Social Media Headhunter

Social Media Case Studies Interview With Dave Johnson Of NGage

I was down at an REBUS event in St Louis, attending at the NGage headquarters, and was happily surprised with some excellent examples of digital agencies using social media to help their clients.  I tend to make fun of agencies that try social media, but in this case, I had to eat my words.  NGage not only did exactly what I would have done - they did it better.  So I figured an interview was a good way to show my humility.

Q)The case studies you showed at the REBUS event were pretty sophisticated - I’d call them best practice for the advertising industry's use of social media.  Did you create these from internal staff, or did you hire someone from outside to build the strategy?

A: All of our strategy is developed in-house. This is a core competency and we consider this perhaps our greatest strength. We are, however learning every day from both personal experience and so much of the great work going on all over the web. That's what's so wonderful about working in the social media space. It's such an open exchange of ideas and strategies.

Q) Is there someone on staff with a job title dealing just with social media?  Do you think there will be, or will social media skills be a new requirement on current roles? Do you think this is a trend just for your agency, or something industry wide?

A: We do have a "Social Media Coordinator," Matt Biegacki. Matt's role is to work diligently on behalf of client brands establishing meaningful and honest relationships in the social media sphere on behalf of the consumer brands NGAGE works for. On a more fundamental level, we do believe that everyone has to be not only fluent on a personal level with the social space, but curious about new stuff here at NGAGE. Observing the online space is like watching an octopus crawling over an uneven sea-floor -- ever changing and flowering and flowing in new directions. When we look for new potential employees, that sense of curiosity is a key characteristic.

Q) The MOZO Case Study: You said that the number one and number two drivers of traffic for MOZO were the YouTube channel and the blog. Did you expect that when you first started, or was it a happy surprise?

A: We certainly thought that branded social applications with a proven following would be a very significant traffic driver. With any online marketing campaign like MOZO, we always like to measure and adjust accordingly. Different brands may require different strategies.

Q) In that study, you mentioned that a competitor to MOZO tried the same strategy, but a month too late. How important is speed in a process like this, and could internal or client discussions have held it up, allowing the competitor to make their move first?

A: Speed is definitely important, but not absolutely essential. Our method is built around casting lots and lots of little nets instead of one big net. If we don't catch a potential consumer with the first net, we've got a variety of other options behind that one to catch them. The nets act as multiple entry-points to the brand. In MOZO's case, they were nimble and great to work with as a client, so we were lucky.

Q) Why is it so many people in St Louis don’t realize Hardee’s is headquartered here, and what can we do to focus media attention on what we have gained, rather than on what is lost?

A: I have no idea why the STL scene is unaware of Hardee's. They're a fun client and we're proud to have worked with them. I think your question really gets to the heart of it. NGAGE has always been about building something here in St. Louis. We're proud of this community and happy to be here. I suppose people find it more  "exciting" to focus on agency or client failures -- always looking for someone "cryin' or dyin'." I would challenge all of us to tell more positive stories regularly, celebrating each other's successes as we all win in the end with a stronger creative community here in the STL.

Q) Do clients outside of St Louis think less of St Louis agencies, especially in cutting edge projects like social media?  Are you the exception, or the rule?

A: We can only speak for our own personal experience. Our reception has been very positive from national clients. So much of building a great client roster is about great client relationships with GREAT thinking behind them and less about a street address. That type of approach helps put a bit of that swagger in our step as an agency. We've always been pleased to look outward to a national client base when courting new work.

Q) Be honest. When you look around the internet on Twitter, blogs, and social networks, what percentage of people saying they have social media experience have ever taken a check and delivered a project?  I would say maybe 20%.  What do you think?

A: 20% isn't a bad guess. With any new discipline or channel, everyone's an instant "expert." Though we are a young agency (figuratively and literally), we have earned every one of our proverbial "gray hairs" in the social media space. We are constantly learning and adjusting by really WORKING in that sphere. There is absolutely no substitute for this type of "real-world" experience.

Q) You guys said something important during your presentation.  You said that as a client, your focus was on selling product for your clients.  Care to expand on that?

A: We have definitely focused at times on brand-building for our clients -- branding is VERY near and dear to our hearts and at the risk of sounding immodest, we're pretty damn good at it. HOWEVER, ultimately, we're about goal-oriented creative and technology. We sell stuff. That's our bottom line.

