I'll be facilitating a workshop tomorrow (Monday, August 16th) to the Vermont Human Resources Association.  The focus of the day is "Leveraging Social Media to Maximize Success in HR, Recruitment and Career Development" and it promises to be seriously kick@ss!

The lineup for the day is impressive and I am honored to be in the company of individuals such as Jennifer McClure of Unbridled Talent (@CincyRecruiter), Rich Nadworny of Digalicious (@rnadworny), Gahlord Dewald of Thoughtfaucet (@gahlord), Jennifer Graham of Competitive Computing (@jenniferggraham), Bibi Mukherjee of Curve Trends Marketing (@wookiesam), and Lisa Wood of Performance Web Soultions (@lisawood). There are others on tap as well, including former students @coreygrenier (now with Brandthropology) and @nicholemagoon (now with MyWebGrocer). The day will also feature @pmgnicole, @katmaund, @cresmer and @annzuccardy as well as Brandy Rudolph of Enterprise Services, Jeff Nolan of Dinse, Knapp and McAndrew and Kerin Stackpole of Bergeron, Paradis and Fitzpatrick.  Like I said, a great line up!

My workshop is about Twitter.  And while the title gives the impression that we'll talk about the pros and cons of Twitter (which we will I'm sure), my emphasis will be on using Twitter in HR. It's probably no secret that I believe that Twitter is a great tool that allows you to connect and engage with others -- when used right. I'll talk about what Twitter is, how I see Twitter and HR being a perfect pairing and how the HR professional/department can get started Tweeting.

So here is what my one hour session will cover as this is the post that I will send participants to for resources and information (it will be a paperless session on my part, and also a powerpoint free presentation too!). Just me, a room, a whiteboard, markers and an internet connection -- and maybe some people.

1. Introduction: Who am I to tell you to Tweet?
   
   
2. Sort out levels of Twitter Use
   
   
   1. Tweetless - what’s twitter?,
      
   2. Grasshopper - I have tweeted about breakfast,
   3. Novice - I know the difference between an @ and #,
      
   4. Apprentice - I tweet and it updates my facebook status,
   5. Specialist - I tweet, I use third party aps, I have participated in a Tweetchat,
      
   6. Ninja - I use hashtags as throwing stars, tweet on the go, have live-tweeted a conference and maybe got a job interview or job because of it and I know what peeps are saying about me.
       
      
3. Quick Vocabulary lesson
   1. “@” = Twitter name convention: @name
   2. “#” = Hashtag which indicates a specific keyword that others can search on: #vhra or #btv or #campchamp or #hrhappyhour
   3. “RT” = Retweet: when your original tweet is passed on to others either with or without comment. The more retweets the better!
   4. “DM” = Direct Message a private message between you and someone else
   5. “@name” = a message to that person and all the people who follow BOTH of you
   6. "TweetChat" = a chat session that is scheduled weekly or monthly using a specific hashtag. Participants respond to questions from the moderator in a free-for-all session that is archived online via http://www.wthashtag.com

4. Twitter and HR: A perfect pairing
   1. External:
      1. Follow keywords having to do with the company = Listen
      2. Announce job openings = Recruit
      3. Vet applicants = Due Diligence
      4. Team with PR to share the “Good News” of the company = Brand Building

   2. Internal:
      1. Check employee sentiment = Morale
      2. Monitor/Share company news = Internal Communication and Recruitment
         1. Announce new initiatives/trainings/workshops = Internal Communication
         2. Announce benefit information = Internal and External Communication
         3. Share internal job listings = Internal Recruitment
      3. Avoid problem employees = Listen, Monitor and Watch

   3. Personal:
      1. Follow professionals in the HR field = Keep current, learn
      2. Participate in Tweet Chats = Network
      3. Ask questions = Finding answers

5. Getting started on the road to HR Tweeting
   1. Appoint your Twitter “team”

   2. In consultation with Marketing and PR, set up an official company HR account that lists who the team is

   3. Brand the account with your Company branding (logo, colors, contact info

   4. Create a hashtag list (#jobopenings, #companynews etc.)

   5. Decide on the keywords YOU will follow and pay attention to (including the company name)

   6. Select a third party application to utilize to help you “listen” “follow” and monitor your HR Account
      1. Hootsuite
      2. Tweetdeck
      3. Peoplebrowsr

   7. Set up an account with Topify (http://topify.com/) which will help you in following people who follow you.

   8. Follow key HR individuals and influencers in your geographic region:
      1. TweepML and search on “HR” to find a great list of people to follow
      2. Twellowhood and look for businesses and key individuals in your geographic area to follow.

