Ten Steps for Media Relations in a Social World.

In the latest Fortune Magazine I read that it takes 212 steps to make a pair of Allen Edmonds shoes. The process takes three days. A pair of the company's wingtip shoes costs $295 - $550.

American Craftmanship lives (or, so says Fortune).

Imagine if after this 212 step three day process, Allen Edmonds just tossed the shoes out on the sidewalk and slapped a price tag on them - hoping that a few passers-by would make a purchase?

Silly, huh? But this is exactly what most companies do with their so-called media relations.

They spend hours crafting a news release and running it up to the executive suite for final approval (usually multiple times ) and then take minutes to distribute the release. And I use the word distribute loosely. More like fan out. They blast their news release out over their favorite wire service (usually not search-optimized and without rich-media) and then do the same to their saved media list that hasn't been updated since GW was in office. All told - about 30 minutes of time. Lock up, go home. A fine days work.

In the age of "social" there are two facts about marketing and PR:

1. It's hard. And getting harder.
2. It's expensive. And getting more expensive.

Deal with it, 'cause it's not changing anytime soon. And besides, it's not as if you have a choice. You don't if you want to play with the big dogs. So its no surprise that the CMO's role is one of business' toughest jobs to hold onto. How tough? Try a 22-month life expectancy.

As our new 90-second SocialEars video says (in a very animated entertaining way), "Your job used to be easy. Then came social."

Or, as Elrond Lawrence, HRmarketer.com's VP of Media Relations and 20+ year marketing and PR veteran says, "It's time to redefine the media list."

"The people with whom you share news should be based on who is participating in and driving the online conversations about the topics that relate to your news. As you’d guess, this list of thought leaders changes daily, as do the trending topics. The goal is to identify and pique the interest of online influencers and content curators, who will then share your news with their own social networks. "

"The lines have blurred between analysts, journalists, and “social voices" – people who aren't journalists or analysts per se, but nevertheless have strong online thought leadership and can be vital to sharing your news/content. This requires you to build on-the-fly news distribution lists on a regular basis – because the week after you build such a list, it's out of date."

Sorry PR folks - call home. You might be a few minutes late tonight. This will take more than 30-minutes.

Noise to Signal Cartoon

We have a new white paper (authored by Elrond Lawrence, APR) coming out in a few weeks that goes into great detail about what it takes to succeed in media relations today. It's titled "Social Influence and Curating Content: Thriving in a New World of Media Relations (coming soon)." It's really good - great actually - and a must-read for anyone in HR marketing and PR. When it's available we'll blog about it here.

In the meantime, here are ten steps for media relations in a social world.

1. Distribute your "news" over your favorite newswire. Be sure to search-optimize the release and whenever possible include rich media such as video, images, and links to related files. Also post the release to your own web site.
2. Write a blog post or two about the key topics of the news release. Within the post, link to other online articles and blogs that support your news.
3. Tweet about the news release topic(s) and the subsequent blog post(s). Change the message and do it again over a several day or week period. Get others on your team to do the same on their social networks.
   
4. Share the news with your LinkedIn network, company Facebook page and if appropriate, your 'personal' social channels (is there a difference anymore?).
   
5. Open up a discussion on the topic(s) within appropriate LinkedIn Groups.
6. Identify the journalists, analysts and other online social "voices" that have recently written original content or shared content (via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) on the topic(s) relevant to your news. Then...
7. Share your news with them and give some context as to why you are sharing the information.
8. Comment on blogs and articles that relate to your news. Preferably ones written within the last month or so. Reference your online content but do so in a non-promotional way.
   
9. Now send your news to your usual media distribution lists. This should be done after the above and should not include anyone you've already reached out to. Compose a personal intro message for each recipient on why they should care about the news and include a link to supporting information (preferably your social media press release with rich media).
10. Reach out to a half dozen or so media outlets (print and online) and see if they have interest in a byline article on the topic. You'd be amazed at how often you'll secure a placement.

Now lock up and go home. A fine days work.

Happy New year.

Post by HRmarketer CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

A SocialEars Trend Analysis Snapshot. What's trending in HR?

Using HRmarketer.com's recently launched SocialEars software -- social media analytics software for the human resources marketplace -- I spent an hour or so analyzing the data we've accumulated the last 6 months and found some interesting trending data in the human resource industry.

