Sirona Says

What to have? Facebook Page, LinkedIn Company Page or a Google+ Business Page?

 

As of this week, social media for business just got a little more confused! The announcement of the release of Google Plus Business Pages this week just blurred a whole lot of lines in regards to social media in business and social recruiting.

So, now you can have a Facebook Page, a LinkedIn Company page and a Google Plus Business Page.......... and of course you already have your website as well. The question is, what should you do - one, two or all of them?

My response is probably a little obvious - you have to do all of them for different reasons. The primary reason is that you need to keep growing your social media footprint. The social sites are all indexed and will appear in searches on Google, Bing, Yahoo etc - so if you want to be found by candidates and clients alike in organic search, you need to give yourself the biggest footprint you can get. That means setting up all these pages (properly) and learning how best to place the right engaging content on them, relevent to the audience on that platform.

So what does each type of page give you?

Facebook Pages

• Facebook is a huge content management platform. 
• It is the biggest social network in the world, so there is immediate access to scale and recognition. With 800 million + people having Facebook profiles and being active, having a Facebook page for your business makes absolute sense, as many people know how to use and interact with Facebook already. They know what the 'Like' is and what to do with them!
• There are loads of superb products/apps etc for recruitment that can sit within Facebook pages such as Work4Us and Facetime, and there are some clever Facebook content management systems being embedded now, such as the brilliant one from NetNatives. 
• People can subscribe to status updates without becoming a Fan of the page. 
• The recent F8 changes are going to bring engagement, interaction and powerful referral actions to a whole new level when they are added to Facebook changes in the near future.

LinkedIn Company Pages

• If you are on LinkedIn you WILL have a Company page....... even if you haven't even set one up. LinkedIn automatically create a page for you when you set a profile up, if your company name doesn't already exist. 
• This is the 'default' business network with over 131 million people now using it. It is THE PLACE people go to check you and your company out, so it is essential you take control of your company profile here. 
• You can add a wide range of content about your company, including listing all the services you provide. You can add blogs, video's, jobs etc and you can even get recommendations for these individual areas from people - a very powerful referral indeed on the quality of your service.
• People can follow your company (for a number of reasons) and by doing so get company updates from you - allowing you to share the latest news and opportunities with them in real time.

Google + Business Pages

• Google search 'owns' the online search industry! They have the number one (by miles) and number two search engines in the world - Google and YouTube, respectively. They can control and alter algorithms to benefit their own products, and don't think Google+ Business Pages will be any different. I have no doubt that Google will give more credence to content on their business pages, in their main search results. For that reason alone (and it is a HUGE reason) you must have a Google + business page.
• Google are slowly integrating their products into their fastest growing social network in the world - Google+. At 40 million people in 8 weeks, the growth has been huge - faster than any other social network before it. As there are 100's of millions of people that use Google products, more and more people will gravitate to Google+ ....... candidates and clients alike. 
• Like Facebook, the concept of sharing and recognition is a major part of Google+, and Fans can recommend your business page with a +1 (similar to the 'Like' action).
• Fans will be able to add your page to one of their Google Circles (in Google+), which will enable them to subscribe to your page's updates, like Facebook and LinkedIn.
• With the option of video chat/interviews and live streaming functionality in Google+ Hangouts, the whole experience for fans of  Google+ Business page is only limited by imagination!

[To create a Google+ Page this walk through will help]

This is by no means an exhaustive list of features and benefits, it is just a few reasons why you as a business will have to have ALL of them for your business. Sorry all  you Marketing Managers out there!

So soon you have to worry about....... Facebook Page status updates, Twitter updates, LinkedIn company statues updates, LinkedIn personal updates, Google+ updates............ AY CARUMBA!!!! 

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Does anyone know what LinkedIn is trying to be with their new Talent Pipeline product?

 

Let's not beat around the bush here......... what the hell is LinkedIn trying to be next?