   9. Set measureable goals for success:
      1. X% new recruits through Twitter
      2. # of chats participated in that yielded new networking, exposure or learning opportunities
      3. X% of tweets are retweeted
      4. # of clicks on job postings

   10. Use Tools to help you monitor your goals
       1. Twitalyzer helps you to see your overall growth and influence as well as a host of cool metrics (which may or may not be important to you)
       2. Bit.ly is a URL shortner which will allow you to track clicks and mentions of your links (note if you use HootSuite, it comes with ow.ly)
       3. Have your web analytics team provided reports each  month on how much traffic is coming to the company website due to your efforts on Twitter

   11. Start tweeting! Remember to respond to others and join in conversations.
       1. Participate in #hrhappyhour or #u30pro (use TweetGrid or TweetChat to help you with the chat)
       2. Respond to questions
       3. Ask question
       4. Engage
       5. Have fun!
          
6. Some things NOT TO DO:
   1. Do NOT set up an automatic follow-back. Vet EACH follower using Topify. Autofollows mean you will end up following spammers and pornbots which probably don’t fit your brand
   2. Do NOT set up an automatic DM for each follower. DMs are for when you know one another and need to have a quick private conversation -- do not abuse it.
   3. Do NOT link your Facebook to your Twitter. Facebook allows for more than 140 characters which (normally) doesn’t work in Twitter.  Also you need different messages for different audiences.
   4. Do NOT measure your success by number of followers: that is a FALSE metric
      
7. Resources:
   1. HRHappyHour: http://www.hrhappyhour.net/blog/
   2. Steve Boese: Professor and creator of HRHappyHour: @steveboese and http://steveboese.squarespace.com/
   3. Unbridled Talent: http://unbridledtalent.com/blog/
   4. Jennifer McClure: President of Unbridled Talent (and our Keynote speaker!) @CincyRecruiter
   5. Mashable Twitter Handbook: http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/

 

And there you have it -- a whirlwind presentation with lots of links and guidelines.  Feel free to pass this on -- I think it works for more than HR. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome and if I missed a great resource, please add it using the comments so others can benefit.

Today, I had the privilege of talking with a group of soon-to-be mediators who are in the Masters of Science in Mediation and Applied Conflict Studies at Champlain College.  We talked about a wide range marketing issues and Bob Bloch of our BYOBiz entrepreneurship program talked about getting your business started.

Why would a mediator care about marketing and starting a business?

Because "we want to eat" and "we want to bring this great service far and wide" and we "want to help people solve their conflict in a constructive way. and because "conflict resolution can make your company make more money."

The big challenge as always is to remember that in Marketing it's about knowing your target market, building value, and gaining word of mouth (referrals in the mediation biz).

I showed them one of my favorite tools of the moment, "Posterous" (http://www.posterous.com).

It is the end of the semester and as the Marketing Management class wraps up it's time to announce who has achieved true Ninja Status (for the rubric, please check my earlier post).

It's exciting to have watched the students as they each explored their own personal brand and while there have been ups and downs, this is truly all about learning, having fun and understanding the true implications of the social tools that are infusing the business world. Not everyone can be a Ninja. It takes dedication, passion, interest and willingness to put yourself out there, engage and connect. At the beginning of all of this I wasn't sure who would achieve "Ninja Status" -- I wasn't even sure anyone would.

First a shout out to the up and coming Ninjas -- the Specialists!

I'm excited to announce that out of the full class of students a total of NINE people made SPECIALIST (that's the level just below Ninja). The specialist is the person who you should watch carefully -- they are honing their skills, hitting their stride and with a bit more time will surely become Ninjas. These individuals have created content, begun building their brands and have, above all, continued to explore and learn the tools of the trade.

Our MKT 420 Specialists are:

• Caila: @cailaburke
• Jackie: @jcooper225
• Amanda: @ajjones87 and @designgutter
• Carolyn: @carolyngetsrad
• Candace: @candaceishungry
• Caitlin: @caitlineo
• Kathleen: @kwamser
• Madison: @madisonwhitneyw
• Brooke: @BrookeZam

If you aren't already following them...well you should.

And now, for the Ninjas.

