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Filed under: Article Reviews, Networking/Social Media, Technology, Thoughts, Twitter
Last Tuesday, Chris Dannen wrote an article on Fast Company giving a brief analysis of Weber Shandwick’s study which found that big companies just don’t get Twitter. At least, that’s what they say. Dannen followed up with an assessment that perhaps companies need a dedicated tweeter who won’t stick just to tweeting about ‘brand awareness’ but also bring more personal flavor to it:
“To succeed on Twitter, I’d bet that companies need do no more than ask those questions–and then hire that person to tweet about anything but brand awareness and product news. Twitter is so popular because it’s so personal and so direct; give one person the keys to your brand’s castle, and they’ll go out and connect. But don’t try to drag the whole board-room table.”
I disagree with this, and I wanted to respond to this post here on my blog in hopes of bringing more attention to the post and soliciting more feedback on this issue.
I have to wonder if individual user accounts who tweet on behalf of these companies were taken into consideration in Weber Shandwick’s study, or if the only Twitter accounts that were considered were officially endorsed accounts, created by the companies themselves. I for one know that many companies have employees who represent them, on a rather official basis, but they aren’t ‘branded’ as a company account because the companies realize the need for personalization of their Twitter presence.
Furthermore, each company is going to have a different purpose for using Twitter. Some perhaps don’t need/want to engage there. Anyone who understands marketing and social media strategy knows that the shoe doesn’t fit everyone in the same way. I saw that the Weber Shandwick study discusses that briefly.
As to the original question of this post, I don’t think a dedicated “tweeter” could/should be a full-time job at this point. It should be part of many people’s jobs, not just one person. The idea of having one dedicate person reeks of the antiquated “spokesperson” concept, and if you take a look at the way business is done today, there is never just “one voice” of a company any more, especially not within the walls of social media.
I think it’s better to ask several people, who understand your company (i.e. NOT a brand-new intern), to participate in some degree. This doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t, in my opinion) rest solely with one internal team or individual. It should be a collaborative effort – after all, if the purpose of a company being on Twitter is to engage, shouldn’t the entire company be represented, not just one person or group of individuals which has decided that they ‘own’ the company’s social media presence? (a whole other issue itself…)
How about you – what do you think about this? Should companies hire a dedicated tweeter or team of people whose sole function is to tweet (and I’m sure engage on other social media)? Leave your thoughts in a comment below.
Filed under: Cool Tool Alert, Networking/Social Media, Technology, Twitter
Twitter recently released Twitter Lists which allow you to group people together based on whatever subjective categorization method you want. For example: since its rollout I’ve been made a part of 107 lists, including: Networking Rockstars, Human Capital Peeps, Movers and Shakers, Gators (go Tebow!), and my favorite – Women. (I looked down and checked; yup, that’s an appropriate group for me to be in)
This is great that Twitter has created these lists – however, Twitter is a bit late to the game with this upgrade, and there are some limitations/downsides to its current functionality. For starters, I’ve had “lists” of people in my TweetDeck groups since 2008. I know other Twitter apps have also provided the opportunity to categorize our flocks of tweeple. In addition, when you ‘follow’ a list, all you’re following is the list. And to the best of my knowledge, in order to view the list updates, you actually have to go TO the list instead of having it automatically update like with TweetDeck groups. You can’t subscribe to an RSS feed of the list yet, either, like you can for individual Twitter users. (unless you know how to manipulate Yahoo Pipes) AND – if you want to actually follow the people in the List, you know, so they can DM you and so forth, you have to manually click through each person and follow them. I don’t know about you, but I’m too lazy busy to do that these days.
Of course, you also can’t ’share’ your TweetDeck groups so Twitter Lists has a leg up here. But I found something better a couple of months ago, long before Twitter launched its lists feature…
My list-builder of choice is a sweet little service called TweepML. TweepML is “an XML format used to represent a list of Tweeps (Twitter users).” Basically, you can add people to a list, share the generated link, and allow other people to actually follow those individuals, not the list itself. In addition, you can add buttons to your website to provide an easy one-click follow to all of the people on the list, or you can select who on the list you want to follow by checking the box beside a name.
