I have been struck recently by the level of use of social tools by those involved in the recruitment advertising industry. It seems most people have a blog be it personal or work related, a vast proportion of people are on Twitter and Facebook, there are a smattering of myspace pages, ning networks and recruitment specific community sites. All of this raises some interesting questions though. Much as we all love this and understand the value of social networking have we just become another gated community?
We, as advertisers, hate the idea of gated communities as they are generally places where ads can't run. The guys at facebook recently started pitching the value of FB communities and they have launched their new social graph technology. Now, when I worked down at Spannerworks (shortlived as it was), they had a great social mapping tool, it was the first I'd ever seen and it did exactly what the FB guys are claiming is new insight. I remember talking to Anthony Mayfield and Jim Byfield about social networks and what they meant and they danger outlined by them was that the network becomes a certain size, gets cool and closes it's doors.
Zuckerberg and the Facebook guys are basically using the Metcalfe model (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law) for valuing a social network but I'm not so sure I buy it simply because the social graph they used is based on an open network (like a telephone network). Facebook is itself a permission and trust based network. If they are going to open it up for all then yeah, the Metcalfe model works and the facebook social graph is applicable. But if by doing that they have eroded the trust given to FB in the first place then the value of that network is diminished. FB by itself is a gated community that is permission based. I've never really ventured out of my network on there and despite having a large number of "friends" on the site I rarely interact with anyone outside a small group. Therefore the idea that the FB team have about the level of reach an individual or brand can have through the site I feel is a little flawed. As I've mentioned before, their targeted ads seem pretty ineffective. I've straw polled our office and several people in the industry and I'm yet to find anyone who clicks FB ads or who is suckered by apps any more.
So is the future of social media just a series of gated communities or is it a wider, more social future we see in front of us? The twitter experiment is certainly showing the growth of open networking is strong but is this going to last forever? Are people with thousands of followers just going to be viewed like people with thousands of linkedin contacts? It seems a little like it's a vanity thing for some and a value thing for others. When we get down to the basic needs and desires people have in networking they are either looking for a closed group to keep up with those in their circle or an open group to prove how popular they are. Will twitter turn into a series of small microblogging groups? I think it could well be, we've already seen the growth of Twibes and I'm sure there will be more and more ways to close the group you talk to or limit your comms for certain types of communication.
Interesting times.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Friday, 1 May 2009
First Tuesday award & Twitterjobsearch. Internet World 2008
OK, sorry, I've been busy again... Not much of an excuse when you're trying to be a good blogger and actually engage with people but them's the breaks. Onrec conference is just around the corner and there's still work to do there!
Anyway, I managed to finally get out of the office a couple of days this week to catch up with a few people at IW in Earls court and to generally have a look around the event. Once again it was a nice setup with some big brands there EC2 is a nice venue and the guys at IW do put on a great show. The smel of salesman desparation was in the air a little adn I have to say on the first day the level of hassle was huge, by the end of it it was almost unbearable, I was bodily stopped by a couple of people both on my way in and out of the event. Having said that, a couple of people I knew on stands in there said even those coming up to the stands to talk were 9 times out of ten not there for anything other than info gathering as they had not go the budgets to spend anymore.
Anyway I went tot the First Tuesday awards thing to go and see the Twitterjobsearch guys talk about their offering, what it meant to the world adn where they saw the whole thing going. Interesting stuff and it is nice to see that they are really not just goign to take the money and run, the whole workdigital thing is to plow money back into what they have and really try and make their whole offering as compelling as possible.
Bill outlined a few top line figures such as there being something in the order of 15 million job ads to seaerch through in the world at any one time online (from what they index) and 160,000 of those are posted through twitter and sorted and indexed by their new software.Going beyond the tweet is where things are at for them and they are trying to scrape job and company info that relates directly to the job and deliver the info based on content and relevancy. A big challenge but quite compelling when delivered in the form of relevant microblogging.
Their current revenue model is not yielding huge numbers as anyone who uses the site will know with about 40 regular advertisers it's a small concern right now with ads being delivered in a similar way to google ads. This is sure to grow as more companies jump on the Twitter bandwagon, for every bangwagon I hope there will be some that actually get the point.
Unfortunately for Bill and the Twitter JS guys they didn't win this year and Shipserve got the gong, but hey, Twitterjobsearch is a new product, with the fanfare thay have already got and the potential growth in the market there is always next time!
