Amber Naslund, community manager at Radian6 and blogger at Altitude Branding, shared a post today, Social Media is a Co-op. I like her way of thinking.
Two hours earlier, we were the discussing how our learning content at WhyHire.me has to evolve and develop through collaborative partnerships. We do not claim to be experts in everything related to our program. Our team offers great experience in teaching, marketing, coaching, communication tools & approaches and technology development but there are many other pieces to our training that we want to continue to develop and evolve, and we are looking for partners to assist.
So, from Amber’s perspective, I’m starting my co-op. Over the past few weeks, I have been anxiously awaiting Sue Murphy‘s eBook, Creating Video for the Web: Tips, tricks and tools for telling amazing stories. Sue had been thinking of developing an eBook and we have been looking for some fresh and insightful content to share with our students on the subject of producing video for their profiles. Sue is making the content of her eBook available on her website at no charge.
This eBook will be a great new resource for our students. We hope to work with Sue in upcoming months to develop some customized content for our specific application and I will be putting together some new video assignments based on Sue’s content. The co-op starts.
As Amber Naslund states in her post;
“They’ll build social media like a co-op. Driven by a team united voluntarily, toward common goals, and equally invested in the outcomes.
Collaboration is not just a feel-good buzzword. It’s the idea that our business is built more efficiently through shared knowledge, and shared responsibility.”
I look forward to more collaborative work with Sue Murphy and others with specialties and knowledge that will make the teaching and approach of WhyHire.me more powerful and engaging for our students. We can’t do it alone. Well, I guess we could, but like Amber, I don’t think that makes the best product, service or experience for our customers.
We are all familiar with different use of the word circle in the context of human interaction. “He runs in that circle” suggests someone is plugging into a specific group. Likewise, “she has tight circle of friends”, would suggest the person is selective about friendships.
I have been introducing the concept of Digital Circles with students, professors and deans. It is a nice metaphor one can use to introduce people to the world of connecting with groups of like-minded online people inside WhyHire.me, Linkedin or Facebook groups, Ning, Twitter Lists, Meetup, you name the digital circle – they pop up every day! 
Once you visualize the fact that many of these circles overlap because of our wide interests, students start to connect the dots as to why it’s so important to have a brand presence and make an effort to join relevant digital circles. It simply expands ones reach into the professional world and provides a tremendous source to learn from and share. Students using WhyHire.me get to bring select elements of their digital circles back to their WhyHire.me profile. Check out my Twitter Tab for my latest Tweets, My RSS for what I am reading or sharing and My Blog for my views on personal branding through post-secondary school. Click on my PURL to see how my online brand is presented.
I continue to connect with very switched on people thanks to these digital circles. It’s all the more satisfying to meet these people in person. Thank you all for extending our story into your circles. I will endeavor to do the same:)
Just before Halloween, I connected with Dawn Mular, the world’s top recruiter on Twitter and CEO of the Helping Friends Career Network. Dawn was very easy to connect and interact with, given the nature of what she does. She takes a genuine interest in people, collaborative technologies and helping put people to work.
Many times over, school administrators and HR professionals ask why students should be coming out of school with an online brand. I was keen to get Dawn’s perspective on how social media has changed recruiting and how her clients react to seeing more than a traditional 2-page resume about a candidate. For those that are interested in downloading the entire 10-minute podcast, simply click here.
For those interested in key sections, you can download and listen to key extracts:
- How the Helping Friends Career Network got started
- The secret to her success becoming the top Twitter recruiter
- Client reaction to social media in the recruiting world
- Stepping outside the traditional recruiting box – how and why
- Important employment trend – green businesses will mean more job / project opportunities
- Advice to Educators and Leaders – become part of the movement
- Bring transparency and authenticity to the classroom
My friend Faisil recently got http://dogoodhq.com/ off the ground. DoGooder turns everyday web browsing into donations for green initiatives and charity by allowing end users to opt-in to see green, charitable, and health and wellness advertising on web sites they enjoy going to rather than the generic advertising prevalent on the Internet today.
Why do this?
1) DoGood donates FIFTY PERCENT OF ITS PROFITS to green initiatives and charity.