I randomly selected the following three human resource topics from the SocialEars data (there are hundreds of similar examples):

• Voluntary Benefits
• Smoking Cessation
• Travel Expenses

The three graphs on this blog post highlight some of my findings.

Without getting into the details of the SocialEars algorithm, we calculate for each "topic" a weight score from 1-100 with 1 meaning the topic is trending very low (little to no references being made online to the respective topic at a given time) and 100 meaning the topic is trending high (a lot of media coverage and online discussions taking place on the respective topic).

The data that SocialEars is analyzing comes from the Tweets, Blogs, news stories and "shared" content in the HR and B2B marketplace. In the last six months we've analyzed over 1 Million sources of online content.

The question of what's trending in HR is very relative. It's like asking what's trending on the Internet? The field of human resources is wide and deep. Recruiting is a lot different from wellness which is a lot different from training & development. Sure there is some overlap amongst all HR functions but lets face it - people in recruiting circles never really mingle with the folks in benefits. They read different trades and blogs, attend different events, join different LinkedIn groups, listen to different analysts, and "follow" very different people on Twitter.

So if you try and answer the question "what's trending in HR" by analyzing the entire universe of HR news stories, blog, Tweets, etc. you get, well, nothing very relevant.

Or, do you?

If you compete in the HR Technology space - particularly if you offer a cloud-based SaaS talent management software product - what was trending the last several weeks was the SAP acquisition of SuccessFactors. Huge news. But not that important to wellness vendors (employee flu shots, voluntary benefits and benefits communication programs are on their mind).

So to generate meaningful trending data you want to focus on topics important to you and analyze the media outlets, blogs, tweets and social activity from people within your universe/network.

SocialEars can do that - but for my analysis I randomly selected the three topics listed above and included the entire universe of HR and B2B content.

What I found was interesting. Check it out:



Travel Expenses
Our trending chart shows this topic was trending fairly flat for six months, meaning the amount of content and discussions taking place online about the topic was consistent. As you can see from it's weighting score the topic is discussed a fair amount (score of about 70) but has little volatility. However, an unusual spike occurred for a few weeks. So I dug deep and discovered that during those two weeks a few public figures were accused of abusing travel expenses. And this led to significant media coverage which found its way into HR circles and resulted in quite a few tweets, blog posts and articles on the subject (and SocialEars gave me the list of the people who participated in these discussions).

So what?

Well, if your HR business relates to travel and expense management, you want to know this information so you can join the conversation, write and comment on blogs, reach out to journalists covering the story, produce a white paper on the subject, etc.

Another interesting example was the topic of Smoking Cessation.



Again, the topic was trending relatively flat (slightly rising) for about six months and then it spiked significantly for a few weeks before tapering down. Further research pointed to a major announcement in the press about a study that pointed to the effectiveness of smoking cessation programs. This resulted in significant discussions on the topic in the HR space. Again, if you are in the business of providing smoking cessation programs to employers you want to not only read all the news about the research but equally important you want to know who is participating in the online "social" conversations about the topic. And then join in, update your media distribution lists, etc.



The final topic I researched was Voluntary Benefits. This trend line is interesting and expected. Every year as we approach open enrollment season in HR, the topic of voluntary benefits peaks and then tapers off as we reach year-end.

As it did this year. Except this year the topic was REALLY popular in the media and online discussions in the HR community - as you can see with its weight score of 100. With rising health care costs and the challenging economy one would predict that, since voluntary benefits represent an inexpensive way for employers to invest in employee benefits. And the SocialEars data validates this assumption. Again, if you are in the business of voluntary benefits you want to know all about this trend and what "influencers" are talking about the topic online.

So yes, the question of what's trending is a relative term. But that does not mean it is not important. As the examples above show, what's trending is very important when it relates to you or your business. But it is not enough anymore to just know what's trending. If you are in marketing, PR and/or media relations, the question of what's trending and who is participating in and driving those trends is of paramount importance in today's social landscape.

And this is where HRmarketer.com's recently launched SocialEars software can help. It monitors in real-time the Tweets, Blogs, news stories and "shared" content in the HR and B2B marketplace, allowing you to sift easily through the “noise” of social media to find the right people driving the conversations on topics important to you. It's real-time, it's easy to use and it's completely HR focused. Learn more here.