Anyway, I managed to finally get out of the office a couple of days this week to catch up with a few people at IW in Earls court and to generally have a look around the event. Once again it was a nice setup with some big brands there EC2 is a nice venue and the guys at IW do put on a great show. The smel of salesman desparation was in the air a little adn I have to say on the first day the level of hassle was huge, by the end of it it was almost unbearable, I was bodily stopped by a couple of people both on my way in and out of the event. Having said that, a couple of people I knew on stands in there said even those coming up to the stands to talk were 9 times out of ten not there for anything other than info gathering as they had not go the budgets to spend anymore.
Anyway I went tot the First Tuesday awards thing to go and see the Twitterjobsearch guys talk about their offering, what it meant to the world adn where they saw the whole thing going. Interesting stuff and it is nice to see that they are really not just goign to take the money and run, the whole workdigital thing is to plow money back into what they have and really try and make their whole offering as compelling as possible.
Bill outlined a few top line figures such as there being something in the order of 15 million job ads to seaerch through in the world at any one time online (from what they index) and 160,000 of those are posted through twitter and sorted and indexed by their new software.Going beyond the tweet is where things are at for them and they are trying to scrape job and company info that relates directly to the job and deliver the info based on content and relevancy. A big challenge but quite compelling when delivered in the form of relevant microblogging.
Their current revenue model is not yielding huge numbers as anyone who uses the site will know with about 40 regular advertisers it's a small concern right now with ads being delivered in a similar way to google ads. This is sure to grow as more companies jump on the Twitter bandwagon, for every bangwagon I hope there will be some that actually get the point.
Unfortunately for Bill and the Twitter JS guys they didn't win this year and Shipserve got the gong, but hey, Twitterjobsearch is a new product, with the fanfare thay have already got and the potential growth in the market there is always next time!
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Busy... Very busy
It's amazing how some weeks hit you like a train and then disappear leaving you to wonder where in the hell they went. This week has been a bit like that, barely time for a twitter or a blog, it's been crazy. Met some really great people some old clients and some new, all of them pushing to make their advertising buck go further and quite rightly so.
It really does surprise me that there are some companies that still really do not get it at all though. The "cut it, cut it all!" approach has been adopted by some people and in such a tough market, yes, I understand why you want to make cuts but no, I don't understand why you want to completely cut the budgets of some really talented marketing people who really do make a difference to your bottom line.
I've heard many stories of frustrated line managers booking marketing activity direct only to have it blown out of the water by senior managers who have expressly said there WILL BE NO SPEND ON MARKETING.
It's a shame for some who will undoubtedly suffer (and no, this isn't an Onrec sales pitch) by not getting the same levels of exposure they are used to. On the flip side and I do keep banging on about this, it's the agile, forward thinking businesses that are already planning their way out of the recession hit industry they are in and looking at what impact not marketing at the moment could have on their brand reach.
Well, that's rant over for this week, not much time to post, massively busy in prep for having a week off and spending some time away from the mobile, the laptop and over obsessing about work.
Happy Easter..
It really does surprise me that there are some companies that still really do not get it at all though. The "cut it, cut it all!" approach has been adopted by some people and in such a tough market, yes, I understand why you want to make cuts but no, I don't understand why you want to completely cut the budgets of some really talented marketing people who really do make a difference to your bottom line.
I've heard many stories of frustrated line managers booking marketing activity direct only to have it blown out of the water by senior managers who have expressly said there WILL BE NO SPEND ON MARKETING.
It's a shame for some who will undoubtedly suffer (and no, this isn't an Onrec sales pitch) by not getting the same levels of exposure they are used to. On the flip side and I do keep banging on about this, it's the agile, forward thinking businesses that are already planning their way out of the recession hit industry they are in and looking at what impact not marketing at the moment could have on their brand reach.
Well, that's rant over for this week, not much time to post, massively busy in prep for having a week off and spending some time away from the mobile, the laptop and over obsessing about work.
Happy Easter..
Friday, 3 April 2009
Google to buy twitter? Apparently so!
Techcrunch reports Google is about to buy Twitter!
Well, we all knew it was going to happen, Twitter needed to be bought by someone and Williams and Stone have a history of selling to Google, it was 5 years ago that they sold blogger to Google so they have a track record and they know how to package a product for a sale.
The attempted buy by facebook was apparently not for enough cash (half a billion just doesn't cut it these days), you've really got to wonder how much Google have put on the table. Big question is, what the hell are Microsoft thinking by not being in the mix? Their grip on the internet is getting weaker and weaker and if / when all this goes through they've slipped out of the social media loop, will MSN messenger survive? It's less and less popular and twitter does the job so much better.
It's interesting that Google have avoided the question of semantic search at almost every conference recently in all probability precisely because they were aware this was going to happen.
