Jon Samsel

I’d like to answer my own question by first making two cautionary statements: 1) Ghostwriters are hired hands, 2) A brand is a terrible thing to waste.

That said, I think a company runs a huge risk outsourcing their social media activities to an outside microblogging service unless that ‘ghost-brander’ has some skin in the game. As hired hands, a ghostwriter can make a mistake, be fired, and move on to her next gig while the brand must suffer through the blunder, repair the damage inflicted, and then control the negative impact of the snafu’s aftermath.

If you are a marketer at the helm of a large brand, I would urge you to think twice about the quality of the ghostblogger (is this an individual, a social media agency, etc.) and what type of training and recourse you may have in the event an unforeseen error occurs, or word gets out that your brand may not be as ‘authentic’ online as the corporate brand promise pontificates.

In the book, “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding,” the authors state that the most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness. They tell how most great brands possess a singularity of focus, a clarity of message. Playskool has done it with safety; Armani with class; Apple with “hipness.” The authors caution that the easiest way to destroy a brand is to put its name on everything. Diversification, they argue, can lead to a weakening of a brand’s quality, a drop in top-of-mind awareness, and more.

The gold rush of brands to quickly embrace social media–either to begin listening, to engage and solve, or to get heard–can lead to some pretty poor decisions that could cost your brand dearly in the long run.

Many firms are experimenting with social media by looking at it as an extension of their internal marketing department’s duties. Some have already found great success by promoting social advocacy as an extension of an employee’s job function–training and empowering certain staff to become the living, breathing, extension of their brand’s value proposition (the face of the brand). Ford’s social media advocate, Scott Monty, comes to mind. Another is Tom Dickson the CEO of Blendtec–who can ignore his “Will It Blend” series on YouTube? Then there is Frank Eliason, the man behind @comcastcares on Twitter. Consumers seem to value the sincerity of the brand voice and in most instances, press accolades confirm what everyone feels–this activity makes sense and is good for both the consumer and the brand.

Alternative social media outreach initiatives that many companies opt for instead resemble classic outsourcing models which utilize external creative agencies, social microblogging, and even ongoing monitoring services to represent brands on sites like Twitter, Posterous, Squidoo, Facebook, YouTube, and the like. With the ‘right’ brand partner, extensive training, a tight service level agreement, and close oversight and direction by internal marketing staff, brands can have success embracing ‘ghostbranding.’

The rub comes when a consumer asks questions such as: “With whom am I speaking to? Are you a company employee or a hired hand?” How this questions is answered is critical. An honest answer clarifying that no, this is not an actual brand employee may turn off a portion of your followers and perhaps generate some bad press. A dishonest answer could cause much greater harm if the truth ever gets out, which will surely have a negative impact on your followers and your brand image–likely resulting in a press feeding frenzy to shame your brand into an apology.

I don’t believe most consumers care whether they are having conversations with a ghostwriter or a company employee as long as the dialog with the brand is honest, timely, helpful, useful, consistent, straightforward, and as transparent as possible.

I don’t advise brands to utilize ghostwriters for social services such as Twitter, especially if you are a popular, well-established brand with the wherewithal to develop an internal social media outreach strategy involving real, authentic employees. If, on the other hand, you have tried to launch an internal social outreach program to no avail, or if you are a small, emerging brand with less to risk, partnering with a capable third-party to properly represent your brand on social networks is entirely feasible.

Suffice it to say that the risk of not participating in the social web at all far outweighs the risk that something may go wrong in your attempts to engage in meaningful social conversations.

Unless you’ve had your head buried in a hole for the past few months you have probably stumbled upon a blog post or two touting Google’s interest in purchasing Twitter as a way to leapfrog forward (and dominate) the real-time search market. Whether or not Google is actually interested in acquiring Twitter is not as important as what is says about the prospect of social search as the next big thing. Move over SEO, SEM and social media. Social search (as its own channel) has arrived!

Social search is an emerging new marketing channel. It’s not paid search, nor organic search, and it’s not social media either. It may be a close cousin to each but it’s a channel in its own right–and it is growing at a fantastic clip.

Trust is the Linchpin

As many of you have already heard in popular search marketing presentations, Google currently functions as every company’s home page. Seventy-two percent of all U.S. searches are done using Google, and people tend to type in branded URL’s even though they could just type it into the address bar to get to the site directly.

Most people trust Google but if you asked these same users if they trust Google’s results, you might elicit a difference response.  For many, trusting Google’s results depends on what they’re searching for compared to what’s presented on the results page.

A recent search for the branded term, Allstate Insurance, for example, yielded 3,210,00 results. Something tells me the majority of these results are bogus, spam, or at least, somewhat insignificant on the relevance scale. So does a Google user trust only the results that appear on page one or should all 3 million+ results be trusted as well?

