#Infographic -- The Exhibitor's Guide to #SHRM2013

The SHRM Annual Conference & Exposition is one of the largest and most important events in HR  with more than 13,000 attendees from around the world (some other top HR conferences). So it's no surprise that it draws a huge crowd of exhibitors, with more than 700 slated to appear at the 2013 event, held June 16-19 in Chicago.

This infographic, "The Exhibitor's Guide to SHRM 2013," provides facts and resources about the event and the host city - including where to stay, what to do and where to eat - as well as tips that will help exhibiting companies avoid critical mistakes and maximize their ROI.

It is brought to you by HRmarketer and Fisher Vista. Enjoy.

And if you are exhibiting, you might want to read this article titled "Tradeshows are Expen$ive: 33 Tips to Maximize Your ROE (Return on Exhibiting)".

Tradeshows are Expen$ive: 33 Tips to Maximize Your ROE (Return on Exhibiting)

Article: 33 tips to become a better exhibitor

A vast space. Row after row after row of booths. Ten or more booths to a row.

At a major tradeshow, everything and everyone seems to blend together.

As an exhibitor, you’re spending too much money to get lost in the crowd. Snappy signage and cool matching shirts aren’t enough—and one of them might not even be a good idea to get the results you need. Hundreds of other exhibitors have hopes for their products and services just as high as you have for yours, and have focused their attention on the same show. Amidst this competition, to be a successful exhibitor, you need to go above and beyond the norm without being gimmicky; doing so requires a combination of strategy, tactics and interpersonal skills, plus a significant amount of preparation.

Our latest article gives you 33 tips to help you become a more successful exhibitor. The tips are organized into five sections:

1. Before You Decide to Exhibit
2. Picking Shows
3. Before a Show
4. During a Show
5. After a Show

Download today and enjoy (no registration required, compliments of HRmarketer and Fisher Vista).

You might also enjoy listening to the audio of a recent webinar we hosted on "Exhibiting Dos and Don’ts"  with expert marketing speakers Craig Fisher (founder of #TalentNet Live social recruiting training conferences) and Jen Iliff (former Marketing and PR director at a leading RPO. 

Visual Job Ads Pack a Punch & Get Results. So Does Our New Strategist, Craig Fisher.

Craig Fisher Joins HRmarketer

In a recent post on his Fishdogs ,social business strategist, HR influencer, and recruiting expert Craig Fisher observed that employers are beginning to see the benefits of making job ads more visual. Those benefits include developing and strengthening employment brands, growing talent communities and driving traffic to employers’ career sites.

Craig also shared Most Wanted’s infographic, The Job Posting Field Guide, a one-stop guide to crafting the perfect job posting “to corral the most qualified applicants.” As Craig himself noted, he’s a huge proponent of adding visual appeal to job ads. His post, Pinterest Can Help Recruiting Get Visual, is another insightful resource on the topic.

To be honest, we’ve been fans of Craig for quite some time. He’s chock full of invaluable insights into social media, online brand visibility, and the HR marketplace. In fact, we’re such big fans of Craig that we wanted to hire him to be our new vice president of strategy and HR marketplace consulting. And lucky for us, he was equally excited about joining HRmarketer.

That’s great news for HRmarketer but it’s absolutely incredible news for our clients. Craig has literally helped to forge thought leadership around key issues in the HR marketplace, social media, and online brand visibility. With Craig’s addition to our already amazingly talented team, we’re basically providing HRmarketer clients with a game-changing advantage. The HR software and services brands we work with now have access to an expert whose knowledge of and relationships in the HR marketplace are among the very best.

As HRmarketer clients know, our agency services team already has some of the most seasoned and talented marketing and media relations professionals—people who know the HR marketplace and its unique challenges better than anyone out there. Adding Craig to this team is a phenomenal coup and makes our bench strength that much deeper.

Craig will be working closely with our agency clients to share his knowledge on brand visibility initiatives, social business strategy, HR influencer relations, lead generation and nurturing campaigns, content marketing and more. 

If you’d like to read about Craig’s impressive background and his depth of experience in the HR marketplace, click here to read our recent press release. 

And if you’d like to learn more about working with HRmarketer and how we can help grow your brand, please give us a call. 

