HRmarketer.com Blog

Listmania and Social Influence

2012-01-16T12:51:00.000-08:00

Last week the HR Twitter world was ablaze with the release of John Sumser's latest "Top 25 Online Influencers in Recruiting" list. It's the fifth edition of John's popular ranking, but the first time he's used our SocialEars to compile it. As you'd guess, we were thrilled to see our media analytics and monitoring technology put through its paces in a very public way. It was fascinating to see the results and the vocal reaction that followed.

As you'd expect with this kind of list, the top 25 influencers (including our own Kevin Grossman) happily announced their rankings and congratulated each other. Hey, I would! Some people debated the accuracy of the choices. And people argued about the choices. Tim Sackett wrote a very entertaining blog post that's worth a read.

In the end, the response to John's Top 25 was pretty much the same as every top 10 list we're deluged with at the end of the year. Lists are insanely subjective. But they stimulate conversation and debate, and that's what makes them fun.

To this PR guy, what's more interesting than the actual list is John's commentary about the power and nature of social influence. He's quick to point out that the players are changing faster than ever. Five years ago it was easy to spot HR industry influencers: journalists and analysts who worked in traditional outlets. Today it's a free-for-all. The lines have blurred between analysts, journalists, and “social voices" – people who aren't officially journalists or analysts but nevertheless have strong thought leadership. The trick is not to find the person with the biggest following, but the people whose followers care about your products and services.

John chose SocialEars because he recognized its power to navigate the overwhelming explosion of social media data. Since it collects and analyzes articles, tweets, blog posts and social content, he could search for a specific topic and get instant lists of the people who cover that topic online -- writers, tweeters, bloggers -- and read their published articles, posts, and tweets. We use SocialEars primarily for media relations, but it's also handy for market research, competitive intelligence, locating speakers and researching material for white papers and webcasts.

While the results display scores from Klout and Peerindex, along with relevance and importance rankings, SocialEars has never been about measuring influence. In other words, we gave John the best tool for the job and it was up to him to interpret the results.

What's ironic is that the top 25 list -- love it or hate it -- is already obsolete.

"Influence is volatile and social media is unforgivingly focused on what you’ve done lately," John explained in his introduction to the list. "There’s no future in social media and precious little past. You are exactly what you’ve done recently."

Preach that influence gospel, brother John.

Posted by Elrond Lawrence, VP of media relations; watch for our upcoming white paper on social PR and media relations.

Don't Forget the Call to Action! Sounds Simple, I Know. But it Happens.

2012-01-14T13:06:00.000-08:00

I received an e-mail from the president of Chico State University, my alma mater. "Fancy!" I thought.

He's going to appeal to my sense of loyalty to the place where I spent some of the best years of my life. He's going to inform. He's going to challenge me with a strong call to action.

This felt special since I'm not used to receiving e-mails from the university president. It's a mass e-mail, yes. But never is the sender the university president and the subject line read,"CSU Receives No New Funding." Sounds serious. So I open the e-mail.

Fast forward through the five paragraphs worth of information to the end. All I heard was a loud thud as the message fell flat.

I read through it again because maybe I missed something. Then I realized the author and whomever executed the communication missed something.

The California State University (CSU) system receives no new funding. OK. The governor of California is proposing a $200 million cut to system's budget. Ok, that sounds serious. The CSU system has had to implement sizable tuition fee increases. Yeah, that hurts.

I stare blankly at the screen wondering exactly what's expected of me.

What a colossal missed opportunity.

Nothing about, "write the governor and here's his address." Or, "help us storm the state Capitol in a mass march." Or, "vote to increase your state taxes."

Wait, what? The last one sounds like a tougher sell than the first two options. But you didn't even ask!

It sounds so simple but apparently not so obvious.

When you're communicating with your audience, a captive audience in this case, don't forget to tell them what you want them to do. Don't be shy. Just ask. And, make it as easy as possible for your audience to do what you want them to do. Remove the barriers and give them the necessary tools to act.

I won't unsubscribe from the mailing. But learn from this. Send an e-mail to your prospects where the message fails and you may hear the collective stampede of clicks of folks unsubscribing.

Ten Steps for Media Relations in a Social World.

2011-12-30T10:59:00.000-08:00

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.

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.
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.
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.
Share the news with your LinkedIn network, company Facebook page and if appropriate, your 'personal' social channels (is there a difference anymore?).
Open up a discussion on the topic(s) within appropriate LinkedIn Groups.
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...
Share your news with them and give some context as to why you are sharing the information.
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.
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).
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?

2011-12-16T13:37:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-13T16:21:00.001-08:00

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

2011-12-13T08:26:00.001-08:00

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.

2011-12-08T11:44:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-12-07T13:41:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-12-06T11:47:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-12-05T17:58:00.000-08:00

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 Managem ent 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:

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!

2011-12-01T13:38:00.001-08:00

#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.

The Changing Landscape of HR Marketing and PR

2011-11-29T10:10:00.000-08:00

Things have changed.

In marketing and PR, that is.

If you are managing your marketing and PR the same way you did five years ago, you are doing it wrong.

Two statistics to help make the point:

Online ad revenue in 2010 will surpass print newspaper ad revenue for the first time. Less ads = less editorial copy = less traditional media placement opportunities!
Total Worldwide Internet Users in 2010 = 1.97 billion. And 41% said they get most of their news online.

For a lot of examples why things are different, see our new Infographic, The Changing Landscape of HR Marketing and PR.

I'll summarize in three steps what HR vendors need to be doing with respect to their marketing and "media relations":

1. You need to be online.

2. You need to regularly produce engaging content on all your social networks.

3. You need to identify and pique the interest of the online ”influencers” and “content curators” - and distribute your “news” to these groups.

Sounds obvious, right?

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?

This former is important (but not enough). The later is wrong.

In other words, the "list" of people you are sharing your news with should be based on who is presently participating in and driving the online conversations about the topics your news relates to. And this list of thought leaders changes daily - that's the value of HRmarketer.com and SocialEars, software to help you sort through the noise, identify trends and the key influencers driving these trends and engaging these thought leaders so you can start to stand-out and build your visibility in both traditional and new media. These products give you an instant list of the thought leaders relevant to your news (and their recent "conversations" that relate to the topic(s).

To learn more register for our December 8th webinar with Lance Haun, contributing editor of ERE and TLNT.com, and Elrond Lawrence, vice president of media relations for HRmarketer.com. Lance and Elrond will host this interactive webinar on understanding today's media relations and social PR.

Elrond and Lance will discuss:

- How media relations has evolved in the age of SOCIAL MEDIA

- How to target the right "journalists" (e.g., influencers)

- How to get your news noticed.

In other words, how to do PR the right way, today.

What do talent communities mean to you?

2011-11-28T06:52:00.001-08:00

It's a bigger question than you'd think. The one about what "community" means to others as it relates to your social recruiting and social marketing efforts.

I told you to put a sandbox in your roundabout so "they" will come for community and each other, not necessarily for you, at first anyway. They being your "leads," the ones you want interested in your employment and corporate brands (which again should be pretty much aligned if you're serious about attracting the best talent and buyers since sometimes they're interchangeable). Plus, we've tackled it more than once or twice via the #TChat shows.

But is that realistic? I mean, most companies I've spoken to of late are only to the point of talent/lead pools, not communities, and they're quite content with what they're doing. Meaning there's sourcing and sharing but limited collaborative nurturing.

Well, at the upcoming TalentNet Live event (#TNL) in Chicago on December 5, 2011, at the JSTN headquarters, my HRevolution co-presenters and me are going to revisit our NPR Talent Community session.

But I'm going to start even early than that, at least the night before at the #TNL Tweetup event co-sponsored by HRmarketer.com and Talent Technology Corporation.

We'll be running a joint Twitter competition during the Tweetup. Attendees (including practitioners and vendors) will be encouraged to tweet their response with the #TNL hashtag to this question:

What do talent communities mean to you?

We'll then review and award the top 3 responses with a $100 gift certificate to their choice of either iTunes or Amazon. The next day I'll announce the winning tweets during our "Talent Community" session.

It's all about putting our ears to the collective community wall and listening to what you all have to say.

You know what else is like putting your ears to the collective community wall? It's when you use SocialEars, HRmarketer's social monitoring and analysis tool, to search for topics like "talent communities" and you get a whole bunch of smart journalist, analyst and online influencer folk who are all talking about the topic in articles, blogs and tweets as well as a myriad of other HR B2B topics (see below).

What, you didn't think I'd leave without plugging SocialEars, did you?

C'mon. I made it work. Kinda.

We look forward to seeing some of you in Chicago next week!

Cloud-y But Clear Skies Ahead in the HR Marketplace

2011-11-16T08:54:00.000-08:00

Nope, this isn't a weather forecast. Nor is it an economic prediction about the human resource marketplace. And it's not even about cloud computing - although the technology I'm going to discuss does reside in the "cloud" and combines social data analytics and cloud computing.

I'm talking about SocialEars, HRmarketer.com's new social data analytics product that analyzes the online “social” activity in the human resource marketplace and identifies the trending topics and the key "influencers" driving those discussions.

SocialEars was quietly introduced at the HR Technology Conference in Las Vegas last month (the perfect event to roll out such technology). These were a few Tweets from a sampling of people who saw the #SocialEars demo:

The company that impressed me most was HRmarketer.com with their new product feature “socialears”.
Forget Elvis! The real must see show this past week was #SocialEars at the HRMarketer's booth!! Very Impressive!
New #socialears tool is HOT. Very cool.
Impressive stuff with #SocialEars!
@socialears is cool!
#socialears is awesome!
Dear HR PR folks, please please check out @hrmarketer's #socialears. Great stuff! - #socialears is Remarkable!
#socialears is awesome!
#SocialEars is brilliant!

SocialEars is currently in controlled BETA with HRmarketer.com software customers and will be introduced to all HRmarketer.com software customers by year-end.

So what exactly is SocialEars?

I wanted to dedicate a blog post to the question because a lot of people are talking about SocialEars and wondering what it is and how it may help them.

SocialEars sits on top of HRmarketer.com's vast information database that include thousands of media outlets, journalists, analysts and other thought leaders (we call these people Social Voices) in the HR and IT marketplace.

From this base of highly targeted data, the proprietary algorithm that powers SocialEars filters out the noise and analyzes the news stories, blog posts, Tweets and other socially "shared" articles.

Notice how I said, "filters out the noise".

That's kind of sort of super important (and really difficult) because anyone who spends any amount of time on social channels, for business purposes, knows just how much irrelevant information is flowing around and the difficulty in sorting through it to locate the good stuff - or at least the stuff you care about.

People are drowning in information.

As an example, in just three months SocialEars has analyzed hundreds of thousands of online social data and even after filtering through the irrelvent content (nothing to do with HR), removing duplicate content and "gaming" tweets (a bunch of the same tweets pointing to the same article using different URLs) we have a database of nearly 500,000 tweets and a quarter of a million unique articles. Again, this is just three months!

But SocialEars helps make things clear.

SocialEars then generates tag "clouds" of trending topics - like the sample image you see below. You can view tag clouds by the week, month, etc. When you click on a trending topic, you can view a list of key influencers on the respective subject and link directly to their online content relating to the topic.

You can also do open ended searches on any topic of interest to you to get similar data described above. You can also search individual people's "social" content (e.g., a journalist, analyst or social voice) and view tag clouds of what they frequently talk about online (which may even surprise them:-)

You can also view the most widely used twitter hashtags in the marketplace and who's using them.

So how are companies using this data?

When we first introduced SocialEars, the primary benefit we spoke about was laser focused media relations and PR. In other words, actually sending your news to people who care! So if you have some news about Total Rewards you would be able to locate the people who have actually written about the topic recently, like the sample image below reveals.

But when our customers started using SocialEars, we learned of many other practical uses:

Identifying trending subjects and using this information to pick the topics of thought leadership content (blog posts, webinars, white papers, etc.). And then knowing who to share the content with.
Source experts on various topics for news stories, and thought leadership content.
Find speakers for conferences and webinars.
Competitive intelligence.
Market research, finding statistics, etc. etc.
Curiosity and fun - OK, not a business argument for using SocialEars but it is really cool to see who in the HR marketplace is talking about what and how often online!

I'm sure as more companies start using SocialEars we'll learn about even more practical uses of the technology.

And as the social "noise" continues to grow, I'm sure the demand for products and tools that help companies filter it, analyze it, and effectively use it will grow.

Like SocialEars.

If you are interested in learning more about SocialEars please contact HRmarketer.

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

While we're not the CIA or an HR B2B mood ring, yet

2011-11-15T08:45:00.001-08:00

You should be proud. Really. You're actually using Twitter to monitor industry chatter about your particular part of the HR B2B space, as well as your company.

You're even jumping into conversations without selling from the get-go. And not just on Twitter, Twitter streams and Twitter chats -- you're also in LinkedIn groups, on Facebook, Focus and maybe others.

You're reading relevant blogs (like this one), sharing content, starting conversations and joining online communities. You and your company are finally embracing social media as a valuable marketing channel.

Right on.

Did you know that social media has been the driving force of social change around the world?

And did you know about how social media has helped reveal the whereabouts and actions of Mexico's dangerous drug cartels?

Crazy cool indeed.

Even more eye-opening -- the CIA maintains a social-media tracking center operated out of a nondescript building in a Virginia industrial park. The intelligence analysts at the agency's Open Source Center, who other agents refer to as "vengeful librarians," are tasked with sifting through millions of tweets, Facebook messages, online chat logs, and other public data on the World Wide Web to glean insights into the collective moods of regions or groups abroad.

Vengeful librarians gleaning insights into the collective moods of groups abroad.

Wow. And you just starting using Twitter.

Let's bring it closer to home, though. Now that you're floating in and around the social noise you're realizing that it's just, well, too noisy.

SocialEars helps you hear the right voices. While we're not the CIA or an HR B2B mood ring -- yet -- SocialEars is our new social data analytics service that analyzes the tweets, blogs, and online conversations and news stories for thousands of HR and B2B journalists, analysts and other "social" voices (new online influencers database) to identify trending topics and the people driving those discussions. It's a pretty amazing marketing and media relations research tool.

Learn more this Thursday, November 17, from 2-2:30 pm ET (11-11:30 am PT).

Oh, and you can share this across your social networks, too. That would be great.

Because otherwise we know where you live.

(Just kidding. Only some of you.)

What will go funny viral? It's like a thing

2011-10-31T14:24:00.001-07:00

Now that the new HRmarketer.com B2B marketing platform is live, along with SocialEars in limited beta, it's time for us to continue the marketing.

Because, as all of you know quite well, marketing is hard work, even when it seems effortlessly funny.

Yes, hard work. Lots of it. If you attended our social media marketing and digital storytelling webinar with Jessica Miller-Merrell at the end of September, you'll remember I covered comedy.

Comedy can be highly subjective, but there are universals that can be a big viral win -- if you get it right.

"If" being the operative word. I bring this up because we're in the process developing some new viral marketing campaigns for HRmarketer.com, some of which will be funny (we hope).

Hey, after our magically viral marketing success in launching SocialEars, which was highly creative but not really funny per se, it'll be a fun challenge to be funny. By the way, I did nominate our SocialEars campaign for the Mashable Awards Viral Campaign of the Year, so don't forget to vote when the voting starts.

Being funny isn’t as easy as it seems, especially when combining comedy and B2B marketing. It’s hit and miss even in B2C marketing, which by the way you always remember your favorites, but you certainly don’t remember the bombs.

In fact, when attempting to be creative and funny whatever the medium, usually video, most HR B2B vendors don’t do a very good job.

Neither did I back in the day. Yikes.

Because the problem is that we’re trying to hard to explain what we are, what we do, why we want to buy – and oh, buy the way, please laugh at our funny, which isn’t. Here are some tips that might help:

Good comedy is about getting us to relate about something we can all relate to (in our space). Like aspiring to grow up and work in HR.
Run the script and/or copy by folks inside and outside of the space. Does it resonate? Crack a smile? Make them cry in pain and not the funny kind of pain?
If you’re going to make an animated video, for goodness sake spend some money. Those free shareware problems are fun to play with, but they make for poor quality videos. Production is important.
Whether it’s a live-action video or an animated one, or some combination of both, don’t make it too long. In fact, take your original length and cut it in half. Lighten up and the set up and get to the punchline quickly. 1-3 minutes max.

What will go funny viral? That’s anyone’s guess. It's like a thing.

"They have tables made of doors. It's like a thing."

Like OccupyFacebook in Nondescript Building 4

2011-10-25T11:42:00.001-07:00

The show of hands was clear.

There were at least 20-30 people out of 250+ whose companies still block access to Facebook and other social networks. This revelation came literally at the nondescript interim Facebook headquarters at the end of day of ERE Media's latest must-attend event, the Recruiting Innovation Summit.

Facebook is a company that lives and breathes their own marketing mantra, "The web is being rebuilt around people." But there are still companies who build fences around the web, and vendors who only peek into others' yards, afraid to join in on the social media marketing fun.

But not Facebook. I learned yesterday that they hold Hackathon Projects, 8-hour marathon programming sessions where employees build something new.

No normal day-to-day work. Only building something new. All in 8 hours.

For example, the Facebook "Like" button was a Hackathon Project from only one year ago. (I'm still pulling for a "Right On" button.) Facebook Hackathons are not just for the software developers; they're for all employees. That means that everyone from marketing to recruiting and more get to build new stuff.

Here's another inspirational Facebook mantra, "Move fast and break things." It's okay, because stuff can be fixed and made fancy again.

It's true that Hackathons probably wouldn't fly at 99% of companies today, because too many worry about "clock-watching" instead of "innovation" -- innovation that the 1% knows can and will skyrocket productivity and revenue.

But the "99%" attended and represented at Facebook headquarters for the summit. They were there to learn innovative new recruiting strategies and the technologies that drive them. It was their Hackathon, their 8-hour marathon learning session to consume, digest and apply their own customized strategic versions back at their headquarters.

Hopefully.

