Social Media Smackdown

Social Media is a blast. If you’re a social butterfly, which many of us are, you will find social media to be fun and a challenge, almost a game. I have happily played in the pool of social media for about 18 months now and have been making my living consulting in social media marketing for about six months. The applications to my two fortes, recruiting/HR and marketing are endless, allowing me to weave this incredibly fun, incredibly easy way of communicating into my tried and true strategies from B.T. (before Twitter).

But as Jeremiah O plainly states in his recent Forrester Report, the game is OVER. It’s time to get serious about the effects these applications will have. Yes, it’s nice to have a transparent and witty consultant on your side, but if said consultant can’t prove the numbers, the laughter may start to die down.

Even as mainstream comedians mock it (yes, you Jon Stewart) governments, big business and yes, even our mothers are jumping into it. While it’s not mainstream yet (a recent tweet stated, if you still have to explain it, it’s not mainstream) and it hasn’t jumped the shark as snarksters are quick to proclaim, social or new media is now being taken a bit more sersiously. This university will soon offer a Masters’ in the subject.

I recently gave a speech where I tried to articulate all the Twitter vocab, including such words as “retweet” “tweeted” “twellow” “twitpic” and the like. I casually remarked that if Twitter wanted us to take them seriously, they should have a more serious name and just as quickly realized that Google probably sounded very stupid when it first came out. Now it’s a verb, “Just Google it”. My 2 year old knows what Google is. My 7 year old knows what Twitter is. My 9 year old wants an account.

The truth is we’re putting new words into the vocabulary now. People are discovering ways to apply the technology and manipulate the data to find out what they want to know quickly and efficiently. People are doing business, bypassing email, raising awareness, raising money and advertising their wares.

There are still a lot of mistakes being made, but then the same can be said for direct email and banner ads, both of which have been around for a while. So how do we get people to take this phenomenon seriously?

1) Realize it’s not a silver bullet. Communications is shifting, even the most unplugged can see that. But that doesn’t have to mean that a social media tool comes in to replace every other marketing or recruiting tool we now hold dear. If you’re bad at your job now, all social media will do is let more people know that and…faster.
2) Do your job. I have found that unless you are paid and paid well by an employer to discover as much as you can about something, you should integrate social media into your current position. The best way to do this is by finding the function. Once you find the function of a tool in your current job, you can easily identify, via research the social media tool which can accelerate or transform that function.
3) Don’t sell it. I have not been doing this as long as some, but I have been doing it long enough to know that the results of social media sell themselves to those who are willing. Those who are not will not adapt easily nor will they understand the slowly emerging code of conduct that dictates social media strategy and actions.
4) Don’t embarrass me. You know who you are. You call yourself a social media guru yet no one knows what you’re up to. You say you are a new media maven, yet you recommend facebook for every client. If you want to work in this field, get to know the tools on YOURSELF first, try them out for your business and figure out how they work before mass-slapping them onto unsuspecting and frankly, hungry clients. Figure it out before hanging up your shingle.

Because this is no game.

Do your policies and your brand match up?

True Story:

A young man was interviewing for his dream job. (We’ll call him Fred). Fred was in the final stages of the interview, you know where the formal interview room turns into a steakhouse and you get to order dessert and you KNOW you’re getting this job. Anyway, Fred was happily chomping through his asparagus when his boss to be (also the CEO of the company) said: “Fred, we’re excited to have you come on board. We want you to know that XYZ Corp. is more than a stepping stone for you. We want you to build a long lasting career here.”

Fred nodded, finished his lunch, accepted the position and worked at XYZ Corp happily for three months or so. However, he began to notice that while the company expected complete loyalty from everyone from the copy paper boy to the Accounting Director, rarely did the company think twice about letting them go, for minor infractions or even just to help the bottom line. The final straw came when Fred was sitting in a meeting where the CEO decided to let the VP of Sales (been around for 3 years) go because he’d just hired an associate who would “do the same work for half the price”. Fred knew a college grad couldn’t replace the 20 year industry veteran and said so. The CEO just laughed and said, “We can do what we want, people are desperate for jobs.”

Fred realized that while the company might want him to build a long-lasting career there, it was only for as long as the company deemed necessary. XYZ Corp not only did a lousy job of fostering their employees but they rarely rewarded loyalty or chose the person over the paycheck. Although Fred was disillusioned, he stayed at the company. But his idealized dream of building a long term career there was gone. He knew that anytime the chopping block came down, his time there would only count against him and any raises he received would be grudgingly given at best. His work began to become routine, he put little imagination into his tasks and he rarely went “above and beyond”.

