Apparently a challenge is in place where Twitter specialists were asked – “using your Twitter broadcast methods, find me candidates for XYZ job and prove your worth”. (Thanks to James Mayes and his excellent UK-based social recruiting blog which brought this to my attention in The #day socialrecruiting got challenged if anyone knows where this challenge was posted, please share it in comments here). The fairly typical response to such a challenge is ‘yes we can do it, but…’ and my folks taught me that when people say ‘but’, they really mean ‘no’.

Requests for measurable effectiveness of social media recruiting are often met with remarks that redirect the topic instead of directly addressing effectiveness. A request or challenge asking ‘Can Social Recruiting fill positions x, y and z?’ frequently lead to lectures that social media is about community, dialogue, transparency, etc. Would we accept similar arguments saying that asking for results from Pay Per Click is misguided because it’s about the user’s post-click experience?  No. We simply need to get to the point where best practices are an assumed part of any such challenge or request for results. Asking for results is never misguided.

Maybe I’m tired of running into arguments saying that asking for results from social media recruitment efforts is misguided because it’s all about community-building. Or maybe I’m just too close to the issue.

While Social Recruiting is not a one-off campaign tactic and community building is crucial, at some point you have to determine your core performance metric. This is recruitment and ultimately core performance metrics have to include: number of viable candidates found through a social media channel, successful hires of candidates found through a social media channel. No amount of best practice caveats can side-step this ultimate goal.

If I am properly building a social media strategy will I be able to generate an on-demand stream of qualified candidates when positions are open? Will the results of my social recruiting efforts reap the rewards for which I am going through this effort and will they be of an appropriate volume and effectiveness to justify the content development and labor costs associated — because saying social recruiting is free is only true if your time, talent and expertise is free as well.

Should you expect to get these results right off the bat through the social media ‘if you build it they will come’ mentality? No, not at all. You still have to build community, diversify your social media footprint, engage with your audience and build value — all the standard best practices of social media marketing.

Just saying ‘you need to do it right’ doesn’t remove the need to ultimately determine that a well-run recruiting effort/tactic/strategy/whatever actually works and is financially viable. However, given the mind-set of most companies, we will probably all have to get used to repeating variations of this phrase and the attendant details since many seem determined to view social recruiting as a simple ‘plug-it-in’ tactic that will produce immediate results. Yes it will produce results, but…

Can Twitter Social Recruiting Prove Its Worth? Yes, but… is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

The landscape of SEO is changing and, well, you’re probably not ready to react. Many organizations are just getting up to speed with in-page optimization strategies. Those are all the things you do on a web-page for SEO, like focusing on a specific keyword with title tags, a good description and other fun details too geeky to get into right now. Some forward-thinking companies are exploring off-page strategies which involve building links to and from valuable web properties. And now, main-stream marketers are discovering something previously only exploited by hot-shot Internet Marketers: Social Media Strategies for linking are an SEO gold mine.

Yes, I know, you’re tired of hearing the S-word – it’s everywhere.  The S-word is ubiquitous and almost annoyingly showing up in every media source you encounter from blogs to TV news stories. Even the line-cook at Denny’s is talking about it – heck, he moon-lights as a social marketer. Haven’t you heard? EVERYONE’S promoting their personal brand in social media these days.

Whether you think times are ripe for a social backlash or not, social media spaces are only becoming more and more important to any online marketing and recruitment strategy. Let me tell you why social media is the next big thing for SEO.

You see, first of all search engines are very clique-conscious. The more popular and authoritative a site is, the more reputation it has to share. When one of those sites links to another site it passes a bit of credibility to the new site, making the search engines say: “Hey, if Amazon links to that site it MUST be worthwhile. I’m going to give it a better search results ranking.” In SEO this is called sharing ‘link juice.’

How powerful is link juice? Let’s just say that 1 link from a site with a lot of link juice can do more for your search engine results position than 20 links from sites with no link juice.

Who’s got the juice?

Right now, social media sites have a LOT of link juice. Google, for instance, isn’t stupid. They know that a lot of people are busy sharing information on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other social media sites. These are real people sharing information they find valuable in real time. If you’re a search engine, it’s like being able to tap into the internet’s stream of consciousness and find out what site’s people really think are the most valuable about any given topic.