This honor goes to TWO students who have picked very different areas to focus their energy on. Each in their own way has exhibited an understanding of engagement, connection, consistency, relevancy and building a brand. Both are passionate about what they are doing and their personality and passion shines through in different ways. One is helping others and gaining visibility and interest in what they are doing through outside blog posts and in-state business people. The other is connecting content and pointing out the challenges women face in the world. They have done all the right stuff -- and even if there have been some true "learning moments" along the way, both have earned...

It's the end of the semester and it is now time to determine who in the Marketing Management has achieved true Social Media Ninja Status. It's been 14 weeks since the students began their journey by reading CrushIt! by Gary Vaynerchuk and then making their own personal branding plans.  What have they learned along the way?

1. Building a personal brand is hard work.  It takes time and dedication.  This is not unlike working with a brand that is for a product or service. Social media may not cost the same amount of money that an advertising campaign does, but there is an investment.

2. Keeping it relevant takes intentionality. How do you stay relevant and add value? Every day. Day after day. Week after week. If you have an idea of what you want to blog about, how do you know who to link to, what words do you select and how do you leverage your keywords to help grow the visibility of that brand (namely you!)?
   
   
3. Keeping the passion going isn't that easy.  Like a marriage, it takes work. Every day. Several of my students realized that what they initially thought they could be passionate about didn't sustain them, so they had to switch it up.

4. The tools, they keep a'changin! In social media and the digital world, there is one constant and that is change.  Just this semester alone we have seen Facebook institute "communities" and "like" vs. "fan", the release of the iPad and an upcoming new OS for Apple, the growth of FourSquare and Twitter changes. Ning is now charging. Widgets abound. There are new options every day.  How do you keep up and keep your presence fresh and engaging?

The question for this professor, is how do I judge which of the students have been most successful?  Who, in this class of 20+ deserves true "Social Media Ninja Status" and more importantly, how do I arrive at that determination?  With a rubric of course!

So without further ado, here is Dr. Young's Social Media Ninja Rubric. Perhaps this will be helpful to businesses and others who are hiring content and community managers! 

1. URL/Username
   
2. Bio
3. Connections
4. Content
5. Personality

Tomorrow I announce in class who the TRUE SOCIAL MEDIA NINJAs for the class of 2010 are based on the rubric above.  What do you think? Is this helpful?  Have I captured the main points?

It's been an interesting Customer Service Week for me.  I've been trying to resolve two different billing issues with two different large companies -- which I am going to name because I think it is an important part of the conversation about what I'm seeing in the world of customer service. I'll start off by saying that it looks like everything has been resolved and in the end the companies came through.

It's what it took to get the companies to come through that has me wondering about the state of customer service.

I'm old enough to remember a time when the only way to reach out to a company was through a nicely written letter that went into the mail to some person somewhere in the company and just maybe 6 - 8 weeks later I might get a coupon or something for my trouble.  There was a time when I could call a toll free number and be on hold for a brief period of time but then speak to a human. Fast forward to this week.  No longer does snail mail come into consideration and getting on the phone and speaking to a human does not guarantee that something will get resolved right away. How did I get results?  How did I get heard? Well I tweeted of course.

My first experience was with Comcast. Recent changes for my Dad at the nursing home had him moved to a new room.  We upgraded his TV cable to digital service. Seemed simple enough, and I worked with local folks to get the digital box set up.  Unfortunately somewhere between the move and new equipment my Dad hit the account jackpot with Comcast -- and they generated a bunch of new accounts for him.  There was his old account.  Then there was a new account for his regular cable and then another new account for his digital box. Confusing. But the bad part is no one actually communicated that to the person paying the bills (that would be me).  So I continued to pay the old bill and when I got the first set of bills that showed a crazy mess, I got on the phone.  Spent over an hour on a Saturday trying to figure it all out. The person I spoke with did a great job of trying to figure it out and then said they would get back to me. So I let it go.  And then a few days later,  I got the disconnect notice for my Dad. I was not happy. So I vented on Twitter.

Less then an hour later I got a note back from one of the @comcastcares people.  He told me what email to send my issue to, and then I started getting phone calls from a great customer service rep who was able to figure it all out.  I haven't seen the final results but they were able to consolidate everything and get it down to one account without my Dad losing any service.