What happened here? ( I am taking Fred’s word for it here)

First off, the CEO told a bold-faced lie. So your company’s not a daycare. FINE BY ME! Just don’t pretend it is. If you expect folks to come in, learn a new skill, contribute until they are no longer useful and then replace them, GREAT! Hire a good marketer to get that message into your employer branding packet and move on (in the meantime, coach the leadership team on saying it at the hiring lunch). But don’t give every doe-eyed young executive the speech about how they should give your their best and you’ll support them all the way if it’s not gonna happen.

Lesson: Get branding initiatives in line with what your company actually stands for. Why not say “We’re a driven and dynamic company that takes pride in teaching our employees how to move to the next level”? Make sure not to sell employees on something that doesn’t exist. Flaunt what you have, don’t pretend to be something you’re not.

Secondly, expectations were very poorly mismanaged by both Fred AND his new company. The company used a line that might as well have come from the “How to sound like a CEO” book and it put in Fred’s mind an expectation of company loyalty (which as a younger fellow in his first real executive position, Fred may not have posessed before). This contrasted with the company’s actual practices, made Fred feel betrayed, which affected his work adversely.

Lesson: No matter how namby-pamby it sounds, the work relationship is just that. A RELATIONSHIP! So even though a company is paying the employee and even though the positions of power may vary from normal relationships, some of the same tenets still exist. Trust still exists (or should) and when that is broken, even if by a “little white lie” like the one listed above, it denigrates the relationship. Fairly, or unfairly, these intangible issues become an inherent part of the “benefits package” as understood by Fred. When one of them is taken away, the commodity he provides to employer, namely his dedicated and innovative prodcution on a daily basis, is denigrated. Furthermore, he feels entirely justified in this practice, since he was “betrayed”.

Instead, use a program like the much lauded Zappo’s “hire slow and fire fast”. I recently advised a client in a high turnover industry to start explaining all the negative aspects of the job to prospective employees. Hiring for key positions now takes weeks or even months. However, not one of those executives has left, while the “people pleaser crowd” were moving every 3-6 months. So many employers stress the positives of the job first and then gloss over or omit the negative parts. Never works. Manage expectations.

Third, Fred is a big baby. Okay, maybe that’s not the PC way to say it, but it is the truth. By taking his employer’s money and refusing to contribute his best, he is putting his own integrity on the line. Using his lack of trust in his employer to excuse his own poor performance is at best a raring sense of self-entitlement and at worst, stealing. And his acceptance of the company line right off the bat without further investigation as the environment he was exposing himself to further pushes the responsibility off his shoulders. As a young executive he should have done his due diligence and made an educated decision.

The Lesson: Imagine how different Fred’s reaction would have been had he dug up the company rep before starting there. Or had he decided how this job was going to fit into his overall career plans ahead of time, and not allowed the careless whispers of a new boss to sway what he knew to be his personal trajectory? In my mind’s eye, it looks like a young man taking a job with eyes wide open, using it to build a wealth of experience and further his education, getting a fantastic reccomendation when it’s time to move on and staying in control of his career. Instead, for now, Fred is stalled, “pretending” to work at a job where he feels betrayed and is scared to rise to the top for fear of being fired. He has effectively handed over control of his career to someone whose main concern is to grow his business at a profit in difficult economic times.

Shame.

Get by with a little help from my friends

Whether your drug of choice is traditional media, new media or hiding your head in the sand, you must know, we’re in trouble. The economy is a mess, more people are losing their jobs every day, former stars are sent packing and outplacement is quickly becoming the breakout star of HR in 2009, depending on who you talk to.

Fortunately, my completely rad recruiting brethren have risen to the occasion admirably, organizing movements, helping the unemployed find work, dispensing free and helpful advice and helping those who may have once forwarded a recruiter’s call to voicemail. Here’s a quick rundown of how recruiters are helping jobseekers, each other and the economy.

Free (or cheap) Webinars and E-Books- I am seeing this all over. Many noteworthy blogs have taken on a Dear Abby feel as HR Pros and Recruiters attempt to bolster an unprepared and shellshocked workforce. And while free tools proliferate the web, it’s often easy to forget just how much work goes in behind the scenes to make this happen. If the information is good and the recruiter well connected, I will make that statement double for third party recruiters, who do this partly to build business but partly because they understand that when job seekers are scared and out of work, we all suffer. Noteables? Paul Debettignies, Jason Alba, Jennifer McClure and Amitai Givertz are all offering great, inexpensive (or free) information.