What else can you do with this kind of information and data? Here's how some of our SocialEars beta users have benefited from SocialEars:

• Identifying trending topics (or searching on any subject important to your business) and finding the "people" participating in and/or driving those online discussions. In other words, more effective media relations - engaging with and sending your news and press releases to people who care!
• Supporting media relations efforts by tracking and understanding hot topics, and accessing the recent content and activity of online influencers, journalists, analysts and publications.
• Supporting your company’s social media efforts by finding and "following" people – some, previously unknown - relevant to your interest areas, retweeting other's posts and finding relevant topics (blogs, articles, etc.) to comment on.
• Understanding the articles and content that are being shared and talked about and helping them to jump in the conversation.
• Choose more timely/relevant white paper, webcast or blog topics using SocialEars trending data – and accessing the information to help write the content.
• Identifying potential speakers, moderators, partners.
• Competitive intelligence and market research.

It's marketing and PR software you can't live without in today's social world. We know, which is why we built it, and why we use it.

And you can too. If you are interested in a demo or some trending research on topics relevant to your business give us a call.

Post by HRmarketer CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

#HRTechChat: The SAP acquisition of the SuccessFactors acquisition of Jobs2Web

It's time for #HRTechChat once again! This Friday, 12/16, from 2 - 3 pm ET (11 am - 12 pm PT).

Friday's topic: SAP's acquisition of SuccessFactors' acquisition of Jobs2Web.

Please check out this guest post from Brent Skinner, co-creator and conspirator of #HRTechChat:

The Future of HCM Tech Is Not Premise-based

What's more exciting than stories about big companies buying smaller companies? Big companies buying smaller-but-still-big companies, that's what—in the cloud. And that's what we witnessed this past weekend, when the very, very big SAP AG acquired the not-exactly-small cloud-based HCM vendor SuccessFactors, Inc. for $3.4 billion. That's a big development, one that the industry needs time to study and fully understand—more time than the mere three days that came and went before SuccessFactors then announced its own acquisition of Jobs2web, the widely respected provider of a social media–based approach to recruitment marketing. When the news is about really big companies buying really big companies, and the oft-discussed cloud is the buzz, the only other news that will rise above the din is probably something related to social media, the cloud's match in the HR technology wars.

Assimilation is not Futile

In fact, it is unavoidable.

To recap, the past week has seen one of the very biggest ERP providers acquire a big cloud-based HCM technology provider, which itself turned around, just a few days later, and snatched up a major provider of social media for recruitment marketing. Let's stay with the implications for cloud-based HR technology and leave for another blog entry any analysis of what the latest news means for social media–facilitated recruiting.

There's a metaphor in here, somewhere, to capture the significance of SAP's acquisition of SuccessFactors….

Watch a storm brew, and you'll see the phenomenon that led to the saying "storm clouds gathering." Open, blue sky slowly gives way to clouds, which gather. And those gathering clouds grow, the larger ones seemingly assimilating the smaller ones, till a single cloud asserts its primacy. Where the sun's light once peered through plentiful openings revealing the blue sky above, a large cloud blocks it, enjoying dominion over everything and everyone underneath.

Minus the bad weather and negative connotations of storms brewing, the idea of growing, larger clouds assimilating smaller clouds in their paths appears to be an apt (or at least a cool) metaphor for SAP's acquisition of SuccessFactors. No, prior to Saturday's announcement, SAP wasn't a bigger cloud in the cloud, but it always has been a metaphorical cloud, and in acquiring SuccessFactors, SAP assimilated a smaller, also metaphorical cloud that just so happens to be a real cloud, too.

Hold that thought, because assimilation of the SAP kind is here to stay.

Unification Now...into the Cloud

The evolution of the HR technology marketplace continues, from a large congregation of myriad vendors of best-of-breed solutions that address the many silos of human capital management, to a much smaller congregation of massive providers of single-solution HCM suites that embody as much of the employee lifecycle as possible. The term for this is unification, of course, and acquisitions elsewhere reflect the trend. Just look at players such as ADP, whose acquisition of The RightThing was just the latest in a string of acquisitions designed to fill out ADP's emerging role as a one-stop destination for all HCM technology. And where will that destination be? It will be in the cloud, as evidenced by ADP Vantage HCM™. Companies comparable to ADP in size and influence are angling to provide all technology necessary for proper HCM via the cloud, too.