The best part is that I’ve actually found a great way for the two of these listing services to play together! A very cool feature that TweepML has is a quick import tool, so if you have a link to a page with a list of Twitter users that you want to add to a list (let’s say, oh, a Twitter List) it will automatically extract the Twitter users from that site and put it directly into your list builder.
For example: we recently had our first Bellingham Social Media meet & greet, and I wanted to create a list of people who were interested in the group on Twitter. I created a Twitter List of these people, copied the URL, and pasted it into the field that TweepML provides to automatically find Twitter users:
I finished creating the TweepML Bellingham Social Media list and posted the link up on our Facebook group page so that everyone there can follow each other without having to constantly click through to the Twitter list. Simple, quick, and no extra steps!
Now – something that would be even more of a value-add would be an integration between TweepML and say TweetDeck to automatically associate people from a certain list with an existing group….how ’bout it guys? Can you make that happen?
This article was originally written for and posted on CruiterTalk.com for the Blog Carnival.
This post is dedicated to all the nay-sayers and people who keep belly-aching “Show me the ROI of Twitter”…. it’s time you stopped asking for proof that recruiting using Twitter works, and actually listen when people share proof with you. I recently used a fantastic resource called HARO (Help A Reporter Out) started by Peter Shankman, @skydiver on Twitter. I wanted to find individuals who have found their current full-time position through communication on Twitter. Take note: this could be via a job posting that was tweeted, an @ message from a company representative, or a DM from a colleague passing along some information about a position. Here are just a few of the responses I received. The results, quite frankly, I think are going to surprise you…
1. Chris Kieff – Director of Marketing at Ripple6, Inc.: Chris lost his job in January of 2008. He did the usual things such as going to job boards and applying for jobs, but he also started increasing his presence on LinkedIn and Facebook, and decided to start his own blog about internet marketing,www.1goodreason.com. He began writing about search engine marketing and internet marketing, and he started connecting with other bloggers through several social media resources and having offline meetings with people to solidify connections (hint). Chris had begun interviewing for various opportunities but as many companies ended up in hiring freezes, he simply wasn’t finding anything. After one such opportunity was lost, he went out to Twitter and tweeted ‘I just lost a job opportunity but I think they want me to be a consultant now…’ An observant employee at Ripple6 who was following him saw his message, said they were looking for a social media person, and he started going through the hiring process. He was eventually hired on full-time as Director of Marketing, based on a Twitter follower directly from Ripple6 who was keeping an eye open.
2. Megan Soto – Account Associate at LaunchSquad: Megan was recruited and eventually hired by her PR firm through Twitter. She was a senior at the University of Oregon and had a couple of internships in the queue for the summer. Megan was active on Twitter and had a class-assigned blog about PR, which was her focus in the Journalism school. She tweeted about one of LaunchSquad’s clients in reaction to a cool New York Times article they’d just secured. While scanning for Twitter activity on the article, Brett Weiner, a partner at LaunchSquad, found her tweet, which led them to her blog and they eventually contacted, interviewed and hired her as a salaried Account Associate.
3. John Robinson, Jr. – Interactive Developer at Balcom Agency: John started at Balcom in April of 2009. He is responsible for coding and helping design numerous websites for businesses and nonprofits using PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. John actually wasn’t looking for a new job when he noticed Balcom Agency’s tweet about a job opening for a developer for its fast-expanding interactive division. Still, he shot a quick direct message back to @Balcomagency to ask about the job, and by the time Balcom’s social media specialist, Kayla Bond, responded he’d already gotten a tweet from Balcom’s interactive account director, Chip Hanna. As webmaster for the Amon Carter Museum for five and a half years, John handled its Twitter account and the Balcom Agency was on the “friend” list.