I had an interesting experience at the same time with my old hosting provider, Network Solutions.  I've been with them for a very long time, but as social tools have made things easier and I've decided to go with a WordPress option for my site, I've decided to go in a different direction with my hosting. I was able to take care of DNS redirects and everything from the account panel.  But interestingly enough at Network Solutions I cannot "cancel services" from their account management area. So the one part I still needed to shut off required an email. I went on their website to their email form which did not have an option for "cancel services". Then I got on the phone and got put on hold for over 15 minutes. I follow @shashib on twitter so after this experience I sent him a tweet asking him how I cancel services.  In a short period of time (under an hour) he responded with the email I needed to use.  I sent out the email, and got a response and now, hopefully I won't get charged for another month.

Notice what happened in both of these situations?

Twitter

In order to get the results I wanted as a customer, I used a public soap box.  And they were listening. And they responded.

But, I tried other ways before that and it didn't work.

Dear customer service professionals -- what do you think of this? Is this just the way it is now?  Or is there something wrong with me as a customer having to go public before you listen to me and I get results that I need.

I've watched lately as colleagues and people I follow online in the Marketing and Social Media space make dramatic changes in their professional careers.  It seems that a new decade brings new opportunity.

Thanks Google. Really. Without you my job might be boring or at least mundane.  I might actually be able to take content that I'm teaching and "set it and forget it". But no. You have to keep evolving and offering up nifty little tools that create these interesting dialogues out on the intertubes.

The current plethora of "predictions" posts have spawned a particularly interesting debate that actually has a big impact on my lessons plans for my Spring semester Internet Marketing course -- does SEO matter anymore?

Back in the day when I first started teaching Internet Marketing I went over the different search sites and directories describing to my students how to get your site listed. We would talk about Yahoo! and Microsoft and Google and DMoz and DogPile.  We'd explore who acquired whom and the changes in the rules.  White Hat and Black Hat. Link Farms. Meta Tags, Keywords, Key phrases, Alt-tags...OH MY.

Now, we talk about content, content, content. There is discussion about what you have control over and what you don't. We focus on top properties with the most traffic, emphasize conversion and the importance of analytics in understanding which search properties garner you the best leads. We talk about inbound and outbound. We talk about tags, and keywords and relevance. We've been talking more and more about the impact of social media on SEO as well.

But, if I listen to Robert Scoble in his recent post: 2010: The Year SEO Isn't Important Anymore I can just get rid of that whole focus on SEO. Ok, well not really. His point is that things are changing so fast between Google and Bing that the small business can't really keep up (frankly not many people can) and that so many search results are served up now based on personal search behavior and location that well...you just don't need to focus so much on making your site SEO friendly because they'll find you anyway. Of course his real message is that anyone engaged in utilizing online tools to market their business must look at a holistic approach. This is probably the most important part of his message.

Enter in Danny Sullivan (without whom I could NOT teach my class anything about Search. Danny, you might not know this, but you have been in my class since 2000 when I first started teaching!). Danny wrote a great post today over at SearchEngineLand in response to the Scoble POV. His post, entitled, "Is SEO Dead? 1997 Prediction, Meet 2009 Reality" shows just how challenging these "predictions" can be -- SEO is not "dead" says Sullivan.  As a matter of fact it, just like everything else on the web, is evolving, and more importantly if you are talking about a holistic approach to your online marketing strategy you must consider the important aspects of SEO -- regardless of what Google and Bing roll out tomorrow. Another post by Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media entitled "Ignore Robert Scoble, SEO Still Matters for SMBs points out that for the small business it's vital that they be found when people are looking for them.  Ignore SEO at your own peril because " ...search engine optimization will remain important to your site until the days that people stop searching."

What's a simple College Prof. supposed to make of all this debate (insert what's a simple SMB, or student, or agency...)? Well from my perspective I think they are all right.

Ain't that just like a professor!

Scoble highlights the holistic approach and addresses the key changes that are influencing search results.  We MUST be aware of these as consumers and as marketers. They will continue to influence search results and most importantly how people search.  But Sullivan and Barone are also right. They point out how important SEO is and continues to be because of people's reliance on the search engines to find what they are looking for.  You MUST be there and you must be aware of ways in which you can get found on the terms that are most relevant in order to provide your customer with the most valuable experience.

So will I keep teaching SEO in my class in the spring? Ayup. Will I bring up both POVs in class?  Ayup.

And I'm sure my students and I will have great debate about the whole thing as well.