And on the other end of that, recruiting technology and services companies like Branchout, Pinstripe, Jobvite, BraveNewTalent, Scavado, Jibe, Avature, SelectMinds and Dice were there with their own innovative "social" marketing Hackathons, from Branchout's mobile text surveys to Dice's 100 recruiting tips shared by the attendees.

Yep, I'm the dork with the chalkboard thought bubble. (Although I know a lot of firms who could use a marketing hackathon, that's for sure.)

It was like OccupyFacebook in nondescript building 4, with the web being rebuilt around us, the people.

Because we're the most important part.

In other words, SocialEars is magic

2011-10-18T06:37:00.001-07:00

So maybe the 10 trivia questions were too hard, but that really wasn't the point.

Neither was our 10th Anniversary Celebration (Get it? One question for each year?), although we're very proud of the fact that we were an early adapter of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and that we've helped hundreds of HR suppliers in the greater HR B2B space grow their businesses, while witnessing the amazing tech trends of social and mobile turn enterprise innovation and the world of work inside out.

Only a couple of you got 9 out of 10 of the trivia questions right, not counting the bonus question:

What is the name of HRmarketer’s new service, to be launched at HR Tech 2011, which captures the tweets, blogs, and online conversations from thousands of HR and B2B journalists, analysts and other “voices” and uses a proprietary algorithm to show what topics are trending and who is influencing those topics?

Many of you did get that one right at the end, which was the point, if you were paying attention.

What the heck am I talking about?

Well, I'm talking about our launch of SocialEars, our groundbreaking algorithm that captures real-time online content, and analyzes the tweets, blogs and online articles by thousands of HR journalists, media outlets, analysts and thought leaders, who we call social voices, to show which topics are trending and who is driving the conversations.

In other words, it's magic.

We launched it with a low-cost viral social marketing campaign that buzzed along softly until its crescendo at the 14th Annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition.

We released our 10-4-10 HR tech marketplace trivia questions into the wild about one month before HR Tech, which then redirected folks to SocialEars.com after taking the quiz.
Also, for almost one month prior to the show, we shared lots of fun tweets like, "At @HRmarketer, we’re all ears. Are you? #SocialEars coming soon," linking to SocialEars.com.
From there we shared a little more info via SocialEars.com on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and more.
Then there was a little blogging sprinkled in for good measure.
Then there were a couple of search-optimized marketing press releases and a SocialEars plug on our Digital Storytelling webinar.
Then there was our pitch to all the HR Tech vendors to come see our SocialEars demo and get an iPod Shuffle.

So for just a small monetary investment compared to what many vendors spend for a product launch prior to the HR Tech show, primarily for our trip, exhibiting at the show and the Shuffles (and iTunes gift cards when we ran out of Shuffles), our team canvased the floor and our founder Mark Willaman delivered dozens and dozens of demos to nearly 100 people in two days.

Nearly 100 people in two days. Beat that, baby.

Check out some of the post-demo buzz:

Forget Elvis! The real must see show this past week was #SocialEars at the HRMarketer's booth!! Very Impressive! - Kevin Hautzinger, Director of Marketing at OneSource Virtual HR
New #socialears tool is HOT. Very cool. Sam Higgins, Acquire, Inc.
Impressive stuff with #SocialEars! smashfly, Chris Brablc
Demo'd @socialears from @HRmarketer and it's cool! I wish they had it for every industry! - Maren Hogan - Head of US Marketing for BraveNewTalent.
If you haven't, make sure to check out #socialears at HRmarketer.com's booth #950. Awesome social media tool! Ceridian_US Ceridian
Dear HR PR folks, please please check out @hrmarketer's #socialears. Great stuff and will help you write better messages to me. - Lance Haun, Editor for ERE.net

Pay special attention to the last one in particular -- "SocialEars will help you write better messages to me."

And check out this nice plug from Felix Wetzel, Group Marketing Director, Jobsite:

The company that impressed me most was HRmarketer.com with their new product feature “socialears”. It analyses the social activities of journalists, analysts, bloggers, thought leaders, and identifies the topics, enriches the profiles with tag clouds and Klout scores and highlights the key influencers for by topic. The demo looked really good. It met my criteria of increased convenience and better experience. I will certainly be testing it in a real time environment. And somehow it’s not surprising that this company isn’t really an HR technology provider, right?

Right.

Our new HRmarketer.com platform along with SocialEars (beta) will launch at the end of October. Don't worry, we'll make sure you don't miss it. And if you don't have it, you're crippling your competitive edge.

And double don't worry -- if you're already an HRmarketer.com software subscriber, you're golden.

By the way, if you did miss our demo and shuffle combo at the show and you'd still like to see SocialEars, contact us for a demo and we'll give you an iTunes gift card for your time.

Like I said, it's magic.

Transforming the ordinary into extraordinary

2011-10-11T12:49:00.001-07:00

I ordered an iPhone 4S last Friday, upgrading from my 3GS. If you're a fan and watched the Apple promo videos (or any of their videos over the last few years), you'll notice that they make ordinary activities look extraordinary with their elegant hardware and software.

It's alien technology and I love it.

But you don't have to be an Apple fan to like amazing technology; that's not what this post is about. It's about companies who make extraordinary products and/or offer great services -- and market them as such.

I mean, Google's Android phones may have had blips of marketshare grab, but their campaigns are over-the-top Transformer sci-fi belch (remember, my cold and super cold crappy brand marketing).

Transforming ordinary activities into an extraordinary user experiences is where it's at. Keep it real, especially in our space.

After such an amazing HR Technology Conference and Exposition last week in Vegas, here are six companies that come to mind in the HR B2B space that do jus that -- transform -- with their products, services and/or marketing (and/or because even with extraordinary stuff, not all of them have the marketing quite there -- but hey, they're working on it).

Workday: If you've seen or used their HR software, you know what I mean. Talk about turning ordinary HR business workflows into extraordinary collaborative software interactions. Plus, they know how to talk with the HR business and the practitioners who populate it. That's huge today because too many vendors can't in a world gone cloudy.
ReviewSNAP: Their refreshing approach to conducting performance reviews while ensuring ongoing feedback in a way that clearly conveys to the employee the benefits that await them when they embrace workplace behavioral changes. It's called Benefits-Based Performance Management™ (BBPM™), and it's sweet.
Talent Technology: Like what Workday has done with HR software, Talent Tech has done with sourcing and recruiting technology. It's called Talemetry. And again, they know how to talk with their buyers.
Visier: Workforce and business data analytics are hot today, but too many vendors still only offer a few reporting choices, basic visualization and may or may not have predictive algorithms baked in. But if any company has what I'll call "alien" technology, turning ordinary data into an extraordinary interface that HR pros will understand and use, it's Visier.
Dovetail Software: My goodness, what's more painfully ordinary than dealing with issues and questions from employees? But Dovetail is on to something with their HR case management software, again turning ordinary activities into extraordinary process management and service delivery that can achieve significant savings for HR.
myStaffingPro: Any talent acquisition technology company who focuses on the candidate experience when developing their software is extraordinary as far as I'm concerned. And too many vendors still aren't doing that. But myStaffingPro is and they've got the usability statistics to back it up.

There are so many others (thankfully) that I could mention here, some of which I've written about here, and others I just haven't gotten to yet (TotalRewards Software and Bright.com and Talent Circles).

And of course, we have to include our very own new HRmarketer.com marketing platform launching at the end of October, complete with SocialEars.

When pictures and words aren't enough, make more

2011-09-27T06:22:00.001-07:00

The black and white photos of professionals in thoughtful workplace poses were warm and inviting against their green backgrounds. Each piece of collateral stacked neatly next to one another along the far wall of the lobby highlighted everything from recruiting to learning to performance to compensation and more. I pictured their online resources that included articles, white papers, reports, case studies, podcasts, webcasts, seminars, conferences...

I thought, "Wow, this company has done such a great job at defining themselves in the marketplace. There should be no mistaking what they do."

Months later I'm reading Bill Kutik's Human Resource Executive article titled What Does Taleo Do Exactly? and the difficulty that many companies have defining and differentiating in the marketplace becomes painfully clear. Too bad that's the only thing that does.

From Bill's article:

At Taleo World, its recent user conference in San Francisco, CEO Mike Gregoire publicly owned up to all of that and even showed this breakout of its customers (large and small) using each of its applications:

Recruiting: 85 percent
Learning: 13 percent
Performance: 12 percent
Compensation: 4 percent

After all the product development, acquisitions, integrations, a big ol' bucket of marcom money and a bevy of marketing and media relations pros as well as outside agencies and educating and evangelizing the marketplace, they're still known as a recruiting software company and are utilized as such. We're talking years now. With their own customers.

Bill's right on the money when he writes, "When the market doesn't know what your company does, it's the fault of marketing. That's why they call it that."

But it sure takes a heck of a lot of marketing and most companies today face this daunting task daily. Defining brand and then educating and evangelizing in the marketplace ain't no simple trick of pretty pictures and fancy words over simply a few months. The white noise alone is deafening to the point where we can't see or hear beyond our own arm's length.

Unfortunately there's still a disconnect between what CEOs' expect from marketing and what CMOs' can deliver, hence the revolving marketing doors that lead to the HR B2B street covered with shards of broken economic dreams.

We still keep giving it a go, though. Acording to MarketingProfs:

"Despite a lack of confidence in the overall US economy, CMOs are planning to increase spending on all forms of marketing over the next 12 months, particularly the share of budget allocated to social media marketing, according to The CMO Survey. In addition, surveyed CMOs now report their companies are planning to increase spending on marketing hires 7.2% on average over the next 12 months."

Honestly, generating awareness and interest take time, money, heartbeats and consistency, and no matter what, you've got to develop and launch an integrated marketing strategy that includes every imaginable marketing activity known to the human race -- from traditional print advertising to media relations to social media marketing.

Every imaginable activity. Because when pictures and words aren't enough, make more. Really. You're prospects, customers and influencers (inside and out) these days consume awareness in a myriad of diverse ways.

Including going to conferences. See you next week at the 14th Annual HR Technology Conference and Exposition. Don't forget to stop by booth #950 and ask for your very own balloon rabbit ears.

A Tale of Two B2B Brain Wedgies

2011-09-20T12:08:00.001-07:00

I was already running late when I stopped by Costco to pick up diapers and laundry detergent.

Two things. That's it. Of course because I was in a hurry, and after one full circle pass, I forgot (again) that the diapers had been moved to the very back of the warehouse.

Argh.

So I went all the way back again and dumped the diapers into the cart next to the detergent. As I made it up the to the check-out stands, I scanned the open ones quickly to pick my safest and quickest bet.

I got behind a mother and her two children with what seemed like a quick-moving line. However, I watched the lines on either side of me recede while the mother in front of me unloaded her bottomless cart onto the check-out counter belt.

My list of to-do's beeped incessantly in my head like an alarm clock just out of reach. The line to the left of me cleared out and so I moved over to it; I could feel the mother's eyes on me.

Too bad, so sad. Daddy's gotta get home. I checked out and quickly looked at the sales receipt and thought, "Wow, that was cheaper than I thought. Cool."

That should've been my first clue, but off to the exit I go! If you're familiar with Costco or Sam's Club you know that you have to show a store clerk your receipt at the exit and they review to ensure everything you bought is on the receipt and in your cart.

"Sir, do you have another receipt?" the kind store clerk asked.

"Um, no, that's it," I answered.

She looked at me and frowned. "I'm sorry, sir. Only the diapers are on the receipt. They must've missed this at check out. Let get someone to help you."

"But how could they miss that? There were only two things? Do I need to go back to check-out?" I asked, feeling time rake it's razor blade nails down my head and back.

"No, sir. Just give me your credit card and wait here. We'll take care of it. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience."

You've got to be kidding, thought. Two things. That's it. And so I waited. And I waited. And I almost fled with just the diapers, but while I waited the mother I had originally gotten in line behind cruised out the door with her burgeoning basket and two kids in two.

She smiled at me as she passed.

Seven minutes later in total (I timed it), I was checked out and on my way, frustrated yet relieved I'd be going home with the family goods.

Two things:

Don't rush your marketing and PR out the door unless you've proofread and proofread again. I don't care what your competition is doing and what race you're in. The karmic haunting is palatable.
Take care of your customers, whether they're the idiot, you are -- or both.

Thank you. Don't forget to join me and special guest Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR, CEO of Xceptional HR and master blogger of Blogging4Jobs, for a live webinar Digital Storytelling -- What really sells with social - this Thursday, September 22, 1-2 pm ET (10-11 am PT).

HRmarketer Turns Ten! Recap of first decade. Looking ahead to next.

2011-09-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

It's our birthday.

The company I founded a decade ago will turn 10 in October. Sing along with us, won't you?

HRmarketer will celebrate 10 years in business this October, 2011. To share in our celebration, we created an HR trivia quiz with the theme "10 questions for 10 years". As of yesterday I was told nobody had submitted a perfect score. Maybe you will be the first - take the quiz here. (we'll give away a few iPads to people who took the quiz at the upcoming HR Technology® Conference & Exposition).

My goodness. A lot of change has occurred the last decade in the HR marketplace. And like most companies, a lot of change has occurred with our own business since we hung out our shingle 10 years ago.

When we first launched HRmarketer.com a decade ago most B2B decision makers got their HR news and information from a few news portals and outside sources like analysts, conferences, and print trade magazines where journalists operated as gatekeepers. And this news was consumed at prescribed times during the day — a lunch hour, after dinner or during commute times.

These more "traditional" outlets remain very important today. But now, we get most of our news from the Internet. And we consume this news throughout the day via email, webinars, podcasts, blogs and on networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook where we actively 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.

These new technologies have fundamentally changed the way we consume/share information and how businesses market their products. It has also required us to completely transform our HRmarketer.com software (more on that later).

As I look back on our first decade one thing that hasn't changed are my "three truths about starting a business" that I often share with people considering the move into entrepreneurship. These are:

Determine how much it will cost to start the business – double it
Determine how much time you’ll spend running the business - double it.
Estimate how much money the business will make – half it.

In spite of me personally not being very sentimental and adhering to the old sayings, "you are only as good as your last game" and "past performance is not indicative of future results," I guess 10 years in business deserves a little retrospective blog post. After all, 10 years is an achievement. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail within the first five years.

We are still around because of our amazingly talented HRmarketer team - many of whom have have been with me since the beginning. We pride ourselves on being a close business family and I have been truly blessed by this team's friendship and dedication. Our business is still relevant purely and simply because of this team.

So here it goes - a little recap of HRmarketer's first decade.

2001: We formally open for business in my guest house in the Santa Cruz mountains during a deep recession and shortly after 9-11. A vivid memory was our first employee, Pamela, waking me up at 4am making breakfast (loudly) in our Kitchen. Yes, we operate a little differently here in the Silicon Valley. My wife was pregnant and very understanding.

2002: We move to real office space and sell our first HRmarketer.com software license to Matt Pitchford at TruStar Solutions. Thanks Matt.

2003: We formally launch our HRmarketer Services Group to help customers with their marketing and media relations.

2004: We launch the HRmarketer blog. Hey, it was a big deal in 2004! Since then this blog has been recognized on many Top HR blog lists.

2005: HRmarketer.com reports 36 consecutive months of sales growth.

2006: Our best year yet measured by revenue and profits fueled by the growth of the Services Group. We also launched a blogs information database on HRmarketer.com and our Trends in HR Marketing research series.

2007: We launched our HR Directory and Buyers Guide. Today, it is one of the largest HR vendor buyer guides and the directory contains over 5,000 articles, white papers and other useful HR content.

2008: We launched major upgrades to the HRmarketer.com software including a new "alert" system that allowed users to customize over 20 alerts such as speaking opportunities, new journalists, award deadlines, and editorial opportunities - and get them via email, RSS or their software dashboard.

2009: We acquired Outcalt & Associates, the owner of HRVendors.com and the HR Vendor print Phonebook. We also released Conversation Starters, our groundbreaking eBook outlining the importance of participating in social media marketing and how to do it.

2010: HRmarketer achieves record revenue growth in 2010 and we launched our HRmarketer.com "cloud" upgrade with improved measurement and social media features, including a integration with Google Analytics. Also launched a Media & Analyst Relations module helping customers to centrally manage, track and report on their outreach activities.

2011: We launched our HR Tradewinds eNewsletter and a new eBook, The Right Mix: A B2B Marketing Allocation Guide. On the software side, we added new collaboration features, enabling the seamless sharing and management of marketing and PR information. Also expanded HRmarketer.com's information databases to help HR vendors market to departments beyond HR and reach decision makers in IT, Finance, Operations and Procurement.

2012: A peek into the future:

By the time 2012 arrives we will have completely overhauled the HRmarketer.com software platform - 12 months in the making (actually to be launched in the Fall of 2011).

The new platform will leverage the growing popularity and importance of "social" media/networking and the need to capture the online conversations taking place amongst journalists, analysts and other online 'influencers" within the HR and B2B market segments - and to analyze this information to show what's trending, who is driving these conversations and how to seamlessly reach these audiences.

In short, we are rapidly adapting the software by aggregating the right information HR vendors need to implement and manage effective marketing and PR and providing the tools to use this information effectively.

This has always been and always will be the core of what we do. It's our DNA.

But whoa, we're not quite there yet, although we'll be there in October.

So let's stay in the present and celebrate 10 years in business first.

And once again, join us in celebration by taking our HR trivia quiz and then stop by our booth #950 at the 14th Annual HR Technology® Conference & Exposition to see if you won an iPad 2 - and get a sneak preview of our new platform.

We'd love to hear from you.

We're all ears, you know - SocialEars.

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

Try our HR Tech Trivia contest (pssst, I'll give you some hints)

2011-09-13T06:50:00.001-07:00

That one always comes back to haunt me. The name Tapesty.net and the old school days of HR recruitment technology and the front end of the greater dot.com boom, where the internet was bright and shiny with a capital "I" and companies bid big on programmers and engineers and developers to launch them and their tech into online stardom.

Like many today in social and mobile. Smaller, faster, better. Again. Crazy.