Q) What does it take to work for you guys?  How could someone really impress you if they wanted to get hired?  What traits/experience would you like to see?

A: As far as "hard-skills," we look for folks that have truly outstanding skills in the basics of really great design, writing, planning and client management. The "softer" side of NGAGE employees ranges. Everyone sells their need for people with ability to ideate, but we believe firmly in that on the most basic level. We need SMART thinkers. We look for folks that are "bootstrappy" self-starters, as curious as they are self-reliant. We also look for even the barest bud of a "BS detector" in applicants. The most common question asked at the agency is "Why do I care?" The approach is really: "I'm listening. Make me care about your idea. If you can't, let's move on and come up with something amazing that I DO care about." We need people that can really engage (no pun intended) with that way of looking at the world. We indoctrinate and foster that on a fundamental level, but some folks aren't wired to look at the process that way. Ego has no place here, but pride in great ideas and work is our cornerstone.

Facebook Recruiter Training and MySpace Recruiter Training Rock

I'm not one to brag, but the completed Facebook Training for Recruiters.  is something to behold.

There is nothing like it out there, and it's now available for sale at the Store.  Originally, my MySpace Training for Recruiters was a pale shadow of the Facebook training.  That has now changed.  MySpace is awesome in its own right, and I'm putting the finishing touches on it now.

It's rare that all of the currents in your live converge like this.  My wife's development and branding skills combined with my love of teaching, recruiting, social media, marketing, and my own voice has helped me put together a series of training products that I'm really proud of.

And that's something that you can take home with you at the end of the day.  Thank you to each of you that has purchased a disc so far, and consider feedback on this blog.

Social Media Tools You Should Get To Know As A Recruiter

Fistful of Talent is a group HR blog that represents the same kind of zeitgest Recruiting.com brought to the recruiting world.  It's fun, informative and most of all, it's building a rabid readership that tries to implement what they've learned.

Jennifer McClure lays out her vision for social media recruiting, and as luck would have it, she lists five topics that are all covered in the Social Media Headhunter cafe.  Great minds and all.  I committed the Great Sin of comment spam on the post, but figured since I know most of those guys, it might be okay this once.  Her list:

1. Meet them where they live - candidates online
2. LinkedIn Really Using It to Find Candidates
3. RSS
4. Twitter as a Sourcing Tool
5. Facebook Recruiting

 It seems that recruiting training is being cut, but what's one DVD (or five) you can use over and over?

Social Media Resumes Online

One of the questions we're going to have to start addressing is the resume.  In new fields like social media, the relevant experience can be a tiny portion of the resume, making one look foolish when applying for a position.

Hopefully you're applying for a job to a company that doesn't want a resume, but if you do find yourself doing so, remember to focus the front page entirely on results-oriented campaigns to compensate for your years behind a desk selling paper for a mid-sized northeastern paper distributor.

The resume should list all of your positions, but the first page should be a list of social media campaigns.  If you don't have campaigns, I would strongly suggest you go out and do some, either for a local retailer (probono if you have to), or for your church, or local cub scout troop, or maybe just a topic you're passionate about (local sports teams work fine).

If you're committed to social media, might I suggest an online profile linking all of your social media presences?  Don't just list the sites - describe what you do.  Define how and why you use Twitter, or Plurk.  Brag on how your use of LinkedIn brought in money for the last company you worked for, or point out how you moderate a forum for left-handed Episcopalians that brings in 500 comments a week.

The resume is a key to a door.  If you lack 10 years in social media (as we all do), try writing about what you have accomplished, rather than where you worked.  Also make sure a recruiter does your pitching.  I hear they're good at that.

Social Media Flame Wars And Reputation Management

I received an interesting call today.  A prospect rang in and wanted to know if I could fix his reputation.  It seems that information online from a previous company was damaging to a current endeavor, and he wanted me to fix it for him by blogging.

It's not what I do, and although it's possible, it did underscore the problem of online reputation.  Which is why this post from Jeremiah covering online reputation so interesting.

Two people, Thomas and Simon, have a disagreement.  Thomas has a blog - a well-read and high ranking blog.  The blogger writes about the disagreement, and calls Simon a name.  The story goes onto the net, and quickly, the search engine result pages make a search for the Simon pull up the story.  So what does it mean?  Here's my comment, but you should read the whole post for a sense of what other people were saying.