Google already gives certain social media sites extra exposure and the links from these sites carry the juice to prove it. In real-time news search, you can already watch topic-related tweets and Facebook status updates emerge among blog and news story updates on Google. Just click on the ‘options’ link on your Google search results and then click the ‘Latest’ link to let Google know you want the ‘latest news results.’

Google's Real Time Search Already Tracks Tweets in Real Time

How to get social link juice

Taking advantage of the new social-search phenomena isn’t as easy as just setting up a Twitter account or a Facebook page and linking to your career website or job listings. Nobody ever said anything worthwhile is easy. Your destination pages have to be optimized; your social sources need to be diverse and populated with worthwhile, interesting content; your use of keywords has to be selective but not spammy.

Really, the first steps to getting good social link juice are recommended best practices in their own right:

1)      Develop good content on your career website

2)      Build branded social media presences that provide interesting information to your candidate audience. (FYI: ‘Interesting information’ doesn’t mean job listings or blatant self-promotion.)

As attendees of the NAS Social Networking Boot Camp learn in our hands-on sessions, developing a effective social presence means you become an asset to your audience by giving them information and tools that help meet their goals – not necessarily yours. This alone transforms you from a suspect source of self-serving advertising into a valuable resource. And that’s an important key to building an audience…and ultimately a stream of link juice you can direct through your branded social media properties.

Social Media and SEO – The New Gold Rush is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

EBizMBA ranked the 15 most popular/largest Web 2.0 Web sites as of April 2010. To compile the list, they ranked according to a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast. It provides a great overview of the top sites where people are congregating and engaging online.

1. YouTube.com

2. Wikipedia.org

3. Craigslist.org

4. Twitter

5. photobucket.com

6. flickr.com

7. WordPress.com

8. IMDB.com

9. digg.com

10. eHow.com

11. TypePad.com

12. topix.com

13. LiveJournal.com

14. deviantART.com

15. Technorati.com

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What Are The 15 Most Popular Web 2.0 Websites? is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

In Forrester’s research they show little overlap between the “big 5″ agency types–advertising, direct, media buying, interactive, and PR. This, to date, has been leading towards a splintering of agency relationships for clients where no one agency can provide all solutions. The race, it would seem will go to the swift — those who are more agile, grow new skill-sets internally and form long-term relationships with valuable solution providers.

What do you think? is the answer growing strong multi-disciplinary digital skills in one agency organization, eventually resolving this cross-vendor dilemma through service and skill consolidation? What do you see as the role of agencies in the ‘Adaptive Marketing’ future?

The Future of Advertising Agencies Thru Forrester’s Crystal Ball is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

A few days ago, @N3W_Media raised an interesting point and question. The other day I submitted my proposed answer/term to Urban Dictionary. I just heard that it was accepted, so ‘yay’ for that! I’ll provide a link to the at the end of this post. Anyways, here tweet from @N3W_Media:

‘…not real friends just Facebook friends’. Is FB devaluing the term Friend? Should they have called them something else?

This got me thinking…for a few years there has been a lot of talk about Dunbar’s Number. Dunbar’s Number refers to a theory that there is a limit to the amount of relationships we can maintain. Beyond that number, you simply cannot maintain a meaningful relationship. Dunbar sets that number at a maximum of 150 people

In October of 2009, Seth Godin proclaimed that: Dunbar’s Number isn’t just a number, it’s the law. He makes a good argument that once you reach beyond your Dunbar number your message effectiveness changes as a side-effect of the intimacy of your relationship changing.

Supporting this, Switched.com explored How Many Facebook Friends Do We Have, For Real? I urge you to look at the eye-opening research they performed to explore ‘friend’ engagement.

But not everyone agrees with the relevance of Dunbar’s number to social media. Contrary to Seth Godin’s take that you must have ’strong ties’ to your audience to be effective, Morten Hansen puts forward in his book Collaboration that the real value of collaboration and networks comes from weak relationships rather than from strong relationships and networks.  One of Morten’s network rules is “build weak ties, not strong ones.”

According to Morten: “…research shows that weak ties can prove much more helpful in networking, because they form bridges to worlds we do not walk within.  Strong ties, on the other hand, tend to be worlds we already know; a good friends often knows many of the same people and things we know.  They are not the best when it comes to searching for new jobs, ideas, experts, and knowledge.  Weak ties re also good because they take less time.  It’s less time consuming to talk to someone once a month (weak tie) than twice a week (a strong tie).  People can keep up quite a few weak ties without them being a burden.”