Recently I reviewed the list of 95 exhibitors from the first HR Technology Conference & Exposition way back in November of 1998, and there they were -- Tapestry.net -- the sourcing software and services firm I worked for that built talent communities and then with software "artificial intelligence" magic matched applicants to job descriptions.

Like many today in recruitment tech. Are they around still? Nope, and speaking of that, what percentage of companies from that first HR Tech expo do you think are still around today under their same name?

Take a guess. 8%? 18%? 28%? 38%?

I'll give you a hint -- less than a third and more than a quarter. Wow. What a difference a decade and some change makes.

Hey, if you like HR tech trivia, then you should check out our HR tech trivia contest.

Those who answer all the questions correctly will be entered into a drawing for two new iPad 2s that we'll announce at booth #950 at HR Tech on Tuesday, October 4, at 3:45 p.m.!

And why are we running this HR tech trivia contest (it's not one of the HR tech trivia, but give it a go anyway)?

How many years HRmarketer.com has been in business as of this October, 2011?

10 years! Right on. So to celebrate our 10th anniversary, we came up with this 10-question quiz to test your knowledge of the HR B2B tech marketplace over the last decade.

Hey, don't scoff. I already gave you one answer, and how about another question and hint?

What city was the first HR Technology Conference & Expo held at?

Why, the city of brotherly love, of course.

That one was easy, but there are others that aren't so easy, like:

Which industry analyst founded a company named IQ4Hire early in his career?

I'll tell you this -- it's not Paul, Phil or Ringo.

Look for other hints online and you can even ping me if you want some help.

Really. I'm that kind of a guy. We want you to win.

See you at HR Tech!

How Customer Reviews Help You Recruit Star Performers. Or, Don't.

2011-09-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

The topic of Online Brand Management as it relates to recruiting candidates is frequently covered and something I know every employer is (or should be) concerned with.

One of the better articles I have read comes from Monster and is titled Online Brand Management: How to Protect your Company’s Online Identity. In this article Michael Fertik, founder and CEO of ReputationDefender discusses the many sites employers need to stay on top of that allow people to rate and review companies, such as Glassdoor - here is Glassdoor's profile for Apple, Inc. Mr. Fertik gives a good listing of similar sites that employers need to monitor.

But what about sites like Yelp and other popular rating sites that allow consumers to rate everything from restaurants to chain retail stores and other professional services?

I was reminded of just how important it is for employers to monitor these sites while dining at a popular local restaurant here in Santa Cruz on Saturday night.

We ate in the bar area and our server/bartender was simply amazing. Great personality, knowledgeable, attentive, efficient, etc. The whole package. The kind of guy that brings customers in and keeps them coming back. If you visit one time he is likely to know your name the next time you return. A restaurant's equivalent to a star programmer at a technology firm.

Every restaurant in Santa Cruz would want this guy working for them.

So how did this particular restaurant recruit him?

They didn't. He recruited them.

As it turns out, this guy was planning a move to Santa Cruz and visited Yelp to find the highest rated restaurants in the area. After studying the reviews he chose the top three businesses he wanted to work at, and applied for a job. The restaurant we dined at Saturday night was the lucky winner.

It got me thinking - how many businesses actively manage their online reviews?

On Yelp most businesses have under a few hundred reviews and maybe a few trickle in each week. It would be easy to manage this volume and there really aren't that many significant review sites to monitor.

Yet, in the five years of me personally being a power user of review sites like Yelp and a few others only one business has ever reached out to me as a result of a review I posted. The business that reached out to me was a hotel in San Francisco. Their company brand manager sent me an email through Yelp thanking me for the review, my business, and offered me their personal contact information in the event I ever had a problem and needed to speak to someone at their company.

Wow.

That hotel is now the only one I stay at when I am in SF.

But this was a positive review! No business where I posted a horrible review has ever reached out to me. Ever. Who knows, if they did reach out, acknowledged the problem and invited me back I may try it again and change my review.

But most businesses - to their detriment - don't pay attention to good or bad reviews, or figure they don't really matter.

And they would never have the opportunity to land that great employee like the star performer I encountered Saturday night.

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

Crappy brand marketing code be gone

2011-09-06T06:54:00.001-07:00

Take heed of a software firm's technical debt, the amount of hastily written code that's never fixed and compounds and complicates the overall platform, new customer deployments and future development over time.

I heard Naomi Bloom talk about that with Bill Kutik last week on his namesake radio show. Then I read that Ward Cunningham first created this analogy. (Ward is an American computer programmer who developed the first wiki.)

Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite... The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt.

Ah, when the debt is not repaid how the interest rate compounds it...

I hope you are aren't offended by the word "crappy," because there's a lot of it out there and I'm going to use a lot of it in here. Please no need to read on if you are.

If you aren't offended, then take heed of companies whose employment brand and/or product/service brand have a high "brand" debt, where they keep building on top of bad year after year.

I don't care how you spin it, these days you don't need hackers to expose your "brand" debt. Your employees and customers will do that without a hitch on their laptops, smart phones and tablet computers across every social network known to mankind (and even that of alien civilizations). They'll share your good "code" too, but you know how it is -- we always aggregate and commiserate over what's bad.

However, those companies with lots of this credibility "debt" continue to code over the crappy and compound the problem, even though they think a new marketing campaign will help.

Like beer. Go with me here. Mainstream beer has been sold big in this country for many years (although sales have slumped of late).

I like quality, full-bodied beer. India Pale Ales preferably. I do not like mainstream Pilsners, at all, but from when prohibition was repealed until the late 1980s, those beers were basically the only domestic beers in the US market. That's thankfully changed.

So, if a crappy beer introduces two-stage cold activation -- cold and super cold -- or if you introduce a two-stage canned employee recognition plan -- cool and super cool -- or if you introduce a two-stage dysfunctionally indebted software upgrade plan -- smart and super smart --

Shouldn't they all really be called crappy and super crappy?

Crappy brand marketing code be gone, or your employees and customers will be.

(Cold and super cold? That's just stupid.)

Put a sandbox in your roundabout

2011-08-30T06:45:00.001-07:00

On the other hand, roundabouts shouldn't be so efficient. Especially when you drop a sandbox in the middle of it.

No worries. I woke up early today, so let me explain.

There's a traffic roundabout in Santa Cruz just up the street from the wharf and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk that used to be a four-way stop. When it was a four-way stop, it had with heavy pedestrian congestion and on the busiest beach days would be extremely backed up.

But now that there is a roundabout in its place, which more and more studies have shown globally can actually relieve traffic and create traffic efficiencies, there's still heavy pedestrian congestion and on the busiest beach days is extremely backed up.

On the street, not so good, but online?

We do everything we can to get "passive" marketing prospects and job applicants to stop by our sites. We now know with marketing software automation who's stopping by and for how long and what they looked at and/or did. We make it so easy for them to get in and around quickly and efficiently, otherwise we know they'd bounce.

We talk a lot about talent and lead-nurturing "communities" these days, but yet it's no different that if was over a decade ago. We funnel them through our roundabouts and then harass them non-stop on the other side with phone calls and emails. Then at some point we stop when they never respond.

However, if you watch kids play in sandboxes (which I do a lot when I'm at the park with my daughters), someone always brings toys and tools to play with. One kid starts playing, then another, then another, and soon kids and sharing and playing and their parents are meeting and talking and sharing.

Other kids may be running around and around the sandbox, but for those who are in it, for whatever time that is, it becomes an impromptu community where folks aggregate again and again. They're not coming to the sandbox because you put it there. They're coming because they want to play with the other kids and parents.

They come for community.

What you fill it with will vary, but if you truly want talent/lead communities, you've got to put a sandbox in your roundabout.

Really? Recruiting Communities Nurturing? Hmmmm

2011-08-25T06:03:00.000-07:00

I saw press releases this morning by I Love Rewards announcing both The 50 Most Engaged Workplaces in United States & Canada and understand the prestige of being named in this, and similar, awards. In the market of attracting the best and sharpest talent, being known as one of 10/25/50/100 best places to work is like being a Chai Tea Latté instead of just a cup of tea. But there are so many other ways to promote the company and environment to get the right fit to the position.

Where does Nurturing Recruiting Communities fit in this picture?

As you may recall, a couple of weeks ago, I was part of a Blogging Duel with two brilliant people, Jennifer Brogee and Bernie Dyme which gave three very different perspectives on a subject of remote workers. It is happening again! We have dropped the gauntlet by Twitter and challenged each other. Okay, stop jumping up and down so that you can read all of the blogs and get 3 different perspectives, myself, Jennifer Brogee from myStaffingPro and Jessica Merrell of @blogging4Jobs. I am up against some very heavy hitters here.

I guess the first thing to do is to consider the issues that recruiters have in getting a qualified, interested, “form-fitted to the position” person. What are they? Recently I read that the market is changing to a candidate-driven market, and it is more and more difficult to fill those positions with what the client wants. Sure you still have to have access to job boards, ask for referrals, perhaps do some social media filtering and there is always the archaic newspaper ad (really??), but something that could give you the crème du la crème – recruiting communities.

By building these communities, either company specific based, or recruiter based, can help to create a pool of active and excited candidates. But you can’t let the pool get stagnant and begin to get scummy and stinky and not worth being in – and I think you know where I am going with this. You have got to feed it with strong resources, success stories, learning materials and in the case of company specific communities, shouting about all the things that make that company the best to work for. Some of the ways you will want to consider doing this is:

- a library of resources from creating cover letter, resume, 10 Tips about your interview, competencies assessment, and the opportunity to engage with others in the community. Why not consider including links to podcasts and webinars for that visual play.
- a Company/Recruiters blog – come on – be bold and tell everyone why you are so great.
- Candidate success stories – nothing better to win someone over than to tell them about the success of someone else who was right where they are now.
- FaceBook and LinkedIn groups for support and conversation
- What is happening in the industry – good or bad. Write about it, comment about it, encourage guest writers, and just share it.

You need to nurture and feed that qualified candidate, move them from passive to active; watching to seeking; wall flower to disco diva; so that when a position comes up, they are so prepared and excited about the opportunity – they will explode out of the gate and into the position.

My opinions for sure – and for some different perspectives check out the other blogs - Jessica's 'Recruitment Lead Generation for Dummies' and Jennifer's "Communities are for Suckers". Thank you so much ladies for being part of this Blogging Duel.

The Day HR Tech Stood Sexy Cool

2011-08-23T07:41:00.001-07:00

When The Last Starfighter came out in 1984, I remember reading that to create the special effects with computer-generated imagery (CGI), one of the earliest films besides Tron to use extensive CGI for the big screen, it took an amazing amount of software code as well as dozens and dozens of servers in Walmart-sized buildings.

I thought, Mercy, I’d really like to be that someday.

The last starfighter, not a software developer. Sadly neither of those occupations has occupied my workspace to date. But I can certainly write about it from an HR B2B marketplace perspective. That much I got right.

What is literally amazing today is that I can control my entire virtual office via my laptop, tablet computer and smartphone. And that’s because of software – software that takes up a gig or two of hard drive space, if that. And it’s also software-as-a-service (SaaS) that allows me to purchase and use software online without having to download anything. And it’s also cloud computing where the software is delivered more as a service rather than a product, giving me access to software, data access and storage services.

The glitz and glamour of big-screen entertainment, consumer software, apps and the social cloud we play in (and don’t even really know we’re in clouds) – these are all sexy cool and rich in marketing romance.

HR business software? Not so much. But that really doesn’t matter when software runs the world these days. Or, when it’s eating it according to Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape and is now a general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz:

More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not.

Why is this happening now? Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.

Eating the world, running the world – however you want to view it, it’s happening, sexy or not, in Silicon Valley and many other places around the world, although I did have an interesting discussion last week with startup TribeHR co-founder Joseph Fung. They provide HR management software for small to mid-size companies. He argued that HR software can be sexy cool, especially if you’re focusing on the customer and end-user experience as well as creating an emotional connection between product and consumer. Tough to do, but with the innovative software mash-ups I’ve seen this year alone addressing multiple business problems, he may be right.

But long-time purveyors and surveyors of HR tech sexy cool like Bill Kutik, co-chair of the HR Technology® Conference and leading independent analyst of the HR technology marketplace, know it’s not just small startups that innovate. His latest article talks about the software smack down between long-awaited Oracle Fusion and Workday. Plus, for those of you attending, exhibiting and/or sponsoring at this year’s HR Technology Conference & Exposition, you can check out the Awesome New Technologies for HR session on Tuesday, October 4, from 4:00-5:15 p.m. PT. And you’ve also got Jason Averbook, Co-Founder & CEO at Knowledge Infusion and Naomi Lee Bloom, Managing Partner at Bloom & Wallace, battling it out in the Great Technology Debate earlier that same day. This is just day two of three amazing HR tech days.

What a birthday I’m gonna have. Heck, HRmarketer.com may even have something shiny and new to share.

Now, once HR business software self-configures and adapts automatically once deployed, event providing talent acquisition and management recommendations automatically like an Alfred on AI steroids, that’ll be the day HR Tech stood sexy cool.

Or when I become software developer, or the last starfighter, whichever comes first.

It is clear as mud - JUST SAY IT!!!

2011-08-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

I don’t think that there is any industry out there that doesn’t have it’s lingo, language, jargon and superficial conversations weighted with phrases and correspondence that is rifled to confuse and drag you off the track of the discussion so there is no way that you can fully understand the reasons for the dialogue in the first place, and recall an understanding of why you are associating with this particular intercourse initially and what exactly the meaning of initiating the actual ……. STOP - WHAT???? Oh please, just say it!!!

Clear messaging has got to be the most important, and often the hardest aspect of any companies goals so that it clearly is included in promotion, PR and marketing outreach – really, until you have a clear message – Who you are – What you offer – How the solution fits into pain points – Identifying your target audience - you are absolutely lost. And the messaging has got to be universal from the Homepage to marketing to PR to sales pitches. We all know that this is what needs to happen but it is easier said than done. But it really has to start with UNDERSTANDING what the heck you are offering and what is going to resonate for your audience.

Just to start, I decided to search Performance Management and then pulled descriptions from 3 very large and well known Performance Management vendors, to prove my point – I will call these companies 1/ WHAT??? 2/ Not mud but foggy 3/ AHH, crystal clear – lush!

#1 (Vendor company name appeared here) unique and highly efficient talent management suite is purpose-built, from the ground up, to assure all your talent management processes support and drive employee performance.

With our truly seamless suite, your HR and C-Level executives can roll out a cohesive end-to-end talent strategy that’s fully aligned with their core business initiatives.

#2 Performance management includes processes that effectively communicate company aligned goals, evaluate employee performance and reward them fairly. Clear goal planning, skill development and a true pay-for-performance culture are talent management practices that successful companies use to demonstrate their employees are valued. Effective performance and talent management has been proven to increase employee morale and overall productivity.

Engage, productive employees are essential to any company outperforming its competition.

#3 Effective performance management solutions improve employee goal planning, career development, competency assessment, performance appraisal, compensation management and organizational alignment. With effective performance management software, you can automate performance management in your organization to improve employee engagement, retain top performers, and improve performance at both the individual and organizational level.

By aligning your workforce on key goals and performance measures through performance management software, you can identify career paths for employees, create development plans, and identify developmental resources, tasks and ideas to encourage individual development and enhance organizational performance.

I only gave you these examples to prove my point – and I do agree that #2 and #3 may be somewhat “long-winded” - they are helping to crystallize the understanding and remember, it isn’t all about the short and sweet. But if you have to explain it to thoroughly guide the reader to the best understanding, then that is what you have to do.

From this understanding, a company can strategize their industry, target market, SEO keywords, PR and media outreach, all marketing activities, collateral, sales pitches and so much more, but securing this message is essential.

So on your mark, set - Know it and just say it.

If you really don’t know it – then I guess - jargon it?

POSTED BY: Rita Jackson

Event Marketing Webinar: The glitz and the glamour is a lot of work

2011-08-16T07:20:00.001-07:00

Regardless of the glitz and glamour for attendees, event marketing is more than just high-end giveaways, a few glossy brochures and high-tech opulence.

It's a lot of work -- from strategic planning to detailed execution. How many times have to gotten your booth and booth team to an event and then shouted from the venue rooftop:

"Why did we forget to do that and bring that?!? Why?!?"

The fall HR B2B trade show season will be kicking off soon and there's no better time to review your event marketing strategy and tactics than now. And don't forget that 2012 is right around the corner...

Join HRmarketer.com's expert guests Audrey Johnson, Visibility Manager at WorldatWork, and Fred Kurst, Exhibit Sales Manager at Human Resource Executive® Magazine, for a detailed look at trade show marketing best practices on Thursday, August 25, from 10 am - 11 am PT (1 pm - 2 pm ET).

Audrey and Fred will review:

How to make sure you're selecting the right show
Best practices in pre-show planning
Planning your booth for your audience, not you
Booth staff communication
Onsite etiquette
And much more

They might even share a wise tale or two that all of us could use when it comes to event marketing. Plus, the HRmarketer.com team will add their own event marketing best practices to the mix at the end of the webinar.

Could you ask for more? Well no, you don't get an iPad for attending, but come join us anyway on Thursday, August 25, from 10 am - 11 am PT (1 pm - 2 pm ET). Lots of great marketing takeaways.

Register today for Best Practices in Trade Show Marketing.

The new golden age of wireless: online talk radio

2011-08-09T07:40:00.001-07:00

In essence, it's the new golden age of wireless: online talk radio.

Radio of old changed the way the world communicated and listened to itself forever. The internet today has been even more dramatic, democratizing the way we communicate further, and wallah -- talk radio reborn.

Sure video is the hip and happening medium that the world has grown to embrace -- 71% of online Americans use video-sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, up from 66% a year earlier.

However, according to Pew Internet Research from 2010, the overwhelming majority of Americans (92%) use multiple platforms to get their daily news and the internet is now the third most-popular news platform, behind local and national television news and ahead of national print newspapers, local print newspapers and radio. Getting news online fits into a broad pattern of news consumption by Americans; six in ten (59%) get news from a combination of online and offline sources on a typical day.