Neither Here Nor There, the Cloud Is Here to Stay

Someone recently tweeted that a major benefit HR technology has brought to HR this past decade is the capability to have a bunch of technology in one place that isn't even a place. That's a paraphrase, and the place that isn't a place is the cloud, nevertheless a platform. Yes, SAP's acquisition of SuccessFactors is a major nod to the legitimacy of cloud technology as the way forward for all things HCM. If a savvy ERP vendor of SAP's heft sees the clouds gathering, then we know: The future is not premise-based.

***

HR practitioners, vendors of HR technologies and services, analysts, journalists and industry observers alike are welcome to participate in the chat and follow the Twitter hashtag #HRTechChat each week.

Here are the questions for this week's chat:

• Q1: What does SAP's acquisition of SuccessFactors mean for the future of cloud-based HCM ecosystems?
• Q2: What are the underlying implications, if any, for single-silo, best-of-breed solutions vs. all-in-one suites?
• Q3: Will any #HRtech be premise-based in the next 10 years? If yes, then what?
• Q4: What does SuccessFactors' acquisition of Jobs2web say about social media as a channel for recruitment?
• Q5: How does the acquisition of Jobs2web play into SAP's acquisition of SuccessFactors, if at all?
• Q6: Where do social media-based recruitment marketing and cloud technology meet? Or is there little intersection? Why?

Learn more and take a poll at TalentManagementTech. We'll see you Friday!

Marketing isn't supposed to be collectively constipated

Large company, big table, huge marketing team, small conference room.

As we all sat there looking quite uncomfortable, if not collectively constipated, I finally asked:

"So, what marketing activities are you developing and executing?"

More collective constipation. No one spoke.

For a moment I thought we were in the wrong room, which was silly, because we weren't, considering our contact had met us in the hall and led us to the small conference room.

I cleared my throat. "You know, our HRmarketer.com software and new SocialEars product can help you research and plan your marketing and media relations activities."

"Well, we're just so busy we haven't had time to use your software," one of their team members responded.

Busy doing what? I thought.

As if she heard me, she continued. "We're responsible for creating air support for the division marketing marketing managers so they can execute their regional campaigns. That takes a lot of our time, you know."

Wait, what? Air support? Regional campaigns? What the heck are you talking about?

This isn't the first time I had this "out of body" experience. Fifteen years ago I had these same painful conversations at very large Silicon Valley technology companies, and every year since there's been a marketing "Ground Hog Day."

Whether you're a big company or a small one, you need to develop an integrated and comprehensive strategic marketing plan that includes:

• Marketplace positioning
• Primary brand/product/service messaging
• Target markets
• Target buyers and influencers
• Strengths and challenges
• Marketing and media relations editorial calendar
• Marketing deliverables and activities
• Timeline of activities
• Activities measurement

Actually do stuff and understand the greater business growth context in which you do that stuff.

Remember, marketing isn't supposed to be collectively constipated; you're supposed to generate visibility, traffic and leads for your company.

We can bring relief. I promise.

SocialEars: Laser Focused Marketing and PR. The Easy Way.

Disclaimer: This is a promotional blog post - a flat out commercial for SocialEars. But I think you'll find it very interesting. And I believe the post will give you a better understanding of why social media analytics software - like SocialEars - is critical for marketing and PR success in today's business environment.

So, what is the business value of SocialEars ? And how are companies using SocialEars for better marketing and PR? I get asked this a lot.

The short answer: SocialEars helps HR vendors execute laser focused marketing and PR - better, faster, more efficiently and effectively.

Want some detail? Read on.

1. HRmarketer's information databases track nearly 10,000 news and content sources in the HR and B2B marketplace including media outlets, journalists, analysts, and social "voices". And our SocialEars media analytics algorithm analyzes the information. In just five months SocialEars has indexed nearly one million unique sources of content from the Tweets, Blogs and "shared" content from these sources. The content we analyze comes from the crème de la crème sources within the HR and B2B industry and these "conversations" shape and are representative of the marketplace. In short, they generate our trending topic tag clouds - and these tag clouds are what's trending.