At first blush I would agree. Especially when we are looking at making a social media brand relationship. I do not have a ’strong tie’ to any of the brands I engage with on Facebook or Twitter, we do not have regular lengthy conversations nor have I found myself buying a round of drinks for either author Christopher Moore, or Hyatt Hotels and Resorts Careers. But, I have found that I can engage with them on a semi-regular basis very easily.

I get information from each which I would otherwise have no way of knowing and, if I so desire, I can have a micro-engagement with little effort. From a brand perspective, whether engaging me as a would-be book reader/buyer or a possible job applicant, that level of engagement is enough — they open me up for deeper engagement according to my needs in response to the value I am exposed to by my ‘weak connection’. The same ‘weak tie’ value can be seen by anyone who is ann of a consumer brand and yet takes advantage of an online coupon or special promoted through a social media channel.

So what do we call these ‘weak connections’ in our networks, specifically Facebook? My proposed answer: they are a Facequaintance.

Someone who you have ‘friended’ on Facebook but don’t really know or keep in touch with. You generally don’t know anyone who ever comments on their Wall and wouldn’t know them even if they walked right up to you and slapped you.

Usage: “Yea, I’m friends with her but we’ve only met, like, once. She’s just a Facequaintance.”

Just who are your real friends on Facebook? is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

I found this thanks to a really well crafted tweet from @TravisGreenlee. It read simply: ‘Is This The End, or Just The Beginning?’ and then a link. A kind of classic headline — vague enough that it could mean anything, intriguing enough to get someone to click. What i found was a brief post about the economy and the power we have in the face of circumstances beyond our control. We have the power of choice, we have the power to respond. For me, these choices and actions are rooted in attitude — the right attitude cannot guarantee success but the wrong attitude can certainly predicate failure.

Anyway, this video was on the post and it’s simply amazing. It’s about a mouse…and a mouse-trap. And if you’re like me, you’re going to spend a few moments cringing, waiting for the inevitable ‘CRACK!’ of the trap…but then something magical happens. Something entirely about having the right attitude in the face of circumstances beyond your control. Enjoy!

You can view the video here if the embedded video below doesn’t work.

Learn From A Mouse: Attitude Is Everything is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

After one year in operation, the geo-location/game/stalker’s dream tool Foursquare has landed a huge brand: Starbucks. Foursquare is a mobile-device based game in which people “check in” at places they visit (the gym, a bar, an airport terminal, etc) and often share their location with friends via Twitter and Facebook. Since the game started, businesses have been exploring ways to take leverage foursquare, and there is already a Foursquare coupon system.

Starbucks has just started using Foursquare as part of a new customer rewards program. To take part in this program, all you have to do is use foursquare to ‘checkin’ at your Starbucks location (I use the Foursquare app on my Droid).

While Starbucks has no official prizes associated with Foursquare activity (such as free coffee), after five checkins customers unlock the new “Barista badge.” The first specifically business branded badge on Foursquare, although almost certainly not the last.

Obviously this is just the tip of the iceberg for an organization that has already leveraged multiple presences on both Facebook and Twitter. If nothing else, Starbucks is hyper-activate about finding ways to leverage the groundswell and social media.

While both Twitter and Foursquare are looking to offer more business analytics tools (Foursquare plans to introduce free statistics and engagement tools for businesses) Starbucks is apparantly hoping to use Foursquare to provide more meaningful prizes. Some possibilities incluse invitations to special events, photo sharing or online reputation scores.

Already I’ve begun to hear people discussing ways to possibly use Foursquare in recruitment. Is it possible? Is it advised? How would it work? Would candidates get to unlock some special ‘2nd Interview!’ Badge? Or are mobile-based geo-location tools simply not relevant?

Starbucks asks Foursquare to the dance…will recruitment follow? is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

This week Microsoft is rolling out new variations of their ‘Search Overload’ ads in the UK in a bid against Google’s choke hold on the UK search market. Bing has only a 3% market share compared to Google’s 90% — making this a definite search engine David v Goliath battle. Not a position Microsoft is used to: playing the role of David, in this case.