While video and reading are still the primary methods of news consumption (and yes, there are times when we use the term "news" loosely), for those of us who are listeners and auditory learners, internet talk radio is where it's at. Between live streaming audio and downloadable recordings (think on-demand podcasts), the online "radio" realm is as diverse as the world's population, and the content delivered just as diverse.

And internet talk radio is yet another viable channel for delivery news and information by way of content marketing, and of course, brand marketing (think radio advertising spots and sponsorship). It may still be a smaller audience, but as we always expound, you must employ a wide array of marketing tactics these days to reach your target markets that includes your buyers and influencers.

Closer to home in our glorious HR B2B space, there are a few radio shows of note listed below (and more are being launched each month). These shows give voice to variety of practitioner and vendor types alike as well as providing sponsorship opportunities for some. If you know of any I haven't mentioned that are of the newsroom / talk show variety, then please let me know.

And hey, you could launch one today with platforms like BlogTalkRadio, or interactive expert sites like Focus, or simple audio recording and distribution technologies to create and deliver podcasts. There's a bazillion options these days.

The Bill Kutik Radio Show

The Bill Kutik Radio Show is a bi-weekly talk show featuring unedited and unrehearsed conversations with key HR thought-leaders. Hosted by Bill Kutik, the leading independent industry analyst, the program airs at noon EDT every other Wednesday.

HR Happy Hour

The HR Happy Hour show is a weekly show hosted by renowned HR technologist Steve Boese and focuses on human resources, management, leadership, and workforce technology.

TChat Radio

TChat Radio is monthly radio show hosted by yours truly and TalentCulture founder, Meghan M. Biro. It's all about the re-engineering of business and business leadership today -- aptly named The Business World of Work. Each month our guests will cover how we acquire, empower and retain our workforce today.

TLNT Radio

TLNT Radio is a weekly call-in show and podcast series to supplement the in-depth coverage provided daily on TLNT. They host experts and thought leaders in HR and workforce management and cover the latest news, insights, and topical information impacting talent management in real time.

The DriveThruHR Show

The DriveThruHR Show shares an inside and colorful look at what (1) one thing keeps the Trench HR warriors up at night. The daily 30-minute program airs at 12PM/CT, hosted by Bryan Wempen and William Tincup features interviews with exclusively (HR) human resource professionals. Their HR guests have embraced all that it takes to get HR done day-in-and-day-out.

Bite Size B2B Marketing Talk

Of course we're going to mention our new series as well -- actionable marketing and PR tips to help you with your HR B2B marketing and PR. Soon with guests and more!

Keep your gamification promos simple and straightforward

2011-08-02T06:55:00.001-07:00

The game is afoot.

Gamification is one of the hip-happenin' concepts today as it applies to behavioral econimics and getting folks to adopt software applications, services and just about anything. It takes advantage of our competitive nature and our sometimes insatiable need to be rewarded.

Badges, points, miles, vacations, gadgets, toys, candy, flowers, music, money -- the game is afoot indeed. Promotionally speaking, that is.

Which is why marketing promotions and their giveaways can be so powerful. Not always mind you, but they can be, if they're simple and straightforward.

You may have heard of the gambler's fallacy, the fact that if I toss a coin 10 times in the air and it lands on heads, I may incorrectly think that the next toss will have to come up tails. But the odds are the same either way no matter what.

This is what keeps us finding our gaming heads "back in Vegas with a handle in your hand" (thank you, Steely Dan), and why lotteries have become as big and powerful as they have, and why "bingo parlors" are the second oldest profession of all time (wink).

Somebody wins, but most of us lose, and mercy do we like to play the game. Especially live and in person. Since the fall HR B2B marketplace conference season is about to begin, I think it's important for companies on the hunt for visibility and leads to keep their gaming promtions simple and straightforward:

Stick with what works -- bingo. I've seen attendees dash excitedly from one exhibit hall booth to another to get their bingo cards filled in order to win a prize.

Wheels of fortune. How much simpler can you get? Paste prizes on the wheel and let people spin and salivate.

Brain teasers, quizzes and trivia. "Don't make it New York Time Crossword" difficult, but make your brain teasers challenging enough so not everybody wins the big prize. This isn't the Gen Y school of "Why I'm the mostest special" (I know, that may get some calls).

Scavenger hunts of mystery and intrigue. Make it light-hearted, fun and accessible to all parties, but don't over-complicate with WWII Navajo code talkers and secret decoder rings. And make sure it can be accomplished in a reasonable timeframe.

The prizes and tchotchkes you give away are another subject entirely, so make sure they're not brand damaging pieces of junk.

However, if you're ever giving away a vintage Star Wars pinball machine, I'm game.

Bite Size B2B Marketing Talk Podcast. Pull the String and Listen

2011-07-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid the really cool new dolls had a string on their back that when pulled would say something? (they were my sister's dolls - honest!).

Sometimes I wish I had a string on my back.

Like when I find myself having to discuss and explain the same marketing topics over and over.

As much as I love to talk marketing with prospects and colleagues, there are only so many minutes in a meeting/day. And people are busy.

And I have discovered that 80% of the marketing questions I am asked relate to a short list of a dozen or so marketing concepts - like what we mean by content marketing or how to integrate social media/networking into a marketing plan.

So, I decided to record some short podcasts (under 10 minutes) on these topics. Not to automate or replace the personal conversations I have day-to-day with clients and prospects but to have a resource I can direct people to for more information or to share our discussions with peers.

We branded these podcasts "Bite Size B2B Marketing Talk" and created an iTunes channel where they will be hosted.

Each "episode" gives actionable marketing and PR tips with respect to B2B marketing and PR.

The first episode in what will be a monthly series is titled "Content, Your Marketing and PR Foundation". And it is now available on iTunes. Our next episode in August is on integrating your "social" sites with your ongoing marketing and PR

This blog post includes the transcript for the first episode on content marketing. I invite you to pull the string and listen. And if you have suggestions for other topics please let us know.

So go ahead, pull the string. And maybe experiment by creating your own series for your prospects and customers. And if you need help getting started give us a call - our HRmarketer Services Group can assist.

EPISODE ONE TRANSCRIPT

What is content marketing?

Wikipedia defines it as "an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. Marketers may use content marketing as a means of achieving a variety of business goals. These may include: thought leadership and lead generation".

What is meant by content?

Content can be many things. Articles, survey results, white papers, ebooks, case studies, blog posts, webinars, or a podcast like the one your listening to.

I titled this episode "Content: Your Marketing and PR Foundation" because once you create a piece of content it can be used in a variety of ongoing marketing and PR tactics. "Ongoing" is an important term because marketing is not a spigot you turn on an off. Marketing needs to be a constant at your company to keep the pipeline full and maintain the visibility you need to stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace. And content is the most cost-effective way to do this.

So lets get right to discussing the practical use of content and how you can build a comprehensive marketing plan using content as the foundation.

What type of content should we start with?

I suggest a white paper. A white paper can be as short as 3-5 pages. It is a non-promotional educational piece that speaks to a pain-point or challenge your target customers are dealing with. Why? Because you want to create content that your buyers will find useful in solving their day-to-day challenges. I say non-promotional because this is not a commercial about how great your product is - that will only turn-off your prospects.

So what do you write about? Lets say, as an example, you sell a product or service relating to background screening. You might write about the importance of doing background checks for new hires, the proper way of conducting these checks, what's legal, the types of checks you might want to do, how they may be different for full-time employees versus contractors, and current legislation that might impact how you conduct such checks.

The point is to make it educational and position your company as a thought leader in the space you compete in.

Don't worry about promoting your company in the content. Trust me, your buyers will know what you do because you'll include a short description about your company at the end of the content and a URL to your site on each page footer.

Who can write the content?

If you don't have internal resources, hire a freelance writer using craigslist or another freelance site. You might even find a popular blogger in your industry to write it for you.

After it is written, make it look great. Again, if you don't have internal resources find someone who can take your MS Word document and turn it into a sharp looking PDF.

Then, put the white paper on your website. You might want to require a short form to be completed in order for someone to access the content - these become leads for your sales team. But don't require to much information. I suggest asking for a name, company name email and phone and maybe one qualifying question like "Do you currently use background screening when hiring new employees?

OK - you have a great piece of content (in this case a white paper) and it's loaded to your site.

Now what?

Now you promote the content.

Start with an online news release that announces the availability of the content and directs readers to a landing page on your web site where they can download the content. Upload the release to your web site and post to a service like PRweb or other news distribution service like HRmarketer.com software. Not only does this broadly announce the availability of the content but serves as a permanent promotion on the web for your content, to be found by your buyers when they type related keywords into a search engine. This also has long-lasting SEO benefits.

Next, send the news release to key journalists in your industry. In your email to the journalists, "pitch" the news in a way that encourages the journalist to take interest and write about your content. You might even offer a customer or expert the journalist can interview on the subject.

You can send a similar "pitch" to prominent bloggers in your industry who might find the content useful and may write about it.

Next, send a direct email to your house prospect list announcing the availability of the content. You can also rent or purchase an email list of prospects in your industry and do a campaign to them.

But this is just the beginning. If you have a newsletter, mention the availability of the content in the newsletter.

Now lets talk social marketing.

Blog about the content on your company blog. You might even turn it into several blog posts over a several week period, highlighting certain sections within the white paper. You do have a company blog, right?

Then "share" the content on your company Facebook Page. Also share it to your LinkedIn network and any relevant LinkedIn "groups" you are a member of. Then tweet about it with relevant hashtags. Again, you can do several tweets over a few days, each time pitching it it in a slightly different way with different hashtags.

You can then record a short podcast on the white paper topic. Keep it to under 20 or 30 minutes and designate someone to host the podcast and interview a subject matter expert on the topic you write about - think of it as a short Q&A session on the key topics in the white paper. Use a service like Skype to do the recording. When done, upload to iTunes and link to it from your web site.

If you don't have a company blog, facebook page, twitter account, iTunes and YouTube channel you should. Our next podcast episode will discuss the basics on getting these set-up and how to use them.

What else?

How about condensing the white paper into a shorter 500 -800 word article and pitch it as a byline article for inclusion in a relevant trade magazine or website in your marketplace? Every publisher needs content and you'd be surprised at the interest you might receive.

If you have a company YouTube channel you can record a short video that summarizes the content. This is easier than you think. It can be as simple as using iMovie and your built in web cam to discuss the white paper, show a few graphs and direct people to a URL where they can access it.

Another use of the content is a webcast. Use a service like GoToWebinar to host a webcast on the topic discussed in the white paper. Have a guest speaker who is an expert on the subject matter. You can then use direct marketing, a press release and your social sites to promote the webinar - maybe offering the white paper as a perk each attendee gets after listening to the webcast.

And of course, you can record the webinar and have it on your web site for visitors to view.

Everything i just discussed can be spread out over two to three months.

Then, reload.

Create another piece of content and follow the exact same steps. When you do this you'll have a solid 12-month content based marketing campaign that will give you increased visibility online, increases sales leads and better SEO.

And the best thing about it - it is not as expensive as you might think.

Join us next time when we discuss using social media in your B2B marketing and PR. We'll discuss how to set-up and put to practical business use a company blog, facebook and LinkedIn page, twitter account, iTunes and YouTube channel.

See you next time.

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

Flick. Light Bulb. I need to do more marketing!

2011-07-26T06:57:00.001-07:00

He told me it was a valuable review of “Marketing 101” – but it was still Marketing 101 and he wanted a deeper dive (referring to our webinar last week about HR B2B marketing is more than social).

And that’s okay (the deeper dives are coming by the way), because not everyone needs that baseline review, although I still run into savvy business owners and marketing pros who do need it.

As if only as a reminder that the number of tactics has exploded in the past decade.

EX-PLO-DED.

The diversity of tactics is just as diverse as the professionals using them, who are just as diverse as your buyers and influencers consuming them -- while your strategy remains focused on generating visibility, website traffic and sales leads.

So it was refreshing to hear these words from another one of those savvy business owners:

“I need to do more marketing!”

That was Lindsay Colitses, Principal at Windridge Consulting, a professional hiring and coaching consultancy that helps companies identify “best fit” candidates for their clients’ positions.

Here’s what she has to say about our Marketing 101 webcast review:

It brought me back to a "marketing" mindset. Seriously, social media is great, but it shouldn't replace other more traditional marketing streams…Email sends used to be a mainstay for me. I abandoned them because of the difficulty of getting past spam filters, and quite honestly, the cost was prohibitive when people were not spending money on virtually anything anyway. It feels like we're coming out of that "battened down" phase - I hope!

An interesting aside, I had a returning client ask me last what happened to my e-newsletter, which I abandoned for blogging. It made me reevaluate the fact that my clients like getting something specifically targeted to them…

Lindsay and I are going to talk soon about tactical strategy, but keep these three things in mind:

You have to constantly evaluate your marketing mix to ensure you’re generating the visibility, traffic and leads that sustain your sales efforts and growth. If not, then it’s time to revisit tactics that maybe you haven’t engaged in for a while.
Larger companies may have the budgets and staff to manage dozens of marketing activities, but smaller companies can still manage at least a dozen effectively and reasonably. Really.
You need to prepare, plan and execute a monthly marketing strategy. Then measure and revise – and re-prepare, plan and execute a monthly marketing strategy.

As Mark wrote yesterday, if all you do is social media you are not doing enough and it's not going to work.

It all starts with content. And once you have a system in place to produce ongoing, non-promotional, credible content on a regular basis that is valued by your business audience you must then have a system to distribute and communicate that content - which includes not only social media (blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Podcasts) but more TRADITIONAL marketing and PR such as press releases, media relations, direct marketing, webcasts, advertising, trade show participation, and so much more.

To help you get started we again recommend some content HRmarketer produced, starting with another webcast today, Tuesday, July 26, at 10 am PT (1 pm ET) titled HR B2B marketing is much more than social. Dude - register now.

Future webcasts will deep dive into topics such as social media marketing (go figure), event marketing, traditional media relations, lead nurturing, branding and much more.

Social Media Done Right Ain't Cheap (nor is it all you need to do)

2011-07-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

Whoever believes that social media is inexpensive is either doing it wrong or has a marketing staff that works for free.

Sure, anyone on a limited budget can create a basic company Facebook page and set-up a LinkedIn and Twitter account. But if all you are doing is sharing other people's content and making a few random tweets and comments - like you may do for your personal social media - you'll quickly realize that strategy won't work for your business.

When you participate in social media tactics for business (which must also include blogging) you have an obligation to fund those sites with content. And you need a process for not only providing on-going, up-to-date content but for providing compelling content that engages your audience and positions your company as a thought leader or valued resource for customers and prospects. You also need a process for distributing and managing that content throughout your social media properties.

And that, folks, takes resources - a lot of resources.

And if you are still on the sidelines and not sold on the value of social media, well, I don't know what to tell you.

Procter & Gamble is one of the most respected companies in B2C - and a company that is known for great marketing. P&G was an early adopter for using content based marketing and excels in social media as a strategy for attracting and engaging customers. Their sites which include HomeMadeSimple.com and ManoftheHouse.com, are text book case-studies on the effective use of content and social media. Check them out. And don't laugh - they are quite effective.

If it works for a consumer goods company like P&G - who trust me, measures everything and would not invest in marketing strategies that weren't effective - then it can work for your B2B human capital business.

This is what P&G says about their ManoftheHouse site:

"ManoftheHouse.com is an online property that provides help and advice to men. We're trying to help men adjust to this new role, because dads are now doing things that their dad's didn't do, and our research has indicated that they are looking for help online through content and information."

Interesting. Our own HRmarketer research discovered the same about human resource professionals (they are looking for content to help with their jobs).

The principles are the same in B2B. Your customers and prospects have business challenges that relate to the solutions you provide and they need help and advice (not advertorials).

But again, it isn't cheap - nor is it all you need to do.

Which brings me to the subject of content and integrating social media throughout your traditional marketing tactics.

In other words, if all you do is social media you are not doing enough and it's not going to work.

It all start with content. And once you have a system in place to produce ongoing, non-promotional, credible content on a regular basis that is valued by your business audience you must then have a system to distribute and communicate that content - which includes not only social media (blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Podcasts) but more TRADITIONAL marketing and PR such as press releases, media relations, direct marketing, webcasts, advertising, tradeshow participation, etc., etc., etc.

To help you get started I recommend some content HRmarketer produced, starting with a webcast tomorrow (Tuesday, July 26th) titled HR B2B marketing is much more than social. Dude - register now.

Some other resources:

- eBook: The Right Mix: A B2B Marketing Allocation Guide
- Podcast: B2B Bite Size Marketing Tips (episode 1 on content)
- eBook: Conversation Starters: Social Media Marketing in the HR Marketplace

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

iTunes/Spotify, Facebook/Google+ and Why Competition Is a Beautiful Thing

2011-07-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent a few hours getting to know Google Plus. This week I did the same with Spotify. Both are excellent products and I am thrilled at their arrival. And if you are a loyal Facebook and iTunes customer or use any other social networking or online music service, you too should be thrilled.

Indeed, competition is a beautiful thing.

For competition to truly work - and by work I mean raising the quality and improving the functionality of products throughout a respective category - someone really has to build a better mousetrap. A lot of products have claimed to "compete" or offer alternative solutions to Facebook or iTunes but please, most have been nothing more than knockoff imitations that, well, aren't that good.

But Google+ and Spotify are the real deal (and they did a stellar job at their product launches). And both will positively impact their markets. And consumers will benefit tremendously.

These recent product launches remind us of just how fleeting products, brands, market share and customer loyalty can be. Sorry folks, but it is a misconception that customer loyalty is a lasting, unbreakable bond. So note to marketers via Ray Davies - Be Always on Your Guard. Don't stop innovating and don't stop marketing.

It also reminds us that nobody - not even the most respected industry analysts - can predict what the future may bring.

And that is a beautiful thing - and what gets people like myself out of the bed in the morning.

