Here are some top tips for how to use all of the social media sites, and how to best manage your online presence, for maximum effectiveness during your job search:

• Consider the use of multiple sites focused on specific areas of your job search. While you don't want to take on more than you can manage effectively, it can help to have a clear and specific focus.

• Above all, don't mix your personal sites with your professional. Keep them entirely separate.

• Google (or Bing or Yahoo!) yourself to see what comes up online. Prospective employers are likely to. Check images as well—Google Images—you may be surprised, and perhaps not so pleasantly, by what you may find.

• If you're active on eBay or any other online retail site, pay attention to any negative reviews you might have and respond to them with your side of the story. Every bit of information about you that is online is one more piece of information that potential employers could use when forming impressions of you.

• Be careful what you say to or about others online. Avoid disparaging messages or profanity when commenting on someone's Facebook profile or any other online forum.

• Find those you know and put them to work for you. All of the social media sites operate under the principle of networking. Using your network of contacts to connect with other contacts who may be instrumental in helping you find a job or who can help get you in front of the right people.