“Socialnetworkingitis” |
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March 2nd, 2008 -- by Jenny Floren
I’m on my way to Florida tomorrow to present at ITT’s Future Workforce Solutions conference (which is a phenomenal collaboration between many of the world’s most influential tech companies to prepare our nation’s talent pipeline for the future… more on that later), and the discussion topic I’m leading is “social networking”. As I’m completing research and gathering my thoughts for the talk, I can’t help but feel **completely fatigued** by this topic. There is sooooooo much chatter and noise out there about how companies should embrace social networking, how everyone should have a blog, how interactivity is the name of the game in the Web2.0 world… And yet the vast majority of employers - meaning the **individual people** who work for organizations that are hiring - seem to feel like fish out of water in this new ocean of social-blogging-interactive-wiki-chatfest. It seems like more folks feel guilty about NOT doing it - mostly b/c it seems to feel so overwhelming they don’t know where to start… So for all of you who are among the savvy blog reading, Joel worshiping, IM-sending, wiki-building, social networking leaders out there - what do you recommend for newbies who aren’t quite ready to dive into our interactive world, but want to stick in their toes to check it out…?
March 2nd, 2008 at 1:21 pm
It’s not about the tools, or the sites or the software. It’s about interaction between your company and the user. Conversation is king, content is what they talk about. If your audience is not on Myspace, then don’t bother with Myspace. If they are, then find a way to integrate within Myspace in order to present yourself professionally and get the results you want.
Lots of companies want their own social networks. A terrible trend in fact. Why not integrate into what is already happening on the web. Sites are opening their back-end up to developers everyday. Why not be a part of something special than start your own something half-ass.
If you are going to be partaking in Social Media, take part in it. Do not do it because its the “cool” thing to do. Just my 2 cents, that’s all.
March 2nd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
A lot of recruiters of other human resource professionals want to blog but are afraid that they won’t have the time to write weekly or even daily as virtually all blogging experts recommend. One way they can get much of the value from blogging but without the time commitment is to guest write articles for other blogs or to have guests write for their blog.
To facilitate this content sharing, dozens of recruiting bloggers several years creating the Recruiting Blogswap where some author articles to run on other blogs and others publish those blog articles and some do both. The Blogswap started off as a fairly informal system but has evolved into an automated content sharing system at http://www.RecruitingBlogswap.com. There’s no charge for it and it brings tremendous value to authors, publishers, and readers.
March 11th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I can speak from experience from the standpoint of being somewhat timid of using some of the technologies you mentioned. What worked for me was first using some of these things in my personal life (i.e. Facebook, blogs, etc.). Once I understood how they could be used and how cool they were, the flood gates opened and I began to understand how they could be used in my professional life. I’ve been converted ever since.