JobAngels- Soon to be seen at a keynote near you, Mark Stelzner! So the story goes, this enterprising HR Pro was eating cereal when the idea of one to one job search, pro bono of course, would revolutionize the sweeping unemployment epidemic. He posted it up on twitter (@jobangels) and before long the searches and candidates were flying across the airwaves. The program is so new that there are few stats on how well it’s worked thus far but even at the lowest possible level, connections are being made and candidates and recruiters are gaining exposure, and that’s good news in any market.

Splits- Heard of #splits? Chances are you will soon. Jason Davis has been using using Twitter and third party widgets to help recruiters looking to make some money, any money. Recognizing that no matter how altruistic your motives, no one can work free forever,  #splits simply invites recruiters to tag on #splits to any tweet or post, twitter is then searched for the hashtag and the results are displayed on an easy to visit (and search) website. People get jobs, recruiters make money.

Synching up- Talent Synchronicity’s Susan Burns is trying to do her part to help educate recruiters and make conferences more accesible. Donating a ticket to ERE’s Spring Expo and 35,000 air miles to the winner of a survey she’s doing, Susan has made it personal. Her contest and desire to help fellow recruiters, also underscores the value of education and netowrking even in a down economy. Check out just how successful her contest was!

So what can you do? Can you help a job seeker, a recruiter or a new college grad? The one thing no one seems to be short of these days is creativity!

Don’t trust HR

If you haven’t yet heard of the March 10 article in CFO magazine, titled “Memo to CFOs: Don’t Trust HR”, you might just be living under a rock. Poised to go down in history right next to Fast Company’s post “Why We Hate HR”, the article attacked some fairly sacred trusts in the Human Resources field, including employee engagement, low turnover and even some training and development issues. Beyond that, it snatched away some of the most coveted buzz words in the HR profession including the shining star of HR “Employer of Choice” badge. The roundhouse kick? The article was based on a speech delivered by a professor of. . .Human Resources. In the speech, he sntached strategic recruiting from HR and kicked them in the shins by stating that corporate HR (note the distinction between speaker and subject) “are not businesspeople”.

It’s harsh, it hurts, it’s a corporate slap in the face for HR folks who have been writing, talking, blogging about a “seat at the executive table” for YEARS. But is it true?

HR Capitalist Says: (regarding HR’s general inferiority complex) The folks around you know whether you are any good or not as an HR pro.  I guarantee that.  For those of you who are strong, your business peers know the value. Let’s stop wringing our hands and start acting like we belong.  Please.  Every time you comment on a story like this one, you guarantee five similar studies/articles will come along in the next year.

Gartner’s Jim Hollincheck says: (regarding the slam on analytics provision by corp HR) Unfortunately, this is true in most HR organizations.  However, it is not universal and the trend I see is that more HR organizations want to build a competence here.  There is a lot of work to do though.

ERE’s John Zappe says: (regarding the dismissal of the importance of “employer of choice) I once went to work for a company that was anything but an employer of choice, and I can personally attest to how hard it was convincing people to come work there. Few top performers, including some I counted as close colleagues, would even consider the company.

ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett says: (regarding the one sided nature of the speech) Sure, the numbers matter but HR brings a human dimension that finance lacks. While the vision of the steely eyed bean counter may not be entirely dead, finance is not a place where you’ll find much sentiment. Having HR alongside acts as an essential counterweight to ensure that attention is paid to managing the right people well.

And a social median reader adds a snarky “those who can’t do, teach” intro to the full article here.

So what’s your opinion? Should we do as Kris Dunn says and stop stressing everytime someone says we’re incapable? Or try to get lockstep with the financial folks while simultaneously teaching them how to manage HUMANS? Or should we just tap out snippy replies? Or like this pollster (another professor…), find a way to refute the generalizations and commit to publishing what we find, no matter what?