Compare Google with your own person social network. Most people trust their social network. And this trust seems to be manifesting into actions.

Take a look at these recent statistics that showcase social media’s impact on the retail purchase decision and consumption process:

“60% of consumers are actively involved in generating and sharing buzz.”
- Forrester Research

“80% of consumers say recommendations are the best sources of information.”
- Universal McCann

“Over 90% of consumers say WOM influenced their purchases”
- DoubleClick

Social Search Is Not Paid Search *

• Community is at the heart of the web experience, hence the rise of social media
• Hundreds of these communities are emerging
• And there are thousands of services that help connect these communities and share data amongst these communities
• Brands haven’t been invited into these communities, it’s about individuals
• Brands are trying to figure out how to become part of these communities because they know that effective listening is critical to business success
• Social media advertising is an oxymoron. You can’t buy your way into this club
• Social is not about advertising at all

Social Search Is Not Natural Search

• The big search engines are already playing a role in social search
• Most engines are morphing their algorithms and business models to account social content (Microsoft’s Bing comes to mind)
• Some social networks, like Twitter, have built in search (and user love it)
• New vertical search engines and social listening services are emerging to help people tap into this mountain of real-time, word-of-mouth content that can appear in many formats
• But is social search similar to natural search optimization?
• It’s not about tweaking a web site’s content & code
• It’s not about adding localized content pages to a website
• It’s not link building
• Social is not really about optimization at all

Social Search Is Not Social Media

• Social media is more about testing, influencing and monitoring
• It’s about user-centric conversations
• For companies, activities inlcude actively monitoring brand, reputation, and threats
• It’s also about tracking sentiment and buzz volume over time
• And its also about customer service outreach
• For some companies it’s about sales & promotions too
• But social media is not social search

The Social Web (of Opportunity) Is Huge

From a size & scope standpoint, the social web is already huge (and it’s growing!). It’s made up of content that lives as DATA, which does not necessarily reside on a single, traditional website. Consumers are publishing unprecedented quantities of data across all types of networks, sites, services, and feeds.

And the scary part is that the social web is already impacting opinions, brand perceptions, purchase decisions, along with the public psyche.

Social search can be thought of as the mechanisms used to tap into this emerging mass of trusted knowledge. These mechanisms are a combination of popular search technologies we already know and use today (Google, Bing, etc), new platforms (Hunch, Collecta, Cha Cha, etc.) and intra-search tools that help users navigate the popular social platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, etc).

New types of search engines are entering the fray, allowing users to:

• Conduct real-time searches
• Review conversations, reviews, comments, ratings & tags
• Helps find multimedia content, RSS feeds, blogs, and other web 2.0 content

The big takeaway around social search is the enormous opportunity–and challenge–it presents to companies around the globe. To be successful in social search, businesses must formulate a proactive strategy that directly influences and impacts who, what, where and why certain results are FOUND whenever, wherever, and however a social search is performed.

That’s no easy task. The good news is that nobody has mastered it yet and it will be years before the rules of engagement and optimization best practices are etched into stone.

* Several of the bullet points in the ‘Social Search Is Not Paid Search’ section of this post can be attributed to Rob Key, a panelist at SES NY, March 2008.

Ken Moss is a very smart guy. He led the search engineering team at Microsoft for five years. So why did he, of all people, launch a Twitter search engine known as CrowdEye? Yes, there is a huge demand for identifying, cataloging, monitoring, and just plain making sense of the deep web of conversations and content accessible today online. But a social search engine? Looks like Ken recognized that the social web has reached a tipping point–it’s huge, it’s still growing, and it’s impacting the way people acquire knowledge and make decisions. Social search needs tools to help people find what others are saying.

So what is Social Search anyway? Social search is all about uncovering nuggets of information from real people (like me and you) in multiple formats such as text, video, blog posts, reviews, comments, tags, tweets, pictures, audio, bookmarks, and events. These word-of-mouth exchanges are the new content that is now dominating the web. Try it yourself. Google a major brand and count how many results are company-generated versus consumer generated. One out of eight results, on average, across engines, can usually be attributed to someone other than the firm who controls the brand. This is simply amazing.

Social content tends to be deemed more authentic than prepackaged corporate propaganda–and, thanks to a plethora of easy-to-use web tools and conversation hubs such as Twitter, social participation is booming. The social web is having a MEASURABLE impact on how search works and how consumer behave.

Social content is having so much impact that it’s spawning the next generation of search tools.

Take WhosTalkin? for example. It’s a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations around topics of interest.

