Social Media Headhunter

Social Media Case Studies Mean Jack Squat

Case Studies.  They are the new buzzword after "engagement" and "business metrics" grew stale.  As social media matures and splits into more familiar territory (customer service, marketing, PR, Sales, recruiting, operations), the cry for case studies is now spoken at every conference, and written in the blogs and tweets of charming consultants everywhere.

Blech.  

Case studies are not science.  They are marketing tools written by copywriters to help a client make a sales decision.  They are a risk management tool for buyers that can be compared to a reference check on a company.  Half the point is to show the prospect that other companies they recognize have paid you, the second half is to prove that you're not just making this all up. Most important, case studies are written to persuade, not explain. 

So why the fetish?  Why do so many people write blog posts where it's assumed that having case studies gives authority?  Mostly it is because they don't understand the purpose behind case studies.

  

Let's assume you watched that, which I strongly urge you to do.  After making the claim, this is the point where I'm supposed to back off it and say that case studies are actually important.  I'm not going to do that.  I won't deny that prospects often demand them.  I won't deny that some prospects have case study requests embedded in their RFP's.

I will state that good salespeople don't need them.   If you buy the proposition that case studies serve as an informal reference check, then you can recognize that a request for case studies after a presentation is a vote of non-confidence in your presentation or your company or in you.  Asking for more information on how you worked with another company is known in sales parlance as an objection.  The case study company is different.  It's structured different. It has different communication and market advantages.  How relevant is a case study written to showcase your success?

Do you know when case studies are useful?  It's when they are written internally as part of an after-action report for a project.  Self-evaluation, which includes critical analysis, is as important for a company as it is for an individual.  A Case Study that explores where you succeeded and where you failed is of more use in working with a client because it suggests a willingness to learn from past mistakes.  It shows an interest in how things get done, instead of a marketing tool intended to ease fear. 

In evaluating candidates and companies, my goal is to find out what they know and how they approach problem solving.  A case study, like a resume that shows sales numbers without explaining how they achieved them, is only a tool to filter applicants. Let's quit pretending they are more than that. 

 

 

SXSW In Small Bytes

It's going to be impossible to dig through my notes from SXSW, as the overwhelming nature of the five day event has my brain firing in multiple directions on possibilities and pitches.  While unable to see everything I wanted to, the interconnected maelstrom that was the recruiting and marketing community let me talk to dozens of people I respect from reading online, and another hundred I've just met and now follow.

While a number of reports will talk about how crowded and big SXSW got, I found it possible to connect one-on-one with a lot of people.  Must be a recruiting trait - I spoke with people on elevators, in line at coffee, standing around at parties, and even in the shuttles back and forth.

I'll be writing out a lot of my notes and trying to link those I met, both here, at StlRecruiting, and at the Brandstorming Blog, in an attempt to pass on the knowledge I received and to give some link love to those I met.

In the meantime, keep this nugget of wisdom close to you for future SXSW and conferences in general.

Most people who go to events like SXSW don't know a lot of people there.  Even those who do, can often find themselves on the outside when they attend a new kind of panel or a party that their friends haven't shown up to.  These people are not only happy to speak with you, they're grateful to have someone to speak with.  Ask them questions, like any good recruiter, about where they're from, what they do, and what they hope to get out of the conference. 

We had a product and a company to sell at SXSW, but we weren't there to get leads.  I was there to find out where the world was going and what it currently looked like from the highly-connected.  Sure, Craig and I talked about the company when it was appropriate (except once, when I had too much Red Bull and got excited, but that's another story for another time), but other times we jut sat back and listened.

The online network can seem big, but it's really just a series of subconnected groups and individuals.  It's the same thing as being onsite at large conferences.  There is a lot to learn if you can focus on the people around you and what they have to teach.

More to come. 

Social Business Is About Productivity

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes when I read about social media as some new paradigm of marketing. The connections afforded with a networked community do pose challenges to the way we communicate with customers, prospects, and internal staff, but that's not where social media currently resides.

Social media is a public phenomenon, but no one pays for something that occurs naturally. Like it or not, your goal as a social business consultant needs to be on the company - altering internal habits in a way that lays the groundwork for different divisions within your client to take advantage of information about product, services, and competitors. Most social media consultants focus on content and profile creation in the hope that user inertia will create conversions of some kind.

