Category: Social Media

How We Hire in a Social Media World

Personal Branding, Social Media, Social Recruiting

As soon as I know I am scheduled for a meeting I do a search on the people that I am meeting. I’ve been doing this for years. But these days, I am finding much more information – personal, professional and social. There are Facebook accounts and pages, blogs, Twitter accounts, articles, pictures, movies and even LinkedIn recommendations. It’s a jumble – but if you let it wash over you, it’s amazing the kind of image that can be built up relatively quickly. For example, here’s what I found when I did a vanity search on visual search engine Spezify.

gavinheatonspezify

But does this sort of thing impact the way that others see us? In particular, does it impact our careers in a positive or negative way? And would you take steps, as Jye Smith recently did, to erase the past?

Forbes writer, Kashmir Hill shares an interesting report from social profile management company Reppler. The results from interviewing 300 recruiters tell an interesting story – 91% of those surveyed use social networks to screen candidates – and 69% claim to have rejected a candidate based on what they found.

Why-employers-rejected-candidates

On the upside, 68% have hired a candidate because of what they found on social networking sites. So clearly, it’s a double edged sword.

Why-employers-decided-to-hire-candidates (1)

But like everything to do with “social media” – hiring processes show that we are really just doing the same thing in a different medium. As Kashmir explains, at the end of the day:

It boils down to demonstrated creativity, well-roundedness, and the ability not to tell lies about their educational and professional qualifications. Surprisingly, no one said “Because they looked really hot in their profile photos.”

Even in B2B You Have to Think Like a Rockstar

B2B Marketing, Branding, Smart Bloggers, Social Media

Business-to-business marketing can often appear dull and boring. The messaging is subdued, the social media is lacklustre and personality? What personality, right?

Now, there are always excuses here – government regulation, brand guidelines, tone of voice or particular assumed audience needs. But these are merely excuses – not reasons. We should instead see them as challenges – for to succeed in B2B marketing, I believe we need to think like rockstars.

How does this work? Mack Collier has put together a great deck on the subject of rockstar thinking. He calls out four key points – but let’s think about these in a B2B framework:

  1. Rockstars are fans too: remember, rockstars don’t necessarily love their own music. But they do have inspirations, musicians and artists they respect. Pay homage to your inspirations – learn from what they do and bring their work and focus into the work that you do.
  2. Rockstars shift control to fans: if you are a rockstar what do you like to do? Yep – hang out with other rockstars. Think about ways that you can elevate your advocates – and empower them in unexpected ways.
  3. Rockstars find the bigger idea: what mission are you on? How are you improving the lives of people. How are you changing the planet? What is the difference you are making. Sure you can throw money at a problem, but what can you DO to change the game. Think about it, then DO IT.
  4. Rockstars embrace their fans: in the B2B world there are many stakeholders. How do you celebrate them? What can you do to recognise their help and their efforts? How can you answer their questions faster? Think about stepping out from behind the shadow of your brand to provide unexpected value.

B2B can be exceptionally funky – and can prove a fertile opportunity for out-of-the-box thinking. Do you have examples? I’d love to hear of them!

Think Like A Rockstar

Optimise Your Website with NLYZR.com

Social Media, Web/Tech

“You don’t have to run faster than the bear, just faster than your slowest friend”

When I first started building websites, the web was a very loosely joined collection of sites, boards, pages and applications. It was hard work finding what was “out there” – and we all spent a great deal of time finding, collecting and curating lists of sites and bookmarks. And then along came Google and everything changed.

Suddenly you could search and find what you wanted.

Google’s search results were powered by a complex mathematical logarithm that calculated the number of other websites linking to each other, analysed the text on the page and the images that were shown – along with dozens of other criteria – and then sorted this list of websites into an easily navigable list. And in our impatient, time poor world, those websites that ranked highly – on the first couple of pages – received the bulk of search related traffic.

But just as the web became easier to search, it also became easier to create. With cheap or free blogging and content management systems, you can have a website up and running in minutes. Literally.

But having a website doesn’t guarantee traffic. Remember, there are millions of sites out there. The challenge is finding the time to not only update your website, but to optimise it so that it can be easily found by your customers.

The thing to remember about search rankings is that it’s like the quote above – you don’t have to rank #1, you just have to outrank your competitors.

The team at Newcastle digital agency, Sticky, have recently launched a tool – NLYZR – that helps you do just that.

This web based tool has been under development for over two years. I remember being excited to see a very early – and very manual – version some time ago. Back then, Sticky founder, Craig Wilson, knew he was onto something special, but has invested a great deal of intellectual and practical knowledge into the system. From the beginning the vision was to automate as much as possible – so that business owners and web masters could easily and quickly see improvements.