Pipl is a people search engine. AT it’s core, social is about personal conversations–so it makes sense for a social engine to search through public records, social sites, and the web to uncover information about individuals.

Collecta is a real-time search engine. Instead of searching ‘old stuff’ like standard web sites, they monitor the update streams of news sites, popular blogs and social media, and Flickr, so they can show you results as they happen.

Then there is Socialmention, a site that allows visitors to search terms around specific categories of the social web such as blogs, comments, etc.

Caterina Fake recently launched Hunch, a tool for finding answers to a wide variety of questions. What makes this tool unique is that it makes decisions based on a database of responses provided by real people–and the results get better the more people use it.

OneRiot is a service that uses a person’s own social network and takes into consideration what’s currently popular within someone’s network when providing search results.

ChaCha has answered 150 million text inquiries/conversational Q&A’s over the past 18 months. ChaCha uses expert guides (in-house staff trained to use their proprietary search tools) to provide answers to any question–mostly via cellular phones.

These new social search engines approach ‘finding results’ in a way that standard search engines don’t offer. From a marketing standpoint, these new generation of social search tools are helpful, but ’social’ is not yet a fully baked channel that can be targeted and optimized. Social is evolving. There are some standards and many variations–making indexing results a real challenge.

Social search is an emerging topic. Many of the tools to find, sort and serve up results are primitive–and the various types of social conversations they do find are not easily placed into context. However, social search is hat our doorstep and it’s evolving very quickly.

So why should social search be at the forefront of of every company’s online marketing strategy?

1. Paid search can only grow and be optimized so far. At some point you reach the point of poor returns (long tail search terms are one example) and paid search cannot be expanded in a way that makes profitable business sense.
2. Natural search tends to be inward-focused, concentrating 80% of its effort and output around website optimization. Companies tend to take a web development approach to SEO by identifying a small cluster of valuable keywords and then optimize the content and code around them. This in and of itself is not a bad thing, but SEO can be so much more. Search engine optimization is about producing relevant, engaging content in multiple formats. It’s about empowering employees and customers to participate in content publishing and syndication. SEO is about about link building. It’s about harnessing feedback. But when SEO is controlled and bottlenecked by an overzealous technology department, marketers are often left with few ways to innovate, expand, and improve organic search results.
3. Social search, on the other hand, is about tapping into the deep web of conversational data exchanges to uncover jewels of knowledge in which to monitor, influence, or act upon. This hidden web presents an enormous challenge and opportunity to marketers because it’s an emerging channel, research are scattered and not easily aggregated and accessible, metrics are emerging and evolving (they are different than traditional search), and how best to join in the social dialog is a hot topic for debate within some companies due to the legal and regulatory risks some belief social media poses.

Like it or not…ready or not…social search is already here. Yes, the onus is on smart marketers to monitor and make sense of it all. But analytical search tools are arriving every day to help makes things easier.

Companies have a choice–they can dive in now and start monitoring their brand reputation, conducting competitive research, identifying opportunistic content marketing through social keyword trends, resolving problems, and even selling by providing unique offers and incentives. Or they can choose to bury their head in the sand and wait for social search to ripen as channel…sitting still as their brands are talked about, hijacked, or even transformed by consumers who are hungry for authentic opinions, insights, news or feedback.

The social web is happening with or without listening to the marketer’s side of the story. The business stage is now set. It’s your move.

If you’re an Average Joe like me, you probably search for your own name using a search engine once and a while to see what pops up in the search results. Call it curiosity or vanity, I would classify it as ’smart sleuthing’ to see how the engines display ‘who you are’ to the world.

The more common your name, however, the more likely YOU may not even appear on page one results. The more unique YOUR name is, or the more active YOU are online, there is an increased chance your name will be served up in the organic results for web, image, news, video, audio, or blog search queries.

There is good news from Google. They have created a new tool to help people JUST LIKE YOU exert greater control over their PERSONAL BRANDS.

Just type ‘me’ into the Google search bar and the first paid result will be a message to ‘create your own profile on Google.’ Having a current Google profile about YOU could help make it easier for people to find YOU versus someone with the same name that isn’t YOU.

Google Profiles is just one small piece of the larger brand-management puzzle, albeit a useful one, and I encourage you to try it.

Google software engineer Brian Stoler recently wrote in a posting at the Internet firm’s website that when searching for yourself on Google to see what others would find, results can be varied and aren’t always what you want people to see.

For example if you type in the name “Nick Lange” you’ll generate some Google search results that are quite disparate.

