Your Social Network Profile May Get You Hired

Social networks are mined by HR and recruiting firms today as a primary recruitment source according to Jobvite, a U.S. company that monitors hiring by companies. In its June 2010 survey nearly 75% of organizations indicated that they were using social networks to find candidates and almost 60% reported successfully hiring someone they found through social networks.


What does this mean for sites like Workopolis and Monster? They are still a primary source for recruiting but new hires increasingly are coming from site searches in places like LinkedIn, Facebook and even Twitter.


What does this mean for anyone posting information to a personal profile, a discussion group, or fan page in Facebook or other popular public social networking sites? If employers are finding new hires through personal pages online, those pages need to present individuals in a professional manner.


When HR or recruiters come calling what will your social networking profile say about you? Here are 7 points to ponder.

1. Are you professional?
2. Can you be trusted to act responsibly?
3. Does your profile reflect positively on you and therefore the organization that hires you?
4. Are you sharing information or joining groups where what you say and contribute could reflect badly on you?
5. Do you have pictures on your site that demean you?
6. Are your Tweets and Wall postings fatuous or a positive reflection of your work ethic and values?
7. Are you linked to friends and associates that positively reflect who you are and who you know?  

How Can You Maximize the Message in Your Tweets?

I don't do a lot of tweeting but whenever I publish an article I go to Twitter and announce it with the URL. When the URL is a long string it can literally occupy the entire tweet.

There are a number of online application providers that have created ways to shorten a URL. One of them is Tiny.cc.

Here's an example of what using this application does for you:

I created a blog with the following link name:

http://lenrosen4.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/energy-in-the-21st-century-part-1-our-history-and-the-current-global-dilemma/

In Twitter the URL pretty much would occupy the entire message.

With Tiny.cc, however, you can contract the size of the URL to a very tidy number of characters.

http://tiny.cc/42ldf

And you have room for a message as well.

Tiny.cc is not the only application provider offering this service. I found it using a Google search query "short URL names."

You can use Tiny.cc for wall postings in Facebook or for updating your LinkedIn status. It's a great way to maximize your marketing message while minimizing those long strings of gobbledygook that constitute URLs.

Another Reason to Use Social Media to Create Visibility for Your Business on the Web

In my past blogs I have talked about creating Facebook presence for your business as a way to attract new customers, build a fan base, support causes and create increasing social awareness of your brand. But now there is another compelling reason to include Facebook in your online strategy.

Following on Bing and Yahoo's ability to create Facebook, MySpace and Twitter results, Google has announced a series of new features for its industry leading search engine. These features include the ability to get search results from popular public social networks and micro blogging sites.

Google has also added a really cool capability to its search engine, the ability to make searches sensitive to geography. This means if you are located in a particular city and making search queries, first page results will provide local sources of information. For retailers this has powerful implications.

This geographic search sensitivity reflects the growing use of smart phones for doing Internet search. Google has even created a Google window decal with a unique bar code known as a QR code which can be read by smart phones. The QR code is designed to have the same type of impact as a Michelin or Zagat sticker. When a phone scans the QR code, it displays important information about the retail site in Google search format results. That information could highlight specific merchandise, sales, services, menus, reviews and comments, and social media coverage.

BtoB Magazine Says Thought Leadership is the Number One Reason Why Companies Use Social Media

In business-to-business relationship management, or B2B as it is commonly known, U.S. companies are recognizing the power of social media strategies. Of 397 companies surveyed in the study done by BtoB Magazine, 60% indicated they were using social networks and other social media to establish thought leadership in their industry.

Thought leadership is all about establishing an organization's credentials through published articles, news, speeches, Webcasts, podcasts, videos, trade show and conference presence, and involvement in industry oversight or standards committees. The goal in the end is to establish trust and credibility with existing customers and prospects.

