I've not been a big fan of Facebook for marketing.  Facebook is a difficult beast with low clickthroughs and far more potential than ROI for the majority of marketers, and so when I'm looking for a social media expert, Facebook is about having a profile, not necessarily driving results.  Sure we've seen results, but they've tended to be as a traffic driver for traditional websites.  Lots of folks spend time on Facebook, and thus its natural you have a presence there.  Do some conversion pages - create some groups, and that's about it, unless you have the time and money for apps and contests.

Well, no more. 

Based on my own traffic stats for blogs that range from politics to marketing to fashion to small business, I see Facebook becoming an ever-increasing important aspect of a social media marketing campaign.

This article on Hitwise's estimate of Perez Hilton's traffic was the first clue.  Google typically will deliver 80% of your non Rss traffic if you optimize well, and the revelation that Facebook can outpush traffic is no small one.  You may say that Perez is a gossip, and the only people who want to read gossip are heading there from Facebook, but that's exactly the point.  Facebook is built to keep people in.  When click traffic goes outside Facebook, it's highly targeted.  Those wanting to read gossip go to Perez Hilton.  Those wanting to say, get a job, or buy a product, or watch a video, or learn about a service are also going to self-selecting to be interested.  And they'll be coming from referrals.  Currently, if you have the viral chops, you can drive traffic using your update feeds and getting people interested in joining, writing, and posting content to your pages and groups and updates.  If you have a big network, that can lead to a lot of traffic, but it's entirely based on your network (and their network).  That's some hard slogging, and tends to only work haphazardly.

But now, there's the Facebook search beta, which is rumored to be like Twitter search.  If it's executed properly, which is to say if it actually dredges up content, it could be a tremendous boost for traffic for those outside Facebook.

All of a sudden, those not in your network can find you.  Furniture designers, car enthusiasts, political causes, and job seekers can now search by brand through updates, instead of profiles.  That's huge.  It's a microcosm of what Google and Twitter do, and with the sheer traffic of Facebook, it guarantees some very hot, targeted opportunities for marketers.

I don't see a lot of people getting involved in this.  They're making a huge mistake. This is big.  Much bigger than BING, which is sending me traffic, but not nearly as much as Facebook is.  If I can almost double traffic to every site simply by improving my content to my network, imagine what you can do with a targeted marketing campaign.

It's big.  Gird your loins, and figure out how to build community on Facebook.  6 months from now, the winners will be those with networks in place.

Jeremiah (@jowyang) tweets that social media hires are up - and wonders if the economy is picking up.  His regular posts showcasing who is promoted and hired are a boon to the industry, and he's been kind enough to include me on that list. 

Incoming calls and interest from the client side has certainly increased, but the types of positions have a heavy sales focus as of late.  Most calls from from executives who have not been successful finding what they wanted, and are looking for expertise (it helps that I do what they are looking for).

When I first started SocialMediaHeadhunter.com and branded myself as the SMHeadhunter, I wondered about the size of the market.  There's niche recruiting, and then there's tiny crack recruiting - and with social media being, well, social, there's the danger that everyone I would place has a significant presence online. A company can find my candidates easily, so why would they hire me?

The answer is noise.  It's not easy hiring the right person for any job, and even if you know the industry well, we all have significant blindspots.  Even bloggers who have done this going on 10 years don't realize just how big this universe is, and the old adage that you only know who you know is more true now than ever.

In my own town of St Louis, large groups of online folks from Twitter to blogs to Facebook don't realize they're a small subset of a larger group.  There are hundreds of millions of folks online - and understanding how to map out a community and contact the right people is a skillset few have.

So yes, business is on an upswing, but It's hard to draw conclusions to the general economy.  Recruiting is actually harder in a down economy, so we're a poor marker.  And the assumption that social media is a luxury probably contributes to the idea that more social media means a better economy.  It's far more likely that social media hires are a recognition that this tool can cut costs, but only if you have a full-time person.

The connections you make in social networks are the primary value of spending time in social media. It's not the marketing or advertising that makes you money, it's the people you meet who refer you business, solve a problem for free (or for a fee), and drive attention and traffic your way.

Until of course, enterprising business owners realize that being connected to a community can yield profit.

Enter Twitter as the ultimate traffic driver for retailer. Leave it to a small business owner to do this, but a coffee shop/lounge owner in Houston decided to join Twitter, he didn't realize it would double his traffic.  His store traffic, that is.

For real.

What's interesting about this is the owner just joined to make friends, and the business aspect happened as a natural outgrowth of his success in becoming a personality online.  Once a customer was comfortable that he would be reached, the customer asked a question about business, and the result was a "slap yourself in the head and say why didn't I think of it" moment. Those are the best ideas.

It makes a lot of sense.  Twitter is basically a texting tool that is online instead of on your phone (and the apps on your phone don't count, as they are online as well).  Individual texting for business is okay, but Twitter adds the personal touch that allows CoffeeGrounds to get a Word of Mouth campaign going.