• Are you the Nick Lange who, according to one forum poster, “BEWARE OF SCAMMER: Nick Lange, aka Nick20, UWisconsin77…DO NOT do business with Nick Lange from Florida!******”
• Or are you the Nick Lange from the 1991 graduating class of Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, CA?
• Or perhaps you are Nick Lange, illusionist, at www.nicklange.com
• And then there is author Nick Lange who posted a very opinionated research paper for the University of Illinois titled, “Interracial Relationships and Korean American Families”

If your name (aka personal brand) was Nick Lange, would you be concerned about what was already out there live on the web? The brand of Nick Lange is not unique. In fact, there are several real (or seemingly real) people all using the same name (brand). In the Internet, real people sharing the same brand can cause headaches for you if they are not managing their brand the way you would like them to. To the unsuspecting searcher, how are they to know one Nick Lange from another?

Besides the real Nick Langes co-opting your brand, anybody could pretend to be you and easily inflict brand havoc if they wanted to. And this scenario doesn’t necessarily cover the identity thieves who are actively trying to steal your persona for financial gain. These evil-doers can also inflict much pain on your brand if you do not catch the intrusions early, and rectify them.

So now that you’ve seen how a simple vanity search can provide valuable insights into how well you’re managing your personal brand and the dangers that may already exist, what are some good pointers for improving or protecting your egosurf results and the BRAND OF YOU? Here are five:

1. Establish your online brand baseline. The brand of you starts with a simple search on Yahoo, Google and MSN. Taking a snapshot of your search results is a great first step in managing your reputation
2. Publish your personal brand. Launch a blog, a resume website, or a personal website all about you could help boost the quality of your unique vanity search results. Better yet, ensure that there are unique image labeled as you, word docs, PDF’s and .ppt files branded you and live on the web, or go so far as to create and publish podcasts, videos, press releases, and the like — as you, about you or authored by you. Search engines don’t just serve up web page results, they serve up results in multiple media formats
3. Take action against online brand fraud or mistakes. If you find that your personal brand has been misused, take action against the site that has posted it. For example, if an unflattering photo of you has been posted on Flickr.com by an old high school buddy, ask that is be taken down or moved to a web service that is login protected so as not to cause you embarrassment
4. Stake your claim on social media sites. Utilize social networks to clone your online persona to be present everywhere. I nice service is KwonEm.com, which can check the availability of your brand across 120 of the most popular social networks. For a small fee they will register your brand on all available social sites on your behalf
5. Be diligent. Check and re-check your egosurf results often to see what others may see when they search for your name or brand. If you are surprised by what you find, imagine what others are thinking! Stay on the offense and you will be much farther ahead of the next guy or gal in managing the valuable brand of you

As many of you already know, Twitter is many things to many people. There seem to be two broad categories of Twitter users: 1) Casual friend & family communicators, 2) Hard core social networkers. Twitter is useful to both groups because it’s real-time, it facilitates connections from unexpected users, it quickly enables the transfer of news & knowledge, it allows people to access a worldwide network for personal expression (the me channel), it’s a mechanism for meeting people (no more excuses for being lonely), and it’s a free exchange for leveraging the wisdom of crowds (research, popular opinion, career advice, etc).

So I was on Twitter a few months ago, just a few weeks after joining, when I noticed some of my followers communicating in a strange two-letter code: RT.

Hmm, I thought to myself. What’s an RT? Run time? Roaming tiger? Right turn?

Retweet Defined
According to several Google search results, RT stands for retweet. Retweeting is simply the act of reposting someone else’s tweet and giving them credit. The person making the retweet is a retweeter. Mystery solved. Or was it? There must be more to this RT thing, I thought. So I set off to RT for myself.

Getting Started
Before you can retweet, there are two things you need to do first: 1) Sign up for your free Twitter account, 2) Identify a tweet you like.

The Twitter sign up process is one of the easiest of all the social networking services. If you are not already on Twitter, take a few minutes to get on board.

Finding a tweet worthy of retweeting is another matter. The organic way to do this is to first start tweeting yourself. After a while, people will start to follow you. You will find their tweets in the main content well on your Twitter home page, post log in. Browse through the conversations. When something sparks your interest, this post is a good candidate for retweeting.

Another method of discovering new tweets is by using the search tool at: http://search.twitter.com/. Type in a topic of interest, such as Academy Awards, and a long list of tweets will suddenly fill your screen.

How to Post a RT
A little more research revealed just what to do next. Apparently, the syntax of your retweet needs to start with the abbreviation, RT. Alternatively, you can spell out the entire word, Retweet, followed by a space, then the user name of the person who first made the tweet, and then finish with the content of the actual tweet (or as much of the content as you can squeeze into the 140 characters allotted).