2. SocialEars also indexes/analyzes the "content" that Tweets link to. This is very important. It dramatically expands our reach. For example, if Mary Jane has 5 twitter followers and follows 10 people she is likely not on your radar. But if her content is shared within the HR marketplace, we have it. In short, we have a huge amount of HR content to draw from in our SocialEars databases. More than anyone. I feel pretty confident about saying that.

This allows marketing and PR departments to do a few really important tasks and addresses some critical pain points.

For example, if you have news to share on Employee Engagement you want to know who the “people” are that have been talking about employee engagement online -- say, within the last month or so -- people who have tweeted about the topic, wrote blog posts, shared related stories on their LinkedIn or Facebook sites, journalists who've written articles and analysts who've covered the subject.



SocialEars can deliver this list (note: screen shot below is a partial list).



From here you can determine who to engage. And SocialEars/HRmarketer.com helps you make this decision by:

• Showing their influence score from leading influence ranking services.
  
• Showing the person's topic tag cloud (generated by SocialEars) to see what they most frequently discuss online – with links to the original content.
• Showing their recent blog posts and Tweets.
• Giving you the person's bio and quick links to their social channels.
• Allowing you to search and view their archived content from their social channels - on any topic.

You can then email these people (if they allow it), follow them on Twitter, connect with them via LinkedIn or other social channels and add them to an existing news distribution list within your HRmarketer software – or, create a new list.


Equally important, for the topic you searched on (e.g., employee engagement) you can get a list of the top content on this subject. You can learn from it for your own competitive or marketplace intelligence, quickly re-tweet or share the content on your social channels, save it to a private folder, or post comments to selected content (e.g., a blog post or online article).

And of course, you can grow your own social network and followers, find speakers for conferences/webinars, and many other needs.

This is not your grandfather's PR. This is laser focused marketing and PR for 2012 and beyond. It's about filtering through the noise and getting to what really matters. And then acting on it. Get familiar with it.

BTW - this was the subject of a recent webinar we hosted with guest speaker Lance Haun titled Understanding Today's Media Relations and Social PR. Listen to it here. Following this webinar we received a comment from a marketing/PR person in the HR space. She said "People are desperately looking for ideas, solutions, tips and answers on how to do things better, faster, more efficiently and effectively."

It's here. And it goes by the name of SocialEars.

Thanks for reading. If you want a demo, contact us! Or, better yet. Watch one today! Sign-up now for our SocialEars demo on Thursday, December 9, from 1-1:30 pm ET (11-11:30 am PT) and get a iTunes gift card for watching.

Post by HRmarketer CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Online INFLUENCE. And a webinar about media relations and PR in a social world.

Influence is defined as an “implicit or explicit effect of one thing (or person) on another,” which online can be further simplified to: “can someone’s words (and/or video) make you think or do something?” - source

It seems these days like most everyone strives to have some sort of online influence. People joke about it, but a lot of us really do care about making the top influencer lists, how many LinkedIn connections we have, our TFF ratio, and how often our content is liked, shared, +1'd, etc.


Noise to Signal Cartoon


Some jobs require a strong personal online brand. If you are an analyst, speaker or social media/marketing consultant, you have to build and maintain a strong online presence. And I feel for ya, cause it's really hard and never-ending work. Interestingly, a lot of the top online influencers in the HR marketplace today were top offline influencers back in the day -- they adapted and transitioned well. Bill Kutik is a great example.

But if you work in marketing/PR and your primary job requirement is to get the word out about your COMPANY'S brand, then do you personally need a strong online brand? What about a high Klout score? Do you need to be on the top influencer lists? Is it a prerequisite for job success?

Dan Schawbel, managing partner of Millennial Branding and prolific tweeter at @DanSchawbel, says it’s essential to have both.

But I'm not so sure.

Building influence online isn't easy. It takes time. Lots of it. And although building a personal online brand and a strong online company brand share some similarities they are different strategies and require a different set of skills and tactics. And very few people can effectively do both. From CEOs to individual contributors, most highly successful people I know (and by "success" I mean they are damn good at their job and produce measurable results tied to company revenue) don't have a particularly high personal online "brand."

Ironically, if you start by focusing on building your company's online brand, you’re in fact laying the groundwork for eventually establishing your own personal brand. But nevertheless, they are different. Understanding the difference is key.

Micah Baldwin, VP and Lead Evangelist for Lijit Networks, wrote a great article on personal influence and branding back in 2009 and it's still a great read. Check it out.