Post written by Mark Willaman, the founder and CEO of HRmarketer.com and Fisher Vista Marketing. Connect with Mark on LinkedIn. 

Three Bold Predictions for the HR Department of 2020

This is a guest post by Erin Osterhaus, the managing editor of Software Advice's HR blog, The New Talent Times. She focuses on the HR market, offering advice to industry professionals on the best recruiting, talent management and leadership techniques. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+, or contact her directly at erin@softwareadvice.com.


What will the HR department of 2020 look like? How will the HR function change and why? And what can HR professionals and HR software vendors do to prepare?

Earlier this month, Software Advice, a firm that serves as a matchmaker between HR software vendors and buyers, interviewed nine HR experts to see what they had to say in response to these questions. While some have predicted the demise of the HR function as a result of software, the experts see these changes more as an opportunity for HR professionals to expand their horizons and increase their value to the company. 

Prediction 1: In-house HR will downsize and outsourcing will increase.
This prediction may seem somewhat, well, predictable. But the reasons experts give for the change might surprise you.

Industry analyst Brian Sommer, the founder of TechVentive, claims a shift to smaller HR departments will be caused by new technologies and increased employee participation in HR processes. He says, “Many businesses are going to get a lot of capability done by better technology, more self-service and the employee doing a lot on their own.” For instance, employees will increasingly input their own data into self-service systems.

In addition, many transaction-heavy HR jobs will be outsourced entirely to HR agencies or specialists. Dr. Janice Presser, CEO of The Gabriel Institute, goes so far as to say, “Entry-level HR jobs, as they currently exist, will all but disappear as transactional tasks are consigned to outsourced services.”

However, despite these changes, the internal HR function will survive. As Chip Luman, the COO of HireVue, explains, “Given the ongoing regulatory environment, the need to pay, provide benefits, manage employee relations issues, and process information will go on.”

Prediction 2: The pendulum will swing back to the specialist.
Janine Truitt, chief innovations officer of Talent Think Innovations, says she has observed a cyclical shift in the HR field over the years. As she explains, “Every decade or so we fluctuate back and forth from the paradigm of the independent contributor/specialist to the generalist practitioner. We were in a ‘generalist’ mode, and now I think the pendulum may be swinging back toward the specialist.”

Luman puts it even more directly: “HR generalists as we know them will disappear.”

Elizabeth Brashears, the director of Human Capital Consulting at TriNet HR, agrees, and notes, “There will be more specialized roles. I believe this to be the case as the employment landscape becomes more complex with changing regulations around employment law and benefit compliance with the Affordable Care Act.”

Prediction 3: HR will need to become more like marketing.
Sommer says that “recruiting is going to become more like marketing.” In particular, he suggests recruiters begin to “identify specific micro-segments of either job seekers or job holders that you want to target to bring into your firm, just like a marketing firm would.”

Meanwhile, Scot Marcotte, Barry Hall and Steve Coco at Buck Consultants predict the entire HR department will need to think like marketers. As they say, “HR will evolve the ‘internal marketing’ role to include social marketing coordination and brand ownership, that is, outside talent ‘buying’ into the brand — the company — to potentially work in the organization.”

Advice to Prepare for 2020
What can current HR professionals and software vendors begin doing now to prepare for these predicted changes? The experts all endorse one tactic: keep learning. Trying new things and actively networking will help, too.

Dr. Presser advises those in the HR field to "get ahead of the curve." “Realize that many of today’s ‘best practices’ evolved under very different business conditions, and may well become obsolete within this decade. Learn everything you can about your industry, your competitors and pending legislation that affects your business operations. Most of all, define yourself as a businessperson and act accordingly.”

Additionally, Luman encourages HR professionals to develop their own personal brand. As he says, “Network inside and outside of your field. Blog, communicate, read and help others achieve success. If you are not outside of your comfort zone, you are stagnating.”

As for software vendors, Sommer advises expansion, and emphasizes the need for the eventual creation of a single global HR solution. As he says, “Everybody can do business with people all over the planet now, and I think tech companies have no choice but to continue to expand into more and more countries. In time we might actually see a world getting closer and closer to a single product being able to support the needs and requirements of a global workforce. We’re not there yet, and we won’t be there for probably many years — if ever — but we’re gonna get closer to that over time. ” 

The ideas in this blog post are covered in more detail in Erin Osterhaus' article "The HR Department of 2020: 6 Bold Predictions." For the full article, click here.