So what would this mean? Well, if Google have any sense they'd not change it too much, we'll see the ad revenue streams coming in but there was never any doubt about that. One thing I think we'd all LOVE to see is a search facility that is not quite as awful as the current one, if there's something google does well...
The guys at Twitterjobsearch have got to be the biggest benefactors of this in the recruitment industry! Now that's surely the hottest property in job boards right now, I'd not be at all surprised if I heard they were in talks with a buyer in the next couple of months!
Well, we all knew it was going to happen, Twitter needed to be bought by someone and Williams and Stone have a history of selling to Google, it was 5 years ago that they sold blogger to Google so they have a track record and they know how to package a product for a sale.
The attempted buy by facebook was apparently not for enough cash (half a billion just doesn't cut it these days), you've really got to wonder how much Google have put on the table. Big question is, what the hell are Microsoft thinking by not being in the mix? Their grip on the internet is getting weaker and weaker and if / when all this goes through they've slipped out of the social media loop, will MSN messenger survive? It's less and less popular and twitter does the job so much better.
It's interesting that Google have avoided the question of semantic search at almost every conference recently in all probability precisely because they were aware this was going to happen.
So what would this mean? Well, if Google have any sense they'd not change it too much, we'll see the ad revenue streams coming in but there was never any doubt about that. One thing I think we'd all LOVE to see is a search facility that is not quite as awful as the current one, if there's something google does well...
The guys at Twitterjobsearch have got to be the biggest benefactors of this in the recruitment industry! Now that's surely the hottest property in job boards right now, I'd not be at all surprised if I heard they were in talks with a buyer in the next couple of months!
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Terrible, Terrible HR
Bad recruiting practice drives me crazy.
It really does and there is ABSOLUTELY no reason for it other than the HR malaise. I’ve recently been chatting with 2 friends of mine at separate companies who are suffering almost exactly the same problem. One has had a member of staff leave and the other has had to replace someone on maternity leave with a temp.
Now in these days of fixed fee recruiting, online media etc etc, HR function should have a really good awareness of current recruiting practice, where they can source candidates and have an understanding of the specialist skills required in each area of their business. Apparently I’m wrong.
Something that used to drive me absolutely insane when visiting major businesses was the poor quality of people in HR functions, people that told me that booking online recruitment ads was a marketing job that they wouldn’t get involved with, people who had, believe it or not, ever met the marketing team. Something I used to take great joy in was introducing these teams to each other and helping them understand that what they were doing was not helping either the HR dept or the overall perception of their brand, the good ones got it, the bad ones went back to their office and shuffled paper.
So what does this have to do with the 2 examples I’m talking about?
Well, I was absolutely gobsmacked when one of my friends asked me for my help; they had been passed over 50 CVs by the HR dept which had just been sent in on spec by local recruitment agencies… The Agencies had made no effort at all to vet the resumes they were sending and some of them were shocking, I saw one that was over 10 pages long which listed every temp job ever done by the candidate. One was from an interior designer, another for an accountant with 12 years senior accounts experience, the range of people sent through was simply mind boggling. They were all for an admin job…
When my friend asked HR for some help in going through the candidates they were informed that it wasn’t their job to select candidates but, one of the HR ladies had a friend they really thought should get the job… The 55th CV arrived, from a woman who had run her own catering business for 5 years and had never worked in an office.
Eventually after sitting in the pub for several hours we whittled down the CVs to a shortlist of 8 and surprise surprise, 3 turned up with no explanation from the agencies as to why the others didn’t arrive (well apart from one agency who apparently got rather aggressive when it was pointed out that perhaps they should ensure their candidates turn up!).
So my first friend recruited….
The other, was not so lucky. Pretty much the same issues, volume of candidates, NO help from the HR dept other than when it came to hiring, which they got so spectacularly wrong I was actually speechless…..
They hired the wrong person. Sent an acceptance letter, put the candidate through the induction and gave them the job etc. They were so keen to be involved in what they considered the important part which was the actual hiring (oh and having a lovely lunch from the rec con who made the placement) that they neglected to check anything with my friend the line manager. Understandably livid, he kicked off at HR and it went nowhere (wife of one of the directors is the HR manager) He’s now had the new start for 5 weeks and is having to jump through hoops to get rid of the useless idiot he never wanted in the first place.. Guess what though, he has to check, recheck and double check all of his actions with HR and make every effort to keep this person in the company because HR is very concerned about retention….
The fate of the first hire was much the same, a temp hired to cover maternity leave, claimed to be an admin whiz, have loads of IT experience etc. Turns out she’s an idiot who fails to operate Excel properly, oversaved an entire department’s work costing 3 days of IT time to recover and then a whole department had to go through and check all the work to see if the info they got back was accurate. Deleting client files by accident etc. Fine, get rid of her, she’s a temp, I hear you cry… no, in their infinite wisdom the HR dept decided to put her on a fixed term contract and agreed to give her all the rights of a full employee, once again jumping through hoops is the order of the day.
