wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
SOCIAL MEDIA: like networking on steroids
By Bill Roberts
Social media like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are so popular and powerful that they can be used to help sell products, services, almost anything – even the people who use them.
Consider their popularity: If you Google "social media" you get 163 million results. Heck, "candy" generates only110 million results.
And their wide use: Facebook has 400 million users, which is a larger population than any country except China and India.
We can use the social power of social media for self-promotion and meeting our professional goals, Scott Rowe, partner in charge of interactive planning and strategy at Bozell, told the March 3 luncheon meeting of the Mid-America Direct Marketing Association.
"It's like networking on steroids," Rowe said. "Just think of this giant community and the number of people you can communicate with."
One big use of social media is the hiring process.
In a Harris poll, 45 percent of human resources professionals said they used social media in their hiring decisions. The poll also said 35 percent of HR professionals found social media content that led them not to make a hire, compared with 18 percent who said they found content that led them to make a hire.
Rowe said one of the main reasons HR pros consulted social media was to get a sense of the applicant's personality and whether he or she would be a good fit for the position and the culture of the company.
But use of social media in hiring can lead to problems.
Rowe said he heard the city of Bozeman, Mont., asked job applicants to provide links (including username and password!) to all social media networks they use. The policy probably will face legal challenges, he said: "I just think it's interesting that somebody is going down that route."
Another natural user of social media is the salesperson looking for leads, Rowe observed: "Most of our leads come from connections of some sort."
You can leverage your links, he said. An example would be contacting a fellow LinkedIn member at XYZ company to ask who at XYZ is the buyer for the widgets you sell.
What are good ways to use social media to your benefit? Rowe offered this advice: Become a digital connector and a digital publisher.
You become a connector by increasing your connections to people, Web sites and networks. This is a principle of search engines: The more people who link to you, the more you will be linked to by other people on the Web.
You become a digital publisher by establishing a site on the Web and making waves: "Start talking. What is it you know? What is it you understand? What is it you can talk about?"
Rowe mentioned some of his favorite Web sites for measuring, establishing and leveraging a social media presence: mashedin.com, usernamecheck.com, addictomatic.com and onlineidcalculator.com (where you can learn if you're "digitally distinct" or "digitally dissed").
Rowe mentioned two Omaha restaurants that are using social media effectively: the Blue Planet Natural Grill and the Dundee Dell.
Retailers are often digital pioneers, he said: "The first industry to take up text messaging was bars."
While it's good to link to many networks and many sites, it's also good to avoid being digitally promiscuous, making links that you never follow up or use.
"I think it's important to keep only the connections that are important to you," he said.
Rowe also warned against the nearly addictive allure of social media networks.
If the digital conversation veers away from legitimate business too far and for too long, sign off, he said. Building contacts can be valuable, but no boss wants you wasting company time, whether it's over the water cooler or the Internet.