What Does a Retweet Look Like?
RT @jonsamsel Free PDF book: Writing For Interactive Media. Click the green ‘Read It Now’ button http://www.jonsamsel.com/books

Why Are So Many Retweeting?
I asked three of my Twitter followers about retweeting. Why were they using this odd code in their tweets?

@joerawlinson told me that he started seeing RT in people’s tweets so he Googled to see what it meant. Joe said he retweets when others make a great comment that stands out or when someone shares a link to an interesting article. “My RT usage is really based on what I come across as I see others messages. Maybe once every couple of days. I don’t want my tweets to be all RT’s.”

The one thing Joe dislikes about retweeting is the 140 character limit, which forces him to have to edit other’s messages since their username takes up characters their original tweet didn’t.

@ctomlin said he retweets to: a) Let his network know about something, b) Give credit to the original tweet.

Craig did mention he’d like to see one Twitter one improvement to the RT process: “It would be nice if it could be done via a single click.”

@heatherhuhman explains how and why she retweets. “My first tweet was on November 3, 2008, and my first RT was on November 26, 2008. I RT as often as necessary. It’s not about quantity—it’s about quality. I RT information I truly believe my followers will find interesting and/or beneficial. Most of my followers are internship and entry-level job seekers, many of whom are thinking about careers in public relations, so I RT information relevant to them. I enjoy being able to bring my followers information from sources other than me. I certainly don’t have all the answers, and it’s great to bring other people’s perspectives to the table.

Recently I RTed a blog post by @dmullen about the importance of building relationships with the media in order to place stories. That RT caused a flurry of activity on his blog, as well as prompted people to write about the issue on their own blogs, because it was such a controversial issue. It started an excellent dialog among public relations professionals, and I think we all learned a lot from each other.”

What It Means to Be a Retweeter
The act of retweeting is a lot like adding footnotes to a term paper, or publicly recognizing a helpful co-worker on a large team project. It’s good karma, proper manors, goodwill. Your social capital is enhanced on Twitter every time you retweet because your network sees you as someone who recognizes and acknowledges others—someone who is selfless, willing to take the spotlight off of themselves for the betterment of the community. Retweeting does have many upsides.

The Power of RT’s
In previous blog posts I have written about the Twitter Effect and the huge impact that social networking is having on WOM marketing. Retweets are a fun part of this phenomenon because they’re more powerful than your average tweet. A retweet means someone’s tweet has received a stamp of approval from another person, and that person was willing to share this with their followers. A portion of these followers will, in turn, retweet again to members of their community. And so on, and so on. As you can see, retweets have the potential of spreading fast, far and wide—to the nth degree.

Monitoring Retweets
Wonder how many folks are retweeting your tweets? It’s nice to keep tabs on who’s retweeting you and the topics that are of interest to them. Not only is this a good way to learn more about your followers, but it can help you identify the key influencers in your network.

There are several ways to monitor your retweets. First, try using the Twitter search tool again:

http://search.twitter.com

Only this time, your query should be: RT @yourtwitterusername. You can also try: RT yourtwitterusername. This result may include a wider net of retweeters infamiliar witht he proper way to RT, plus ot will inlude all the retweets you have posted for others.

Emerging RT monitoring tools include retweet radar, which helps users discover trends in the mountains of information ‘retweet’ed on Twitter, Retweetist, a service that ranks the hottest links being retweeted as well as the most retweeted people on Twitter, and re.twitd.com, a service that track the most retweeted tweets.

Baa baa TwitterSheep, have you any wool, er, tag clouds?

Ever wonder what your Twitter network of followers would look like as tag cloud? Well now you can transform your Twitter friends into visual cluster tags in a folksonomy, using the free social indexing tool, TwitterSheep.

Twittersheep takes your Twitter username, pulls your follower list, then analyzes each of your follower’s bios to generate a unique tag cloud displaying commonalities. The most common words/interests are displayed in large type.

What’s the value here? Bragging rights, of course! Compare your TwitterSheep flock to those of your friends and colleagues to see who is more of an authority on any given subject. The clouds are also just fun to look at (social eye candy).

But there could be other uses. Imagine if some upstart dating website integrated TwitterSheeps into their user profile database. Members could search according to tag cloud compatibility, or they could hyperlink to people they were interested in dating based on unforseen commonalities.

Twittersheeps could add a feature to their website that automatically generated a new tag cloud on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, then allow users to compile a time-lapse montage of their evolving social history. Of course, Twittersheep could be expanded to other social platforms so that users could generate a broader and more accurate view of their true social sphere. Start with Facesheep, then expand to LinkedSheep and then launch MySpaceSheep. Or just roll them all up into a single unified service and call it SocialSheep.

The possbilities are endless. Perhaps that’s part of reason why so many of us are entranced by everything social media—there are so many exciting possibilities all around us.