Nothing inspires product innovation like competition. Trust me, I know first hand how competition can light a flame under one's hind quarters. After our initial success with HRmarketer.com software in the early 2000's we got lazy and enjoyed what seemed like endless revenue streams and profits (make that me - I take full responsibility) . We stopped innovating mainly because nothing pushed us - there was a lack of competition. Wow - what a mistake. As competition started to clean our clock we refocused on product development. And while we have corrected our complacency with a series of software improvements the best is yet to come. We are releasing a series of HRmarketer.com software enhancements and other new products in Q4 and Q1 2012 that I believe will have a significant impact on marketing and PR within the HR and perhaps broader B2B marketplace. None of this would have happened without serious competition in our space. And once released, we will likely inspire others to raise their game. And so the Circle Game goes on and on (sorry, I can't avoid musical analogies - I've been testing Spotify!).

And while we all may hate it when it impacts our company - competition that is - we cannot doubt that in the end, competition is a great thing for our personal and professional growth and the products and services that we develop. And guess who else benefits? The customers, conference/event organizers, media outlets, analysts, consultants, etc., etc. Without competition many are out of work. And all take a pay cut.

This is one of the many reasons I love to work with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators in the human capital marketplace. It is these companies that we all should embrace and thank. For they are the ones who drive innovation and inspire all of to raise our game. Granted, many start-ups and new innovations fail but without them even the big enterprise companies would get old and stale and we as users would enjoy far fewer features.

And this isn't just about the money. Most true entrepreneurs would agree. It's about building great products and never being satisfied with your current offering. And nothing inspires innovation more than other people's cool stuff.

But to innovate only after the competition inspires you to do so is risky business. You must build a culture of innovation and constantly look for ways to break new ground and maintain relevance in your market. A book I am currently reading helps you along this path. It's called The Essential Advantage: How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy - check it out.

At the upcoming HR technology Conference in October there will undoubtedly be major announcements of new products and technologies in the HR marketplace. And to all a thank you in advance for driving innovation in our space (as painful as it may be when we are on the receiving end).

So go ahead. Innovate. And raise the tide for all in the human resources marketplace.

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

Don't force fit your grandfather's used dress shoes.

2011-07-18T16:15:00.001-07:00

I beamed proudly just like my grandfather did when he bought his over three decades ago.

Mine were purchased most recently from Walmart. Running shoes. $14. Thank you very much. I had to buy them because I lost my "real" running shoes while on family vacation recently, and although they were 10 1/2 W, and I didn't need the W, I liked them and the deal and bought them anyway.

My grandfather's were purchased from his church bazaar. Dress shoes. $5. Thank you very much. He had to buy them because he needed new used dress shoes, and although they were actually too small for his feet, he liked them and the deal and bought them anyway.

Reminiscent of Steve Martin's Cruel Shoes, my grandfather beamed proudly every time he wore the shoes no matter how much physical pain he was in. And I remember my mother telling me it was a lot.

And me? I'm an idiot to think that running in cheap running shoes that weren't even the exact fit would be good for me (at least they weren't too small). In fact, the experience was painful and jarring throughout my entire not-so-young-anymore body for all 4.5 miles I ran.

And yes, I ran all 4.5 miles in that pain. It was like running in my grandfather's used dress shoes.

It got me thinking about recent posts from John Sumser and Naomi Bloom about how social technology and HR technology aren't always the right fit for an organization when you're only automating either existing poor processes, or when the manual and/or existing automated processes are fine and don't really need a retrofit, yet.

It's the same thing with the B2B marketing tactics these same companies use to promote their social and HR technologies.

Do you:

use social media solely as a direct marketing channel?
use mass email marketing to relationship build?
record podcasts with only "Drink my Kool Aid" jingles?
set up your exhibiting booth in malls instead of trade show floors?
launch flash mobs at tweet-ups? (Hmmm...that would actually be fun.)
buy HR tech ad space in "Low Rider" magazine?
send your press releases in response to personal ads?
Skype video telemarket your prospects early in the morning and late at night?

Mostly tongue in cheek, I know, and maybe you haven’t heard, but the number of marketing tactics has exploded in the past decade.

Ex-plo-ded.

Many are mainstays and many are new. And of course the tactics mix can and will vary whether you're a startup or whether you’re an established company or somewhere in between.

The key is getting the mix right as well as the appropriateness of each tactic. The outcomes and benefits of social media are not the same as direct email, which are not the same as exhibiting at a trade show. The combinations are endless, but the appropriateness of each are not.

Finding the right fit when selling and buying is both a science and an art. Just don't force fit your grandfather's used dress shoes.

Get Your Tweet On

2011-07-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the demands of social media. I mean, the days were already full, and now we’re supposed to Like, Tweet and Follow, too? Twitter, in particular, is still “new” enough to arouse suspicion and downright distrust. “We tried Twitter, but none of our customers are there.” That’s what one of our clients told us recently. If you’re still skeptical about using Twitter in a B2B context, you’re not alone. But if you don’t start using Twitter (in addition to other social media services), you may end up alone.

Consider these statistics from HubSpot’s report, “100 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts and Graphs”:

- More than ½ of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks.

- 57% of all companies that use social media for business use Twitter.

- B2B companies are far more likely to use Twitter (75%) than B2C companies (49%).

Their statistics show that, for Twitter users, the service plays an active role in purchasing decisions:

“I use Twitter to…”

Learn about products/ services 42%

Provide opinions about products/services 41%

Ask for opinions about products/services 31%

Look for discounts/sales 28%

Purchase products/services 21%

Seek customer support 19%

Here’s a stat that should get your attention: companies that use Twitter average two times more leads per month than those that do not.

Organizations are starting to really grasp the power of Twitter and leverage it in interesting ways. The Economist recently ran a short, fascinating article called “Can Twitter Predict the Future?” that discussed how the analysis of Tweets can reveal trends and other vital data.

“Other researchers have shown that searches for job-related terms are a good predictor of unemployment rates and that mentions of political candidates on Twitter correlate with electoral outcomes.”

One researcher was even able to correlate a rise in anxiety with a dip in stock prices. Researchers at John Hopkins University analyzed Tweets and determined that the allergy season started early this year in certain U.S. regions. What could Twitter analysis of your market segment tell you? What products or services could you innovate based on such data? More to the point, what are you missing by NOT being on Twitter?

The business world has fallen for Twitter—hard. An entire sub-industry has arisen due to its existence. Klout, for instance, is a forward-thinking company whose sole focus is measuring the influence of Twitter users. Their data is so useful to businesses that Virgin America partnered with them recently to offer free flights to “influencers” with high Klout scores, in the hopes of course that those selected would have a good experience and Tweet about it. Other companies, like Dove, Starbucks and Covergirl, offer Klout Perks to people with high scores.

Yes, these are B2C examples, but don’t let that throw you. You also have clients or prospects who want free stuff and who can influence others regarding your brand. The only limitation here is your own imagination.

We are actively practicing what we preach here at HRmarketer. Our inimitable VP of Sales, Rita Jackson, recently used her Twitter account to build buzz and excitement ahead of two conferences, which led to Twitter introductions and conversations. That led to live meetings at the conferences, and at least one sale. You can read her blog post about this here.

We feel so strongly about the value of Twitter that our own HRmarketer software programmers are currently developing an algorithm that will analyze Tweets within the human resource marketplace to identify trends and other vital data. This algorithm is being developed specifically so that HRmarketer.com software customers can leverage Twitter data in their media relations and marketing.

“We tried Twitter, but none of our customers are there.” This may be true for a small sub-set of companies, but it essentially feels to me like someone complaining that they never win the lottery—only to learn that’s because they never actually play the lottery. Similar statements were made by companies in the early 1990s as a reason not to develop a company website – “Why should we have a website if our customers are not going online?” You get to decide whether you want to be a front-runner or an also-ran.

Twitter’s low cost of entry (free!) and ease of use via tools such as TweetDeck and HootSuite, coupled with the examples above of how it’s being successfully used, should answer the question at last about whether to finally break down and get that Twitter account. Go get your Tweet on.

Blog Duel: How to Engage Remote Workers - Jennifer's Blog

2011-07-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

It all started with a tweet.

@RitaCJackson: RT @BSDperspectives Here's the challenge-how do u engage remote emps http://t.co/ScklruR

@jenniferbrogee: if they're good, u don't have to

@RitaCJackson: @JenniferBrogee Yes some employees thrive as remote workers, but many ARE good but also need engaging, motivating, rewarding .

@JenniferBrogee: @RitaCJackson sounds like a good blog topic!

@RitaCJackson: Dually Blogs posted July 15th. @JenniferBrogee @BSDperspectives Topic - how do u engage remote employees. OK?

Be careful what you tweet for!

Actually, I’m very excited to be a part of my first ever blog duel, on the topic “How to Engage Remote Employees.”

My experience as a remote worker started when I learned I was expecting my first child. I loved my job, but couldn’t imagine leaving an infant for 9-10 hours a day, five days a week. I wanted to be able to spend as much time with my child as possible. So, with trepidation, I broke the news to my boss about my upcoming pregnancy. I asked him if I could please work from home for at least part of the week.

Thankfully, he agreed. As a programmer, almost all of my work was done over the internet, so the transition wouldn’t be difficult. Over the next few months, I spent time getting an additional phone line installed (yes, it was during the era of dial-up internet), finding a work-worthy computer for home, and testing the waters by spending a day or so working from home each week.

When my daughter arrived, I started work within five weeks – two days in the office, three days at home. I was the first and only remote worker for the company for some time.

Since then, I moved into a role overseeing IT at myStaffingPro, and have managed workers with a variety of remote schedules. Based on my experience over the last twelve years, I recommend the following tips for engaging remote workers.

Clearly identify work responsibilities

If the job requires that remote workers are available via instant message for eight hours a day, identify that requirement. If the worker can fit his work into any schedule as long as he gets the job done, then say so. Don’t let requirements go unspoken – lay them all out on the table. Unspoken requirements for remote workers can cause resentment on both sides.

Ask immediate supervisors to communicate often

Ideally, the workers’ immediate supervisors will communicate with their remote employees at least every work day. Just an email to say “Hi, how’s x project going?” helps keep workers feeling plugged in.

Provide needed tools

Don’t skimp on hardware or software needed for remote workers. You’re going to be saving on the electricity they use and the coffee they drink, so you can afford to get them that piece of software that saves a lot of time or makes remote work that much more secure.

Meet once a week

If at all possible, ask remote employees to come into the office for a face to face meeting with colleagues at least once a week. There isn’t really any way to replace the multi-dimensional communications that are made in person.

Brag on their accomplishments

Because remote workers aren’t chatting at the water cooler, co-workers may not know what they are up to. Send out an email, newsletter, or make announcements often about accomplishments made by remote employees.

Don’t treat all remote workers the same

This has to be the most difficult step to take – get to know the strengths and weaknesses of your employees. Some remote workers are highly motivated and arguably more productive when working from home. Other workers need constant monitoring or more structured responsibilities while working remotely. Still other workers can’t handle the freedom. Instead of having a one-size-fit all policy, treat employees like individuals. If it’s not working out, meet with the employee, lay out the requirements and adjust the remote schedule.

Keep an open mind

I attended a seminar by an HR analyst this year about the differences between generations. The Greatest Generation puts loyalty above all, and expects a traditional work experience. Baby Boomers as a group strongly identify with work and want their employees to do the same. Gen X desires a balance between work and family, but will work hard and creatively while working. Millennials embrace the new and innovative, but the lines are blurred between work and play. On one hand, older workers are very reliable, yet may not think out of the box, while the younger generations break boundaries, but may be hard to hang on to. Both groups have strengths that are needed in the workplace. Focus on the strengths, and find a way to manage the weaknesses without making employees into your own image.

In this uncertain economy we want to cling harder to our employees, to monitor them more closely and watch every dime. I think it’s a mistake to hold so tightly that we squeeze the enthusiasm right out of them. A remote work schedule can be a win-win for both employees and organizations, giving employees a greater reason to stay, and providing organizations with a talented workforce, as well as cost and environmental savings. Remote work can be a success if approached creatively, if results are measured and communicated, and if the needs of both sides are met.

Read the other two blogs in the duel:

Bernie Dyme, President & CEO, Perspectives Ltd

Rita Jackson, VP and Team Lead of Sales for HRmarketer

Engaging Remote Workers: The Duel of the Tweeters - Bernie's blog

2011-07-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, a number of us began a discussion on Twitter. I am delighted and excited about engaging in this ideafest with @RitaCJackson , VP and Team Lead of Sales for HRmarketer and @JenniferBrogee, Chief Information Officer for myStaffingPro . We all agreed to have duelling blogs today so here is my first one. First of all, the discussion began about a piece in World At Work. The article pointed out that there has been a decrease of 7.5 million teleworkers since 2008. The challenge posed was what can employers do to engage remote workers. It is a tough challenge but one that is critical organizations want to grow and thrive. Even at 26.2 million teleworkers, that comprises 20% of the adult working population so you can see how significant that is. Here are a couple of my thoughts on this to get this discussion started.

1. Bring your technology up to speed. It doesn't need to be too sophisticated or even that expensive. Today, You Tube, on line meetings, Skype, etc. Go beyond the telephone conference calls. Obviously, the key is easy and continuous access to the Internet.

2. Bring your staff up to speed. They have to feel comfortable with the technology so that it is second nature to them like the telephone was for the old folks like me.

3. Create a quality and easy to use intranet. Make it attractive and user friendly. Easy navigation is important as is making sure it is consistent with your brand. In fact, this will have a secondary benefit in that it will familiarize all your employees with your brand.

4. When you have your technology at a working level, you need to COMMUNICATE, consistently and often. This is no different than in the "pre-internet" days. Transparency is critical. Once people know that this is an important way to communicate, leadership needs to use it to let people know what is going on in the organization.

5. Most importantly though is the COMMITTMENT to interactive communications. This is not your grandparents' communication strategy where the founder would give a speech or drop a newsletter to employees informing them of what is going on. The organization must have a strategy of interacting with employees so when they see something and respond, they get a response back. Treat it as if it were a virtual office where they can virtually knock on your door and have a conversation.

Obviously what I have laid out is a perfect world creation. Don't give up. It is okay to begin small and grow into it. The only thing you need to do is develop a short and long term strategy and a gradual plan for evolving into it. AND stay with it. Don't make it the "flavor of the month" which dies when things get rough.

Good luck and remember this is the future.

How do you engage remote workers? Let me count the ways.

2011-07-15T03:58:00.000-07:00

Last week, Bernie Dyme CEO of Perspectives, tweeted a question – “How can U engage remote workers?” and it truly hit home for me. So much so that with a retweet began a conversation that included Jennifer Brogee CIO of myStaffingPro. As with other playground situations, this one escalated into words and finally with a challenge of ideas "bring it to a blog" and then came the “Duel”. I want to include all the blogs on HRmarketer Blog for you to read, or just go to: Bernie's Working World Cafe and Jennifer’s myStaffingPro blog.

You see, I am a remote worker and I “Lead” a team that is also remote from me as well as the home office; and I often wonder if I am engaging the team that I am responsible for. I realize that many people say that the simplest way to determine if the employee is engaged is seen in output of work, completion of tasks and accomplishments – but are they happy? Heck! if an employee can do all that without being engaged, imagine what they can do if they were!

I did some research with the members of my team, as well as other remote workers that work at HRmarketer.com (which is about 60% of them) and the overwhelming thing that engages those that I connected with is:

1/ continuous clear and concise communication. OKAY this is so very important with any employee BUT how much more difficult is it if the worker is not physically in the office all the time. How many conversations happen in the lunch-room, or at the water-cooler, or “Hey could you just step in my office for a minute, I need to discuss something with you”. Remote workers miss this, unless there is a consistent effort to do it virtually. How brilliant does Skype look right now – easy, cheap and very good way to just touch base. Of course you can email, text, IM but I have to admit, voice is best.

2/ Feeling like they are part of the BIGGER picture and that their contribution is essential to the common goal – I guess that is communication again, because all of these things have to be articulated, discussed, understood, laid out and always need feedback, Feedback, FEEDBACK. Easy to see if you are in the environment of the office, seeing the energy change when something wonderful happens to move the company to the goals – or even if a roadblock comes up and the team needs to overcome it.

3/ To still feel to be part of the company community and culture. This is so easy for a worker who is at the office all the time – not so much for those remote. So what about weekly team call? Company wide home office visits? Localized visits? Company news streamed through FaceBook, Twitter, or other. We often start our weekly sales/marketing calls with a picture of one of the team members, who just had a baby. Once a week we see Julia grow up!

I have also taken my team members to lunch, bringing them into one location and having an all day strategy meeting in a home and another time, discussing work concerns while getting a pedicure.

4/ Generally, the remote workers that I work with – well, remotely – like it that way. They appreciate the flexibility of working from home, or sometimes the local coffee shop or library, it is the way they “roll”. They do have some valuable strategies and tactics to keep themselves on task and motivated, and I would like to think that my “spidey senses” can still detect when there is something wrong.

The next question for a management team might be: Is it worth it to have remote workers? I would hope that my CEO would say YES absolutely, or I have not performed as well as I think. Let me count the ways:

1/ being able to get the BEST person for the job/position. It opens up the whole hiring window, cross/multiple country, if your company is willing to hire remotely.

2/ offers very strong work/life balance for many people

3/ cost savings many cases

4/ having a team/office close to some priority clients

Interestingly, not one remote worker I connected with indicated that they felt that rewards/incentives would engage them. Hmmmm, let’s see what Jennifer and Bernie says about that!!!

Duel done – and I am spent.

Are you being seen as beloved through your storefront window?

2011-07-12T08:01:00.001-07:00

Family vacation has been fun, but it's a lot of work as well with baby and toddler in tow, so it's time to get back to the other work, because the Mama and Daddy can only take so much fun...

Yesterday we were driving back to Portland for our flight home today, and I saw a billboard with a big bee that said:

Bee Seen -- Outdoor Advertising Works

Of course the "buzz" wasn't lost on me and it got me thinking about business brand, both from the employment perspective as well as the buyer perspective.