The tactics in building thought leadership include creating and maintaining company profiles on social media sites, doing micro-blogging (Twitter) and responding to customer comments on these sites, creating multiple blogs, monitoring when your company and competition are mentioned in social networks, contributing to discussions on non-company sites that have an industry focus, participating in social networking forums, creating company-associated causes and posting these within social networks, and creating company-sponsored social networking events.

Social Media Marketing Central to Fastest Growing Companies - Isn't it About Time Your Small Business Invested in this Medium?

Over 90% of the 100 fastest growing companies in the U.S. are using social media in their marketing strategies according to the Center for Marketing Research, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. More than half of the companies surveyed were tweeting. This is a remarkable uptake and reflects a significant change in behaviour as the companies surveyed recognize the power of social media to reach customers.

The change over the last two years has been remarkable. In 2007, 43% of the 500 companies surveyed were not invested in social media as a marketing strategy. Today only 9% have not at least adopted one social media strategy.

The study which included 148 of Inc. 500’s fastest growing companies was conducted by Nora Ganim Barnes, Director of the Center, and researcher Eric Mattson. The chart to the left illustrates the growth in use of social networking, blogging, and Twitter with a decline in podcasting, bulletin boards and online video. When those surveyed were asked to gauge the success rate of their investment in social media, they reported an 82% success rate for Twitter and 87% using other social networking tools.

Nora Barnes states, “While so many things are leveling off, social networking and blogging remain strong, showing businesses are continuing to immerse themselves in social media and blogging even while others are getting cut back.” Barnes believes companies recognize the low to no-cost of using social media to promote products and services, often requiring no more than a small group from various departments within the organization to interact with customers. “Social media is the only thing I know that you can talk to a customer 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, a portal created between a consumer and a provider that allows constant and open discussion....If there is a problem, it can be immediately taken care of, making it easier to to address issues. Consumers like it and businesses like it because things don’t fester. Social media allows things to be handled quickly,” Barnes states.

The study reports that 68% of the companies interviewed are listening to hear what people in social networks are saying about their brands and business. That represents a significant increase from 2007 when only 50% were paying attention to what people were saying. Barnes remarks, “you shouldn’t only be talking on social media, you should be listening as well.”

The types of social media activities that these up and coming companies have engaged in over the last two years are listed below in order of use.

• Wikis - 92%
• Message & Bulletin Boards - 91%
• Podcasts - 89%B
• Blogs - 88%
• Social Networks - 87%
• Online Videos - 87%
• Twitter - 82%
  

Guest Submission: Social Networking's Place in Lead Generation

Jeremy Miller is a Partner with LEAPJob, a sales and marketing recruiting firm here in Toronto. His recent post is one I want to share with my readers.

Twitter is all the rage, but can you actually use it to drive sales? What about Facebook, LinkedIn or blogging? Social networking seems like the right place to build a lead generation program right now. These sites offer up huge audiences of engaged users, and make it relatively easy to setup targeted groups and encourage participation. It seems like a no brainer, but it's not. Many business-to-business lead gen campaigns based on social networking are failing.

Here's the secret, age matters. Your audience just might not be ready to be marketed to via social networking. They could simply be too old.

Take a moment and profile your customers. On a piece of paper identify the key decision makers you target in the sales cycle. This could be CEO, President, CFO or VP of HR. Beside each of the titles, write down their average age of the people in these positions. Next, profile the users of your products and services by writing down their titles and average age.

Depending on what you sell, I suspect you will see a gap. For example in the software industry the decision makers, the senior people inside organizations, tend to be 35 to 50. While the users, which could be administrative staff or mid-level managers, are typically 22 to 35. These groups are at least a generation apart, which has a direct impact on the types of technology they use in their day-to-day lives.

The Age Gap: Digital Immigrants versus Digital Natives

The plus 35 crowd, people born before 1974, are Digital Immigrants. They didn't grow up interacting with friends and family through the internet. Rather, they connected on the phone, in person or maybe by letter. If they wanted to plan a Friday night out, everyone called each other to coordinate plans.