There is already the debate as to whether it is really a professional social network or really a more glorified job board. But with their announcement of an additional part of functionality coming in 2012, are LinkedIn trying to add further confusion to the mix by entering the ATS world, or even the talent community space?

The enhancement I am referring to is the forthcoming LinkedIn Talent Pipeline. Rather than me explain it, here is their promo video:

..... now do you see what I mean? [video link here if you have a problem seeing it above]

• Is this an example of a clever strategy to pull al the facets of the recruitment lifecycle together, to ensure LinkedIn keep you within their platform for all of the recruitment process? 
• Is it borne out of competitive fear ? Have some of the social referral tools recently put the wind up LinkedIn?
• Is it part of a confusion strategy to bamboozle more potential clients to buy more recruiter licences? [me being cynical? Never!! ]
   
• Are they showing real insight to strike a hammer blow into some of the ATS platforms as they start to go into a period of necessary changes and updates? With Work4Labs proving that recruitment can be completed within Facebook alone, maybe LinkedIn are trying to do the same with their platform?

Anyway - I for one think this is really interesting - the only question for me being how much LinkedIn will rip people off charge for this service next year.

Will LinkedIn be a social network, glorified job board, talent community or are they going to become something akin to an ATS sitting on a huge talent database?

I know what I think - but what do you think? 

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Track companies more efficiently with the *new* LinkedIn Company Status Updates

Now we are talking. LinkedIn has now given you a way of sharing information with all the people that follow your company on LinkedIn. Equally, importantly thay have given you an easy way of tracking company information and updates more easily (read full post to see how).

<Pause for a second :) > You do know what I am referring to here I hope? It is the fact that you are able to 'Follow' companies of your choosing on LinkedIn to see all their 'news' - new employees, leavers, changes etc. If not, do a search for a company you are interested in - on the right hand side of the page you will see the 'Follow' button shown here. Simply click it and you are following that company - very similar to the Like button on Facebook pages.

LinkedIn now allow Companies to post Status Updates (exactly as the ones in a personal profile) that will allow all followers of those companies to get the company status updates in their update feed. >>Excellent news!!

As with status updates there are a few things to consider here - the primary being - don't be a company plank and just use it to post loads of jobs all the time!!

That is just spamming! This will be the quickest way to get people to unfollow your company or even worse, hide you in their update stream! This is what happened with LinkedIn Twitter spam!

 

Think two words - INTERESTING and ENGAGING. Vary the content - add in links, product info, latest news, humour, (one) job of the day maybe etc etc

A good example of this is, is a recent company status update from Harvard Business Review:

More examples can be found on the LinkedIn blog here.

With these new company status updates, companies will have the flexibility to share the latest on the company directly to all of their followers on their company page’s “Overview” tab. The updates can be up to 500 characters long and can support URLs with multimedia as well.
Any LinkedIn member can post a comment, like or share the company status update so the potential for sharing and building your brand further is huge. 

How to turn your company status updates on?

Simply go to your company page, and tick the box Admin Tools box on the right, and click Edit. Then in the main screen tick the box Designated users, and add all the users that YOU allow to post updates (they must be connected to you to do this). Simple - that's it. Now any of the designated users can start posting updates.

If you are still not sure, then just watch this quick official LinkedIn video here

I really like this new addition by LinkedIn, and from a recruitment perspective it now allows me to be clever in how I track companies and what they are doing.

Being Clever

Now you have the updates coming through, you want to make sure you don't miss them amongst all your other updates. So use Signal (the ability to search your status updates) shown on the top right above the updates (shown here):

Put in the company name of the company you are following into the search. Then simply click Save. It will save the search in the left toolbar of the status update. So to get the latest information at any time, just click on the saved search and all the latest company status updates will be shown here.

As a I said - this is going to be a great addition to LinkedIn. Go and turn on your updates for company today.