Being seen is the first stage of brand immersion (visibility), but you also want to be known (thank you Monster) and the lucky few, beloved. How do you get there?

First, let's start with the outdoor advertising. Imagine you're walking down Main Street in Any Town, USA, and then imagine it's the holidays. (I know, it's the middle of July, but just go with it.)

As you're walking down said Main Street with your family, all bundled up and huddled together to stay warm (no, you're not in the Southwest or Florida), take a look at the businesses through their storefronts and you might see one of two scenes.

A holiday display highlighting store products/services.
A group of employees setting up a holiday display of store products/services.

Maybe the holiday display is gorgeous, or maybe it's not. Maybe the employees setting it up are happily doing so, or maybe they aren't, or maybe you just can't tell.

The businesses do their best at controlling what you see through their windows, but as we all know today in the 21st century of purposeful and accidental transparency, we see the dust bunnies and the cobwebs and the unhappy customers returning goods and the unhappy employees talking smack.

But it's also your opportunity to share why your customers stay with you as well as your employees, dust bunnies, cobwebs and all.

The Marketing Process Model works the same for all brand marketing: Prepare, Plan, Execute, Measure.

Keep these all in mind:

Super Customer Service and Lead Nurturing Both Inside and Out
Social Media Marketing and Monitoring
Traditional Direct Marketing and Monitoring
Cross-Marketing to the Business at Large (HR, IT, Operations, Finance, Executive Management)
Cross-Marketing to Your "Extended Enterprise" (Employees, Customers, Partners, Suppliers/Competitors, Channel and Distributor Networks, Contractors or Volunteers, and More)

Through boom, bubble and bust, we can always use a little authentic holiday cheer.

Look through your own storefront window. Are you being seen as beloved?

(Hey, join us for #TChat tonight where we're going to explore the question Is Employer Brand BS?)

Old and New - Taking the best from both marketing worlds!

2011-07-08T07:38:00.000-07:00

Taking a cue from both Mark and Kevin’s recent posts – "When a tchotchkie is a brand damaging piece of junk" and “Social is in the sidebars, not the swag” on this blog, I would like to add my 2 cent’s worth about conferences – and in Canada it is 2.04 cent’s worth.

A couple of the biggest conferences in the space have come and gone, and the big sigh of “ahhh” can be heard across the industry. However, building up to the conferences themselves, all kinds of promotion strategies are discussed around conference tables, and in conference calls all over the country. What outreach strategy do we use? What marketing vehicle to we utilize? How much do we reveal? What do we surprise them with at the conference? How can we get those conversations? What SWAG do you bring? Oh Boy – these are very difficult decisions to make. However MY focus is to meet and introduce "me" to as many new people as possible, and to meet my established clients in person if possible (one of my favourite things to do). Well – it takes some old and some new, we can all be successful at the conference game.

Case in point – the new - I do some Tweeting – or perhaps I would say that I am above average in my Twittering skills and find that what I love to do most is to try to create a “fever pitch” moving into a conference. That is what I did before the WorldAtWork annual Total Rewards conference in May and again for SHRM annual in Las Vegas in June. In the particular case of my story, I was following the hashtag for WorldatWork, and began a couple of online conversations with others who would be there and decided that it would be great to meet. Basically, we introduced ourselves, communicated about various things in the industry, and decided to meet – a true online courtship all in the name of business.

The old – good old actual conversation. There is nothing more telling and satisfying than meeting face to face, discussing all the nuances of the needs and objectives of a prospect, and the full opportunity to even show a Demo at the show. To see the furrowed brows of confusion, the surprised “aha” of clarifying the information and the satisfied smile of someone who totally understands what we discussed. LOVE IT.

And the end result – business. Yes, there is a happy ending to this story- are now working together with SilverSaver and we are privileged to be a strong partner with helping them to gain ground and momentum with their PR and media outreach into voluntary benefits.

When a tchotchke is a brand damaging piece of junk

2011-07-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

You wouldn't send a text-based direct email campaign with courier font and a flashing gif would you? So why do some vendors essentially do the same thing with their tradeshow giveaways?

Now that I have officially dug out from SHRM and caught with emails I can get to the really important task of sorting through all the tchotchkes I collected.

There were a few high quality giveaways that I will keep around the office or take home - great for the vendor because they serve as a permanent brand reminder. And isn't that the point of a tchotchke?

But most are junk.

Which begs the question - why do it?

The majority of vendors treat tradeshow giveaways as an after-thought or spend as little as possible just to have something. And I think this is a big mistake. Sometimes you are better off not giving away anything.

What am I referring to?

Wow, where to begin………

There are the pens that weigh less than the paper I'm writing on and would blow away with the slightest bit of wind. Oh, and they don't actually write.

And the eye-glass repair kit combined with a flashlight. Really cool idea except I could not figure out how to open the repair kit and when I finally did, the whole thing broke up into several pieces.

Or the mouse pad that within one day of using it started to peel apart. Useless.

The list of junk goes on an on.

Giveaways are all about branding and generating booth traffic. The point of this blog post is not to tell you what type of giveaway you should use - that creative/strategic decision is an art and there are hundreds of great articles on the Internet that help you with the decision. Like this one.

My point is to caution you against choosing junk.

I believe there are two primary uses of a giveaway at a tradeshow - and yes, I'm aware there is some overlap.

One, to attract people to your booth. For example, an iPad raffle. These giveaways are often used in your pre-show promotions to encourage prospects to visit your booth. A variation of this type of booth attraction giveaway (which do not always merit pre-show promotions) are what I will call "feel good" giveaways. These are not intended to be taken home and kept. These type of "giveaways" offer an immediate benefit or gratification. For example, a chair massage. Another example is food or beverages (if the event permits this). It's hard to mess these giveaways up unless of course the unlicensed massage therapist injures your prospect or someone gets sick from your candy.

At SHRM in Las Vegas where it was 110 degrees and where food and beverage were limited (and expensive) I found great value in vendors who had good munchies or bottled water at their booth. It brought me to their booth and regardless of whether I was a viable prospect it did leave me with a positive feeling about the company/brand (like the WebMD chapstick - a godsend in the dry climate of Nevada). And if just ONE person who otherwise would not have stopped by the booth did so and became a prospect it paid for the entire giveaway program.

But the majority of giveaways (the second type) are not intended to PROACTIVELY bring people to your booth nor be "consumed" on the spot - they are given to people as they leave your booth or casually picked-up by people as they walk by your exhibit space. These are intended to be brought home and kept by your prospects.

And this is where you can really tarnish your brand by having junk.

OK, I'm exaggerating but seriously, put some thought into your next giveaway. And if you are going to have a giveaway spend the extra $1 or $2 unit cost for a quality item.

Otherwise, consider saving some money and do nothing.

Social is in the sidebars, not the swag

2011-07-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

For many HR pros and B2B supplier folk, going to conferences and expos is just part of the job. Of course, who goes fluctuates with the economic ebb and flow and whether or not it was worth past returns in education, marketing and business development. (And obviously the world was looking a little bit brighter at SHRM 2011 with over 17,000 attendees and nearly 700 exhibitors and sponsors.)

No surprises that there are four very important activities that take place at conferences & expos:

Marketing (supplier product/service promotions)
Learning (keynotes, sessions, etc.)
Networking (fueling the face-to-face fire)
Business development (includes sales, although more sales and partnering prep and follow-up than anything).

The first and second are pretty clear: the brand marketing primarily delivers shiny objects and swag to the attendee buyers and influencers (along with some quality messaging and content that sometimes makes it above the din), while the learning is key for attendees, and the primary reason they're sent to conferences, with only the exception of the product/service shopper subset with a shopping list (the folks exhibitors and sponsors salivate).

But the last two, networking and business development, the two that I've lived and breathed for what seems like a long, long time, are the most critical activities for buyers, suppliers and influencers alike. (For a great recent discussion on influence, see John Sumser's recent post Thinking About Influence.)

Prior to conferences, many of us (again, buyers, suppliers and influencers) reach out to colleagues, prospects, partners and new individuals we have yet to meet face to face to schedule sit down meetings, informal sidebars, time permitting, which usually it isn't. But we try nonetheless.

And it's in those sidebars where the true social of business happens -- the connections that lead to friendships, partnerships, jobs, business and sales -- you name it. That's the business development part.

But c'mon, you know me. All things social rock and social media marketing is an important part of your Human Resources B2B marketing plan. Even a little swag is fun to take home to the B-hive.

But there is still a marcom thinness to all things social. Today we're selling to the business at large, and that includes executive management, IT, operations, finance, HR, recruiting, talent management, training, and the list goes on and on.

It's become a much more complex marketing and sales effort than ever before, and there is just as much diversity and complexity with marketing and PR tactics that goes beyond a Tweet or a top 25 list.

So join me for two upcoming webinars titled HR B2B marketing is much more than social. Dude.

Sign up for July 19, 2011 here.

Sign up for July 26, 2011 here.

Right on. These will be mint.

(Cross-posted at Marcom HRsay)

My Walkabout Back to HRmarketer.com

2011-06-27T07:10:00.000-07:00

“Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.” — James Matthew Barrie

“So, how’s your walkabout going?”

When she asked me that about a little over a month ago, at first I was taken aback. Years ago she was an HRmarketer.com client, and now she works for HRmarketer.com, and I didn’t anymore.

That “walkabout” comment certainly hit the mark.

And because everything is correct on the Internet (wink), Wikipedia defines walkabout as “a rite of passage during which male Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months. In this practice they would trace the paths, or ‘songlines’, that their people's ceremonials ancestors took, and imitate, in a fashion, their heroic deeds.”

Mine was almost 12 months, and while not quite heroic, I’ve learned a lot about business, myself and the rest of the world while watching it slowly thaw from its latest economic ice age. But I found no matter how I stretched myself, and where, I always snapped back to my “core” of marketing communications, business development, all things people management, all things social and greater marketplace evangelism.

No worries, though. I’ve survived the wilderness and I’ve kept in touch with Fisher Vista, LLC and HRmarketer.com founder and CEO, Mark Willaman, my old “partner in marcom crime,” and we’ve talked about how the HR space has changed, and how it hasn’t, how B2B business has changed and how it hasn’t, and again how too many companies come up short when it comes to their business marketing efforts.

For example, a new study titled 2011 Global Marketing Effectiveness Program found that 73% of CEOs believe marketers lack business credibility and are not proving to be growth generators for their companies. But in the same breath, 69% of CEOs said they believe marketing strategies and campaigns do have an impact on a company's business, although they can't precisely quantify results.

And we thought there was an innovation gap in HR technology. Gadgets be gone indeed. In all fairness there are many HR suppliers who know content marketing and how to make to business cases to the various stakeholders. Yet, there are still too many more who don’t.

These days in B2B we’re not selling in silos, we’re selling to the business at large, and that includes executive management, IT, operations, finance, HR, recruiting, talent management, training, and the list goes on. Not everyone is the primary decision maker (depending on what you’re selling), but everyone in your target companies are influencers, including their customers. It’s become a much more complex marketing and sales effort than ever before.

There is just as much diversity and complexity with marketing and PR “tactics.”

Social media marketing is important today, and more and more companies are coming online, but it should not exclusively be the only activity you engage in. Because while it may be enough to launch a new product or service, particularly one that incorporates “social” functionality and targets “social” buyers, it’s just not enough to build a sustainable growth business long term. I can’t tell you how many small businesses I’ve spoken with who have eventually burned through word of mouth and needed something more substantive in their marketing efforts. Take a look at the most successful HR Tech or other talent management companies. None achieved their success by focusing on just one marketing or PR tactic.

Back to the present, though – in all my collective careers, I have never met someone like Mark Willaman who has been so focused on professionally imparting marketing best practices to the human capital management industry, as well as now across all lines of business (IT, operation, finance). Also, someone in such relentless pursuit of creating a better marketing mousetrap in his software and services that truly help companies generate greater visibility, traffic and leads.

For example, the new HRmarketer.com "online voices" database that’s coming will track thousands of social voices in the HR and B2B marketplace (IT, Finance, Operations, Purchasing). Each "voice" will get a profile that includes an influence "score", recent blog and tweets, links to their social sites, their photo, bio, etc. Users can also search the content (tweets, blog posts, etc.) for each "voice".

And then there’s the aggregation of all tweets, blog posts and other social "conversations" for press contacts, analysts and online voices in the HRmarketer.com databases. With this information they’ll be the first in the HR marketplace to aggregate and analyze the "conversation" in real time and generate powerful trending data.

How cool is all that? And there’s much more where that came from.

This is why I’m returning to my “core” as the Chief Marketplace Evangelist at Fisher Vista, LLC and HRmarketer.com where I’ll be responsible for strategic marketing and business development initiatives, while still at the intersection of supplier and buyer.

You heard me right – I’m returning to Fisher Vista, LLC and HRmarketer.com as Chief Marketplace Evangelist.

In fact, I’ll be hosting webinars on July 19 and July 26, 2011, from 10-11 a.m. PT (1-2 p.m. ET), titled:

Marketing is Much More Than Social. Dude.

My brief work at Ventana Research wasn’t all for naught – I learned quite a bit from the very smart principal researchers there as well as helping to launch a research and education partnership partnership between Ventana Research and HRmarketer.com. The partnership will provide technology research insights from Ventana Research to the subscribers of HRmarketer’s news and information services. In addition, we’ll collaborate on HR-related benchmark research projects that will benefit business users and software companies in the business intelligence market. And I will still be an industry analyst of sorts, at least from the marketing communications perspective, taking vendor “briefings” in order to help them with their strategic marketing objectives.

So Katrina, remember when you asked me how my walkabout was going?

Well, now that I’ve finally come home to one of the best marketing software and services firms out there today, let me tell you all about it…

P.S. – If you’re at SHRM 2011 Annual Conference & Exposition as I will be Monday afternoon through Wednesday, then ping me. Here’s how to find me:

Twitter (@KevinWGrossman)
LinkedIn
Facebook
Focus
Marketing to HR
Marcom HRsay
TalentCulture
ActionHRM
kgrossman at HRmarketer dot com

A Professional Marketer is Patient.

2011-06-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh, if I had a dollar for every HR vendor who suspended or cut their marketing and PR budget because their latest grow big overnight marketing idea or campaign fell flat. And if I had another dollar for every vendor who got all jacked-up about wanting to be more visible in social media and once they realized the amount of work involved in doing so, delayed the initiative or quit all-together.

I'd have a lot of cash.

I was reading the The War of Art by Steven Pressfield last night (cool book) and the following two paragraphs got me thinking about marketing - sadly, most things get me thinking about marketing.

Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can't sustain that level of intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.

The professional, on the other and, understands delayed gratification. He is the ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not the hare. Have you heard the legend of Sylvester Stallone staying up three nights straight to churn out the screenplay for Rocky? I don't know, it may even be true. But it's the most pernicious species of myth to set before the awakening writer, because it seduces him into believing he can pull off the big score without pain and without persistence. - Excerpt from The War of Art, Steven Pressfield.

"Only 50 people registered for my webcast! No more webcasts".
"Hey, that social media news release I sent didn't result in a single media placement. No more press releases."
"None of the 200 downloads from my direct marketing campaign last month bought anything from us yet. No more direct email campaigns."
"The last 5 speaking opportunities I applied for were rejected. What a waste. No more."
"I spent hours applying for that award and I did not win. No more award submissions."
"You mean I need to update my blog at least 4 times a month? I don't have the time. Forget blogging."

The list of excuses goes on and on.

Folks, marketing is hard. Really hard.

I don't know why so many smart entrepreneurs and business owners subscribe to the "build it and they will come" philosophy. It doesn't happen.

Marketing is not only hard, Marketing is Everything as the now famous Harvard Business Review article argued in 1991.

Building a brand (or company) cannot happen without aggressive and consistent marketing - day in and day out, month to month, year after year. Nor can it occur by focusing on a few tactics like only doing social media marketing. Our latest e-book The Right Mix: A B2B Marketing Allocation Guide discusses the importance of incorporating many tactics in your marketing.

Take a look at the most successful companies in the HR space. None - and I mean none - achieved their success without a sustained and broad marketing and PR plan. None.

There are no we-got-big-quick-without-any-marketing case studies.

So why do so many companies skimp on marketing or quit when a few tactics don't pan out?

Great question.

In some cases it's a cash flow reason. OK. Fair push back. But is that REALLY the reason?

More often or not it's cultural or fear of the unknown. Or both.

A lot of business owners - especially those without a strong business or marketing background - are resistant to marketing. Sometimes they've been burned by the promise-you-everything firm. Other times they just feel uncomfortable investing in something that doesn't have a guaranteed outcome. And some are overwhelmed with everything they see they need to do and have no idea where to start.

But the irony is it really isn't that hard (getting started).

Start small. And have a plan and a disciplined process.

And for crying out loud, be patient.

So as we get ready for SHRM and then prepare for HR Tech (you are going to one of these events, right?) I present you with an achievable marketing and PR plan to get you started in the mysterious world of HR marketing.

Think of it as a marketing starter-kit.

1. Create a piece of content like a white paper. Lets say, as an example, you sell a product or service equating to background screening. You might write about the importance of doing background checks for new hires, the proper way of conducting these checks, what's legal, the types of checks you might want to do, how they may be different for full-time employees versus contractors, and current legislation that might impact how you conduct such checks. The point is to make it educational and position your company as a thought leader in the space you compete in. Don't be promotional.

2. Put the white paper on your website. You might want to require a short form to be completed in order for someone to access the content - these become leads for your sales team.

3. Promote the content. Start with an online news release that announces the availability of the content and directs readers to a landing page on your web site where they can download the content.

4. Send the news release to key journalists in your industry. In your email, "pitch" the news in a way that encourages the journalist to write about your content. You might even offer a customer or expert the journalist can interview on the subject.

5. Send a similar "pitch" to prominent bloggers and analysts who might find the content useful and may write about it.

6. Send a direct email to your house prospect list announcing the availability of the content. You can also rent or purchase an email list of prospects in your industry and do a campaign to them.