But let's talk about building your company's online brand/influence.

You'll want to consider a strategy for online advertising -- both search engine advertising (e.g, Adwords) and display advertising. And yes, you'll want to consider direct email marketing and webinars.

But regardless of whether or not you choose these, you absolutely need the following: a company blog, Twitter channel, LinkedIn page, Facebook page, Youtube Channel, iTunes Podcast channel, and more.

You then have an obligation to fund those sites with content. And you need a process for not only providing ongoing, timely content but for providing compelling content that engages your audience and positions your company as a thought leader or valued resource. You also need a process for distributing and managing that content throughout your social media properties.

But that's still not enough.

You also need to participate in online "conversations." This means sharing other people's content, commenting on other people's blogs/content, participating in LinkedIn Group discussions (and creating some of your own Groups). It also requires a different approach to "traditional" media relations. Sending a news release through your favorite wire service and mass-mailing your news release to the usual media distribution list isn't enough anymore. The lines have blurred between analysts, journalists, and “social voices" -- people who aren't journalists or analysts per se, but nevertheless have strong online thought leadership and can be vital to sharing your news/content. This requires you to build on-the-fly news distribution lists on a regular basis -- because the week after you build such a list it's out of date.

For example, let's say you have some news or content to share about employee engagement. You write a blog post on the subject, you Tweet about it, share it with your LinkedIn and Facebook networks, maybe do a webcast, direct email campaign or even a podcast. But how many of you are still blasting your news releases over your favorite wire service and sending your news releases as a bulk email to the same list of journalists?

The former is important (but not enough). The latter doesn't really work anymore.

You want to know who the “people” are that have been talking about employee engagement online -- say, within the last month or so -- people who have tweeted about the topic, wrote blog posts, shared related stories on their LinkedIn or Facebook sites, journalists who've written articles and analysts who've covered the subject.

How do you do this? Allow me to plug HRmarketer's new SocialEars media analytics software. It gives you this list.

Once you have the list, you can determine if they are worth engaging and if so, in what format. Do you send an email to them with a link to your content and why they should care? Do you comment on their blog post/article? Do you share their content on your own social channels? All the above?

Hey, who said media relations was easy?

It aint.

But HRmarketer is sponsoring a webinar on this subject tomorrow: Thursday, December 8th at 10am PST. Sign-up today.

This interactive webinar is about understanding today's media relations and social PR and features Lance Haun, contributing editor of ERE and TLNT.com, and Elrond Lawrence, HRmarketer’s vice president of media relations. They’ll discuss how media relations has evolved in the age of social media, how to target the right journalists, and how to get your news noticed.

Other topics will include:

- Writing a good introduction for your press release
- The importance of personalizing your news or story pitch
- What makes for a newsworthy topic
- What not to send a journalist

We hope to see you there.

Post by HRmarketer CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Part Two: Sharing the news about SAP SuccessFactors. Top Content and Influencers.

Noise to Signal Cartoon


Yesterday I wrote a blog post about the most popular content related to the SAP SuccessFactors acquisition and the list of individuals in the HCM space who were most instrumental in getting the word out about the acquisition. Read it here.

The danger in compiling such lists is that someone always asks, why wasn't [fill in name of influencer] on the list? Or, why wasn't so-and-so's great blog post on the list?

And they did ask.

I concluded yesterday's blog post by saying "tomorrow the lists will change" and indeed they have. Today, Zoli Erdos and Naomi Bloom are in the top of people instrumental in getting the word out about the acquisition - yesterday Naomi wrote and then up-dated a blog post on the subject and that likely helped - and when she publishes her "mega-post about the SAP/SuccessFactors deal" she'll likely rise even further.

Remember, the people who are first or early to report news and who have a widespread following will, naturally, always get the recognition as most "influencing" the initial distribution of the story. Does it matter? Does this make someone more influential? You tell me. I have no idea.

But what happens when I search SocialEars for the phrase "SuccessFactors" over a 6-month period - or beyond?

The list, again, changes.

Now we start to see the people in the HR technology space who regularly discuss topics related to HR Technology and SuccessFactors - and who are widely followed and whose "content" gets widely distributed. Naturally, Bill Kutik, Naomi and other recognized thought leaders dominate this list.