These days, you simply put your website address into the NLYZR site together with preferred search keywords and the system comes back with a ranking and some recommendations. From there you can change, tweak and update your site to improve your search results.

The thing I like is that it provides practical suggestions – like reducing the length of the titles in your blog posts or adding descriptions to the images on your website. And that’s just the free version. Those who want to dig deeper and optimise an entire website can subscribe to the service from as little as $149 per year. It may be just what your business needs.

What Happens in Retail Stays on Dropbox – #gaspfail

Social Media

When you live in a city you get used to poor retail service. You get used to attitude.

But what happens when your retail experience becomes big news in social media – for all the wrong reasons? Retailer GASP Jeans is finding out.

Shopping over the weekend with friends, Keara O’Neil experienced the style of “customer service” that is all too common in many of our retail spaces. She then emailed the GASP Jeans customer service team to describe her experience to which she received a response which has since “gone viral”.

Here is the “complaint” email:

Complaint

And here is the response: 

Response

Now – this is clearly not good customer or brand management from GASP Jeans. But these emails have been quickly transformed not just into links or stories, but “social objects”. So even if websites are modified or Facebook pages closed off, screen captures such as these can be taken shared and promoted via many other types of social media – for example, this copy of the email was passed on via Twitter with a link to dropbox.

And the “conversation” on Twitter is spurning a completely different style of brand engagement.

But while #GASPfail continues on its merry way, the question really is – where is the follow-on response from GASP Jeans? One small incident has been amplified across the web and the PR and management team are nowhere to be seen.

Could this happen to your brand? What would you do? Do you have some crisis planning in place? Maybe you should.

Social Media Around the World

Social Media

After surveying more than 9000 consumers in 35 countries, Insites Consulting have released their Social Media Around the World 2011 report. Coming in at a whopping 167 pages, the data and information is bound to find its way into many a pitch between now and the end of the year.

The results overall, tend to reinforce what we already know – and what we are, ourselves, experiencing:

  • Big social networks are winning and new entrants will find it hard to gain traction with consumers
  • Offline brand experiences are the main conversation starters online
  • There is significant interest in co-creation of products and advertising
  • Social network usage is set to grow even more
  • People connect with people, not brands

Some of the more interesting items include:

  • Twitter use does not impact Facebook (ie they are not mutually exclusive)
  • Twitter users are early adopters and tend to engage in multiple social networks
  • Consumers tend to react to brand content rather than initiating conversations
  • 33% of European businesses restrict access to social networks – yet employees remain the strongest brand ambassadors of all
  • Smartphone owners have strong social media profiles and levels of adoption – but location based services have a way to go
Social media around the world 2011

View more presentations from steven van belleghem

While there is an obvious European skew in the data, the data seems to also bear out for other markets. And interestingly, for all the hype around social media, it appears that corporations have a way to go before they catch the socially-savvy consumer.

We are the 99% – #occupywallstreet

Politics, Social Justice, Social Media

When protesters across Tunisia and Egypt took to the streets to demand more transparency in government, democracy and equal rights, the West stood and cheered. Dubbed the Arab Spring, these people powered movements saw the disenfranchised 99% of the population rise up and protest the concentration of ownership and privilege controlled by the 1%.

But how do we respond to the same situation in our own backyards? The 400 richest Americans at the top of the economic pyramid have been able to amass more wealth than the 180 million Americans at the bottom – and I’d wager there is a similar disparity in Australia.

In an open letter to Join the Wall Street Occupation – The Revolution Begins at Home, Arun Gupta explains:

Our system is broken at every level. More than 25 million Americans are unemployed. More than 50 million live without health insurance. And perhaps 100 million Americans are mired in poverty, using realistic measures. Yet the fat cats continue to get tax breaks and reap billions while politicians compete to turn the austerity screws on all of us.

At Liberty Park in New York, hundreds if not thousands of people are gathering each day to discuss, debate and protest the state of democracy in the United States. The campaign #occupywallstreet is spreading to other cities and countries – from San Diego and Omaha to Toronto and even Brisbane.

We Are The 99% from socially_awkwrd on Vimeo.

And while there is a lot of conversation on Twitter and on social media, the mainstream media outlets are yet to deeply engage on this subject. And it makes me wonder – where is the tipping point … what level of social movement or activism is required before traditional media can no longer ignore the unfolding situation? And at which point does it become “contagious” – shifting gears from a protest to a movement?

Perhaps financial traders like Alessio Rastani, shown here in interview on the BBC will help galvanise such a movement.