Remember the Past When Promoting Content on Social Media

Social media is such a “now” thing that it’s easy to forget the past. That’s a mistake, especially when it comes to content.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media networks are great for promoting your latest content, but to maximize your brand exposure, you should consider sharing content you’re released previously.

There are, however, situations when, generally speaking, you should and shouldn’t share older content. And you should be careful where you share it.

Don’t share your older content if:

• It’s outdated or not of high quality (if it was unpopular last year, why would it be popular this year?).
• You are promoting other content, and are sharing little or no outside content.
• You are heavily promoting other content, and the older content isn’t related to that content.

Do share your older content if:

• It was a big hit the last time you promoted it. 
• It relates to content you are currently promoting or sharing. Social media is a conversation, and sharing older content that is relevant to current content (yours or someone else’s) can add to the conversation.
• You aren’t promoting any other content.
• Your social media followers have increased or changed significantly since you last promoted your older content, or you’ve never promoted it on social media.

Where to share older content:

• Twitter is a great place. You have a lot of capacity, so it’s OK to tee up another dozen or so tweets (with different hashtags, of course).
• Be careful with Facebook and LinkedIn, as there is less capacity and a higher risk of turning off people who already saw it.
• Also consider social channels where you did NOT promote the content previously. For example, maybe you did not have a SlideShare account last year when you promoted your webinar archive. Now you can promote the slides on that channel.   

As you consider your strategy for sharing recycled content, keep in mind the 80:20 rule: For every piece of your content you promote, the best practice is to share at least four pieces of others’ high-quality content. Doing so keeps your audience more engaged, and makes them less likely to stop following you.

One other quick point about older content: If it’s outdated, perhaps take the time to update it, especially if it was successful when first released. It can take a lot less time to update older content pieces than it does to create entirely new ones. And, then, of course, you can promote it on your social media properties.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

Can You Predict What Will Be Hot in HR?

Occasionally.

That’s the answer to the question posed by the headline.

It’s not a high prediction standard, but, hey, it’s more success than seismologists have with predicting earthquakes.

What we mean by what’s hot in HR is the topics that HR movers and shakers are most engaged with on social media and are being intensely covered in articles and blogs. Using HRmarketer software, we identify the three hottest topics of each week and publish the list in our e-newsletter “What’s Hot in HR.” Register for the e-newsletter at http://www.hrmarketer.com/whats-hot-in-hr/.

The value of knowing what’s hot in HR is it’s a great idea to release content on topics when they are hot, when people are clamoring for content about them. For example, it would be a much better idea to release content about the SHRM Annual Conference in June, the month of the event, than in October.

To examine if you can predict what’s hot, we took a look through the week-by-week results (the results since October are shown at the bottom of the post), and examined them for any obvious, predictable hot topics. We found only a few, but also gleaned some other insights.

Some hot topics you can predict well in advance

1. Major HR conferences are likely to be hot topics around the time they are held. HR technology was a hot topic the week of Oct. 12, and the HR Technology Conference was hot the following week. The conference was, of course, held in October.

2. Some holiday-related content is bound to become hot. Veteran employment was on the list the week of Nov. 16, and Veterans Day was Nov. 12.

Because these topics are predictable, they aren’t likely to be exceptionally hot. Except, of course, if something unexpected happened, such as a major announcement at a major HR conference.

Some hot topics you know will be hot right away

The hottest HR topics, however, tend to come out of left field, and that they will become hot is HR circles is about as obvious as a baseball hitting you in the face.

Examples of this include:

1. A major company makes a headline-creating HR move. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced in February that the company would no longer permit telecommuting. That week, remote employees was a hot topic. The next week, telework was hot.

2. A major magazine covers HR. If a major publication puts HR news on its cover, it’s going to get heavy play. Bloggers will be chiming in with opinions, and influencers will be discussing it on social media. Remember last summer’s “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” commentary in The Atlantic and all the resulting conversations? Well, several related topics became hot as a result, including maternity leave.