4. Andrea Slesinski – Media Relations Specialist at MediaSource: Andrea was working at a full-service communications/branding agency and had been hunting for a new job for several months when she saw the post by the media relations director at MediaSource, whom she knew in “real life.” She sent her some correspondence and arranged for interviews via Twitter the entire way through. The only time they communicated outside of Twitter was when Andrea sent her resume and cover letter for the position, which she did via e-mail.
5. Rob Totaro – Account Representative at POTRATZ: Rob just started a job at the end of June 2009 that he found through an update on Twitter. He didn’t know Christy Potratz, one of the owners at Potratz Partners Advertising, but through other people she had begun following me. He followed her back and after a few weeks saw their posting for an Account Rep. He responded and interviewed, and eventually was hired.
6. Lance Hunt – Software Architect/Consultant at Cogent Company: Lance had been on Twitter for a good while before getting laid-off and had around 100 followers at the time. Before the RIF, he already had accumulated a few recruiters as followers as well as many key players/influencers in the .NET Development arena due to a variety of past discussions on technical, social networking, and philosophical topics. The initial announcement about and from Lance and others being caught in the Telligent layoff was a big surprise to many who had been following Telligent over the years, so the overall response from the community was great. It seemed like everyone he had chatted with in the past offered to leverage their contacts and tried to help. At least 75% of Lance’s twitter job prospects were identified indirectly through colleagues in the industry who saw the tweets and gave him a referral or sent his information to someone they knew. The remaining contacts were directly from employers or recruiters who were already active on Twitter and were either interested in topics that he had been discussing and found him through that, or were actively searching on terms around layoffs and job search and found him that way. Lance’s current employer, Cogent Company, was one of those who found him through the former method of searching on topics and following other peoples’ discussions. Marc Hoppers, the owner, had seen Lance’s tweets while researching discussions on social networking topics and contacted him via a DM to see if he would come in for an interview. The rest is history.
7. Tac Anderson – Social Media Director at Waggener Edstrom: Tac’s story is a personal one for me, because it was my direct message to him that alerted him to the position he now has. I had been following Tac’s blog, New Comm Biz, for a little over a year, and we had connected through Twitter and shared a few links and other niceties over time. When the position at Waggener became available, Tac was one of the first folks I reached out to for it. I sent him a direct message and asked if he might be interested. Tac was at a point where he was ready for a new opportunity, so he began the interview process at Waggener and eventually was hired.
8. ME! Amybeth Hale – Talent Attraction Manager at AT&T: I was laid off from my job at the end of February. Immediately, I started quietly reaching out to some of my network connections through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. One of the individuals I reached out to was Chris Hoyt, Associate Director, Talent Attraction with AT&T. Chris and I had been introduced by Jennifer McClure over the fall of 2008, and as we were both bloggers in the recruiting community, we developed a good friendship and respect for each other. When I told Chris what was going on, he set up a time for us to discuss an opening he had on his team, and it was a great fit for both of us. I was hired and started with AT&T at the beginning of April 2009.
I don’t know what additional proof anyone needs that Twitter is a helpful tool for connecting companies who are hiring to candidates who are looking. And for those who say this only works with certain job functions or in certain select industries – take a look at the variety in the stories presented here: we have marketing, PR, advertising, web development, software architecture, and recruiting professionals from companies operating in telecommunications, technology consultancy, interactive design, advertising, multimedia, and public relations. In addition, this worked for people ranging from fresh out of college to senior / director level professionals. So this isn’t limited to just the “social media” people or the “creative” companies.
Another interesting observation I had from reading through these stories is that the majority of the folks mentioned who were monitoring, seeking, and reaching out to these qualified candidates via Twitter were in fact NOT RECRUITERS, but observant employees and either partners or owners in their companies. So… perhaps this is a rude wake-up call to recruiters: the more you resist and poo-poo using tools like Twitter to find, connect with, and develop relationships with people, the more beneficial it will be for the direct hiring authorities, since they’ve already seemed to embrace this method of search.
So my recommendation to you is this: do what you want, and what you think is right for you. But stop asking for proof that it works, because it’s out there and you’re just not listening. And all those candidates are being grabbed up left and right by others who have chosen to embrace the tools, whether or not you do.