Or maybe not. We may be part of the 99%, but many aspire to the 1% – and while a culture of aspiration (and entitlement) dominates our thinking, non-traditional media will have to work harder to reach that tipping point. If Duncan Watts is right, then we need about 15% of a closely linked social network to act before contagion begins. And that means we have some way to go.

Using Fascination to Trigger Behaviours

Social Media, Storytelling, Videos

Let me tell you a secret.

It’s just for you.

Today.

I think you’re really going to like it.

This idea.

Concept.

Innovation in marketing practice.

In fact, better yet, read on. Read this. Buy it .

*****

Did you see what I did there?

Sally Hogshead, author of Fascinate, describes seven triggers that we can (and should) tap into to help us tell stories and engage our audiences. They allow us to go beyond the simple concept of “personal branding” – to a deeper, more authentic place.

The seven triggers can be woven into our stories and drive a response from our audiences.

  1. Power – Take command
  2. Passion – Attract with emotion
  3. Mystique – arouse curiosity
  4. Prestige – increase respect
  5. Alarm – create urgency
  6. Rebellion – change the game
  7. Trust – Build loyalty

Sally is presenting at the Content Marketing World conference, and thanks to Nate Riggs, we can see and hear a little of what she has to say. But don’t just watch this – think about what you can do today to impact your work. How can you put the power of storytelling to work? Which triggers can and will you use (and why).

I like this better than my own P-L-A-Y framework – or perhaps, in practice, I can see ways of extending that framework in new ways. I’ll let you know what I find out after a few experiments. But in the meantime, let me know how this works for you. Does it fascinate you and your team? What about your clients or customers? For it seems that telling the story of telling the story is, itself, one of the many ways to fascinate. Get to it!

Sally Hogshead Live at Content Marketing World from Nate Riggs on Vimeo.

How Advertising Works

Social Media, Storytelling

When I studied theatre I loved producing what we then called a “multimedia” production – the type that literally included multiple media mixed in amongst performance.

Intellectually I was working with “intertextuality” and experimenting with the points of intersection between these different texts (this was back when we talked about everything being a “text” that was “read”). But emotionally I was experimenting with layered storytelling – presenting one point of view, accentuating or limiting that point of view through performance, voice and body – and then challenging all that with visuals – usually in the form of slides or sometimes video projection.

It was a lot of fun and hugely challenging.

And this is what good advertising does too. It tells stories on different levels. It allows us to connect these stories, flattering us in the process. It can say one thing and mean another – all the while giving us a sly wink and a nudge.

Unfortunately most advertising is one dimensional. It pokes at us. Interrupts us. Irritates. As does a lot of branded social media. It’s about time we saw some sophistication in the planning and strategy of advertising and social media (ideally together). It really is.

And don’t blame the dog, we all know who is responsible.

Kiva Lights Up the World with Microfinance

Good Works, Social Media

I’ve been a Kiva supporter for some time. I love the way that this microfinancing system allows you to effectively invest in the entrepreneurial dreams of those who live in a completely different world. It also allows you to choose where (and to whom) your investment flows. This means that you can choose to support education initiatives for women or to help establish a retail shop in a village in Nicaragua – and you can do so starting with $25.

When I first started with Kiva, I saw it as a donation. I never really expected to see this money returned. But 50 loans later, this has changed. You see, Kiva is not about charity – it’s about entrepreneurship. It’s about helping people change their lives … and supporting them to do so.

Kiva have field partners who provide supervision and support on the ground. They work to ensure the loan is successful. And repaid. In fact, the repayment rate for Kiva loans is 98.84%.

Take a look at the video below. It shows how, since 2005, more than $240 million in Kiva investments have been made to over 620,000 entrepreneurs. More than 80% of these are to women entrepreneurs. And as the video also shows, the vast majority of these are repaid – and can then be reinvested as you choose. Seriously, if you ever wanted to change the world – here’s a way to get started. Start with Kiva.

Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance from Kiva Microfunds on Vimeo.

The YouTube Creator Playbook is Your New Best Friend

Branding, Social Media, Videos

If you are like me, you will have done some experimentation with YouTube. Sometimes it works – and sometimes you have to delete your video before the world catches it and you become an unintentional (or unwitting) viral star!

But while there is no doubt that YouTube is an important part of your marketing mix – the question remains – how do you maximise the benefits and value of YouTube within your marketing framework? And how do you do so with limited (or no) experience in the production of video? Finally – what are the best practices that you can follow in order to not present yourself in a way that is a detriment to your brand?

If this sounds like you, then the YouTube Creator Playbook may well become your best friend. Check it out – and then send me a link to your most embarrassing video! (Oh and you may need to click the button to open the playbook in a new window – the resizing is not kind)