Most of the time you just don’t know

Despite the above cases, most of the time it’s not obvious what will become hot.

Certainly, the topics covered in trade publication websites can become hot, but so can the topics of leading HR-related Twitter chats, such as #TChat. Or a blog post could go viral.

Unless you know what the leading trades are going to showcase, most of the time you can’t predict if a topic is going to be hot or not.

Now, certain topics do tend to stay in the limelight more than others. These are generally highly debated topics that publications, bloggers and others frequently produce content on, because they know there is demand. A prime example is employee wellness, which seems to become hot every month or two. But, when exactly, it will become hot again is hard to tell.

Then there are seasonal hot topics. For example, we saw flu shot become hot in January and sick leave in April. But again, it’s hard to tell, exactly, when they will become hot.

So, ultimately, most of the time we just don’t know what will become hot. Take a look for yourself below:

April 26, 2013: background check, mobile recruiting, predictive analytics

April 19, 2013: organizational culture, workplace violence, HRMS

April 12, 2013: HCM, temporary employees, wellness

April 5, 2013: employee morale, H-1B Visa, sick leave

March 29, 2013: return to work, reference checking, workers comp

March 22, 2013: referral program, skills gaps, employee attitudes

March 15, 2013: job growth, temporary workers, employment verification

March 8, 2013: employee appreciation, employee motivation, telework

March 1, 2013: remote employees, HR analytics, employee wellness

Feb. 22, 2013: ATS, employee referral, minimum wage

Feb. 15, 2013: workplace bullying, talent acquisition, Affordable Care Act

Feb. 8, 2013: employee development, qualified candidate, work culture

Feb. 1, 2013: applicant tracking, hiring interview, Twitter recruiting

Jan. 25, 2013: maternity leave, benefit communication, interview tips

Jan. 18, 2013: flu shot, employee recognition, corporate recruiting

Jan. 11, 2013: employment contract, performance review, personal productivity

Jan. 4, 2013: minimum wage, unpaid internships, work-life balance

Dec. 21, 2012: background check, career communities, HR certification

Dec. 14, 2012: right to work, social HR, telework

Dec. 7, 2012: stress management, wellness program, employee selection

Nov. 30, 2012: bad bosses, interview tips, skills gap

Nov. 16, 2012: veteran employment, health reform, salary increase

Nov. 9, 2012: workforce management, social learning, unemployment rate

Nov. 2, 2012: employee referral, social listening, talent community

Oct. 26, 2012: employee development, workplace bullying, work culture

Oct. 19, 2012: ATS, employee engagement, HR Technology Conference

Oct. 12, 2012: social network, HR technology, passive candidate

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

The 2 Types of Social Influencers

Like, I think, most people, I generally don’t like to be categorized. I’m me and I’m nobody else. Don’t box me in. But there are some boxes that I nonetheless fit into. Male, Caucasian, 30-40 years old, married, father, U.S. citizen, Californian, etc.

There is value to society to putting me in those boxes. That’s why we have Census and other forms.

As marketers (another box I fit into), we don’t tend to put social influencers in separate boxes. Instead, we tend to put them all in one giant social influencer box.

But there is tremendous value to marketers to make a distinction among online social influencers. There are actually two types of social influencers: content producers and content distributors. The two groups offer distinct potential benefits to marketers, and require different approaches from marketers.

What’s the difference?

Content producers write.  A journalist is a content producer. Most analysts are content producers. A blogger is often a content producer. A content marketer is a content producer. So long as they have at least limited voices on social. On the other hand, writing tweets, Facebook status updates, etc. is not enough to make people content producers. They need to be producing content outside of social media networks, then using social media networks to promote that content. Content producers often share others’ content, but their own content is an important, if not primary, source of their influence. Many content producers have deep knowledge and expertise on the topics they write about — but not all do. 

Content distributors, on the other hand, primarily or solely share others’ content. They share content written by content producers and other writers, and their influence comes from the size of their social networks, the quality of the content they share, and the high engagement of their networks. Most influential content distributors also have unique online personalities.

For both groups, how influential they are is tied to the scope, quality and engagement of their audiences.