Admittedly this isn’t anything terribly new, but I would bet money that most of you have never participated in a hashtag chat before! So, what is a hashtag chat?
First off, let’s define a Hashtag: it’s putting the pound (#) sign in front of a word or a phrase in order to track conversation about that word or phrase on Twitter. So for example, some of the most popular hashtags at the writing of this post included #iranelection, #jobs, #journchat, and #bachelorette. This means that a lot of the conversation being had was about the election in Iran, people looking for jobs, folks discussing The Bachelorette, and people participating in the hashtag chat, #journchat. Which leads to the next definition…
A hashtag chat is an organized conversation via Twitter that is followed using a hashtag term. The chats are usually moderated, have either pre-set questions or chat leaders, and usually happen at a pre-determined day and time on a semi-regular basis. Since these conversations happen real time, and in the public Twitter stream, they can be participated in by pretty much anyone who’s interested.
Here is a list of some of the more popular and best organized hashtag chats, as provided on www.wthashtag.com:
- #cmtychat – a weekly discussion about the business of online communities, Fridays from 12-1pm CT, hosted by @sonnygill and @bryanperson
- #journchat – a weekly conversation on Twitter between journalists, bloggers and PR pros, taking place Monday nights from 7-10pm CT
- #smchat – a discussion on the power of social media among active practitioners and strategists, taking place Wednesdays at 12pm CT
- #blogchat – a chat on Sunday nights from 8-9pm CT that was started by @MackCollier to discuss blogs and best practices
There are plenty of other topics, ranging from SEO to K-12 education to healthcare communications and marketing practices, and even cars and the automotive industry. I recommend checking out the organizers who have registered with What The Hashtag here.
I’d also encourage those of you in the recruiting business to check out the #talentnet (or #TNL) hashtag chat run by Craig Fisher and Susan Kang Nam. It’s a hashtag chat specifically for recruiters that takes place the last Wednesday of each month at 9pm Eastern.
Some of you may be wondering why I’m listing this as a “Cool Tool” and the reason is simple: large audiences discussing the same topic. This is like you attending an industry trade event. If you work in a particular industry or function that has a hashtag chat already established, it’s a great opportunity for you to network with these professionals. It’s also a great place to learn about a particular topic you’ve been interested in finding out more about. I’ve also noticed that every time I participate in a hashtag chat – I mean REALLY participate by following the topics and adding value when applicable (there’s a tip) – I typically gain anywhere from 5-15 new followers. And usually the new followers work in some capacity related to the chat.
By the way – if you don’t see a hashtag chat listed in YOUR industry, don’t complain, throw your hands up in the air, and say it doesn’t work for you 
Why don’t YOU start the chat – that’s the beauty of social media. You don’t have to wait around for someone to create content; you can take the initiative and do it yourself.
A disturbing new trend has been popping up in Twitter. The onset of these so-called auto-follow opt-in Twitter follower increase services. They’re everywhere it seems – helping you increase your followers so you can have big numbers.
For what?
Ever since Twitter has become popular due to celebrity use and mention on TV, it seems like there’s this mad rush for lots and lots of followers. Everyone wants to know how to get more people to follow them. As a result, these services such as TweepMe and Twit Pro Quo have surfaced, offering to “build a diverse and well rounded group of followers” for you and help you get a ”good jumpstart on a new Twitter account with a nice set of followers”.
But step back for a minute and ask yourself this: what are you trying to accomplish on Twitter? And what is having 4,000 completely random people, with whom you’ve never built any kind of relationship, following you going to accomplish? Or is this simply becoming some sort of ridiculous high school popularity contest. “Look at me, I have 8,000 followers!” So what? Do they even care what you have to say? It seems about as silly as a meatball salesman giving a presentation at a vegan conference. Wrong audience.
The whole idea of quid pro quo when it comes to gaining followers kind of defeats the purpose of the conversational networking concept around which social network functions optimally. Seth Godin says, “What I really don’t like online is this superficial networking…all the thousands of people who show up friend-ing everybody else. Why? Right. It doesn’t count for anything it’s just a waste of time.”