Remember, as I wrote in yesterday's blog post - influence and popularity are relative. Time matters.

One comment on yesterday's blog post said "I don't recognise many of the names on your list. Not sure how well the SocialEars algorithm really works."

I had to laugh. Apparently, the algorithm works beautiful - for what it is supposed to do. SocialEars is NOT an influence ranking tool - we'll leave that to the engineers at Klout and PeerIndex and others - there is a reason why we integrate/partner with these technologies as we have no interest in doing what they do.

SocialEars at its core is a marketing and media relations tool to help people view the trending topics in the HCM marketplace (or, search for topics important to them) and view the "people" participating in and driving those respective topics.

If you are in PR at company ABC and you have some news to distribute about cloud computing technology in the HR/Talent Management marketplace you kind of sort of want to know who the people are that have been talking about that topic online - and from there you can determine if they are worth engaging.

So the fact that we turned someone on to people they did not previously "recognise" is sort of the point!

Today, most of us get our news from the Internet. And we consume this news throughout the day via email, webinars, podcasts, blogs and on sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, where we also share the news we consume. It's a never-ending loop where everyone functions as a news source and few gatekeepers control what news we see. (here is a cool infographic on the subject).

The byproduct of this phenomenon is that we are drowning in information - noise.

And this is the real value of marketing/PR social media analytics software - like SocialEars. These tools allow us to filter through the noise to access what's really important (to us) and better understand what's being discussed and who is participating in those discussions.

How you use this information and assign "influence/popularity" - well, that's entirely up to you. The gentlemen who commented "I don't recognise many of the names on your list" also wrote "I'm not yet convinced that we can analyse influence with mathematics - yet."

And I agree.

Post by HRmarketer CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Sharing the news about SAP SuccessFactors. Top Content and Influencers.

By now most everyone is aware SAP acquired SuccessFactors. The news was announced Saturday. A Google search for the story brings up nearly 3,000 "news" stories from the last 24-hours. That's a lot - relatively speaking. For comparison, Newt Gingrich brings up about 30,000 news stories the last 24 hours. (hey, HR Technology is popular but not THAT popular).

Given the magnitude of the SAP SuccessFactors story, I wanted to analyze it from within our human resources marketplace using our new social media analytics software, SocialEars.

SocialEars is a proprietary algorithm from HRmarketer that analyzes the online "social" activity of media outlets, journalists, analysts and other thought leaders in the human resource B2B marketplace to identify trending topics and the key "influencers" driving these discussions. Content aggregated and analyzed includes hundreds of thousands of media stories, blog posts, Tweets and other "shared content" on social sites. It allows you to quickly locate the key influencers on topics relevant to your business and locate the most popular "content". From here, you can do a lot of things like assemble timely and relevant news distribution lists, market research, network building, speaker identification, etc.

So I searched SocialEars shortly after noon on December 5th (Monday) for "SuccessFactors". Now keep in mind, by now every major business news outlet has covered the topic and there will be a lot more coverage to come over the next week - including Jason Averbook's webinar on December 12th about what it all means. Sounds like a must-attend event.

But my search was from earlier today so my analysis did not include content published after that time. For example, Matt Marshall from VentureBeat wrote a great article about the acquisition this afternoon (which I found on SocialEars moments ago) titled SAP-SuccessFactors: 9 reasons why this is a smart acquisition but it was a little late to make my analysis from earlier in the day.

And this actually brings up an interesting point about influence and popularity - it's relative. Top influencers and top "content" (articles, blog posts, tweets, etc.) change with time. It's also relative within groups. Those of us who work in the - relatively small and secluded - HR marketplace likely learned about the acquisition in a much different way than those outside our space. Those of us inside the space likely learned about the news from key analysts, bloggers, or other people in our networks whereas the masses learned about it on CNN. But that's an entirely different topic and blog post.

OK - so within our HR marketplace, who was instrumental in spreading the news and what was the most referenced content about the news?

The news was first announced by SAP and the official press release on SAP's web site was posted on December 3rd titled SAP TO ACCELERATE CLOUD STRATEGY WITH ACQUISITION OF SUCCESSFACTORS.

That press release was initially by far the most popular "content" about the story.

