Social Media Headhunter

Twitter Used To Boost Local Retailing

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.

When J.R. Cohen, Operations Manager for CoffeeGroundz (@coffeegroundz) Cafe in Houston, Texas first heard about Twitter from one of his customers, he was puzzled but intrigued. Today, he credits Twitter with almost doubling his clientele and with opening his eyes to a whole new way to build Community.

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.

Social Media Headhunter Cafe Launches

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:

LinkedIn: Recruiting Companion
Web 2.0 Tools for Recruiting
SEO for Recruiters

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.

BarCamp St Louis: December 13th at the City Museum

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

Internet Marketing Conference In St Louis

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

Social Media Hiring: An Interview With Jason Falls

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?

BlogTalkRadio: Career Conversation With Elizabeth Lengyel

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!