Isn’t a large part of networking taking an interest in others and helping them reach goals? Why do we have to turn this into a “mine’s bigger than yours” competition, that is, number of followers. How many of those people do you think actually care about what you say…
Want to make your Twitter network rich and diverse? Don’t artificially pad your following with people who most likely don’t care and won’t listen. Communicate. Participate. Engage.
My Cool Tool Alert this week is 140it (pronounced ‘One-Forty-it’). Having been around since early 2009, this tool will help you condense your tweets into the necessary 140 characters to be sent. No longer will you have to sit there and try to figure out TweetSpeak on your own, or fumble around with going to another site, copy/paste your message, shrink it down, and then go back to Twitter. This neat little bookmarklet can be clicked and dragged right to your browser toolbar!
140it shrinks your twitter messages down to 140 characters by:
- Reducing words, removing extra spaces
- Shrinking URLs with unhub
- Exchanging company names with their StockTwits symbol
Check out their easy instructional video and see how to grab the bookmarklet. It’s as simple as a click and drag to your toolbar:
What you’re lifting from the site is a javascript bookmarklet that will sit in your toolbar. When you go to Twitter and type a message that’s greater than 140 characters, simply click on your 140it link in the toolbar and it will automatically shrink your message for you. Twitter will only shrink your URLs, and that’s only if your entire message, link included, is under 140 characters. Take a look at before the message is shrunk:
…and after clicking 140it in my toolbar:
This tool works with Safari, Firefox, and IE7 and above. Sorry – it doesn’t appear to work with IE6. Take a look and try it out for yourself!
A day late for my Cool Tool Alert of the week, but hey, yesterday was a holiday here in the States!
This cool tool alert will be very helpful for promoting webinars, concerts, networking events, etc. Calendar Tweet allows you to tweet out short links to events you create, promote them via Twitter, and gather lists of attendees.
Created by Fredrickus Williford and launched about a week ago, this new Twitter service tool has potential! Some of the things you can do with it include:
- Tagging, sharing, and promoting events
- Use as a private Calendar or promotional event management tool for Twitter
- Monitoring to see if your friends or followers will be attending an event
Calendar Tweet uses the Twitter oAuth System so you can login through twitter automatically without having to provide credentials.
A cool discovery is that when you create an event, the description area accepts HTML code, so you can post links and things in your description area. So, if you simply want to use Calendar Tweet as a quick service to re-direct people to an Eventbrite.com, Evite.com, or Meetup.com site, you can do so.
You can also either publicly tweet out events or keep them private and then invite just a select group of people. Couple this with TweetParty and you’ve got a completely Twitter-ized event management process. For example:
Say I want to have a quick local geek get-together for lunch tomorrow. I don’t want to take the time to create a big production for invitations but I want to make sure I invite my tweeps. I set up a quick Calendar Tweet for lunch:
Notice I un-checked “Tweet Event” as I want it to be private – otherwise your event will automatically be sent out as a tweet through your Twitter account. When marked private, the link and event are still created, it is just not tweeted out through my account. It ends up looking like this on the Calendar Tweet page:
Once the event is created, you’ll want to go back into your event and edit it to make it publicly accessible, otherwise the link will not work when you send it to people (since it’s private):
Since I only want to send this to a few people, I can then access my TweetParty account and select which group I would like to invite. I have a group for lunchtime tweeters (it’s purposely small):
I then follow the directions for sending a group a private message, and copy/paste in the link to my Calendar Tweet event:
And as people decide to join me for this get-together, I will be able to see them on my calendar event page.
You can also add events directly from Twitter. Just send a direct message on Twitter to @cal_tweet (you must be following first). For example:.
“d cal_tweet Fordyce Forum social media session (follow #VegasRG) @ 6/10/09″
As an added bonus, Calendar Tweet will send out a reminder prior to the event to remind attendees and to help increase turnout.
A couple of things I noticed about Calendar Chat that I’d like to see fixed:
- The date/time selection seems to be a little glitchy; it doesn’t like activities scheduled for noon (changes them to 12am for the following day). You have to rig the actual date for a day early in order to get the correct date; at least this was the case at the time of this post being written.
- I would like an option to not tweet a public event automatically, or a link that can be sent to and actually viewed by select people for a private event.
- It would be great to have a place for people to leave comments when they decide to accept a calendar event invitation.
- I’d like to see the ability to quickly add a Calendar Tweet event to an Outlook / iCal / Google Calendar. Could we get some links on the site to do so?
Some other things you can use Calendar Tweet for:
- Promotional events
- Concerts
- Quick party invitations
- Contests
Give it a shot yourself and see how it works for you!
When most people notify their Twitter networks that they’ve been laid off or are looking for work, they’re not very specific:
This obviously doesn’t help much in the job search. You must be specific about what you’re looking for if others are going to be able to help you. In the same breath, it’s good to have a strategy when you are using a social media communication tool to assist in your job search. The trouble is that most people just simply don’t know where to start. This post should offer some hope!
My friend Colin is an IT professional. He’s not really big on social media, because he works with technology all day long and wants to take a break from it when he is through with work. He was laid off from his job several months ago and has been applying for positions and attending local networking events, trying to meet as many people in the IT field and in the recruiting industry as he possibly can. He surprised me about a month ago when he told me he’d signed up for a Twitter account.
After I caught my breath and mentioned something about hell and frozen, I began thinking about how he could use this to assist in his job search, and at the same time how I could prove to him that he hadn’t ‘crossed over to the dark side’ by registering. I started formulating a strategy in my head, and when I shared it with him, he said ‘Let’s give it a shot!’
The following is a sort of case study of what we did to get Colin prepared for using his Twitter account appropriately, and exclusively, for a job search.
- Choosing a Username: as Colin was a brand new user, he was a blank slate. We tried to come up with a username that would help him to achieve the objective he had for signing up in the first place, which was to help him find work. We chose Colin4Hire. Colin admitted that he thought it was a little cheesy, but there is little doubt as to what his purpose in being on Twitter is. Besides, you’re allowed to change your username without losing your followers, so he will be able to change this if he chooses to continue twittering once he’s found work.
- Uploading an online resume: we decided to use the Website line on Colin’s Twitter profile to display a link to an online resume. A couple of great options for doing this include VisualCV and Emurse. We chose to go with Emurse because of the ease of tracking traffic to the resume.
- Tracking: I told Colin we should track as much traffic as possible, since he was going to Twitter with the sole purpose of trying to find work. Here are the things we chose to track:
- Resume: we selected Emurse as the resume-hosting site in order to track resume views and downloads.
- URL: We chose to track the actual resume link using cli.gs. This allowed us to monitor at an extra level.
- Email: Colin signed up for a new Google email address that was used exclusively for this study. That way we could also observe who was reading his Twitter profile and following the contact instructions we outlined in his tweets.
- Planning the message: As you saw above, many people using Twitter to search for work don’t really plan out how they’re going to share that message with others. We chose to make six simple tweets with basic information about Colin’s work skills and most recent employment, ending with his email and the URL to his resume (offering two ways for Colin to be reached). We also decided to control this study by not having Colin tweet out any other messages other than the ones we pre-planned. We chose to use keywords describing his abilities to make his profile more searchable, and we also used two popular job-seeker phrases (“new job” and “new opportunities”) which many recruiters have set up as search agents to find potential candidates.
- Planning for responses: I would normally never advise someone to auto-DM new followers, but as Colin had a very specific objective for his use of Twitter, I suggested that he set up an auto-DM using Twitterfeed to respond to anyone who decided to follow him. The reason for this is because Colin did not plan to monitor or use Twitter for anything other than trying to help him find a new job, and he wanted to make sure any followers knew this. His DM said something to the effect of “Tnx for the connection! I am using Twitter to find work, so plz check out my resume: [link]”
- Planning the promotion: At the time of this study, I personally had about 2,900 followers, many of whom are recruiters. I decided to leverage my network to get the message out for Colin. I requested several local recruiters and recruiters across the country to help re-tweet my message:
My friend @colin4hire is new 2 Twitter. He’s using Twitter just 2 find a new job – check out his profile & plz RT this note 2 help him out!
Once we’d registered for all of the appropriate services and got Colin’s actual profile taken care of, I had Colin tweet his messages:
Then we settled upon a good time for me to begin promoting. We chose to tweet on a Tuesday at approximately 1pm EDT. The reason for this time selection is that many folks working on the East Coast would be coming back from lunch, while others across other US time zones would be at least at work and possibly monitoring their Twitter accounts. Starting too early in Eastern time would have prevented some of the West Coast folks from seeing the message. Once I sent out my initial promo tweet, I DM’ed approximately 20 of my colleagues and asked them if they would kindly re-tweet my message.
I set up a search on my own TweetDeck to monitor the re-tweets of my message, and others who were reaching out to Colin. My original message introducing Colin to Twitter was re-tweeted 44 times, and within the first 24 hours, Colin had about 23 followers – all earned through word-of-mouth and not through any obligatory follow-back services.
Below are the stats and some screen shots with which Colin provided me – the information is current as of the publishing of this post:
- 30 Twitter Followers
- 266 Resume Views
- 2 E-mails on G-Mail
- 1 Meeting with Erin Schreyer on May 1st 2009
- 1 Interview with Ray Attiyah on May 4th 2009
- 2 Potential Job Leads with one of Ray’s companies
Cli.gs stats:
Emurse stats:
ANALYSIS:
- Colin was a great subject for this – I have been warming him up to the business use of social media for the past few months and trying to convince him that it’s not just for play. Having seen such immediate results of this little study, he admitted to me that he was pleasantly surprised at what he saw happening and might be changing his tune on what he thinks of social media. (score!!!)
- We tried to set up a SiteMeter account to monitor the actual views of Colin’s Twitter account but were unsuccessful in being able to do so before we ran this experiment. This data would have provided some insight as to a profile view:resume view ratio.
- The ratio of resume views:downloads is approximately 44:1. At first glance this doesn’t seem significant but if you consider the fact that he has two job opportunities in the works as a result of 24 hours of real activity, that’s not too shabby.
- The percentage of humans vs. the percentage of bots to hit the cli.gs link to Colin’s resume is remarkable.
- There were no hate-filled messages regarding Colin’s auto-DM to new followers. This might suggest that people are OK with it when you’re honest about your intentions of being on Twitter. It’s important to note here that Colin did NOT auto-follow anyone.
- The promotional power of the re-tweets was quite evident. Over 2x the number of people I originally DM’ed and requested to re-tweet my message actually helped to promote this message.
CONCLUSIONS:
This type of a case study won’t work in every situation. You must individually evaluate your use of Twitter and if this is the right place for you to be looking for work. But one of the big take-aways here I think is planning. If you have a specific objective you’re trying to achieve in using a social media communication tool such as Twitter, it pays to put some strategic thought into the message you want to send. Otherwise, you really are just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks. Think about what kind of an outcome you want, and then backtrack from there to craft your message. Be specific in your message and don’t leave any guess-work for your audience. Especially when you are looking for a job, a simple “I’m looking for a job” doesn’t give anyone any idea of what you’re looking for – what job functions are you interested in, where are you located, would you be willing to move, how many years’ experience do you have, etc.
I’ll end with three things:
- Please still feel free to reach out to Colin if you’re interested in his skillset. His resume can be found here, and you can also take a look at his Twitter profile.
- Searching for a job using social media isn’t a haphazard task. It’s obvious that planning ahead pays off in the end. Take some time to consider what you want to achieve before you dive in head-first, and track your results.
- Your network is your ally. It’s always good to have others who will support your endeavors and help you accomplish something. Never take your network for granted. Special thanks to everyone who assisted in this experiment!