This is a great example of 2 companies in quite desperate need of a complete recruitment process revamp. In neither case was this an isolated event, this seems to be the norm for both businesses. It’s not even like they are small companies who are struggling with limited resources!
Rant over, I was very bored last night and when I got to thinking about all this it really started to annoy me… I’ll now wiat for every consultant under the sun to contact me for the names of the companies!
It really does and there is ABSOLUTELY no reason for it other than the HR malaise. I’ve recently been chatting with 2 friends of mine at separate companies who are suffering almost exactly the same problem. One has had a member of staff leave and the other has had to replace someone on maternity leave with a temp.
Now in these days of fixed fee recruiting, online media etc etc, HR function should have a really good awareness of current recruiting practice, where they can source candidates and have an understanding of the specialist skills required in each area of their business. Apparently I’m wrong.
Something that used to drive me absolutely insane when visiting major businesses was the poor quality of people in HR functions, people that told me that booking online recruitment ads was a marketing job that they wouldn’t get involved with, people who had, believe it or not, ever met the marketing team. Something I used to take great joy in was introducing these teams to each other and helping them understand that what they were doing was not helping either the HR dept or the overall perception of their brand, the good ones got it, the bad ones went back to their office and shuffled paper.
So what does this have to do with the 2 examples I’m talking about?
Well, I was absolutely gobsmacked when one of my friends asked me for my help; they had been passed over 50 CVs by the HR dept which had just been sent in on spec by local recruitment agencies… The Agencies had made no effort at all to vet the resumes they were sending and some of them were shocking, I saw one that was over 10 pages long which listed every temp job ever done by the candidate. One was from an interior designer, another for an accountant with 12 years senior accounts experience, the range of people sent through was simply mind boggling. They were all for an admin job…
When my friend asked HR for some help in going through the candidates they were informed that it wasn’t their job to select candidates but, one of the HR ladies had a friend they really thought should get the job… The 55th CV arrived, from a woman who had run her own catering business for 5 years and had never worked in an office.
Eventually after sitting in the pub for several hours we whittled down the CVs to a shortlist of 8 and surprise surprise, 3 turned up with no explanation from the agencies as to why the others didn’t arrive (well apart from one agency who apparently got rather aggressive when it was pointed out that perhaps they should ensure their candidates turn up!).
So my first friend recruited….
The other, was not so lucky. Pretty much the same issues, volume of candidates, NO help from the HR dept other than when it came to hiring, which they got so spectacularly wrong I was actually speechless…..
They hired the wrong person. Sent an acceptance letter, put the candidate through the induction and gave them the job etc. They were so keen to be involved in what they considered the important part which was the actual hiring (oh and having a lovely lunch from the rec con who made the placement) that they neglected to check anything with my friend the line manager. Understandably livid, he kicked off at HR and it went nowhere (wife of one of the directors is the HR manager) He’s now had the new start for 5 weeks and is having to jump through hoops to get rid of the useless idiot he never wanted in the first place.. Guess what though, he has to check, recheck and double check all of his actions with HR and make every effort to keep this person in the company because HR is very concerned about retention….
The fate of the first hire was much the same, a temp hired to cover maternity leave, claimed to be an admin whiz, have loads of IT experience etc. Turns out she’s an idiot who fails to operate Excel properly, oversaved an entire department’s work costing 3 days of IT time to recover and then a whole department had to go through and check all the work to see if the info they got back was accurate. Deleting client files by accident etc. Fine, get rid of her, she’s a temp, I hear you cry… no, in their infinite wisdom the HR dept decided to put her on a fixed term contract and agreed to give her all the rights of a full employee, once again jumping through hoops is the order of the day.
This is a great example of 2 companies in quite desperate need of a complete recruitment process revamp. In neither case was this an isolated event, this seems to be the norm for both businesses. It’s not even like they are small companies who are struggling with limited resources!
Rant over, I was very bored last night and when I got to thinking about all this it really started to annoy me… I’ll now wiat for every consultant under the sun to contact me for the names of the companies!
G20 London on Lockdown
Stupidly I have organised a few meetings today. Completely forgot about the abundance of Thai dye clad, patchouli oil scented protesters in town today. Much as I admire them for their willingness to stand up for something they believe in do they really have to do it today? I'm actually quite busy and will be attending the #RTU this evening (Recruitment Tweetup for those not in the know). If they could avoid throwing paint on me or whatever it is they have planned for anyone wearing a suit it would be most appreciated.