Thanks to @runnrgrl via Twitter who turned me on to this handy Twitter tool.

Here is what my flock of 477 Twitter followers @jonsamsel looks like:

Recently I had the good fortune to meet and chat with Jess Roberts, president of iRecruitMedia, an interactive media recruiting firm who’s goal is to help leverage their industry knowledge and strong work ethic to bring the most talented professionals to the companies that need them. Jess says his team focuses on the interactive media arena—helping small-to-medium sized, high technology and fast-paced growth companies in the branding, gaming, convergence, mobile web, interactive and digital media space.

I assume a recruiter needs to stay well connected. Any networking insights or best practices you can share?

Roberts: Talk to everyone. I have a huge network of people that I stay connected to. I’m not just talking LinkedIn or other social sites. I’m talking real people, real networking. The best advice that I can give anyone is to not think that you’re above anyone else or that just because a person isn’t your “target” that the person isn’t valuable. Also, don’t make it all about you. If you’re only trying to expand your network to just benefit you, you’re not doing it the right way. Honestly be about helping other people.

What type of employment positions do you focus on—and why this niche?

Roberts: I’m focused on interactive media, mobile web/applications, and gaming. It’s an industry that not only do I love it, but I believe in it. I’m huge video game fan myself. I love to watch my kids light up when they’re online playing on NickJr. When I see my 4 year old working the keyboard and mouse like a pro, it makes me smile.

I work with my clients for whatever they need. It’s typically something in the sales or technology areas. I love being able to bring a person that has been over quota for the last few years but is looking for a company that values him as a person to a company that establishing a foot hold in the market place and is looking for the person that can help get them there.

What are some recent positions you have filled—title and pay ranges?

Roberts: Here are a few examples:

• Interactive Account Managers – Base $100K – OTE $250K
• Director of IT – Base $110K
• Systems Analyst – Base $79K
• Account Executives – Base $85,500k – OTE $175K
• HTML Markup Coder – Base $66K
• SEO Marketing Expert – Base $77K
• Interactive Creative Director – Base $73K

Do you have any recommendations for job candidates in your niche looking to increase their chances of getting hired?

Roberts: Don’t just randomly submit your resumes to companies. Work with a recruiter to put together a game plan. Hiring managers and HR are getting slammed with resumes everyday from tons of people that are not qualified for the positions that they are applying for. Find a recruiter that will spend the time to get to know you and what you are looking for and have a good enough relationship with their clients or can develop a relationship to get quick and pointed feedback.

Do you utilize any of the professional social networking platforms such as LinkedIn or Plaxo—and if so, how do they help you do your job?

Roberts: I utilize LinkedIn a good bit. It has helped me to keep a finger on the pulse of my industry. I also belong to a few industry specific networking sites and groups that allow me to keep my sights cleaned.

What sets me apart for other recruiters including internal ones is the fact that I’m pounding the pavement everyday and working with the latest skill sets all the time just in this industry. Staying in touch with other people in the industry helps keep me fresh. LinkedIn is a great tool for that.

In your opinion, how can job seekers benefit from social networking? In what way–how?

Roberts: I think that job seekers have to be careful in social networking. They would want to be sure that any profile they have on the web represents them in a positive fashion. Employers and recruiters are starting to check the Facebook and MySpace worlds in reference checking. If you’ve got pictures of you hanging upside down from the lights of your office, it may not be a good thing.

I think that social networking sites can help candidates to keep up with what companies are doing and make great research tools before an interview.

What would you like people to know about you that may not be apparent until someone gets to know you?

Roberts: I like to have fun with this and everything else I do. I’m not the guy that’s going to call you and read off of some script. I’m real. I don’t try to do fancy sales talk or B.S. clients or candidates. I’m a bit on the goofy side and will probably have you cracking up before we hang up the phone. The reason why is that I want to be a breath of fresh air for everyone. Look, I’m the CEO of my business. I have employees and a business to run. I understand how busy you are during the day and that you get tired of hearing the same old story from the hundreds of recruiters that call.

My goal is to be the one recruiter out there that can make a difference to a company.

Contact:
Jess Roberts
President, iRecruitMedia
http://www.irecruitmedia.com
jroberts@irecruitmedia.com
Ph: 866-933-6019

The Company Profiles feature on LinkedIn is a cool research and networking tool (in BETA) that helps users gain some keen insights into what companies are all about, what’s happening within those firms, and who within these companies you should consider connecting to. Since LinkedIn tracks so many types of inter-related pieces of information on their system, they are in a unique position to find trends in the work history of users and identifying connections between companies. According to LinkedIn, “[Company Profiles] information was aggregated from non-personally identifiable data of LinkedIn users who are currently employed by this company. This data only reflects estimates about this company’s employees and is not endorsed or provided by the company.”