7. If you have a newsletter, mention the availability of the content in the newsletter.

8. Blog about the content on your company blog. Break it into several blog posts over a several week period, highlighting certain sections within the white paper.

9. "Share" the content on your company Facebook Page. Also share it to your LinkedIn network and groups you participate in or manage. Then tweet about it with relevant hashtags. Do several tweets over a few weeks, each time pitching it it in a slightly different way with different hashtags. And have everyone on your team do the same.

10. Record a short podcast on the white paper topic. Keep it under 20 or 30 minutes and designate someone to host the podcast and interview a subject matter expert on the topic you write about - think of it as a short Q&A session on the key topics in the white paper. Use a service like Skype to do the recording. When done, upload to iTunes and link to it from your web site.

11. Condense the white paper into a 500-800 word article and pitch it as a byline article for inclusion in a relevant trade magazine or website in your marketplace. Every publisher needs content and you'd be surprised at the interest you might receive.

12. If you have a company YouTube channel you can record a short video that summarizes the content. This is easier than you think. It can be as simple as using iMovie and your built in web cam to discuss the white paper, show a few graphs and direct people to a URL where they can access it.

13. Consider a webcast. Use a service like GoToWebinar to host a webinar on the topic discussed in the white paper. Have a guest speaker who is an expert on the subject matter. You can then use direct marketing, a press release and your social sites to promote the webinar - maybe offering the white paper as a perk to attendees. And of course, you can record the webinar and have it on your web site for visitors to view.

Everything i just discussed can be spread out over two to three months.

Then, reload.

If you can produce four quality white papers throughout the year then you have a solid 12 months worth of marketing tactics.

It's a start.

And it's not that hard if you have a plan and a process and stay disciplined to its execution. And not as much of an investment as you might think.

If you don't have the internal resources then outsource part or all of it to a company like HRmarketer. Lots of companies have done so and have great success stories to share.

If you have the resources consider a product like HRmarketer.com software to give you the information and the tools to get the work done. There are also other qualified marketing and PR firms that can help you like Starr Tincup and The Devon Group to name a few. We've all been doing this for a long time and we're all very good at what we do. Very good.

So dip your toes into the water and give it a try. And be patient and stay aggressive.

See you at SHRM. We're booth number 932.

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

"Way to go Nancy" - From Nancy.

2011-06-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

Motivation sounds easy, but it can be CRAZY HARD! As I was power walking with my friend Nancy, she was talking about how she keeps continuously motivating herself, offer pep-talks to herself, gives herself “high fives” and how she continues to realize that as a self employed person, she has value and worth. She has a file on her computer called – “Way to Go Nancy”. BRILLIANT. How else will someone who is generally self-employed, positively manage herself?

It really stuck with me because I realized that this is not just true of self-employed contractors, but it is the same for CEO’s, Presidents and Performance/Incentive Managers. Their job is to continue to keep the team motivated, focused, inspired, creative, rewarded, satisfied, stimulated and excited – but who helps them to feel the same way? Yes, it seems like a silly question because you would think that a company who has a manager to oversee a team and make sure that they are successful, would also have a system in place so that there is someone to oversee the manager. But I would hazard to guess that in many companies, it is the manager who’s job it is to keep themselves motivated.

Here are a couple of ways for those that are self-employed, C-level and manager responsible, to get that shot of Positive MoJo:

1/ Find a Mentor - That can be someone inside the organization, or outside of the organization, but truly understand what aspect of your business life you need “jolts of motivation and insight” and find someone who can do that.

2/ Find a Coach – this may not be as financially feasible as a Mentor, but it is a brilliant idea. This will help to keep you successful NOW, but will also help you to grow in your skills and tactics.

3/ Keep open communication with your CEO – I know that I strive to have open and honest communication with my team, and so insist that this also be the case with my CEO. Without that, no matter how much you motivate yourself or inspire your focus – you have no idea if it fits the Company business objective and the vision of the “big cheese”.

4/ Give yourself a prize! – yup I said it – a prize! If you KNOW that you have accomplished something successfully – reward yourself. Ice cream; a walk; go tell someone else; sticker – whatever will remind you that you are doing a great job, OR that you have completing them successfully. Come on your would do it for your team – just reach that hand to pat your back.

5/ Task one of your team to be YOUR recognition manager – if it is very important for you to be rewarded, and your company has a strong Incentive/Reward/Recognition program, assign one of your trusted team to be yours.

6/ Keep your own “Way to Go” file. I have one now, thanks to my friend Nancy.

Tell me some of your Motivate the Motivator tactics.

Selling to HR Means Selling to IT, Finance, Operations and Purchasing. It’s Complex.

2011-06-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

Selling to HR isn’t exactly a no-brainer anymore. It never was, frankly. But it seems to grow more complex every year. For instance, the number of tactics and channels you need to master has exploded. (Our latest eBook, The Right Mix: A B2B Marketing Allocation Guide, explores these tactics and channels in depth - and no, dumping all your money toward just one or two marketing tactics does not work).

Equally important, you now need to reach an expanding number of decision makers through your marketing and sales initiatives—and these decision makers are no longer limited to Human Resources.

More and more, HR is working in partnership with senior management and other internal functions (IT, Operations, Finance and Purchasing, among others) to choose products, services and vendors. As a result you need to help HR become a better strategic partner in the decision-making and deal-brokering processes. And you must be prepared to influence non-HR decision makers in your presentations and marketing collateral.

Of course, savvy HR suppliers are going a step further, seeking out ways to continuously influence and create an ongoing rapport with decision makers outside of HR.

These companies know the value of identifying and interacting with the journalists, publications, trade shows, bloggers, analysts and other resources that are critical to non-HR decision makers.

Obviously, you have to understand your non-HR audiences, their needs, their ways of thinking and the concerns they bring to the table. And you have to address all of this in your various marketing and outreach initiatives. As I said earlier, that’s no easy task. But the important thing to keep in mind—especially in the hard-nosed, pragmatic world of B2B selling—is that this takes time. Selling to this complex mix of functions and personalities only adds to the already longish sales cycle of B2B. There are no shortcuts.

The good news is that, even with all of these new decision makers factored in, your basic marketing and sales approach remains the same: your initial focus should be on the overall benefits that matter most to your prospect. Just because IT is involved doesn’t mean you need to come out of the gates with a pitch about cool tech features and product differentiation.

Yes, our challenge is more complex these days and the number of decision makers we need to reach has grown. But the game hasn’t changed completely. We simply need to be more inclusive in our strategy and approach.

At HRmarketer , we recognize that marketing to HR is becoming increasingly complex. To help marketers build awareness with and reach these other B2B decision makers, we recently announced that we're expanding the resources in our HRmarketer.com s oftware’s information databases to include key media outlets, press contacts, conferences, speaking opportunities, analysts, award competitions and buyer guides that reach not only human resource departments but IT, Finance, Operations and Purchasing departments. And to help you quickly locate and manage these resources we’re adding some very cool and powerful “tag” functionality that allows you to create niche campaigns not only across various “buyer” categories like IT and finance but also across industry segments (e.g., healthcare, retail).

Want to quickly find press contacts that cover corporate IT or conferences in the hospitality space? You get it.

We think you’ll love the added functionality as you develop niche campaigns to target these key decision makers across various industries. To learn more give us a call.

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

Can you handle a little competition?

2011-06-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

It is funny that the other day, three times actually, this particular topic came up – should you shun/block competition or embrace it and make it a positive experience – heard once in my personal life, and twice in my business life.

The personal life one is kind of fun and may be considered more interesting because it is NOT about business – as a passionate singer and performer, the question is “is competition good for you or should you try to avoid it”. Sometimes it is hard to follow the star of the show, but other times it also means that you will try to out perform them and usually means that you shine on the stage. It has happened to me a couple of times and the competition made for a more entertaining performance.

But the business one – that was a bit of a shocker. I cannot believe the lengths that some companies will go to, so that their competition is not seen or promoted. Block them from advertising in the same publication that they are in; not allowing their info to be linked on a website; can’t do onsite ads. Conspiracy theory I know, but believe it, it happens; and it often it is the bigger the player, the more they do it.

But the competition situation that always comes about, especially with a large industry conference like SHRM Annual 2011 upcoming in Las Vegas, is not wanting to be seen beside, close to, in the same vicinity, anywhere near their competitors on the exhibit floor.

So I posed a question on Twitter, “To all Vendors attending exhibition at #SHRM11 - what do you think about competition in your row? what about 3 booths away?” and though I did not get much response (crazy as I would have thought that many companies would have used the re-tweet to promote their offering at SHRM) I loved the response from Jason Morris of EmployeeScreenIQ “@EmployeeScreen doesn't mind competition in our isle. If you can't set yourself apart in the hall you shouldn't be there! “

Think about this for a second – Pretty bold statement, almost like it was called out from the playground – ‘if you can’t handle it, you shouldn’t be here!’ I mean you have to set yourself apart when you are “on the table” being considered with these competitors, so you are up against them there, so do it, differentiate yourself BEFORE being in that position, and make sure you set yourself apart. If you can’t defend, educate, justify, endorse, support, vindicate, make a case for your product and offering, while your competition is right beside you (hence those great ShootOuts that are often done at HRTechnology Conferences), then do you deserve to be there?

There are so many great ways to show the industry that yes indeed, you are a company that offers a valuable, strong, reliable offering through marketing, PR, media outreach, thought leadership even doing this new fangled thing – social media- so that when you are up against those competitors on the table OR on the exhibit floor, you deserve to be there.

In the thick of it . . . summer and trade shows

2011-06-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

Summer is already here for most of the country – sweltering heat and record temperatures. And this time of year is also busy with trade show activity.

HRmarketer team members returned from the WorldatWork Total Rewards Conference in San Diego, as well as the ASTD Annual Conference in Orlando two weeks ago. And we are now preparing for the SHRM 2011 Annual Conference in Las Vegas in three weeks.

While at the WorldatWork conference I asked many exhibitors and attendees their take on the show. Most exhibitors were upbeat, although several voluntary benefits companies were disappointed that there were so many compensation professionals, not their target buyer. However, there were still many benefit companies that were very pleased with the quality of the expo and the contacts they made.

In talking with conference attendees many of them said they were in search of information on employee wellness. Employers are looking for ways to lower their health care costs by empowering employees to become healthier. And one exhibitor, Alere Wellbeing, had an awesome wellness draw, Top Chef Carla Hall making delicious, healthy recipes right on the show floor!

In light of the just released McKinsey & Co. report stating that 30% of employers plan to cut their health insurance benefits in 2014 when Obama’s health care overhaul takes effect, the focus on employees’ health may shift significantly. So without health insurance as the core of a benefits package, what will employers offer to entice and keep their employees – increase compensation, offer more voluntary benefits, more vacation days, implement recognition programs, or do nothing? The next several years will be interesting to watch in light of the shift we will see in health insurance as a whole and there’s no doubt an organization like WorldatWork will be an important resource for HR professionals.

As we follow up with all the vendors we had conversations with in San Diego & Orlando, we are looking ahead to the largest conference in the Human Resource marketplace, the Society for Human Resource Management Annual Conference and Trade show. With more than 600 exhibitors and over 10,000 attendees expected, and general session speakers Sir Richard Branson and Michael J. Fox, it will be a hoppin’ place!

We believe trade show exhibiting is one part of a diverse marketing mix. If you have not exhibited at any industry trade show before, it is definitely a great opportunity to get face to face with your prospects, customers, and also see what the competition is up to! For additional insight and help with your marketing programs, download our free eBook, The Right Mix: A B2B Marketing Allocation Guide.

We look forward to seeing you at some upcoming events!

I Love Rewards & Recogni(zing) that something is, well, Different.

2011-05-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

I came across a new HR product that doesn't neatly fit into an existing product category. Yet, it's not a new category either. The company/product I am referring to is I Love Rewards.

More on them later.

But first, let's talk categories.

There are lots of product categories in the HR marketplace. It's a vast and diverse space. So vast that a rising tide in this market rarely lifts all vendors. It can be raining on some HR product categories while others are enjoying clear skies and bright sunshine - we've witnessed this on an extreme level the last several years. Trust me, this is unique as not all industries have such economic diversity (which by the way, happens to be an HR product category).

From the clouds (not the Internet ones) the HR "marketplace" is quite simple to conceptualize. It consists of the products and services that relate to locating, hiring, compensating, managing/developing, retaining and eventually saying farewell to employees. Strategically, it's about putting the right people in the right positions to drive business performance.

But when you come down from the clouds and get into the trenches you begin to appreciate just how vast, diverse and complex the space is:

Vast: Every organization with employees will need one or more HR products. That's big time demand folks (and one reason why so many smaller HR vendors flourish).

Diverse: There are a lot of products (the 'categories') that help companies locate, hire, compensate, manage, develop, retain and retire/terminate employees.

Complex: When you're dealing with people - and HR is ultimately all about people - it's always complicated. What makes the HR marketplace so complex is that there are hundreds of product categories associated with the function of human resources and these categories don't operate in independent silos. They are all interrelated components to a larger ecosystem that in itself is constantly evolving - like Big Bang meets String Theory meets HR.

Adding to this complexity is the seemingly constant emergence of new disruptive technologies. Most recently, "cloud" and "social". And every time, we assume the new technology will "change everything" (remember the paradigm shifts of the '90s). But eventually most HR vendors who need to adapt and weave these strange new technologies into their offerings (lets not forget that delivering HR products over the Internet was once considered science fiction).

What's happened, perhaps a result of technology advances, is that more and more HR products are cutting across multiple 'categories' (think end-to-end - gosh I hate that phrase).

All this makes the marketing, positioning and even the use of these HR products increasingly complex. (Selfishly, this complexity has been good for our own HRmarketer software - a product that aggregates the right HR marketplace information and gives HR vendors the tools to effectively use this information in their marketing and PR).

OK. With categories covered we can get back to I Love Rewards.

What's the product category?

I Love Rewards describes themselves as "an employee recognition solution that helps companies recognize brilliant performance and empowers employees to choose their own rewards. Unlike traditional service award programs, I Love Rewards creates authentic moments of recognition that resonate with workers of every generation."

Their words, not mine.

Product category?

Simple. Rewards & Recognition, right?

Not so fast.

I had the opportunity at the recent WorldAtWork Total Rewards Conference to speak with I Love Rewards Solution Specialist Rob Bianchin who gave me an in-depth look at the company's software. I was truly impressed. There are a ton of amazing HR products but when you take the time to understand this company's offering you quickly realize something is, well, different.

This is not a commercial for I Love Rewards. I single them out because they are an example of a refreshingly new type of HR vendor that is effectively using disruptive technologies to offer an "HR" solution that cuts across multiple product categories and gets to one of the core strategic functions of HR - to help companies identify and retain key talent while recognizing and rewarding the specific behavior's of these "achievers" to drive business results.

My words, not theirs.

This transcends beyond the typical reactive recognition program to a product that can have a direct and lasting impact on recruiting, retention, development, communication/morale, customer service, sales and even employee wellness. All of which drive business performance and impact revenue and profitability (and the company can actually measure the impact that their product has on much of this stuff).

You tell me - is this just rewards and recognition?

I don't think so.

Honestly, I'm not sure how to categorize their offering. This is not about taking an established HR product category and dressing it up with some social cloudiness technologies (don't get me wrong as there is value in doing that). This seems to be an entirely new type of HR product.

Will the company succeed?

I have no idea. I've been in business long enough to realize one cannot predict with absolute certainty who succeeds and who doesn't. Too many variables go into achieving business success and even the best of companies cannot control each variable. It's a long, long, long marathon, not a sprint.

But one thing I can promise - I Love Rewards will disrupt the "rewards and recognition" and perhaps other HR product categories. It's a refreshing new product that regardless of what happens will have a significant and positive impact on the HR marketplace.

Take some time to learn about what they do - and you too will learn something.

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

I want to buy from them again! The experience was that good!

2011-05-16T16:40:00.000-07:00

Recently my husband purchased something through e-bay (and if you know my husband, that is almost an everyday occurrence like getting out of bed, brushing your teeth, taking the dog for a walk, buying something from e-bay. That’s his day.) He bought it through a company called blinq.com, and he said that it went wonderfully smooth. Clear concise details, easy to read and using the proper “lingo” and all the shipping information he needed to make a decision. The purchase even arrived before they indicated it would which is also a lovely surprise – but it was the packing slip, giving full information of internal staff that worked on the order (if I needed the reference) that really took our attention. It was done with a twist.

Here is what it said:

Hello John – Good Buy!

You snagged that deal just in time … it was gone in a blinq!

Hello! Grand Gadget Guru OptoroW. Received your item, vetted it like an overbearing mother-in-law, and welcomed it to the family on May 1, 2011.

Deal! Bargain Hunter Extraordinaire John Jackson (You!) spotted an amazing deal, did a two-minute happy dance, then quickly placed the order on May 2, 2011.

So Long! International Super Spy Peter J. received your top-secret order notification, parachuted in, and hand-picked each item on May 3, 2011.

Good Buy! Double Black-Belt Ninja Aaron N. expertly packaged your order, recited a farewell haiku, and sent it on its way May 3, 2011.

Can you say that your customer service is this much fun? This accurate? Gives this much information? Can you even say that you have customer service?

I would like to think that I give exquisite customer service at HRmarketer, attention to detail, take as much time as my clients need and go over the top with performance. I would encourage any of my clients who might read this to post in the comments if they have NOT received great customer service from me. Look out because you will certainly be “smothered with the Rita love”.

What can you do to truly understand if you offer customer service that is worthy of the value of your product, and that is the key – if you feel that your solution is valuable and worthy to the industry, you need to respect your company, your employees and especially your clients to back it up with “BEYOND” customer service.

How can you figure it out? I would say the first step is admitting that you need to improve this – NOW. Word of mouth can make or break a product offering and a company – seriously. Even the big guys.

