This can be a huge hurtle for college kids that are looking to jump into an industry. Podcasting is a great springboard to build a resume and show a future employer that you don’t just wait at home for the call backs, but work the industry to better yourself and others. Although podcasting is relatively inexpensive and almost anyone can sit down and figure it out, very few will attempt to do it and that can make you different. Those that have found themselves recently unemployed can share their experiences and lessons in their career with those around them.

Does giving information away for free allow others to absorb the information and take away potential jobs from you? Potentially, but when they go up against you in an interview who is better suited? The one that learned it from a podcaster or the host of the show? Think about it. You’re helping them, but you were the one that went out of your way to build a show from scratch to present to the masses.

There are thousands upon thousands of podcasts on the Internet, many which are bad and a few that excel at what they attempt to deliver. You don’t have to be a rockstar, web celebrity or genius to find yourself a niche in a market. The goal isn’t to build the next podcasting empire, it’s to show employers and yourself that you won’t take being jobless sitting down. What sounds better to an employer, the individual that has been job hunting for months and just can’t find anything or an individual who hunts for jobs while creating their own “radio show” about the industry.

Your podcast might be on recent news and events in the industry or perhaps an education show where you spread your current knowledge to others. You don’t have to have a PhD or a masters of business to define a space for yourself; podcasters are individuals that have found a passion for a topic and want to bring that passion to others.

Think of podcasting as a gateway to a career in the field you’ve worked or wish to work. You can use it as a bridge to gap the sea of humanity and sameness to one of individual drive and motivation. Employers want career driven people that show strength and desire to learn new topics and to share their knowledge with a strong team of people. Podcasters grow to have key qualities needed for such a job: public speaking, presentation skills, motivation, planning, up-to-date knowledge and the ability to complete a project without micromanagement.

A podcaster plans shows in advance, releases on scheduled intervals and provides content that is needed or desired by others while constantly watching trends, fielding questions and learning along the way. That sounds like the template to a quality employee, doesn’t it?

You don’t need a large budget to start your first podcast, especially if you’re doing it alone or with a few local folks. Getting yourself a microphone and, optionally a mixer, is a great way to start to build a high quality audio show. With a budget of under $200 and a mildly powerful PC/Mac you can setup a show. You may opt to find a free service to host the audio content or host it on a small pay service like Libsyn.

The world needs more podcasters to talk about political science, software development, web design, art, photography, childrens programming and so many other great fields of study. A school teacher looking to find a job can start up a show to entertain younger children or teach them topics to advance their learning in school. The options for podcast topics are endless.

So, what are you doing in your free time? Perhaps you should focus a bit more on being outstanding.

Gary is having a child soon and this is a life changing event; beautiful and fun but changing all the same. Add to that the popularity of his show, speaking gigs and all the work that goes into the day-to-day life of retail, there are only so many hours in the day — there is only one Gary. Gary preaches both “love your family” along with “love your job” and most of all “hustle” but too much of any one thing and something has to give.

The big “Gary V” has been a role model for the little guy growing a brand and becoming a “web celebrity” (but not an A list celebrity mind you!) I’ll admit it, I learned a lot from watching Wine Library TV and used the format to launch EverydayDrinkers.tv which is much like a WLTV for cocktails. Many of my viewers have said “so, you’re an @GaryVee fan aren’t you?” However, I’ve learned a lot from Rhed Pixel as well, in relation to lighting, video formats and how to launch a show but people only see the signature “Gary V” in the content. This is because Gary’s shares many of the same qualities that I’ve lived with for years: passion, intensity and the need to meet your own standards and goals.

He says “hustle,” but I believe the next few months we’ll see less e-mail responses from him along with a slight slow down in his social media presence. I believe this is why he’s using user comments on his latest episodes, to redirect some of the more difficult responsiblities of responding to every person by allowing a few key viewers their 5-seconds of fame on his show. This will allow people to “forget” the lack of e-mail responses by trying to get their commet listed on the show. It also helps inprove the quality of comments because “you rock” isn’t a worthy show shout out.

I think he’ll begin answering the most meaningful of e-mails while simply reading the others (without responses) or farming out an in-house e-mail reader to help him out with day-to-date e-mail. Perhaps he’ll focus more on mass mailing community news letters to keep in touch with people through news letters, thus avoiding the single-instance replies. He’s already mentioned the difficulty he’s had keeping up with e-mails on twitter.

As his fame grows he’ll hit the same brick wall Leo Laporte hit. Niche markets can still have thousands upon thousands of viewers and subscribers – one man cannot carry the world upon his own shoulders. When you breech 100,000 viewers and your inbox is constantly full of 1000 new e-mails, what can you do? You need to take a realistic view and realize you can’t please everyone all of the time.

I’ve read some of the comments, had a presence in some of the UStream live broadcasts and I see a pattern: a large portion of his fans do nothing more than scream “you rock” or become the first to post about how right he is or that he’s “the man.” That’s wonderful, fans are great for your show and your ego but you really don’t have to respond to them all, do you?

We’ve seen this happen with small music bands as well (anyone remember when Dave Mathews used to let you plug into his sound board for personal recordings?). Like a brand, Gary and his products will grow and he’ll find it harder and harder to touch every single soul along the way. Having a child arriving and “loving his family,” Gary is going to have to make some hard decisions in life, do you respond to another 1000 emails and “hustle” or do you rock your baby to bed instead?

Success is a bitch. But I’m happy for him just the same.

The Internet is not only a place to find information about products, it is a place to build information about yourself for others to learn about you. The trick to this seminar will be covering all the major disciplines by giving them relevant information that could potentially change their lives. The methods of promoting yourself with social media as a teacher entering the field is not the same as a student in broadcasting, geography or software development.