Getting to the tool is easy. In the top navigation bar on LinkedIn, click on the ‘Companies’ tab. You can locate companies by keyword, country, zip code, by name or browse by industry. Once you’ve located a company you are interested in (in my case, eBay) you are ready to start spelunking all that Company Profiles has to offer.

So what’s so great about Company Profiles? LinkedIn quickly calls out the social movers and shakers within any given firm, how far away these people are from you—2nd degree, 3rd degree, and who they are likely to be employed by next (aka their extended career path). Company Profiles shows you the names of people who recently joined a company, what type of positions are most common with that company, and the gender mix of employees at that firm. LinkedIn’s Company Profiles feature can be leveraged to locate these data sets, and more.

It is true that some data in Company Profiles is not 100% accurate from a research point of view (the feature relies on members and partners for some of its data). But as a social networking tool, the interconnected data trends that LinkedIn provides are robust in and of themselves. Plus, the information is free for you to leverage as you see fit.

Company Profiles Can Help You Network in Five Easy Ways

Company Profiles helps you better leverage your most valuable LinkedIn asset: your personal connections. Through Company Profiles, your former, current, and potential colleagues and their connections can become valuable access points for you to capitalize on. Company Profiles can help you:

1. Find a new job
2. Secure new clients or assignments
3. Conduct competitive research
4. Identify business partnership opportunities
5. Spot the most socially connected employees at any given firm (the influencers)

Find a New Job

Company Profiles provides a list of all the LinkedIn users in your network (up to 3 degrees away from you) who currently work at a given company. LinkedIn users who have recently joined a given company are also displayed. Recent promotions or changes to positions are listed, along with the most popular positions held across the company. If you are a job hunter, what a great resource this is tap into!

For example, let’s say you are seeking a project manager position at eBay. By using the Company Profiles feature on LinkedIn, today you would discover:

• 2% of eBay’s 10,000+ employees have jobs relating to project management (so this company does need your services)
• Most people at eBay work out of San Francisco (if you live in the Bay Area, this would be a good company to consider working for)
• The number of current eBay employees you know or are connected to (they may know eBay managers who are hiring, and perhaps they can even recommend you for a job)
• There are 7 divisions within eBay that might also be hiring project managers (PayPal, Shopping.com, Half.com, StubHub, mobile.de & eBay Motors GmbH, ProStores and Skype).

Landing a new job is never easy—and it helps if you are searching while still gainfully employed. LinkedIn should be considered as one of your first job hunting resources. It’s not a job search and resume submission site per se, but by utilizing its social networking tools, you can read about new positions being offered and who you might know that can open a door or two for you. The rest is up to you.

Secure New Clients or Assignments

Okay, so you are a graphic designer, freelance writer, salesperson or perhaps you’re a technology consultant trolling LinkedIn looking to drum up new business. Where do you start? How can you harness Company Profiles to secure an assignment or a new client without being perceived as a networking marketing leech?

Two words: Research wisely. The one thing Company Profiles does well is help users sort and search for relevant data, quickly and easily.

Here are a few suggested next steps:

• Use Company Profiles to search the industries you’re most interested in working with
• Locate the employers, experts and customers you most want to talk to
• See who you know at your target companies, or who in your network can introduce you to them
• Ask questions or exchange ideas with like-minded people (join a group and participate in a discussion). By tapping into a broad network on what you can offer and what you are looking for, you may be impressed by the number and quality of replies/referrals

Conduct Competitive Research

The company descriptions within Company Profiles are provided to LinkedIn by Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor’s, a company that provides financial research and analytical solutions to over 2,400 investment banks, fund managers, and corporations. Besides a company overview section, key statistics such as headquarter locations, industry type, type of company, size, revenue, year founded and a link to their website is also included.

The above-mentioned fields of information are valuable in their own right, but combined with some of the related social networking information provided, the context of this research data can be exploited to achieve your desired goals.

Identify Business Partnership Opportunities

LinkedIn is a business person’s best friend. It takes your personal business network online, giving you access to people, jobs and opportunities like never before. It’s your 24/7 electronic rolodex!

LinkedIn’s motto is clear: Connect the world’s professionals to accelerate their success. Built upon trusted connections and relationships, LinkedIn has established the world’s largest and most powerful business network. Currently, over 34 million professionals are on LinkedIn, representing all five hundred of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as a wide range of brands across dozens of industries.