Social Media Marketing. . .through a 4th grader’s eyes

What I Do

Recently, I had to do a presentation on what I do for my son’s fourth grade class. I was so nervous I nearly canceled the whole thing. Why would fourth graders care about my job anyway? I wasnt anything that could be traditionally explained, my road from communications to recruiting and over to social media infused (yep, I’m going with infused) marketing was not likely something they’d sit still long enough to listen to anyway. So why did I do it? Why didn’t I just let me mother in law wow them with her cool nurse stories and stethescope? Two reasons:

1) The first is that children need to know these jobs exists. Heck, they weren’t even created when I was a kid. Now they are a viable, healthy part of an economy that is otherwise, not so healthy. It’s important for kids to understand that there are ways to make money that are not traditional, that they need not rely on a company, that there are educational options that have nothing to with school. I feel pretty passionate about that.

2) Having to sit down and clarify what it is I actually DO all day was huge for me. For an excercise in personal branding, go tell a bunch of elementary school kids what you do for a living. If they are confused, you are probably not very essential. If your job doesn’t in any way affect a form of commerce they can understand, have seen in action or can feel in a tactile way, you might want to find out how (or if) you actually affect the bottom line.

You got some ’splainin to do!

Okay so I am dating myself a bit there. This was a classic “I Love Lucy” line wherein Ricky Ricardo would explode at his hapless, troublesome redhead of a wife, usually when she had gotten into a scrape beyond. . .well, explanation.

Well, I am hapless, oft troubled and occasionally a redhead… but this post is less about my escapades than about really, truly trying to explain social media and its potential to a series of groups. I have been fortunate in the last few weeks to have several groups ask my advice about social media and even offer to “grill me”, which I enthusiastically agreed to. In doing so I noticed some interesting differences in how to “sell” social media to different people groups. I will profile three of them here. (I may go more in-depth in the future with individual case studies but I’m not committing to it )

The Mark: The PR Pro- This lovely lady is well-skilled in the arts of earned media, an icon in her local niche and a practiced professional with all clients who walk through her door. And while she knew that social media was being used in her industry, she couldn’t bring herself to take the leap. Meanwhile, she was smart enough to realize that some of her clients desperately needed to move into new media and what’s more, their products were perfect for it.

The Solution: Just do it- While she had the time and the inclination, this person needed the confidence. By sitting down and literally going through all the steps of the media plan we created together, she was able to watch and learn and take notes. When she started seeing results and realized the plan would work, she stopped being scared of a medium she’d never experienced before.

The Mark: The Social Media Agnostic- This group of designers had less than no use for Twitter, blogs and the like. Their reasoning? If everyone else is doing it, why should we?And we have a site we love and are proud of, why mess with that?

The Solution: Expand the definition- I began by asking them why THEY read blogs. Their answer? To be inspired, discover trends and get authoritative industry news. So now their goals in starting their own blog (yes I convinced them) are to inspire, be a source of industry news and start or identify emerging trends. Regarding their current site, that will stay as is, with the blog serving as a separate entity to bring their very impressive design pedigrees down to “street level”. Twitter was the toughest sell. I started with the line that usually snakes them all. “Twitter is too easy and too free NOT to use it.” They didn’t blink. Next I explained how Twitter was a powerful broadcasting tool allowing them to tell the world when they had a new post, project or speaking engagement. Yawns. But once I started explaining that you could ask questions of your network, give free press to clients and showcase design that did not yet have a buyer, their ears began to perk up a little. Not sure if I ultimately sold them on individual accounts but they do have a corporate one. The key was simply to expand their “definition” of each tool to something that finally piqued their interest.

The Mark: Passionate Non-Profit- When I first sat down with the executive director she was already convinced her NP needed more avenues. What she didn’t know was 1) which ones were right for her 2) how to get all the tools organized into one cohesive strategy and 3) where in the world she was going to find time to do all this. The will was there but the way was convoluted and doubled back on itself.

The Solution: Divide and Conquer. By realizing (what better be) one of social media’s main tenets (not every tool is suitable for every job) and tapping each volunteer’s specific skillset, we were able to come up with a plan that no only creates excitement around the non-profit itself but has the potential to place the leader at the head of a new and growing professional group. Each volunteer was given autonomous control over his or her technology of choice. One person handled email marketing, another tapped previous experience on MySpace, one happily volunteered to man the corporate twitterfeed. Since the group was already using Facebook in creative and useful ways, there was just one more thing to do. Create a community. Now, while I love communities and recognize their value, they are not appropriate for every situation. But for this one, it’s PERFECT. But as anyone who has started on will tell you, it ain’t easy. So most of the manpower and resources are going into this one venture.

So the moral of this story is, there is no blanket explanation for every situation. To really explore the social media needs of any organization, you have to sit back, take in the situation and focus on the unique needs, strengths and resources of each unit.