The Google SERP results are temporary. We’ve seen this played out many times, and while it currently looks bad, over a period of months, sometimes just weeks or days, many of those results will drop off (as the posts move to archived posts with lesser PageRank).

As a recruiter, and someone who has been warning recruiters and candidates for years about Google search results, I can only say that the results of the study are overstated.

Yes, we do filter candidates from information we find online, but a smear campaign, or a blogstorm, will not permanently damage a candidate’s reputation unless it was something serious.

Social Media Means More Than Having A Facebook Account

Jeremiah recounts a situation where an agency vendor pitched a $110,000 blog project when said agency had no experience in the blogosphere.

I concur at my marketing firm's weblog, brandstorming, but wanted to apply it to social media candidates.

Clients come to me with specific business needs.  They want those needs filled, and potentially see the hiring of a social media employee as the solution to that problem.  For far too many candidates, social media is the destination.  They want to be paid to replicate their self-promoting efforts.  But companies don't pay you to promote you. They pay to solve some business need.

Thus, if you want a job in social media, solve a problem using social media tools, and then use that experience to get the job you want.  Some companies might hire  you because you have a lot of Twitter Followers or speak Facebook, but you won't keep that job long if all you can do is write about yourself.

Business is about solving problems.  If social media doesn't solve problems, it doesn't belong in business.  And if you don't have a track record solving problems, you're not a social media consultant, you're a social media consumer.

Social Networking Wars

First, I've had this sitting in a bookmark for a while, but Marianne Richmond's useful list of links pointed me to a top 100 Social Media Tools.

And then, following TechCrunch on Twitter, this video on social networking is making the rounds.  Be the 10,210 viewer!

Hiring Bloggers Isn't Like Ordering Furniture

Megan McArdle writes on the lack of economics bloggers available, and wonders if professional blogging ultimately will be as difficult to break into as writing for the media.

I'm not sure what this means for the blogging world. It's still largely an amateur medium, but it's hard to see how many new bloggers can compete with someone who gets paid to do it, unless they are independently wealthy or have a job, like journalism or academia, that routinely throws them a lot of bloggable material. Will it become as hard to break into blogging as it is to break into print?

The answer to that depends on how you define blogging. If you mean column writing by someone not affiliated with a mainstream publication, then yes, blogging for dollars will be very difficult to get into.  The reasons listed by Megan all make sense.  Blogging as just writing takes time, and if you aren't payed for that time, it's difficult to create large audiences based your work.

But blogging is more than writing.  It's safe to say that blogging is a subset of the wider world of social media, and while political and media bloggers are attempting to replicate or improve upon the publishing world, the vast majority of bloggers, both professional and amateur, are focused on other niches, and it's very easy to break through.

Momblogs, local blogs, sports and hobbies blog, video gaming and music, state and local political blogs, environmental, marketing, and small business blogging are all much bigger (and more lucrative) than blogging about libertarian economics.  Heck - blogging about American Idol is more lucrative than blogging about the '08 campaign because there's less competition, a bigger audience, and more ad money.

So never fear about amateur blogging taking off - corporations are putting real time and money into social media, and it's relatively easy to get noticed.

But even in the niche of economics blogging, it's possible to step in and assume a dominant position.  Using a host of SEO tricks, social media news submissions, demographic marketing, and clever writing, an economics write could grow traffic and quickly become an A-List blogger.  I train people to do this, and all you really need is passion, curiousity, and  above-average writing skills.  Oh, and a recognition that successful bloggers interact.  They leave comments, send e-mails saying thank you, participate in local and national meetings, network profusely, and above all have a focus for their blogging.

Can amateurs do this?  Amateurs tend to do it a lot better than professionals, if only because they don't have ulterior motives that shine through (that's the problems with corporate blogging - they want the ROI without the work).  The question is why the amateur would do it.   

Megan's piece starts out pointing out the lack of a bloggers she could recommend for economics.  It's understandable, but it's selection bias.  We are all blind, and assume that if we don't know someone in our niche, that they don't exist.  The truth is there are lots of qualified people out there who could write on the topic of libertarian economics, but most of the hiring authorities are looking for a cheap way to absorb the traffic of someone already successful.