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5 Things you absolutely, definitely and positively must not put on your LinkedIn profile

Today has just tipped my blogging scales to trigger this mini rant (although it has been building for a couple of days!) I am a fairly heavy LinkedIn user, as I use it every day for work - heck I even train people in using it for social recruiting!  
The point is, I probably look at more LinkedIn profiles that the average person (outside recruitment that is!), so I get more opportunities to see, well, some of the stranger things people put in their profiles.
LinkedIn is known a professional networking site - jobs, business, networking, recruiting, marketing etc etc etc >> Agree?

Then why do some people seem to think that it is OK to put some of the things below on their LinkedIn profiles? 

1. Use a picture of themselves as a child for their profile picture  << so wrong on many levels!

2. a) Use an overly personal email address e.g. smudgykins@hotmail.com; AND worse  b) display it at the top of your summary for all to see! << what's wrong with your real name?

3. Choose the summary as the place to vent anger at a previous employer by calling them liars and cheats!! << remember it's a small world!!

4. Add a web link to the Playboy Channel! << I kid you not - I do hope someone got hold of their LinkedIn profile and was pranking them!!

5. Use a cartoon character to describe yourself in your headline such as Superman or Batman!<< ignorance is no excuse in LinkedIn land - act your age :)

If you are now frantically logging in to LinkedIn to see if you are the guilty ones, don't worry, I made the individuals aware with some subtle advice (well all apart from the baby picture culprit - that was just plain stupid in my book!)

That was just five I found - have you seen worse on LinkedIn?

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Is the LinkedIn and Twitter relationship suffering from social media apathy?

 

Today I read a good post by Jacco Valkenburg regarding Twitter and LinkedIn. You can read the post, but to paraphrase, Jacco noticed that (percentage wise), less people were connecting their Twitter accounts to LinkedIn. He also intimates that some have even disconnected their accounts from LinkedIn.

This is a good point raised by Jacco, because I have found (after some LinkedIn digging) that a good few of my LinkedIn connections are actually on Twitter but have not connected their accounts together. [Just for reference, and according to the Tweets application in LinkedIn, just 25% of my 1400 LinkedIn connections have connected their accounts].

For me there are a number of answers:

1. People simply don't know how to connect their Twitter and LinkedIn account. And to be fair LinkedIn don't make it obvious do they? >> If you want to connect the two, login to LinkedIn , go to the more tab drop down box and click 'Get more applications' link. You will find Tweets in there. Click to add to you account.
2. Users have got p***ed off with the continual bombardment of other users twitter stream in their status updates. I covered this in a rant blog post about effective Twitter spamming on LinkedIn  (worth reading ). Because of this they choose to keep the two separate.
3. People still don't see the benefit of Twitter. For many Twitter is still an enigma, and I know from recent social recruiting training sessions I have done, that many people still don't fully understand the potential of Twitter.
4. LinkedIn users want to keep LinkedIn for business networking. This for me is one of the main reasons we don't see as many using Twitter on LinkedIn.
5. In the business world, there are not as many people actually on Twitter as we think. This is intrinsically linked to no.3 for me, as they don't get the business benefits yet. But that will change.

My final reason is apathy. While I like many others are pro-LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and alike for use as genuine social recruiting tools, I (unfortunately) think that many people just don't give a crap about it! They have a LinkedIn account because someone sent them an invite, they have a Twitter account because someone told them to join and they have a Facebook account because their mates told them they 'had to be on Facebook'.

No big issue.

We are all different and network in many different ways. Of course there are 100's of million people that use online networks to benefit their work. There are millions that don't.

I, for one, am of course a huge advocate for the use of online networks and social media in the recruiting world. But each to their own, and as you say....................." you can take a horse to the water, but you can't make them drink!"

Do you have any other reasons why you think that people are not connecting LinkedIn and Twitter together?

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Who uses Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn? [Infographic]

If you believed the hype then every single person in the world is using social media! The reality is of course much different, but it is true that large nubers are, across a wide ranging demographic.

But who is actually using Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn? The guys at Flowtown produced (as always) an excellent social media demographic on a number of social media sites  (link at the botton of this post). I have taken the data out for the three main social sites involved in social recruiting (at the moment anyway) and grouped them together for easier reading.