When I searched SocialEars today, the top "articles" about the acquisition were as follows:

1. SAP Buys SuccessFactors for $3.4B Signals SAP’s Commitment To Cloud, HCM, and Social

Posted by R "Ray" Wang, Principal Analyst and CEO at Constellation Research Group

Twitter ID: @rwang0

2. SAP To Buy SuccessFactors: Major Shift In Talent Management Market

Posted by Josh Bersin, CEO, Berin and Associates

Twitter ID: @Josh_Bersin

3. TechCrunch trivializes SAP's $3.4B (billion) cloud acquisition

Posted by: Michael Krigsman, CEO of Asuret, Inc

Twitter ID: @mkrigsman

4. SAP acquires SuccessFactors: a first take

Posted by: Dennis Howlett, Zdnet Writer and IT Industry Analyst and Commentator

Twitter ID: @dahowlett

5. SAP to Acquire SuccessFactors for $3.4 Billion

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl, Senior Editor at AllThingsDigital

Twitter ID: @ahess247

How do we measure article popularity? That's the secret sauce of the SocialEars algorithm but basically it comes down to the amount of times these articles were referenced and shared by others.

So who were the people that shared the news of the acquisition? Seriously, a lot and its the wrong question to ask if you count every Tom, Dick and Harry who re-tweeted or shared the story. Frankly, if Dick has 5 followers on Twitter, has never written a blog post and doesn't know what LinkedIn is then his sharing of the story likely fell on deaf ears.

We want to know what people most influenced the news of the acquisition in our HR marketplace.

SocialEars delivered quite an extensive list.

Here are the top 10:

1. Gautam Ghosh
2. Paul Hamerman
3. Jarret Pazahanick
4. Alexia (Lexy) Martin
5. Mark Smith
6. John Hollon
7. Laurie Ruettimann
8. Phil Fersht
9. Dean Da Costa
10. William Tincup

How do we measure top influencers for a particular topic? That's another really secret sauce of the SocialEars algorithm but outside of the obvious (followers, reach, etc.) it's a combination of the authors published content on the topic(s) and how often their content is discussed and shared.

With a little dash of magic :-)

And tomorrow the lists will change. Cool stuff.

If you are interested in learning more about SocialEars, sign-up for our December 9th Webinar.

#HRTechChat is here! Join us!

#HRTechChat is here!

Tomorrow actually -- Friday, December 2, at 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT -- where we'll tackle the question, What are the biggest advantages for HR with HR technology today?

HR practitioners, vendors of HR technologies and services, analysts, journalists and industry observers alike are welcome to participate in the chat and follow the Twitter hashtag #HRTechChat each week.

The questions we'll cover tomorrow include:

• Q1: What are the top "technologies" that revolutionized HR the last decade and why?
• Q2: Is HR behind the technology curve still or catching up? Why?
• Q3: What are some key technology trends that HR must embrace today and tomorrow? Why?
• Q4: Who should HR be partnering with internally to drive tech adoption and utilization?

A special thanks to Rob Garcia, VP of Product Development at UpMo, a SaaS-deployed HR system that focuses solely on internal mobility, who helped us with the first round of questions.

#HRTechChat will be a bimonthly Twitter chat focused on human resource technology and its impact on business today brought to you HRO Today's sister publication, TalentManagementTech (TMT), in collaboration with us, B2B marketing software and services firm HRmarketer.com.

We decided to launch #HRTechChat because out of the dozens in the great HR B2B space, there wasn't one dedicated to HR technology and business today. More and more HR practitioners, business executives and HR vendors alike are connecting in social networks like Twitter. Twitter chats provide an online forum that all professionals can easily participate in from their Twitter client of choice, and all in 140 characters or less.

What's exciting for us is that the chat topics will be drawn from SocialEars, our groundbreaking algorithm that captures and analyzes the tweets, blogs and online articles by thousands of HR journalists, analysts and thought leaders. In its first few editions, #HRTechChat will focus on timely trends identified by SocialEars during the month of November, including:

• Screening and assessing applicants
• HR outsourcing
• Mobile recruiting

Co-hosting #HRTechChat with me will be Brent Skinner, regular contributor to HRO Today and former contributing editor to Executive Recruiter News.

So join us tomorrow for #HRTechChat on Twitter or your favorite Twitter client of choice (use TweetChat because you can slow the stream), Friday, December 2, at 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT.