reporters are easier to approach because they are often looking for story ideas. If they keep busy by having their own story ideas, they avoid having editors dump undersirable assignments in their laps

Large-market reporters are usually more beat specific and often produce only one story per day.

• They are much more picky about what they will cover
• These reporters can receive dozens of media releases each day. They often get shoved to the sides of their desk
• These reporters are far more difficult to approach. They bristle at being told they SHOULD report a certain story
• These reporters (and their editors) have a much more stringent ‘filter’ for deciding what is and what isn’t going to be covered
• If you’re making a pitch, you’d better put your news editor hat on and be able to complete this sentence yourself, long before you make a pitch > “This angle is newsworthy and impacts a large audience because ……”