You create a Facebook post. User reads it and forwards it to friend. Friend buys. ROI! This is 99% of what I'm reading in social media consulting. Some are smart enough to talk about conversion and calls to actions (those from search marketing), but if you search through the pages, you'll find very little of that. The areas you do see good integration are where social-savvy employees add the tools to their current jobs, which is why recruiters take to LinkedIn so well.

Social media is not just marketing.  The real value lies in the productivity an employee gains from being tightly networked to their industry.  No matter how good the strategy, the employee won't follow it if they aren't persuaded to change their work habits. 

Social media may best be understood as a public movement, but social business is about altering the way we do business, and right now, that's where much of the money companies should be spending on social needs to go. We need internal expertise in a company that takes into account how that company sells, markets, hires, and communicates. Outside strategies and strategists may be brilliant, but if you can't apply that information internally and hold the employees responsible for learning and applying what they learn, you're not really doing anything other than glorified copywriting.

Do We Want Social Media Skills, Or Social Media Curiosity?

I admit it.  Google's Sitewiki and Facebook's new search features scare me.  If they become fully realized, I'll be busier than a one-armed paper hanger in a, well - I'll be busy.  And yet, that work is far off enough that it doesn't feel that pressing.  Surely we'll have time to catch up? No.  If you fall behind in the next two years, it's going to be very difficult to catch up, because internal alignment with social media is the new holy grail, and that always takes time.

What's funny is I've been preaching the gospel of integrated marketing, but social media headhunting is still heating up for community management and copywriting.  As you can imagine, a lot of people contact me hoping to break into the social media field.  I am terribly sorry, but I simply don't have time to reach out to all of you, and to be honest, there's not much I can do for you.  You don't break into the field.  You can create the position internally, but work as an intern or leaving your job to consult is not a good choice.  Your best efforts come from inside a company.  If you're taking a position, you're going to need enough authority to make decisions and make changes.  Listening and responding gets real frustrating when you can't actually help the people who are responding.

So while my little section of the job market is heating up, I still see the long-term value in being in a established position and using social media to make you more productive.  Facebook skills are great, but do they bring in more money than PPC? And what lessons can we take from PPC on how to improve your Facebook traffic?  That question is one everyone should be able to answer, and yet, I don't see much written (of course, it could be because no one wants to share their secrets). 

So in terms of skills, I'd say this - stay with your company and look for ways to effect change using social media in your current position. If you want to make a change, use social media to learn a new industry that you can port your skills over to, but don't count on online writing and responding to be your holy grail.

It doesn't pay that well.

Social Media As A Marketing Magnifier?

I started a conversation about using social media to magnify a traditional marketing campaign, it led to this post, which was good enough to reprint, if I do say so myself.

There are two kinds of social media - the tools and what the public does with the tools.  Maybe we should still be calling the tools Web 2.0, but you can get a lot of value reusing content and creative and broadcasting it through social media profiles.  Audio and video, pictures, links, stories, maps, events, and and, yes, even press releases can be repackaged and used as content.  This is where marketing is going - the creation of content instead of the running of campaigns.

Social media is most assuredly an add-on.  That's why most corporate positions are within Marketing, Corporate Communications, or Information Technology, and only a few are managed independently.  I would even go so far to argue that social media without content generated from other departments is solely a marketing and technology function subsidized as a traffic generator. That's certainly how it's being sold.

Some purists (mainly folks who have never taken a check for their work) want to say that social media is about conversation only, a silly definition that precludes any involvement by the corporation as an entity, and restricting social media use to individuals inside the company.  Let's count the number of bloggers, podcasters, and new media publications that started out with revolutionary promises, and quickly came to mimic "traditional media."

TechCrunch, PopSugar, Daily Candy, Huffington Post, Pajamas Media...

Traditional Media and social media feed off each other - I use traditional media to boost my client campaigns all the time - it's one of the major promises of a good campaign (excuse me, of good content).  At the same time, using social media to disseminate message and creative packs a double barrel.  It reuses content (good for budgets), and works as a trojan horse to create extra touchpoints within the corporation that make the corporation more responsive, hence fulfilling the promise of social media using more traditional, top-down, hierarchical models.

The only question now is are people doing it.  And do they know how.

Twitter Affiliate Contest: Want To Win $100

Will people work harder to earn the chance at $100, or will they take a sure bet and sign up for a smaller amount?  Can Twitter work as a supercharged network for affiliates, or does Web 1.0 marketing still work best?  It's an interesting set of questions, and one that convinced me to try a Twitter experiment.

I just set up an affiliate account using ShareASale.com for my recruiter DVD store.  If you're on ShareASale, simply search for social media and you can add yourself as an affiliate, with links and banners and more. 

If you don't want to be an affiliate, but you want the chance to earn $100, simply write a tweet and use this link to reference the store:  http://cli.gs/ayNyuv

After publishing your Tweet, send me a note, reply, or DM (my twitter name is smheadhunter) and I'll add your name to a list for the contest.

That link contains the affiliate code, so whenever someone purchases from the store after using the link, the account I created is credited.  Once the affiliate account reaches $100, I'll put the names of everyone who tweeted the account in a basket and draw a name live on video (so you can see that I'm being fair).  Then I send the winner a check.  Assuming this doesn't take years to get to $100, I'll repeat over and over.

Update:  Super Grand Fun Prize.  Should this contest rollover 10 times in 2009, I'll add an extra prize of $1000, drawn from the ranks of those who won $100.  Contestants can win the regular prize only once, but if we have 10 winners, one of those people will get a $1000 check.

Possible Outcomes:

The most probable ending is few people Tweet and the account puts only small amounts of money in.  There is the possibility, that the nature of Twitter leads to a large jump in the number of Tweets and ReTweets, leading to a number of winners and of course, more sales.  Should it take off like that, blogposts and other forms of social media would lead to a large footprint all based on that affiliate code (http://cli.gs/ayNyuv).  People not directly involved in the contest could be helping those in the contest, simply by posting that link.  And those in the contest could increase the chances for everyone, without improving their own chances.  Should that happen, I think there'll be a case study in there.  In the end, we'll all win.  My customers will get a great product. I'll sell the product.  Several people will get $100 checks, and one may well win $1000.  All for the price of a tweet or retweet.

Rules and Clarifications:
This contest is only open to users of Twitter.  If the code is used elsewhere, while I appreciate it and so would all of the contest entrants, only the Twitter users will be eligible.  Only one entry per person, regardless of the number of times you Tweet. To win, you must be an active user of Twitter, a resident or US or Canada, and not a spammer.  I know how to identify spammers and those with lots of following and no followers.  I reserve the right to kick someone off the list if they're a spammer, but will tell you if I do and pick a new name.

When Should You Add A Social Media Consultant?

One of the big complaints in the SEO industry is the tendency of companies to come to you after they've built their website.  The idea is that after you've conceived a project, funded it, built, tested and deployed the site, the SEO guy can come in and "add some optimization."

Those companies deserve to get soaked with high consulting fees.

User Interface Design had much the same problem.  After the site is built, many companies look for some kind of magic face transplant from the UI Design team, which is a bit like asking an architect to come in and improve a house after it has been built.

As social media becomes more prevalent, the same philosophy is taking root.  Companies either look for a tangential social media project (wasted money), or they look to add a social media component on top of an existing campaign, without access to marketers, corporate communications, or executives.

Stop wasting your money.  If you want to get involved in social media, the time to do so is months before you want to use the platform to push a message.  Building a reputation in a community and laying the groundwork for search engine optimization and traffic should be occurring months before you write the first piece of code or buy your first ad.  The reasoning is simple.

1) Social media gives you a real-time monitoring advantage which can impact decision making. 
2) The longer a website is up, the more impact it has in Google.  Simply writing content on a site before you launch it can boost your SEO and give you a highly-ranked site prior to the official launch.
3) Taking the time to learn a community before you spend money on it is common sense.  They know more than you do about what they want.
4) Building trust prior to launch gives you enthusiastic evangelists who help spread the word of your launch.
5) If your idea is the worst thing since the Edsel, Social Media campaigns will give you plenty of warning about your course before you sink big bucks into a project.