It's what happens when people start joining networks.  They naturally start to look for ways to use the networks for their own benefits  Using Twitter to order food is  a natural outgrowth of being on Twitter all the time. It's easier than calling and waiting, or calling and talking to someone.  And it beats having to get up and walk up to the counter if you're sitting with a client.

It's a great, heart warming story, and I want to hear more.  As of this writing, over two hundred RT's (ReTweets, where someone copy and pastes a Tweet to send it to their audience) have hit Twitter.  That's a big number.

I'm also heading down to the local coffee store to see if they might be interested in hearing about a new idea I have.

It's up, and it's spectacular.  Our training series for recruiters on using social media to hire candidates is live, and can be found at http://store.socialmediaheadhunter.com

Affiliates are signing up at ShareASale.com.  If you are a website or publisher watching advertising revenues fall, I'd suggest you look at some products that complement your industry.  

Email and internet marketing kicks off tomorrow.  And of course, we're fortunate to have many good friends around the interweb helping me out with stories, posts, and links.

The products are 60-90 minute training DVD's mixing screencasts with voice over, walking through strategy, software, and online applications by category.

The first three are:

Facebook Seminar and MySpace Seminar will be available December 20th and December 30th, but are in pre-sale form right now. 

And if you're in social media, and curious about your training - that store is coming.

Todd Jordan and Ryan Keeter are setting up a St Louis barcamp at the City Museum on December 13th to bring together the coolest folks in the 'Lou.

What is a BarCamp?  uh, it's an unconference.  Which is an unscripted meeting of people designed to get you thinking about what you most want to do instead of the more traditional conferences you go to with tracks, set pieces, and the occasional happy hour.

The best part is they tend to bring in very high-power creative types looking to connect with other creative types in a creative explosion of creativity, or something like that.

In all seriousness, St Louis has been working on a number of conferences mimicking the best around the country.  Interplay, the AUX, Idea Market, tweetups and a social media club all had varying degrees of success, but as more people get involved, that core grows.  Todd Jordan, Matt Homann, Marianne Richmond, and others will show.  Will you?

Join Twitter and contact Ryan Keeter, whose employer, Network Solutions  (formerly Monster Commerce), is a sponsor.  Or head here to the barcamp website to read more.

by the way, if you're on Twitter, are you following me?  Twitter.com/smheadhunter

I signed up for the social media presentation for the Internet Marketing Conference in October.  It's a joint conference from DMA, GIMA, and other groups in St Louis.  More details to follow

Jason Falls recently hired a social media expert for Doe-Anderson.  He posted the job on his blog with specific instructions on how to apply, and then went about filtering, interviewing, and eventually hiring Kat French.

Doe-Anderson is an advertising agency in Louisville. They do branding, and they blog.  And so it made a lot of sense for me to ask Jason the specifics of how he went about hiring Kat.  The following is a lengthy interview with Jason on how to hire from a corporate standpoint.  It's remarkable both for how much information he gave us, and for the care he put into hiring.  Try to think of another industry where a manager would give out the secrets of a great hire.  In social media, it's not as difficult, because you either get it or you don't.  If you get it, then these aren't secrets.  If you don't, nothing you read is going to give you a competitive advantage.

What you can take from this is that if you're looking for a branding agency, you now know at least one who takes social media seriously, and you would be well advised to put your account into their hands.   Now, the interview:

Questions:

1) Did you write your own job description?  Was it tough to get through Human Resources?  And did that description change as you went through the interview process?

I wrote my own job description and had our HR director (a Sr. VP and board member) approve it. The description didn't change at all. In fact, when I first told her I wanted to post the opening on my blog in such a way, she said, "That's great. I'm always looking for new and innovative ways to find good people."

2) Did you get better resumes from job postings or from your blog and other social media avenues?

Most definitely from the blog and social media avenues. However, I expressly said in my posting that I didn't want resumes. We also pointed all of our official job postings (LinkedIn, Louisville AdFed, etc.) back to my blog post, so most people who reached out about the job got what we were shooting for. Thankfully, I only got a couple of real resumes, which were immediate rejections, of course. If you're online and you connect with me about the job, your LinkedIn profile and a Google search is really all I need.

3) What was the most common error that candidates made in applying to this position?

Harry Joiner, the Marketing Headhunter, and I will be live on the Career Conversation Blog Talk Radio program with Elizabeth Lengyel.

We'll be live at 7:00 CST talking about how to get found in a Web 2.0 world. This program is primarily for job seekers, but it's also good for recruiters who want to know how to source.

Elizabeth Lengyel, our host, is a career expert at PeopleCoach.com. Her show prep is listed at her site.

If you or someone you know is looking for a job – or just getting started – don’t         miss my next Career Conversation Radio Show!
 
My special guests are:
 
Jim Durbin, VP of Social Media -- Specializes in social media consulting,  web design and development, and branding, www.DurbinMedia.com.
 
Harry Joiner, The Marketing Headhunter -- Specializes in integrated marketing and new media, www.MarketingHeadHunter.com.

Key takeaway: How to use marketing and social media tools to catch the eye of top-notch recruiters!