I was asked to speak to NPA Worldwide, a global organization of personnel professionals, in a workshop for recruiters.  Social media and recruiting go hand-in-hand, especially in today’s climate where finding the ideal candidate is the name of the game.

Fortunately, social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook provide some amazing tools to allow recruiters to target potential placements.  We all post such detailed personal and professional information about ourselves in online profiles that can all be easily searched, that means that finding that ideal candidate is (or can be) easier now than ever before.

Time
One obvious issue that was discussed is the time investment required to be successful in social media.  Several of our participants today voiced concerns about the level of involvement needed. My thoughts on the large time investment are this:  if you are spending tons of time on LinkedIn and you know that it’s working, then that’s obviously well worth the effort.   In order to justify the time, you have to be monitoring your social media efforts and quantifying your results.

PLET
I presented my PLET method for using social media, which covers the basics that everyone needs to know if you’re going to successfully take advantage of these new media channels: Post, Listen, Engage, & Track

Here are some examples that I covered for how recruiters can use this methodology:

• Posting information is crucial, and content is still king! But don’t just throw out your job posting like every other recruiter does- find some way to “hook” people and get their interest. Keywords are crucial, but finding your (online) voice and letting your personality show through are important.
• If you aren’t measuring it, then you can’t improve it (or for that matter, know if it is worth your time investment).  Measuring the effectiveness of social media efforts is a must – so using tools like URL shorteners (bit.ly) that allow you to see how many clicks you’re getting to job postings can go a long way towards helping you start to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
• Listening for opportunities is one of the chief ways to take advantage of online tools.  Google alerts to monitor for lay-offs or openings is a free way to extend your ability to know what’s happening.  We also discussed the importance of organizing all of that kind of information, and using RSS feeds with Google Reader is a brilliant way to not only organize, but it will give you the ability to do searches as well.
• I talked a lot about the great tools that Google provides, and Analytics was another one.  Knowing that your site or blog is getting increased traffic from wherever you are spending your time promoting is just as important as knowing if people are hitting your links.  The reason we can be so good at online marketing is because we can measure it on such a granular level!

We just finished up Day 4 of our Social Media Crash Course for Business that Howell Marketing is hosting with us.  We covered a lot of ground today – and I worked hard to make sure that the information was tailored to the questions that our crowd had yesterday in the Facebook 101 course.

The most pressing questions had to do with effective methods for using Facebook Fan Pages to market a business – a burning question in a lot of marketing minds right now.  I covered the Fan Page sales funnel that is a great method for drawing people to your Facebook presence, engaging them, and offering multiple ways for them to take action.

Here are the slides from today’s presentation:

Today’s class focused on more intermediate to advanced Twitter strategy.  We continued with the rest of our P.L.E.T. strategy for successfully using Twitter:  Listening, Engaging, and Tracking

We also talked about RSS and the power of giving people a ’stream’ of your content.  Here is a copy of our slides from today’s class:

Today I attended a great conversation about Social Media, hosted by Howell Marketing and the Memphis Daily News, that was aptly titled “Joining the Conversation.”

There was a great keynote from Dave Chase of Altus Alliance (and formerly of Microsoft), and the panel was comprised of notable names from FedEx and Pinnacle Airlines, among others.

I was struck by something that Doug Shockey, COO of Pinnacle, mentioned when answering a question from the audience about how to plan a successful social media strategy. His comment echoed one that I’ve heard often from people in business who are trying to wrap their head around this new channel: you have to create a sustainable platform for using social media.

I couldn’t help but think about how the opposite is true. Social media is changing so quickly that finding a sustainable model for using some of these channels would be an exercise in futility. This whole online conversation is accelerating and spiraling upward, so I would almost advocate that a truly sustainable model for marketing on the social web should not be your goal at all. At least, not in the sense of using one particular service or network.

The cost of getting involved with social media is so low (free in most cases, with the only cost being your labor, or the cost of your agency) that you don’t have to worry about a long term commitment to one platform or another.

So what if Twitter isn’t sustainable as a marketing platform? It’s a powerful platform now, but what about if they start charging $9.95 per month? “How many people do you think will continue to use it then?” as Ken Woody from Innova, a Memphis VC company that invests in medical and life sciences start-ups, said today.