I hope this has provided some of you with some pointers on how to begin a job search using Twitter. For your convenience, I’ve made a PDF document of the case study available for you to download and save for future reference. If this was helpful for you, please let me know by leaving a comment below!
This is a great Cool Tool post because there is direct use for this tool in candidate interaction!
This week, I am featuring Tweetparty, a Twitter app which allows you to direct message multiple Twitter friends at the same time:
“Tweetparty lets you organize your twitter friends into parties and send direct messages to them…With tweetparty, when you login all of the people you are following are download to tweetparty. You can then create as many groups as you would like (ie. work, friends) and select the friends you would like in each group creating the party. Then through twitter you can send a direct message to any party – no setting up other twitter accounts.”
This is a fantastic tool especially for those of us using Twitter from a recruitment standpoint! Why, you may ask? Well, take for example if you have a new job that you’re sourcing for and you want to get the message out quickly, but only to a certain group of people. You can simply create a Tweetparty group of Twitter Friends whom you’d frequently notify about your new openings. Instead of having to individually send them a DM, you could get it all done at once.
To get started, all you have to do is create a group and populate it. Here are a few of the groups I’ve created for myself:
Say for example I want to ask some of my recruiting colleagues to help me promote this post. I would simply send a direct message (DM) to Tweetparty with a hashtag (#) in front of the group name, followed by my message:
Of course, I’m a firm believer in personalizing as much of your conversation as possible when dealing professionally with others, but I think this is a fantastic way for us as sourcers to keep any Twitter contacts who might be potential candidates someday informed of our opportunities. This can also be useful in asking a circle of friends to help promote a cause, or a blog post, or quickly inform members of a networking group of an upcoming event. The possibilities are endless.
Only a couple of complaints: I’ve noticed is that if you’re following a lot of people, Tweetparty disables the ability to view profile images. I would also like to see bio information for the Friends list as well; for those of us who are following a large number of people it would be easier to choose people to include in a group if we could quickly scan bios.
Over all, this would seem to be quite a helpful tool for communicating with a large number of people all at once. I suggest giving it a shot!
Anyone else feeling a bit like Winston Smith lately? Social Media has invaded every aspect of our lives. We suddenly know when our coworkers are going out for a night on the town, get live scoops on how hot (or not) our friends’ dates are, discover that they’re playing hooky from work, and learn things about our high school classmates later on in life that we never wanted to know.
What’s going on right now is a true testament to the saying, ‘Be careful what you ask for.’ We asked to be more connected – we got it. We wanted to have faster and more accessible means with which to stay in touch with our friends, family, and in some cases co-workers. BAM – wish granted. But with much power comes much responsibility. And in this case – much paranoia over who’s watching us and why.
We have essentially created our own 1984.
I read 1984 in high school. For those who aren’t familiar with the book, it was published in 1949 by a brilliant author, George Orwell, who also wrote the well-known Animal Farm. The basic gist of the novel, and what it’s so famous for, is its portrayal of pervasive government surveillance and control – as well as government’s increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual. (which is a whole other topic I don’t have the time to get into right now!)
One of the most famous ‘characters’ to come out of 1984 is ‘Big Brother’. Big Brother, or the concept of him, essentially was used to monitor the every move of the citizens of Oceania, and to keep them in line. In Orwell’s world this was accomplished through telescreens, Thought Police, and through devices that would control citizens’ thoughts.
Think about where Social Media is today: we have the ability to read (on our telescreens, or computers) daily updates on Facebook or through SMS on our phones, follow career paths on LinkedIn, watch live lifestreams from Ustream, Oovoo, and Stickam, and essentially follow every waking moment of a person’s life on Twitter and FriendFeed. We monitor each others’ every moves, condemning each other when we either make mistakes or think differently from what we believe should be correct. We have the ability to make or break each other’s online reputations with a swift keystroke, and we constantly remind each other – and worry ourselves – that there’s always someone watching us online.
We are our own Big Brother.
We created this online world – we grow it, we participate in it, we moderate it.
And there is no one to blame for the extreme lack of privacy we are experiencing but ourselves.
After all – we asked for it.