SelfGrowth.com – the Online Self Improvement Community has a wonderful, albeit fairly obvious, list of “The 10 Guidelines for Successful Customer Service” . To these I would like to add:

* Doing exit interviews with outgoing customer service representatives

* Rewarding employees who have done a great job in a customer service situation

* Approach a company that you know is doing an outstanding job – even if it is a competitor. You might be surprised how willing they are to assist you in making the industry a well thought of and respected part of the industry.

* Never shake your head and say – “I don’t believe it”. Truly be honest with what you hear, and strive to make it right.

All this to say – You can have the BEST product or solution out there. You may have the most BRILLIANT technology and development team. You may have the most TALENTED sales and support staff. But if you do not have a quick, efficient, thorough and caring Customer Service team – Just call it quits now.

PS – we certainly do intend to buy from Blinq.com again. We loved the experience.

Content Marketing: To require registration, or give it away, or possibly both?

2011-05-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

OK Marketers, how do you handle your content? Do you require every prospect, client, or visitor, to fill out a form to get your content? Do you mix it up and give some things away for free and require registration for others for lead gen purposes?

We do quite a bit of content marketing for ourselves and for our retainer clients. For our own content, like our Annual HR Buyers Report , or even our latest eBook, The Right Mix: A B2B Marketing Allocation Guide for 2011, we did not require registration.

Many marketers are of the mindset to give away content because more people will read it and share it when there are no barriers (no form required). David Meerman Scott and his book “World Wide Rave” speaks to this concept of letting control of your marketing. And yet, there are a lot of marketers who don’t do this for various reasons – they fear “losing control” of the results of their campaigns, or there is the pressure from Sales for leads, leads, leads.

What got me thinking about this subject again is that I receive emails every day from a particular marketing firm that is a HUGE proponent of content marketing. I’ve participated in many of their webcasts and downloaded their content over the past few years. And yet, for EVERY new email I receive offering their latest report, article, etc., I have to fill out the same form. And it’s not even what I would consider a short form, asking for name, email, company. They have 10 REQUIRED fields, yes 10, before you can download their content!

So some questions popped in my mind:

Is this company’s content so valuable, is their brand so respected that they can require everyone to provide all that information every time?

There is always the fine line with forms of how much information to ask – not wanting a prospect to give up filling out the form because it’s too long, or they don’t feel the content is valuable enough to give up their contact information.
If you must have a form, should you require known prospects to go through the barrier of the form every time?

What about designing marketing campaigns so that prospects that are engaged: i.e. they open your emails, they click on the links, etc., don’t have to take the time to fill out the long form yet again. It is possible to give them a direct link to the content, bypassing the form. Then use the form only for newer prospects.

With the latest email I received, I was interested in the content, I clicked on the link and saw the same darn form and I gave up! I didn’t want to take the time to fill it out again. I wonder if anyone else on their “list” feels the same way?

So how do you handle your content campaigns and forms? I’d love to hear what other marketers are doing and how it’s working for you.

Dahli Lama, Charlie Sheen, Social Media and Influencing the B2B Marketplace.

2011-05-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

HRmarketer team member Dawn Passaro had the opportunity to see his Holiness the Dahli Lama when he visited Long Beach, CA recently. His efforts on behalf of human rights were recognized as part of Amnesty International’s 50th anniversary celebration. It was an historic occasion, and he was humble, in the face of receiving the inaugural "Shine a Light" award. He is a visionary with very down to earth solutions to problems.

Dawn described the experience to me with this email:

"During his acceptance speech, He described his interactions with the Government of China over the past decades. He said that sometime around 1979 he was able to negotiate with the Chinese Government, but he was unsuccessful. He spoke of his long and determined efforts to achieve his goal, lasting years and decades. He is still struggling with this same goal.

I think businesses can learn something from the Dahli Lama's approach.

Determination, and vision, coupled with small achievable goals is the key to making significant progress. His example inspires us to remember that continuing to make efforts every day will yield long term success.

I was surprised when He mentioned social media. The Dahli Lama has a Facebook page! And he Tweets.

Who knew he was so tech-savy?"

The topic of social media influence came up as he described his efforts to encourage the Chinese Government to recognize Tibet. He told of the (on-the-whole) unsuccessful results.

But something has changed since the advent of Social Media, and it has given him hope. It appears that there is a grassroots support by some citizens of China and he credits social media for some of this progress.

He was able to reach "groups" of Chinese people who support this common cause; more importantly – they found each other. In spite of the risks social media can bring to individuals he pointed out that because of Social Media, many Chinese citizens are better able to reach out to each other, and to the Tibetans still in China. He has seen the result - human rights supporters have more impact that ever before. It was a hopeful viewpoint, and one that supports a belief in the power of social media to influence positive change.

Maybe we can be invigorated and inspired by his view. Slow and steady wins the race, or at least, keeps you in the race!

In B2B market segments including human resources, companies are increasingly attempting to use social media to "influence" buyers. As a result of this demand we are seeing numerous new technologies that attempt to identify or rank "influencers". In fact, our own HRmarketer.com software is in the process of developing algorithms and technologies to help human resource vendors identify the most "influential" media outlets, journalists, conferences, analysts, etc.

But in B2B can social media or social media "influencers" (whatever that means) really influence people to buy your products?

Saul Colt, the self proclaimed smartest man in the world, takes a humorous look at social media's influence in his blog post If Charlie Sheen told you to jump out a window: A lesson in Influence.

But there is more serious research on the topic that a recent Information Week article titled Online Influencers: How The New Opinion Leaders Drive Buzz On The Web summarizes.

In this article, Dave Balter, CEO of BzzAgent, says "We actually believed in the idea that influentials drove market trends….but upon closer look, we found out it didn't add up. Today, when a client comes in with the goal of influencing the influentials we tell them that's fools' gold. It sounds really great, it sounds really sexy, but the results simply don't fly."

And Duncan J. Watts, professor of sociology at Columbia University who studies networked communities, recently conducted research that indicates there is no hard evidence that the long-held belief in opinion leaders as, well, leaders, has any basis in fact.

So what's a marketer to do?

The buying process in B2B is complex and we wrote about this extensively in our recent e-book, The Right Mix: A B2B Marketing Allocation Guide.

In our e-book we discuss the role of social media to help companies raise awareness about their company/products, strengthen our brands, and monitor what others are saying. It helps us position our organizations – and our company leaders – as trusted subject matter experts and thought leaders and improve relationships with customers, the business press and other key audiences.

But does it influence?

There is little evidence that suggest your actual buyers are even paying much attention to the the social media chatter. I have had conversations recently with several CEOs of established HR vendors who tell me they have given up on social media because their buyers are not paying attention.

Ouch.

We're not sure anyone really knows who the real influencers are and who exactly is paying attention to them. And the truth is it’s extremely difficult to measure the results of your social media efforts. But it would be a huge mistake to ignore social media in your marketing plan. Conversely, allocating all your resources to social media at the expense of other, more traditional marketing and PR tactics is a huge mistake.

Marc Cantor, founder of Macromedia and CEO of Broadband Mechanics, divides online marketing into first, second, and third-level strategies. First-level strategies are the traditional mass-media campaigns. Second-level campaigns are more subtle and involve "giving something to the community" (e.g., useful educational content). The third-tier approach is to "circle the end user experience with a compelling product, and let people decide for themselves what's in it for them. It involves listening to consumers and actually giving them what they want."

Well said.

Effective marketing means you are investing in a broad range of marketing activities to move buyers from awareness to purchase: distributing a steady stream of news and content through a variety of distribution points, attending conferences, direct marketing (email and print), advertising (on and off line), speaking, awards, webcasts, etc., etc, etc.. Each tactic, including your social media initiatives, plays a unique and important role in moving buyers through the buying process.

As for relying on social media and the "influencers" to do all this for you. Not going to happen.

In B2B marketing, the tried and tested fundamentals are still relevant and critical for long term success.

Stay tuned for more on this topic. HRmarketer will be releasing a position paper on social media and influence later this year.

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

So, What’s the Big Deal about Hashtags (#)?

2011-05-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

If you use Twitter, you probably know about #hashtags. If you don’t, then WOW are you ever missing so much! Twitter users identify tweets with specific hashtags to make them easily “findable”. Or search for tweets by hashtags to find topics of interest to them and their business – like #staffing, #SHRM11, #justsayin, #katyperry and just about anything you can think of. Attend a webinar and follow the hashtag to see the twitter “conversation” during and after the webinar. And more and more conferences are using hashtags for their events so that twitter users can follow along and join in the twitter "discussions" about the conference.

Hashtags, which started organically by twitter users several years ago, are a wonderful tool in blocking out the noise on twitter – i.e. pulling out of the thousands tweets each day information that is of interest to you.

As a marketer would you find it useful to access the tweets about a specific conference to see what attendees and exhibitors thought of the event? What did attendees like, what were the hot session topics, what were vendors saying about the expo? Let’s face it, exhibiting at conferences can be very expensive and getting this kind of historical information can be an invaluable piece of measurement. This kind of unsolicited feedback would be helpful in deciding to participate in the conference next year, right?

But a key sticking point to using twitter hashtags as a research/planning tool is that twitter doesn’t store tweets for more than a week, so accessing this kind historical data could be challenging. But if it were stored somewhere, would it be seen of as a great resource? I can hear the roar of YES’s all over the place. Good.

This week HRmarketer.com is adding “Event Twitter Hashtag” data to our Conferences & Expos Database Profiles. HRmarketer.com software users can now find the event hashtags and monitor the tweets directly from their account. And once the event ends, we will “archive” the tweets that were posted during the event so users can view the previous year’s “conversation” for that event.

Check it out . . . another cool tool to help busy marketing and PR pros!

The Dark Side of Background Screening

2011-04-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

One of the joys of attending a conference such as the recent SHRM Talent & Staffing Management conference in San Diego, is that you learn so much. New innovative thoughts – Grand expanded ideas – New Announcements – and my personal favorite – New companies. That is what happened at this conference, I had a chance to speak to David Nadell of the Social Intelligence. This new company indicates that with using Social Media channels for hiring is putting the employer at huge risks in discrimination, …. but what made my mind whirl is the thought of what kind of stuff you going to find out about this candidate if you dig just a little deeper? Dig into the web of social media and their fan pages, personal pages, chat rooms, networking accounts and so much more. How thorough are the screening companies when it comes to positions that really are about a persons’ character as much as their experience.

Recently, HRExaminer’s John Sumser published a report not only on Social Intelligence but about this whole scary Dark-side of background checks. http://www.hrexaminer.com/social-intelligence. He states “…disconfirming evidence in a variety of ways. They screen pictures, evaluate various alternative resumes, monitor chat rooms and dig deeply into those thousand of islands of social media.”

Yikes – this is a scary thing to consider, but when you are in the financial services, Health services, educational services – wow, we better be sure that the candidate’s life is as clean and pristine as they say it is. Unfortunately, now that there is social media, there is a way to dig even deeper, setting up a Consumer Reporting Agency to cover so many of these “if’s, and’s and but’s” so that an employers can be confident that they have truly served their consumers with due diligence and respect.

Recently, I stumbled on another new company that will help to eliminate this on the consumer side – Reputation Defender; The online reputation management leader. It is all about image control. However, does this help those people that are trying hard to hide what their true life is all about – sheesh, just makes me think again “The Dark Side”.

BUT I have the answer for everyone, that would unfortunately put both of these companies out of business – 1/ be a good citizen 2/ have a good conscience 3/ believe that anything you do selfishly, will effect someone negatively 4/ remember those values and morals hopefully taught to you in your youth 5/ stay on the clean side of the law 6/ only do things that will make your mother proud.

Since I don’t have much faith that this will truly happen, both of the companies will be kept very busy for a very long time.

Who's job is PR anyway?

2011-04-18T07:14:00.000-07:00

It is amazing how one comment can get you thinking about something that you do naturally and for totally different reasons. You have no idea that the end result could very well be as valuable as why you do it in the first place. Confused yet?

As I was attending the recent SHRM Talent & Staffing Management conference in San Diego, a follower on Twitter commented “Are you in PR at HRmarketer.com? because I thought you were in Sales.” I thought that was an interesting comment because “who’s job is PR anyway”.

I like to support and assist the clients/members of HRmarketer by promoting their press releases and content news beyond the HR VendorNews site that we have. I also look beyond other industry news and push that out as well. Isn’t that what Social Media is all about? I may be the VP of Sales, and a dedicated and enthusiastic member of the HRmarketer team, but I am also proud and enthusiastic of my client’s news. Should that kind of promotion be left to my PR team? Do I allow them to decide what is valuable news? What about my opinion?

In a company of our size, it is not very difficult to encourage the full team to take up the thrilling ride of social media, and to do it in a way that gives the collective message of the company. AND it should be the job of the sales team, who works with, and understands the differential aspects of their clients to act as a PR or voice for our clients.

I know that there are some truly difficult decisions made by all companies nowadays (wow that sounds old fashioned), but especially large companies, to decide if the employees of the company should be using social media to promote their company. This is very hard to “police” what message a company wants to promote, and without guidelines and boundaries, this can be difficult to manage. That is why we now hear of titles like - "Social Media Guru", "Online Influencer" and Laurie Reuttimann's new title with StarrTincup - Principal HR and Social Media Strategist (great title by the way).

Do you agree with me? Is PR a job that should be kept in a silo? Should sales take responsibility for this kind of promotion?

I was pleased that David made this comment to me, because it tells me (and luckily my CEO heard it too) that I am doing a damn fine job for my clients and HRmarketer.com.

Step on the Stage Folks!

2011-04-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Those of you who read our blog know we are fans of Laurie Ruettimann, a former HR professional who wrote the seminal Human Resources Blog: Punk Rock HR.

Laurie has a new job.

Here is a blog from the website TLNT outlining the details:

Does Move of Well-Known HR Blogger Signal a Trend, or Something Else?

The article provides some encouraging news for HR Vendors:

“According to Bret Starr, a partner at Starr Tincup, there is “a tectonic shift, a major change taking place in the HR space.” He says that the HR market (for goods and services) is maturing at a rapid pace and becoming more of a mainstream market where defending and building brands is the critical element for HR vendors rather than just simply looking to gain market share.”

Step right up folks! It looks like you might be taking center stage! We have all been working on developing our brands, and using social media tools, and now we have become “cutting edge” - way ahead of our competitors who are not using these skills!

And, in the two-birds-with-one-stone department, I have even more good news from that article:

“Just this week, a new study by SHRM found that found that more than half of human resource professionals (56 percent) now use social networking websites to source potential job candidates, a significant increase from the 34 percent who said they did so back in 2008. In addition, one-fifth of organizations (20 percent) that do not use social networking sites say they plan to use them in the future.”

The information you have learned about social media, branding, and other online marketing skills that has helped you become so “cutting edge” may help you in another potentially lucrative way with your HR clients! That same information can be used to help educate your HR clients about the strategic use of social media. This helps you develop credibility with your clients and develop a stronger customer relationship bond with them. Win-win!

Reach out to your clients as an “expert” on social media’s use in HR. Trust me; you know far more about this stuff than most of your clients. The HR department folk will need your help, and be grateful as you give them helpful advice about all you have learned about the world of social media!

Maybe some of you are already doing this? I am curious; let me know if you have had this conversation with your clients.

What You Don't Know CAN Hurt You!

2011-04-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

As unemployment stagnates, even though the economy is starting to pick up, there has been something of a backlash from discarded employees. Apparently, unemployed candidates are not considered to be viable candidates – at least according to rumors I’ve heard and from various recruitment blogs and other on-line sources.

It has always been the case that candidates who aren’t working are at a disadvantage. The hiring manager often believes the unemployed candidate’s work-skills are lagging.

Thinking this isn’t against the law, or is it?

Well, this “dirty” little secret is out; the unemployed masses have caught on to this practice, according to an article in the April 2011 issue of - Treasury & Risk:

“The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s interest suggests companies should tread carefully. While there’s no law that prohibits employers from refusing to consider job applicants who are unemployed, the EEOC is considering whether the practice discriminates by having a “disparate impact” on certain groups. At an EEOC hearing in February, witnesses argued that excluding the unemployed could have an outsized effect on groups including blacks, Hispanics, women, older workers and the disabled.”

Disparate hiring does not have to be shown to be intentionally discriminatory. In December, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against Kaplan Higher Education, charging that its use of credit checks discriminated against black applicants. This might be of interest to background checking vendors.

I am curious to hear from any recruiters out there, have you been asked to screen out unemployed candidates? Maybe a conversation with your clients could save a lawsuit?

Now Available! HR Buyers’ Behavior: What to Expect in 2011

2011-04-05T07:06:00.000-07:00

Our annual Trends in HR Marketing: HR Buyers’ Behavior - What to Expect in 2011 is here and available for download from our HRmarketer Content Library. No registration required!

Our fifth annual survey reveals some positive news for HR suppliers, as well as the job market as a whole in 2011. Fifty percent of HR professionals report their company will hire more staff in 2011. This statistic mirrors a Business Roundtable survey, also released last week, stating that 52% of top CEOs plan to increase hiring in the next six months.

The key trends outlined in our HR Buyer Report reveal much about the online HR buying process. As we’ve reported for several years now, having a strong online presence continues to be of great importance for HR suppliers to be found and recognized by HR buyers. A few additional highlights include:

As a group, HR buyers plan on increasing their budgets by 20% or more in 2011 for Recruitment, Training & Education, Performance Management, Management & Leadership Development, Assessment & Selection and Background Checks.
LinkedIn is far and away the most popular social networking service among HR decision makers with nearly 95% using it for business purposes. However, this audience’s Twitter use was up 50% over last year.
Sixty-nine percent of HR buyers are somewhat to highly optimistic about the economy and think that business is starting to improve in 2011.

In this slow economic recovery, it’s encouraging to see hiring on the rise increased optimism for 2011.

Seventy percent of survey respondents were executive management across a variety of industries and 50% were from companies with 100-1000 employees.

Download the full report directly here for a great look into the perspectives and attitudes of HR buyers and how you can leverage these insights in your Human Capital Business.

Contact us with questions or comments. We'd love to hear from you. And feel free to share the report via twitter, facebook, etc.