Archive for HR Tools
What Twitter can do to your talent pool?
Are you asking the same question still? Well, don’t you worry tons of HR pros ask the same question over and over again on how to leverage/use Twitter as part of their respective “social media strategy.” I tell you, using Twitter ain’t complicated and it won’t need Einstein for you to crack it – make the most out of it.
Now, to give you a clear case on what Twitter can do to your existing talent pool let’s look at Bill Gates case.
“Eight hours ago, Microsoft founder Bill Gates joined Twitter. Five hours ago, Twitter’s Caroline Mizumoto tweeted about it. And moments ago, @BillGates broke 100,000 Twitter followers.
If you’re looking for the breakdown, that’s about 12,500 Twitter (
) followers per hour, or ~208 new tweeps per minute. In reality though, Bill’s follower count escalated after Caroline’s tweet, meaning his real rate of growth is about 20,000 new followers per hour.” – Mashable
You need a proof? You can visit Twitter or check the screenshot below.
Now, are you amazed at Twitters’ potential? Feel free to exploit Twitter while it’s free but don’t abuse it because they won’t hesitate to kick your arssss out!
Just imagine if you have that kind of BRAND. Making noise on Twitter won’t be a problem right?
What are others thinking for 2010 knowing that social media would really impact our business decisions? Wanna benchmark best practices with them? I want to and we all want to, but the problem is most of us HR pros posses a limited knowledge on what’s really social media – kodus of course to those who’ve bumped into a few crash courses online on what really social media is about.
Now, let’s move forward and face 2010 with all our might armored with a limited know-how on how to go about social media. Anyway, in this world, there’s nothing that can’t be learned. I guess a few or if not most will agree.
As we move forward, we ask, what are others planning for 2010 with regards to social media? What are they looking forward to for 2010? Where will be the bulk of their respective resources be invested? These are just some of the few tricky questions our few HR pros should be asking for us to know where should we also direct our resources. Call it a copy cat but trust me they have the tools to predict or somehow predict where the future of the web is heading. Web 3.0? Semantics? Call it whatever you want anyway this will be a lot fun and challenging…
As I’ve said awhile ago we need to know what these guys are thinking for us to be on the same page and for us to reap calculated rewards – tools are everywhere my friend, if you have the bucks you’ll nail them before we or they do. Anyway, with that in mind, I’ve compiled a few write-ups (hoping for it to be a good read) for you guys to have a hindsight on how are they going to treat social media and where will they be investing of which a few are as follows:
- Marketers Plan 2010 Increases in Social Media – the said initiative was supported by a survey, which was undertaken to gauge the importance of virtual events in the 2010 marketing mix and barriers to more widespread adoption, polled more than 100 US marketing professionals about their plans for next year.
- Social Media Dominates 2010 PR Planning – Supported by a new whitepaper from Vocus with their 2010 PR Planning Survey results has some encouraging statistics about the increasing role of search engine optimization in the overall PR mix.
Upon thoroughly reviewing these surveys and its results, most of these companies will be heavily investing on “search engine optimization” and “search engine marketing.” As you can see, most of these social networking sites are now opening their doors to various search engines i.e. your social profile is now visible to various search engines if you’ve allowed it in your settings. Why these aspects? Because most of these companies believed that majority of the people online either search the web or visit their social media profiles. Now, with that, either way they can find you and attract you with various offers because nowadays, if you’re online, they can find you and they’re very good at profiling potential customers and potential talents.
Take your pick? Search engine or social networking sites? As I’ve said, either way, if you have the tools and the budget you’ll win.
Here’s an interesting question being thrown by HR vendors and HR pros around Facebook. You might want to review/answer this and compare it to your plans and direction for 2010. As you can see, below are some specific directions being thrown by a few HR pros for you start with. Do let me know of your thoughts.
- Content marketing (creating visibility, establishing credibility, growing thought leadership, building a pipeline of leads)
- Pure-play marketing (driving demos, trials and sales conversations; nurturing leads into prospects)
- Referral marketing (generating leads from existing and past customers)
- A tiered strategy of all three
But then again we have to go back to the basics i.e. what’s a marketing strategy? In this way we can come up with a S.M.A.R.T. and stupid yet creative platform for you guys to reap better rewards.
Have you seen Friendster lately - Asia’s biggest and most visited social networking site? Well, sorry for being
Friendster new logo
blunt but their recent makeover ain’t appealing to professionals. To put it simply, Friendster’s major makeover won’t entice professionals to return to them.
Yes, I know it’s for teens – not for us anymore, but business owners won’t be investing on a certain network where majority of its members nowadays are below 18. Worst, most of them don’t even own a credit card to make purchases.
In a professional networking point of view, would you be willing to collaborate, exchange genuine ideas and do business with kids? Hell no! Not unless if you’re there to flirt, be their guest, but expect their respective moms and dads to hit you in the head once they’ll found out.
I’m not saying that you can’t contain them to be your future leaders and talents. Its just that your return on strategy and ROI won’t be on the dot. It’s soooo risky.
With this move, there’s no doubt various game plans can be created just to lure passive candidates, but the questions is, how to start it? Well, just be sure to position your policies, practices and strategies for you to reap the rewards.
So what’s in it for both and everyone – users/clients? According to Jim Stoneham, vice president of communities for Yahoo!, “With this integration, we are opening the door for two of the Internet’s largest online communities to make it easier for people to stay connected.” Additionally, “this partnership extends the current Facebook integration on Yahoo! which enables Facebook users to access their stream and update their status from the Yahoo! homepage, provides “Share on Facebook” options across the Yahoo! network, and allows Facebook to access Yahoo! Contacts.”
Now, is it not a good reason to be serious with your sourcing initiatives towards Facebook? Forget Friendster because in no way they can be a serious contender anymore for next years’ Social Networking war. I know there were rumors of its $100M possible purchase, but I doubt if it could even the battle ground.
Going back, so, how can we position our Company to reap the rewards in our sourcing initiatives with social networking sites? A few things social media evangelist have in mind is that;
Lastly, am I still hyping this social media thing? Yes, but forgive me if I am because I need to since a lot of HR Pros don’t really know its impact to their respective bottom line. Don’t worry HR folks because I’ll be dropping a few costing measures on how to get ROI in your social media initiatives in my next post.
Updates: Kudos to the guys behind JCI Mandaue for accommodating us just awhile ago for the JCI orientation. As I’ve said, I’ve found the right JCI Chapter for me, so, expect me to be joining you guys in your initiatives and program in building a better community.