2) Tempt yourself with more meaningful messages and calls to action. Since I started using it, I am clicking into great messages and calls to action.
3) Now you can browse and navigate ULTRA conservative web sites and get a dose of environment friendly messages. Now that’s balance web surfing!
Its free, easy and simply. Download the DoGooder Browser plug in here!
Kirsti Stubbs, Recruiter at Starbucks Canada, offered her perspective on how social media is changing the recruiting landscape. This five minute Q and A video offers details as to why she uses tools such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook, Linkedin and now WhyHire.me to source and learn more about potential candidates for retail management positions and regional positions across Canada.
An online profile and active engagement in industry topics helps her get a better impression of what a candidate is all about. Our goal is to teach students the finer points of how to build an effective online profile and presence that will help tomorrow’s graduates connect with people like Kirsti.
She represents the traditional early adopter that is working out the best way to leverage all these great tools. Over time, her methods and tools will change, but the take-away points are as follows:
- Students and working professional have to embrace online personal branding – the traditional job search model is fundamentally changing;
- Employers will be using job boards increasingly less;
- Job seekers must have a personal branding strategy and associated platform they can use to develop and maintain their online brand;
- Over time, students and working professionals can attract employers to their profile, provided they stay committed to Deploying Their Brand on a sustained basis.
A seasoned HR professional I met today was keen to understand how employers were responding to online profiles being development by students and working professionals. I offered him personal evidence of the impact that online personal branding had on my consulting business and I pointed him towards new age recruiters like Kirsti Stubbs at Starbucks Canada. Ashley Ferguson also offered this feedback about her initial entry into the job market last spring.
Since I started web marketing at Oracle in 1997 (in Redwood Shores, CA), I was lucky enough to be on the forefront of experimenting with email campaigns (before Constant Contacts), web seminars (before Webex), landing pages and content management systems (before Vignette, HubSpot). It was all pretty bleeding edge and exciting. At the time, the sales organizations at Oracle were skeptical as to how all these new tools could help generate leads. The prevailing marketing wisdom was all about direct marketing – calling, emailing and generally, interrupting people.
Marketing went off and started experimenting with communities, blogs, and engaging customers online. The ClueTrain Manifesto was a great book that really fired us all up and challenged us to rethink what “engagement” was all about. By engaging with customers and prospects with authentic content, offers, and two-way dialogues, marketing was able to establish a conversation with a prospect, before a sales rep called. All of a sudden, sales were emailing and calling into prospects that were interested in sales conversations.
Online marketing and social media have changed the sales and marketing game. All you need to do is look at the change in marketing spend that is predicted over the next several years. This rather long winded parallel suggests that online marketing will be embraced by hiring professionals and their internal clients. How the web evolved in the B2B and B2C sectors is a strong indicator as to how this will unfold in our daily lives as job seekers and hiring managers.
Students and working professionals can add web marketing/social media engagement to their job search methods. What is the payback for a hiring manager?
- They are better equipped to learn more about a candidate before and after an interview;
- Seeing how a candidate presents themselves online is key – it is getting increasingly difficult to shield anyone on the Internet these days;
- It offers a candidate’s perspective on industry issues and how they relate to project experiences gained at post-secondary school;
- It presents entirely new ways to gauge a candidates passion, initiative and leadership potential.
The web changed everything, including personal job search and ongoing career management.
Here is a guy in Kentucky that shared the results of his $10 investment in Sharpie markers. Look how he finished his basement! His story is spreading across the world thanks to social networks, Twitter and the like. Check out the link to see a 360 degree shot of the room. It is amazing.
The next time you think about presenting your ideas, be it a school project, proposal or oral presentation, go beyond the research and facts you present. If you take the time to creatively sell the concept, your audience will take note and get all the more excited about your recommendations. Why is that?
When something catches your attention visually or through your imagination, the underlying proposal or idea behind the creativity simply resonates more. I have walked away from some great presentations really fired up because someone took the time to educate and entertain me. Interestingly enough, I discovered this Vancouver based company exclusively focused on creativity at work. They help business people through arts-based training, coaching and research-based consulting.
Keep this in mind as you think about your school projects and the content you build for your online profile. Creativity sells!