It makes for some interesting reading. So, here are the demographics of who is using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn?

The full graphic for the Flowtown Social Media Demographics can be found here.

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Use LinkedIn Maps to see what YOUR LinkedIn network ACTUALLY looks like.

 

I am sure people think that LinkedIn is a boring business network that doesn't innovate much. Well, you couldn't be further from the truth! They are continually looking to add rich functionality to their platform, and they have again delivered something really interesting and visual here.

You have a LinkedIn network, right? (If not, connect with me here and get started straight away!)

1. Go to http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/

2. Login with your LinkedIn account

3. Just be patient and you will get one of these:

Go on, go to http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/ and see what your network looks like!

 

 

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[Rant] Please stop filling up my LinkedIn Status Updates with your Tweets!

 

Let me get this straight. I love using LinkedIn and I love using Twitter. However, some aspects of the combination of the two is really starting to irritate me! <rant coming up>
Why?
Many people in my LinkedIn network (and lots of others I have no doubt) set up their LinkedIn account to post ALL their Twitter updates on their LinkedIn status updates - and when some people tweet 20-30 times a day that is a nightmare!!

I (personally) do not want to see my LinkedIn status updates fill up with 'tweets', I want to see the updates from my network. I have no need to see 20 jobs fed into my LinkedIn status updates from a recruiter I am connected with. It is simply noise, it is laziness (on behalf of the individual) and the only result will be is that I will hide all your status updates. So the next time you have something important you want to communicate to me, I won't see it!
The same applies to the serial Twitterers who tweet many, many times a day. >>> Please don't devalue the LinkedIn status updates with your (many irrelevant to your LinkedIn community) tweets. The answer is a simple one - just work a little harder to build your Twitter following up, rather than (potentially) alienating your trusted LinkedIn community.

You have probably spent a good amount of time developing your LinkedIn community, and it will likely have more professional depth than your Twitter following - after all it is full of all your professional contacts, work colleagues, business contact, future clients and future candidates. SO WHY DO YOU RISK P***ING THEM OFF by effectively spamming their status updates?

The solution is easy.

1. Respect your LinkedIn community and ONLY share 'tweets' that will ADD VALUE to your LinkedIn community.
2. Don't 'share' through more than two or three tweets from Twitter per day. Less is more!
3. If you have your account set up so that it sends through all your tweets change it now
     >> untick the 'Yes, share all tweets' button and click the one below.
   
4. In future, for any tweets you want to share on your LinkedIn status updates, just add #in at the end of your tweet. This will then appear in your status updates on LinkedIn.

I (like you I hope) am really interested in what my network on LinkedIn has to say every day, via the status updates. But if you keep on using LinkedIn as another Twitter distribution channel and don't care about what information lands in my status updates from you, then there is only one thing that will happen. I will remove you (hide you) from my status updates!

I really value my LinkedIn network and wouldn't dream of trying to abuse the trust I have built up over 6 years using it. I just wish others were more respectful!

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You do use LinkedIn to recruit don't you? You are completely bonkers if you don't!

 

You may or may not realise it yet but simply having a profile on LinkedIn (and usually a poor one to boot!) simply cannot be defined as 'using LinkedIn to recruit'! I have sat with many many recruiters over the last six months who firmly believe they are using LinkedIn as an effective recruiting tool.
Yet, when drilled down, they make few placements, have very poor personal profile pages (is yours 100% complete for example?) and have very few connections. They get very few people contacting them through LinkedIn and ultimately they make no effort to expand their own network. You won't be surprised to hear that many don't therefore make many placements via this platform.
>>>>>> Instead they log in to their favourite job board and spend loads of money to search the huge databases of Monster, TotalJobs or Jobsite (as well as posting all their jobs at the same time!)

My response is simple.................................YOU ARE COMPLETELY BONKERS!!