Anyone can produce content. That alone doesn’t make them an influencer. The content that influential content producers publish is widely read, liked, commented on and shared — often by the most influential content distributors.  The size of an influential content producer’s network doesn’t have to be large. The size of an influential content distributor’s network is always large. Elite influencers (a rare group) are top content producers and distributors.  

Not every social influencer fits perfectly as a content producer or a content distributor. For example, an influencer might blog once per week, but might share others’ content hundreds of times. The best approach for marketers is to determine if the influencer’s value to them is primarily as a content producer or a content distributor, then work with him or her accordingly.

Why does the difference matter?

It’s important for marketers to think of content producers and content distributors separately because they offer separate benefits.

Content producers might write about what the marketers are promoting, or they might share it. If content producers write about what marketers are promoting, marketers get the benefit of exposure on the producers’ media outlets, blogs, etc., plus to the content producers’ social media audiences.

Content distributors generally won’t write about marketers’ content, but they have their social media audiences to offer. They generally are more likely to share content than content producers, whose sharing often takes a back seat to the promotion of their own content. Plus, since content distributors’ worth is connected so closely with their audiences, top distributors tend to have large followings.

Both types of influencers offer great value. Content producers offer the traditional value of an article placement, plus a varying amount of social media visibility. Content distributors tend to offer only social media visibility, but it generally is a good amount.

Another thing that differs between content producers and content distributors is marketers need to approach them differently.

To get content distributors working for them, marketers need to offer value. They can begin by following and communicating with distributors on their social media networks, but ultimately a pay-to-play sort of system is often necessary to get the full value from influential content distributors.  This is perfectly acceptable. It’s how the game is played. It’s business. This can take the form of some sort of offer, perhaps a consultant agreement, with one of the benefits being them sharing marketers’ content.

With content creators, marketers need to earn their respect or attention with great content, deep subject matter expertise and thought leadership. Pay-to-play is rarely an option.  A good way to start developing a relationship is social sharing of content creators’ work and commenting on their blogs, articles, etc., but ultimately marketers need to have quality content or information that the content creators will find interesting enough to write about or share. Some content creators might go along with a pay-to-play system content distributors profit from, but many, especially journalists, would be highly offended.

Final thought

It’s a challenge for marketers to work with influencers, but it’s one worth taking, as they can greatly help with the visibility of marketers’ brands and content.

It’s a process. Unless marketers have something truly amazing to offer, it takes time to develop relationships with influencers. But by recognizing the two types — content creators and content distributors — marketers will have a much better chance of succeeding in this endeavor.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

Is it Time for HR Vendors to Stop Talking About Big Data?

It’s becoming clear that HR software and services companies have a big “big data” problem.

Big data may be the “in” thing, but many HR businesses are struggling to successfully position themselves as big data providers.

The problem has three parts: scope, readiness and interest. Many HR businesses are getting into the big data game, but most don’t have big data products available yet. Until HR sees what big data can do, it doesn’t appear to have much interest.

First, let’s talk about scope (no, not the mouthwash, but about why the big data field has gotten so crowded).

It’s clear that big data has huge potential for a variety of industries. There are many examples of how different industries can benefit, but instead of listing them ad nauseam, here’s one example whose value should be clear to all: using big data to recommend specific actions to combat diseases could reduce health care costs by billions annually, according to McKinsey. Cool, right?

Many HR businesses certainly think big data is cool. They recognize the opportunity it provides, and many have the potential to provide big data solutions. Most vendors collect data from their customers, and by combining it with data from client and/or outside data sources, they can create big data with significant value.

That many HR businesses are jumping into the big data game is the first part of the problem. So many are positioning themselves as big data vendors that we have big overload about big data.

Stories about how big data is transforming business are endless. Making matters worse is the second part of the problem, that while it seems every HR business is touting its big data capabilities with white papers, webcasts, blog posts and other content, few actually have a big data product offering up and running. To get in on the trend (a Google search for “big data” returns 17,000,000 results), most are left to publish thought leadership content about what big data can do in the future.

As a result of this big data content overload, it is getting more difficult to get people to register for content (e.g., sign up for a webinar, download a white paper). And those who do are more likely to be from IT than HR.