As technology exploded in the late 90's and 2000's, the Digital Immigrants embraced the new tools. Email replaced the fax. Blackberries gave access to email and the internet anywhere, anytime. Google made it easy to find information in a matter of seconds. With each breakthrough, Digital Immigrants figured out how they could use the technology to make their lives more efficient.

The under 35 crowd, Digital Natives, have approached technology from a totally different perspective. Digital Immigrants may look at Facebook, Google and email like tools, but not Digital Natives. I asked my associate Fawzia, who is 26 and definitely a Digital Native, how she would describe her use of social media. She said, "It's a necessity. It's what you do. You might use the phone, but we text and social network. That's how we talk to each other. It's like breathing!" The Digital Natives can't imagine communicating without these tools. They are completely ingrained into their social connections, their community and how they learn.

When to use social networking for lead generation

The differing approach to technology between the Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives has a direct impact on your lead generation strategy. It is crucial to profile the demographics of your users and decision makers so that you know which media platforms to use in marketing.

When targeting the Digital Immigrants, social media is not the best approach for lead generation. Sure you may get a few leads from social networking, but not nearly as much as you could through traditional media. Digital Immigrants use technology as a tool to support their buying decisions. As a result, they use Google to find vendors, websites to evaluate companies and human interaction to make buying decisions. Social networking is not used in the buying decision, because it is not a tool for evaluating products or services.

As you understand the habits of the Digital Immigrants, you can tune your marketing programs to fit their needs. Some of the obvious programs are search engine optimization, because they use Google to discover their options. Public relations are effective, because they use newspapers and magazines as a primary source of information. Public events are also powerful, because Digital Immigrants truly value being able to see the white's of their vendor's eyes.

If your audience is Digital Natives, you have a lot more marketing options. In a business-to-business environment there are not many Digital Natives in the decision making roles, they tend to be users. Users are still important to the overall marketing strategy, because having access to them provides an influential group for up-selling and cross-selling.

For example Salesforce.com created IdeaExchange to engage the Digital Natives, and capture their input for product innovation. The IdeaExchange is an interactive, social networking site where users can post ideas and comments to help Salesforce.com get better. The platform builds on the habits of the Digital Natives, and offers incredible market intelligence for Salesforce.com to plan future versions and products.

Beyond product development, building an engaged user community offers tangible benefits for sales. The ongoing interactions the users have in the online community help to build a relationship with the company, and reinforce its brand. More importantly, the interactions keep the users in the know. They have a better understanding of the company, its products and its upcoming products and innovations. This knowledge helps them to advocate on behalf of the product inside the company, and even drive additional purchases. Essentially, the users start the sales process from the inside out.

Driving Leads Today

By profiling your customers, and understanding their technology habits, you can tune your marketing programs. Social media is definitely the way of the future, but it still may be too early for your customers. If you find your decision makers and users are Digital Immigrants, then focus your marketing on traditional media. Social networking may generate some traffic, but not as much as you could through public relations, search engine optimization and email marketing.

Social media is definitely the way of the future. The Digital Natives may not be sitting in the key decision making roles yet, but they will be in the next five years. As they move up the ladder they will pull their technology habits with them, and the use of social media in business decisions will become far more prevalent.

Social Media Marketing Playbook is Worth a Read if You Want to Facebook and Twitter with the Best

In testing the theory that participating in public social networks can assist you in business I am amazed to find pearls that get dropped on my plate. I am a member of Xing, a social network that on a scale of 1-10, where Facebook is a 10, Xing is a 0.5. But Xing attracts a business audience from all over the world whereas Facebook attracts everybody. One of the groups I belong to on Xing focuses on entrepreneurship. This contribution was sent to me by Dean Hua, a member of that group.

The Social Marketing Playbook is 56 pages long and packed with interesting ideas on how to use social media to help you differentiate your brand and sell to customers. I couldn't agree more with the author's opening comments, "Social marketing eliminates the middlemen, providing brands with the unique opportunity to have a direct relationship with their customers."

Enough said. Take a look and let me know what you think.