My Take-away from the panel

At first, what I took away from this conversation about the online conversation made me feel like I got stuck with a crappy gift from a dirty Santa party. I should have learned something valuable from these smart guys in marketing and business, right? Well maybe I did- I just didn’t realize it at first. The realization that planning your social media strategy to death can be fatal is pretty interesting, once I started thinking through it.

Don’t get me wrong here- before we even think about launching a social media campaign for one of our clients, we always define the goals and objectives. But beyond that- you just have to dive in and watch the conversation unfold. Why? Because it is conversational. You don’t script every personal conversation you have, so why would you try to do so for the online conversation?

I spoke with a long-time friend at the event who works for a Fortune 1000 organization in their PR/Communications department. She’s been urging them to get a social media strategy in place and at least join the conversation. But that idea gets mired in the corporate red tape, so nothing happens since they can’t iron out a corporate-wide communications plan for all their brands. Meanwhile, I can’t help but wonder what that organization’s competitors are doing. Are they being just as cautious, or has my friend’s company missed the boat?

Social Media represents a new marketing channel, so the first one out of the gate will likely reap the lion’s share of the reward. Marketing 101 says to be where your customers are, and your competitors aren’t. There is an opportunity now that hasn’t existed for decades, simply because mass media has always held all the keys and guarded all the doors.

Don’t over-think your social media strategy;  define your objectives, and jump into the conversation. Be transparent, produce good content, and follow the 12:1 rule of putting in more than you get out, and you’ll be just fine. Trust me- I’m on Twitter, so that means I’m a social media guru!

It seems I’ve been talking to people about nothing but Facebook lately. I have had so many inquiries from businesses or entrepreneurs who say something along the lines of “I want to do a site like Facebook, except ours will…” that talking about a new web project with us lately seems to center on little else.

Its exciting that Facebook gave us their Facebook Connect interface which allows us to build online communities that utilize your FB login, as well as all your profile information. So I would ask you: why try to start your own social network right now that just creates another ’silo’ of friends, photos, and infomration. People have too many silos as it is: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, the list goes on and on.  And, it should be mentioned, that people will ultimately grow tired of your silo when they decide not to keep up with so many accounts across so many sites. People are already tired of the silo effect- how many Facebook users do you know that converted from Myspace?  Yeah, that’s what I thought- a lot, and that’s pretty common right now.

Facebook gives us the answer by providing a single login that will work on any site that uses Facebook Connect. So now, instead of building your own social network, you just piggy-back on FB’s unbelievable success. (85% growth in 2008 is not too shabby)

We’ve signed several of these projects lately and that’s a trend that is going to continue, unless I miss my guess. What’s got me excited today is that the good people at the ‘book have continued their movement towards a more socially connected Web and provided Facebook Connect for iPhone. With 30 million iPhones sold, that means that we have another rich and engaging platform that we can now access and interact with using the social network that everyone seems to be a part of these days.

I was talking to the guys at Resolute Games about an idea that I had for an iPhone app that we could then offer to our customers. I’m just dying to find a project where we can develop an iPhone app that will somehow tie into our other Internet marketing efforts on some project or another. Talk about having some potential to engage your audience… iPhones and Facebook seem to be a match made in heaven for time-killing!

Yesterday, LinkedIn made a variety of 8 different applications available that add so much-needed functionality to the platform.

Anyone who is unfamiliar with LinkedIn should check it out; it’s a very business-oriented social networking site that allows you to connect with other business, share ideas, and keep up with new trends in your industry or in other industries. The site is aimed at business professionals so it has some unique benefits over other social platforms that are geared towards dissimilar interests such as MySpace or Facebook.

According to LinkedIn, their applications “enable you to enrich your profile, share and collaborate with your network, and get the key insights that help you be more effective. Applications are added to your homepage and profile enabling you to control who gets access to what information.” The new apps give you the ability to link other social media sites such as your blog, SlideShare, or Google Presentation; as well some apps that give you that ability to use LinkedIn as a shared workspace. Huddle Workspaces app gives users private and secured online workspaces with a whole set of collaboration tools for team projects.

If you check out my LinkedIn profile, you’ll see that I’ve integrated our blog as well as our Slideshare account.

This is another example of the power of social media and the ability to tie updates and information into a variety of different sources to expand your reach. Definitely worth checking into!