This leads to the third part of HR vendors’ big “big data” problem: Many HR decision makers don’t care about big data per se. They don’t care about what big data is, or what it might be able to do someday (frankly, they might be more interested in reading about mouthwash). What interests them is what big data can do for them, now — specifically how they can leverage the HR data they already have from their talent, learning, recruiting, payroll, benefits, compensation and other systems (including data from outside their company) to make better talent management decisions and improve the performance of their business.

The way HR feels about big data is the same most of us feel about “Intel is Inside” campaigns. Why Intel is inside is not important; nobody outside of techies cares. What's important is all the great things I can do with my computer if Intel is inside.

What does this mean for targeting HR with a big data product? First, marketing messages that focus only on "big data" or get into a technical discussion (the "why") don't seem to perform as well as messages that focus on how big data can transform HR (the "what").  How big data can help me hire better employees and retain them, lower employee benefit costs, develop better leaders, reduce absenteeism/presenteeism, etc.

Also, while it’s important to incorporate certain technical keywords into your marketing copy and SEO strategies, it may not be a good idea to have them in your subject lines, content headlines or your product copy. Know your audience and buyer personas. Speak in language that resonates with them and talk about how your "big data" will impact their key performance indicators and/or business challenges.  

For example, 

• What can big data do to help me attract, retain and develop a more effective workforce?
• 5 essential things HR professionals need to know about big data — before you go to SHRM 

HR people don't want a technical white paper about what big data is. They want to know how it can make a difference — today. 

Post written by Mark Willaman, the founder and CEO of HRmarketer.com and Fisher Vista Marketing. Connect with Mark on LinkedIn. 

How Marketers Should React to the Thinning of Print Publications

When I see print publications in our HRmarketer headquarters office, I’m reminded of the novel “Thinner.”

For just like the protagonist in Stephen King’s book (he wrote it under his Richard Bachman pseudonym), many print publications are getting thinner and thinner and thinner. Some seem more like pamphlets than magazines.

In the novel, the man shrivels from obese to emaciated due to a gypsy’s curse. The thinning of print publications is mostly the Internet’s doing. The story doesn’t end well for the man, and with many newspapers and other publications folding or going online only (e.g. Newsweek), the story isn’t going so well for print publications, either. While the latter story is still unfolding, it has some important implications and takeaways for marketers.

First, here is a quick view of the process driving the thinning of publications:

1. People head to the Internet/social media first for content.

2. People read more content that is not from periodicals to which they subscribe.

3. People are less engaged with those print periodicals, since they have other sources of quality content.

The proliferation of online news sites has contributed
to the struggles of print publications.

4. People stop paying for print subscriptions, causing some publications to offer free subscriptions, which further reduces the engagement level of the average reader.

5. Advertisers move from print to online, or choose to stop advertising altogether.

6. Print publications get smaller due to decreased advertising.

The effects of the thinning of publications include:

- Not as many articles in many print publications.

- Struggling publications cut writers, meaning that they are in need of content.

- The value of placing articles in these publications is reduced due to having smaller, less-engaged audiences.

- Placements in the publications that still have large, highly engaged audiences are increasingly valuable, but are more difficult to get, as these publications have enough advertising dollars come in to pay for sufficient writers.

So what is the marketer to do? The best choice, as it often is, is to diversify your approach. Get your content out in as many ways as possible to maximize your readership. This means:

- Going for the “best bet.” With many smaller publications in need of content for both print and online, meet their needs with quality thought-leadership articles.

- Shooting for the stars. Pitch major publications, especially when you have a story to tell that is relevant to a hot topic in the news or your industry.

- Starting at home. Don’t forget your own ability as an online content distributor — be your own media outlet by becoming a content marketer. Develop your social media networks and your blog’s audience by sharing and writing quality content. Create white papers and other major pieces of content, and use a variety of tactics to promote them. Often times, you can transform these content pieces into articles suitable for publication, plus they give you ideas for pitches. Also, if you require registration for your major content pieces, the readers become sales leads, a benefit you don’t get from article placements. For more on this, see our article “Content Marketing: The Best Way to Reach and Influence HR.”

Ultimately, despite the thinning of print publications, article placements remain an important part of a successful media strategy. On average, print placements have become less important and online placements have become more valuable. Also, with online opportunities allowing companies to become their own media outlets, to maximize one’s audience (and sales leads), it’s necessary to take advantage of content marketing.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.