Basically, they want you to build the audience to get noticed, and they'll pay you a reduced rate to get in front of that audience.  If that's what we define as a pool of talent, then of course it will be shallow.  The best bargains will be snapped up early, and those that are left will either be profitable on their own or benefit from previous connections.  At that point, paying a  person to be a professional blogger is the only option.  Why should they give their work and reputation away for a reduced rate to a corporation?

The Point (You knew we would get to it some time)

If you are a company or client that wants to hire a blogger, let me make this suggestion.  Don't start with the bloggers.  Start with what you want to accomplish, and list out what you would define as success

1. Is it traffic?
2. SEO?
3. Media Mentions?
4. Blogospheric Street Cred?
5. Establishment of an Online Platform for future publishing?

Once you know what you want, begin reaching out to people (or ahem, headhunters), and ask them who they know who could accomplish those goals. Hiring a blogger should not be the point of your writing exercise. Hiring someone who accomplishes your goals is the point.

If they  know what to do, they can create the traffic you are looking for.  Yes, you have to pay them, but that's not a bad thing for the blogosphere.  It's treating blogging as a separate skill, and not a amateurish subset of mainstream publishing.

I know for a fact I could find someone who fits the bill of what Megan's clients need.  It may not be what they asked for or what they thought they should hire, but I can find someone to achieve their goals.  They may be well-known, or amateur, but they'll be effective.  The question is whether they want a blogger, or a columnist who isn't yet paid for what they're worth.

 

 

Crowdsourcing Isn't A Gimmick

Techdirt Insight Community's Timothy Lee takes issue with the idea that crowdsourcing has jumped the shark. It's important for social media types, because we're constantly asked to duplicate the efforts of other people, but only after they've been successful and experienced wild viral success (because nothing inspires a customer like duplication).

Yes, there are formulas, but social media isn't about tricking customers, it's about listening to them.  It isn't crowdsourcing that's jumped the shark, it's lazy executives and lazy ad agencies who think only of how to extract value from the internet with as little effort as possible, and then wonder why they can't make this whole "social media" thing work.

We talk about metrics, but the truth is many companies don't want to measure their online reputation.  They don't want to hear from their customers, because if they did, they'd spend all day handling complaints that wouldn't be fixed.
Social media isn't for everyone.  It's not that it couldn't be, it's that social media is simply people trading information.  If you don't want people sharing information, giving it a label that takes up 30% of the columns at AdAge isn't going to solve your problem.

Over to Timothy:

I think the problem here is the way the question is being framed. If a company views crowdsourcing as just a one-off opportunity to get some free labor out of its customers, then obviously customers are going to get tired of it. But that's the wrong way to look at it. What crowdsourcing is about, ultimately, is improving communications with your customers, and among the customers themselves. Asking your customers to become more involved in various aspects of your business -- offering product advice to one another, providing feedback on new products, or offering ideas about advertising strategies -- increases customer loyalty by demonstrating that your company is actually engaged with its customers and responsive to their concerns.

"your company is actually engaged with its customers and responsive to their concerns."  If that's your company, or your client, then you have to have a platform online to help people pitch your product.  Good companies and good brands sell themselves is a catchphrase. What happens when companies learn to get out of the way of their customer evangelists, and spend their time and money on improving their product and response?   

Twitter Could Be The Ultimate Sourcing Tool

I stayed away from Twitter for a long time.  Simply from a time management standpoint, I didn't need another Web 2.0 tool to follow, and success is a result of focus, not dabbling.

When I started SMH, it made sense to join Twitter because the types of people I wanted to reach would be on Twitter, and I needed to be aware of everyone I could.  Which is why it's such a nice thing to run into Andy Beal's list of Twitter Marketers on the Marketing Pilgrim.  I've been a longtime reader of Andy's, and when I saw the list, my head exploded.  This of Twitter feeds is an full connection to every possible social media candidate out there.  The list isn't complete, but if you know these 200 people, you can get to anyone you need.

Talk about a sourcing list.  Sourcing is something that sounds simple, but in the recruiting world, hasn't caught on in more than a few areas.  Sourcers are recruiters who create lists of names for line recruiters to call.  They basically make lists of titles and current phone numbers.  Sourcers are experts at digging up data, leaving line recruiters to focus on relationships, interviewing, and negotiation.