I've made a lot of bold statements there, so let me clarify.  Before every statement, insert, "A properly executed and well-thought out social media campaign..."  Simply signing up for a Facebook account and adding friends on Twitter won't give you these results.  Seriously - those don't even qualify as campaigns.  It would be like posting a flyer in your neighborhood and calling it an ad campaign.

So where does that leave us?  If you plan to implement a social media campaign for a product, service, or website, the time to do so is at least two months before you commit to a final budget, and preferably six months before site launch.

Personal Training Is A Great Analogy For Social Media

Social Media Marketing isn't easy.  It's also substantively different than other forms of online marketing like e-mail, mobile, website, and video.  Other types of interactive marketing are services that can be bought and outsourced.  The client pays a fee, and MAGIC happens.

Well, maybe not magic, but you can pay someone to do your SEO-focused, E-mail-centric, integrated interactive multichannel marketing effort complete with a new branded website.  You write the check, they do the work, you reap the results. 

Social media,, not so much. SM is very difficult to outsource, and the only kosher way to do it is to assign someone to a company as an outsourced social media specialist working on behalf of the company (like a contractor - still speaking for the company, but not employed by a W-2).  Lots of companies, I'd say the majority, do one of two things.

1) They hire an intern or a college grad with a Facebook account and tell them to do something with Social Media.
2) They hire someone to execute a social media campaign, and wait to hear the results.

Here's the problem. It doesn't work that way.  You simply cannot hire someone to perform your work in the traditional sense and expect anything other than results based on cotton candy sugar and marshmallow fluff.  Social Media is accused of being fuzzy, and there are metrics you can use to measure results, but there's a difference between using SM tools to affect your online profile, and actively engaging in the communities where your customers hang out.

If you want a good Page Rank, lots of links, and bragging rights for the number of Twitter followers, by all means hire a social media company to do your work for you.  If you're looking to maximize profits by using social media tools to drive sales, create thought leadership, brand your company with influentials, and monitoring for damage control, your company has to do the work.

It's like personal training.  You can hire the 20-something athlete to work you out, but if he gives you a training regimen, you have to perform the exercises to get fit.  Paying Sven to do your workout for you isn't going to help you, it's only going to enrich Sven.   And for far too many of us, purchasing a 3 year membership at the 24 Hour Fitness of Social Media hotspot is a subsitute for actually exercising.

Creating My New Career In Interactive Marketing Recruiting

One of the chief complaints of candidates in any field is the lack of knowledge of the recruiter.  In Information Technology, candidates want you to be a Java programmer, or a Database programmer, or understand use cases and database queries.  If you can't program, at the very least they want you to understand the difference between a programmer and a hack (in many cases, that's shorthand for everyone else is a hack, and the candidate in front of you is a programmer). Some recruiters even go get their CIS degrees to be more competitive.

In finance, candidates warm to former auditors (although I don't think bookkeepers do so well).

In interactive marketing, having the expertise to filter a candidate based on SEO/SEM/Social Media and Agency experience is truly a boon.  As I delve more fully into the experience of recruiting marketing folks, I'm finding that I can help people learn more about the industry, guide them on career paths, prep them for interviews, and most important, assess their salaries accurately based on what they can get paid.

As a practitioner (I consult for companies in this space), my advice is taken as a colleague, and not as a recruiter, and that's something that is rare for both candidates and recruiters (it's certainly new to me).

I used to dismiss the idea that practical knowledge of an industry was essential to being a recruiter. What it takes to recruit is different than what it takes to do the job.  Recruiting is a mix of sales, research, interviewing, and negotiation.  It's not difficult, but it is hard work.

Marketing, certainly online marketing, is a very similar beast. The biggest difference is that sharing information is a two-way street for marketers, but a one-way street for recruiters (referrals or submittals).  In just two months, the recruiting portion of my workday has doubled, and it threatens to grow as large as I let it.

It seems I am truly lucky - as I'm be able to mix my two greatest strengths into a cohesive career.  Isn't that what Pamela Slim and Seth Godin keep telling us what to do?