Friday, 27 March 2009
11 tips on Social Media use
I've been having some thoughts on this and really thought that some key tips may be worth posting up. Some of these will seem like teaching some people out there to suck eggs but, hey, I'm going with it anyway.
1. Learn about your business. OK that sounds flippant but if you are building a social media strategy then you need to know what areas of your business will actually benefit.
2. Build blogs! Conversational markeitng is one of the biggest themes out there and is key to building online relationships with your customers, employees and potential employees.
3. Use tags and metadata effectively. Some people claimed metadata was dead and did nothing for your site anymore, frankly they didn't know what they were talking about, metadata and tags are information about information read much more here: http://www.searchtools.com/info/metadata.html
4. Don't manipulate the social space around your company. Let the social space inform you about how you are perceived and respond appropriately.
5. Build tools to measure sentiment, they are invaluable to understanding what your audience really feels about your business. More here: http://www.tradersnarrative.com/sentiment-measures-78.html
6. Use Social Media Press Release format for any information you want to get out to the wider audience: http://socialmediareleases.x.iabc.com/2008/03/01/iabc-assumes-social-media-release-leadership-role/ for the press release format use this: http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/smprtemplate.pdf
7. Try audio and video podcasts, test both, see what your audience responds to and make it a regular release from the company.
8. Build Flickr and or Youtube channels, they really can have a great influence on the wider perception of your business. These can be particularly useful when your are running or attending events, giving people the opportunity to engage with you before they meet you face to face.
9. Don't be airbrushed into a corner. It's so, so tempting to engage a slick video production and or podcasting company but do they make the content people really watch? Luke McKend from google showed us the PWC auditor video as a great example the other day, created by the auditors themselves with no corporate input at all. it has now had over 62,000 views and is a great tool for the company see it here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56pAdTGHoqc
10. Monitor where your inbound links actually come from. If they are fom a blogger then engage them. Comment on their posts, build a relationship as best you can.
11. Go mobile! This blog can be viewed on a mobile on this address: http://sussexmatt.mofuse.mobi/ (go on, you know you want to!)
This is just 10 things I was running over today, they may not be groundbreaking but I hope there are some elements of use there for anyone reading. I'm going to have a weekly round up of things in the social space, recruitment media, whatever, I come across a vast amount of information and at the moment, I'm not getting to do a hell of a lot with it so rather than sitting on info that could help I'll share it with my lovely readers!
1. Learn about your business. OK that sounds flippant but if you are building a social media strategy then you need to know what areas of your business will actually benefit.
2. Build blogs! Conversational markeitng is one of the biggest themes out there and is key to building online relationships with your customers, employees and potential employees.
3. Use tags and metadata effectively. Some people claimed metadata was dead and did nothing for your site anymore, frankly they didn't know what they were talking about, metadata and tags are information about information read much more here: http://www.searchtools.com/info/metadata.html
4. Don't manipulate the social space around your company. Let the social space inform you about how you are perceived and respond appropriately.
5. Build tools to measure sentiment, they are invaluable to understanding what your audience really feels about your business. More here: http://www.tradersnarrative.com/sentiment-measures-78.html
6. Use Social Media Press Release format for any information you want to get out to the wider audience: http://socialmediareleases.x.iabc.com/2008/03/01/iabc-assumes-social-media-release-leadership-role/ for the press release format use this: http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/smprtemplate.pdf
7. Try audio and video podcasts, test both, see what your audience responds to and make it a regular release from the company.
8. Build Flickr and or Youtube channels, they really can have a great influence on the wider perception of your business. These can be particularly useful when your are running or attending events, giving people the opportunity to engage with you before they meet you face to face.
9. Don't be airbrushed into a corner. It's so, so tempting to engage a slick video production and or podcasting company but do they make the content people really watch? Luke McKend from google showed us the PWC auditor video as a great example the other day, created by the auditors themselves with no corporate input at all. it has now had over 62,000 views and is a great tool for the company see it here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56pAdTGHoqc
10. Monitor where your inbound links actually come from. If they are fom a blogger then engage them. Comment on their posts, build a relationship as best you can.
11. Go mobile! This blog can be viewed on a mobile on this address: http://sussexmatt.mofuse.mobi/ (go on, you know you want to!)
This is just 10 things I was running over today, they may not be groundbreaking but I hope there are some elements of use there for anyone reading. I'm going to have a weekly round up of things in the social space, recruitment media, whatever, I come across a vast amount of information and at the moment, I'm not getting to do a hell of a lot with it so rather than sitting on info that could help I'll share it with my lovely readers!
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