We’ve got to put reality first, students graduating from college this year are entering a market where extremely talented and experienced folks are being laid off due to budget cuts. How does a student walk into the “real world” and get a job in an economy where the unemployment rate is rising a percent at a time? For this, there is no clear answer, but there are other solutions to building your reputation and experience so you’ll be a valuable asset when hiring freezes thaw.

Students should create accounts on a few key social networks, such as Linkedin. For the Facebook and Myspace generation, this should be a fairly straight forward process, except, rather than showing people what your favorite music may be, you’re showing them where your focus and talents can be found. Students should be building their linkedin profile along side their resume and link up with all their friends on the social media site so that you can review each other and explain “why” your friends are worth looking into — you scratch their back and they’ll scratch yours.

Plenty of headhunters use Linkedin and like site to farm for new talent. Market yourself, build a profile that is both desirable to potential employers, headhunters and friends alike. Believe it or not, a potential new hire at a company may be inspected through a “background search” involving pulling up profiles on linkedin and/or google to see what you say you know and what others are saying about you.

Broadcast and communications major should be using twitter to build their fan base and audience, promote products you love (for free) to try your hand at building yourself and your personality. You’ll want to build a large quantity of followers so you can promote yourself to them when the time is right. You may use that audience to “crowd source” (ask them questions) when you do get your first job, or perhaps use it to ask folks if anyone is looking for your talents and, in general, make friends with folks of like interests – this can be a handy tool in your future.

Students who plan to become teachers or explore further avenues of education can start practicing now. How? Get yourself a microphone and computer and start podcasting your talents. If you’re looking to find a career in biology and you’re having problems getting that job, start by podcasting some educational shows about biology, this may be audio or video depending on your budget and willingness to promote your own brand.

Creating your own video or audio podcast will grow your experience along with give you real life technological advances over your competition. When going into an interview to get a job as a science teacher you can either say “I graduated six months ago but I’ve not found a job” or you can say “While looking for a job I’ve started an audio show teaching listeners about weather, cloud formations and natural disasters, I’ve got a thousand listeners interested in the content.” You can build niche markets quickly and get dedicated fans that are interested in learning about new topics and concepts. Use what you’ve learned for students in a classroom when teaching students remotely. Your potential employer will no doubt be impressed with your focus, effort and passion compared to that other kid that watches History Channel while eating nachos and waiting for call backs from schools.

There is a great deal of potential to get your name known, be found by potential hires and discover new experiences and technologies you never thought were possible. You’ll gain experience in across many fields including communications, networking, media recording and promotion regardless to your actual major. Who knows, you may find yourself interested in something completely unique and different, something you didn’t learn in school.

Those are just a few ideas that I’ll be talking about in the 45-minute presentation at Keene State College in the moutains of New Hampshire. I wish I had that knowledge when I graduated!

A few folks have been disgruntled at the effort of promoting yourself on every social media site and getting very little result. For instance, I’ll post my videos on digg.com and receive six hits for a specific show, only two to four “diggs” from those six leads. Then people will say, “well, it’s not worth my time to only get six hits for posting my shows on digg.”

It is worth your time.

People get too hung up watching internet celebrities pimp their shows on one site and get 10,000 hits from the exposure. Everyone else has to fight one person at a time, this is how you grow. If you’re not willing to put in the 2-minutes of effort to post your show on digg or other social media sites to get one or two referrals than you’re going to struggle with success. You might as well quit now.

One new user may find your content interesting. Why else did they click the link to go there? If you get no referrals than you have no chance to obtain an audience but if you get one, just one, you now have a chance to build a fan. Six users gives you six times the luck in building a fan. A single fan can tell their friends about the show, send the link to a buddy or sit down and listen/watch your content in the office with co-workers or at home with family and share the experience together.

It all starts with one person in your audience. After you get a few dedicated folks you’ll know if your content is something people are willing to return to view. If they are, it’s only a matter of time before you’re audience grows from one to one-hundred and beyond.

No matter what the effort, every single encounter is a chance to establish a relationship with a new fan.

There are opportunities on the Internet which would utilize our own creative thinking. Everyone can build their own niche of the web to call their own. Then, after you think about it, you need to do it. I’ve met many individuals that want to do great things but so few are ready to put in the commitment. Worse, I think, deep down inside, they’re afraid to fail.

When you want to put yourself on the Internet you’re putting yourself in a situation to be laughed at, flamed and be tormented by unfortunate souls that don’t have any “do” power of their own. You could indeed fail, there are a lot of ideas that won’t work out for you. I’ve failed with many ideas that I thought were great but because I didn’t put in the proper research to validate my idea is as good as I thought it was. I learned.

Being afraid to fail is being afraid to learn.

Each project I start that doesn’t make it to a successful conclusion gives me more insight on the workings of a success. Not every internet superstar, CEO or industry mover and shaker had their first success with their initial try. The key is to try.

This means dedicating time to focusing on what motivates you — what you would love to do as a “real job.” For me, it’s podcasting and video shows. Not everyone has the courage to sit in front of a camera lens and be a dork for five to ten minutes. But, everyone has their own motivations and it requires you to put down the video games, drama series and focus on what you’d really love to do with your life.

If it turns out you can’t find a way to make money with your efforts now, turn it into a hobby and see where it takes you, you’ll never know if you don’t try. Develop a thick skin to those that want to criticize you and tell you why you’ll fail. Those same people that want you to fail are the same that have been failures their entire life and simply do not want to be alone wallowing in their own self doubt.

Be afraid. Then do it anyway.