LinkedIn is a resource you have to use if you want to find some of the best people out there. LinkedIn have been really working hard over the last six months to add functionality to the platform for recruiters. While a good number of these are aimed at the (paid for) recruiter licences, which can be too rich for some companies, the fact that 1 million new candidates are joining LinkedIn every 10 days should get your recruiter juices flowing (if not, then go and retrain as a hairdresser or florist - they will be more worthing of your motivation levels!)
You don't have to have the expensive recruiter licences (although they will help), because the search functionality for finding people and following (and tracking) company activity is brilliant. Did I not say that LinkedIn is FREE?

So why are you not using it properly?.............YOU ARE COMPLETELY BONKERS!!

If you are some of the recruiters using it well, then you are in a minority (quite unbelievable really), and I hope that you are influencing others around you with your actions.

Here is a statement that I cannot believe many recruiters actually understand:

Using LinkedIn effectively will help you reduce your recruitment costs.

You do want to reduce your costs don't you? Or is your company happy to keep shelling out for job boards and agency spend (if you are a corporate that is) ad infinitum?

Still need convincing? Watch these short videos from Logitech and Ebay and see how much they have got out of LinkedIn from a recruitment perspective.

 

Now if you also factor in other social networking tools like Google and Facebook (as well as Google of course), and you really do have the start of your own social recruiting strategy.

If you are still new to LinkedIn or you haven't connected to me yet - feel free to join my network on LinkedIn.  I have a short beginners guide to LinkedIn pdf I am happy to share with you (if you need it of course)

So are are going to make the effort and either try LinkedIn for the first time? Or are you going to take this 'gentle' reminder as the kick up the a*se you needed?

[Picture credit: the awesome Dizzy Rascal]

Footnote: Before I get various job boards having a moan - I am not advocating never using job boards, all I am saying is to use them when needed - which is not all the time!! They should not be a recruiters 'default setting!'

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Are you using LinkedIn's excellent new company "stalking tool" yet?

This week I had the pleasure of running a social recruiting workshop for recruiters for REC - The Recruitment and Employment Confederation.

In chatting to the various consultants, I have to say that it still amazes me that the primary recruitment tool (in my opinion anyway) - LinkedIn - is still not being used properly (check out the most common mistakes made using LinkedIn). My recruitment industry colleague, Stephen Fowler had this same experience recently, when investigating LinkedIn usage.

It does seem that LinkedIn are "trying really hard" to please recruiters, and recently added a really neat little function - company stalking - sorry I mean  the ability to "Follow Companies", that allows you to track any companies on LinkedIn. This is a great addition to the social recruiting armoury.

As you can see in the image below, I have gone to the Accenture company page, and on the right side is the "Follow Accenture" link. Very simply when you hit the "Follow Company Name" link, LinkedIn allows you follow all the activities that are linked to that company - primarily updates and employees - exactly what recruiters want to know. So, by following a company you could find out:

•    the new employees joining the company
•    the employees who leave the company
•    the employees that have been promoted
•    any new job opportunities
•    any company profile updates

You can choose whether to be notified of these changes daily or weekly (in notification settings).

So if you haven't worked it out yet, this is a brilliant way for recruiters to let LinkedIn do their work for them.

You can now  follow your competitors, their turnover rates, any new starters  and any news going on in the company.
You can track companies that you have an interest in - as a target company to work with or as a source of candidates for other companies.
You can use it as a business development tool, to identify and track key individuals in companies, as well as learning of up to date information via their updates etc.
You can use it to start the engagement process with new candidates, by congratulating new recruits on their jobs, or existing employees on promotions.

However there are two things to note:

1. Following companies is public knowledge - anyone can see who your following.

2. LinkedIn relies on user generated content, so the company information is reliant on people updating their LinkedIn profiles, which may not always be very current - it just depends on the individuals.

I think the latest figure from LinkedIn is that you can follow up to 200 companies at any one time (just don't do them all in one go or else LinkedIn might tag you as a robot spamming tool!)

So the message is simple - go and start your professional stalking with this new feature, it is brilliant!

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