 The multimillion-pound TV ad campaign will look familiar to anyone who’s seen a few of the Bing ads shown in the US.

 It’s been nine months since Bing’s launch and according to comScore’s measurements the search engine IS gaining market share. However that is mostly at the expense of Yahoo not Google. This is good for Bing since it’s growing (albeit usually in percentage points that look like 0.2% gain), but bad since it’s not really hurting Google in any meaningful way.

 With all the recent press around Google and privacy policies and issues, there may be some room for Bing to make further gains if they play their cards right. Maybe they should replace ’search overload’ with a more direct “It’s 10PM does your search engine know what you’re doing?” campaign.

 Anyways, here’s one of the new commercials rolling out in the UK this week — they get points for the most creative use of “Euston station” — oh, who am I kidding, the ONLY creative use of “Euston station.”

 Your thoughts on the Bing/Google search battle and the now international search overload campaign are appreciated.

New Bing Search Overload Commercials Invade The UK is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

I was having a brief ‘between-panels’ discussion at an HR event when something occured to me, a simple revelation that changed how I talk about social media. You see, day in and day out social media as we know it is being mistreated in ways that would get someone fined in your typical episode of Animal Precinct. And I’m conviced that, at the root of it, it’s for one simple reason: the name itself.

The social media discussion online is overflowing with would-be gurus, pundits, wannabes and actual experts repeating one key word around which this whole phenomena revolves: conversation. I mean, really, Google: social media +conversation and you get “Results 1 – 10 of about 11,100,000 for social media +conversation. (0.27 seconds).” As of 30 seconds ago you did at least.

But yet, people continue to use social media channels and ecosystems as shout channels mimicking broadcast media like TV or radio. Just look at all the companies in HR-space who think filling a Twitter account or Facebook wall with nothing but outgoing job listings or endless self-promotional babble is somehow attaining social media mastery. When it’s really more like saying “Hey, DIG ME!!” And really…some people will find it worthwhile (education and informing is part of this process after all) but most will simply consider it spam.

So why is this happening? Why do companies use social media like it was some shiny new bullhorn? The name.

Social media is just a completly inaccurate name for what this space is really about: it focuses on the properties and technology instead of the interaction and content. The name itself promotes the attitude of: ‘here’s a new media environment to play in, how can I use the materials I’ve already developed?’

It would be more approriate to refer to this space as ‘Social Medium’ – a social environment or space. According to Webster’s (excuse me while I put on my trusty, taped-up horn-rimmed glasses) a medium is (definition 3a): “a condition or environment in which something may function or flourish.”

A social medium is a social environment, a natural location for the aforementioned guru/expert/pundit-approved conversations to occur. And it’s the dynamic of the medium that matters, not the technology. It’s the use of the medium in a socially meaningful manner that moved the goal-line, not the specific web properties. It’s the fact that i can influence and be influenced by friends and strangers in a virtually real time conversation in Twitter and the ability to share photos and videos through Facebook so my expanded social circle can chime in with their thoughts and questions. And it’s about the fact that they can see each other and begin to interact with people they might otherwise never have known about in any other way.

But, if someone were to enter a social conversation I am engaged in about yoga and just announce (out of the blue) that they have yoga mats for sale, they’re misusing the space, spamming me and likely to get blocked or just ignored. Meanwhile they’re probably wondering what’s so great about this social media stuff since no one buys their stuff. “Hunh, Twitter doesn’t work!” they think. “It’s just a bunch of BS!” And then they go to the next environment, Facebook, whatever, and do the same thing all over again. It’s a vicious cycle that leads straight to disaster.

Maybe I’m just being a word geek here, but I believe in the power of words to shape and guide perception as well as actions. When entire areas of business have spent ages thinking that ‘media’ means ‘broadcast message channel’ we shouldn’t be surprised when they mis-use the social medium and try plastering it with classified ads and press releases.

The insanely simple reason companies mis-use social media. is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.

This is my first video blog covering some neat features in browser-based Google search as well as 2 new mobile search features. The quality is ‘losier’ than I would like…next time I will ‘zoom-in’ closer to show the screen in more detail and fix any resolution issues!

Google Real Time Search, Twitter Search and Mobile Search Innovations is a post from: Kevin B Hawkins -- Career Sites, SEO/SEM, Recruitment PPC, User Experience (UX), Pop Culture and Beer.