So how does one go about leveraging Company Profiles to partner and do business with other firms? The key is to be proactive, but smart about approaching potential business partners. One of the big misconceptions about LinkedIn is that it takes too much time to master and that it’s ineffective. Wrong! LinkedIn really works. The key is not waiting around for others to come to you—you need to reach out to others in a classy, respectful and compelling way. Don’t be a business wallflower. Introduce yourself to those you don’t already know, or ask people to introduce you to contacts of theirs that can assist you. You’ll be glad you did, as most LinkedIn users are members for the same reason—to accelerate their business careers.

Let’s take my profile for example. As of January 27, 2009, I had 437 connections linking me to 4,577,100+ professionals on LinkedIn. That’s a pretty large pool of potential business partners to reach out to. I might start my prospecting efforts by searching Company Profiles for companies in need of my products and services, then look to see how many current and ex employees are in my connected network. I would start with those I know directly (1st), then move on to those I know indirectly (2nd, 3rd, etc). I would have my hands full with prospective partner contacts in no time. Then it would be up to me own pitch and follow through as a means to secure new business.

Spot the Influencers

Popular profiles can be found in the Company Profiles section of LinkedIn. These are users who are spotlighted because they are actively updating their profile, being referenced in Q&A’s, getting email solicitations, participating in industry groups, using embedded tools, and/or frequently the result of searches and other activities within the LinkedIn network. According to LinkedIn, “users who appear on this list have the most profile views at their company.”

Why is important to identify and communicate with the key influencers related to your line of work or interest? Influencers can create buzz around your product or service, and they can open up unforeseen opportunities for you. By tapping into their social equity and by engaging in word of mouth marketing on your behalf, social influencers can boost awareness and transfer some of their social capital to you.

Brand advocacy fuels business growth—and it can be more important and effective than brand awareness or satisfaction. Influencers can help influence the business decisions, and the purchase decisions of others because what influencers have to say is generally trusted more than other sources.

Some assertive social influencers such as TopLinked LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers) have figured out how to harness The Hawthorne Effect, which involves getting others to participate in trialing, testing, reviewing and suggesting improvements to whatever they are working on—a product, business concept, website design, media plan, start-up venture, and the like. The theory goes that collaborative participation inevitably makes everyone positively disposed to the subject at hand, and those with whom you engage end up among its biggest champions. LIONs and other social media influencers have figured out how to tap into, exploit and share this new form of network marketing—hypertext magnetism so to speak.

Now that you can start to see the benefit of following, communicating and befriending the most socially connected employees at any given firm—it’s time to network with them. Keep in mind that first impressions are everything. Don’t contact an influencer until you are sure you have something worthy to talk about—and to offer. Poor first impressions could have a lasting negative impact…so be careful.

Here is an amazing statistic for you to digest: LinkedIn has over 34 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world. In fact, a new member joins LinkedIn every second of every day! If you’ve ever wondered how to harness the power of Linkedin to grow your social sphere, land a job, promote your company, whatever—then this article might provide you with a few actionable ideas to propel you forward.

Here are seven simple ways to leverage LinkedIn to expand your social network:

1. Create a robust profile. It’s really important to take the time to make your LinkedIn profile as detailed as possible. Yeah, it’s a hassle, especially since you can’t simply upload your resume and pre-populate LinkedIn’s forms with the click of the mouse. But once you fill everything out, your profile can act as a 24/7 beacon that attracts other LinkedIn users to you. For example, by listing the fraternity you were a member of in college or by including the sport you played, skills you’ve acquired, or awards you’ve won—you increase your odds that a person browsing your profile with find a common interest. This, in turn, will make it easier for them to reach out to you because now the two of you have a common frame of reference from which to start a dialog.

Updating your Reading List is another way you can round out your profile (although this is officially a LinkedIn tool or application (more on this later). This tool is easy to use and it’s one more way for people to get to know you through the books you enjoy and recommend.

Whenever I am on LinkedIn looking for people to connect with, I love it when I find a common bond or interest with someone I don’t yet know. I often include this tidbit of information in my letter of introduction to them. This method has been successful for me 90% of the time.

2. Share the now. Why not describe what you are working on right now, or what you are looking for—LinkedIn makes this easy to do. Describe the type of project you are toiling away at. Or the type of customer you hope to land next. Or even the ideal job you are looking for. Simply update the LinkedIn profile tool that asks, ‘What are you working on?’ Update this as often as often as possible. Think of this feature as a mini-Twitter on LinkedIn (only not nearly as robust and powerful).

This is an easy profile update feature that serves two important purposes:

• It informs your network what you are doing right now. If what you are doing is of interest to them, you are likely to hear from them right away. People generally know this is the closest thing to a real-time content post you will see on linked in, and people often chime in on what you have to say since it feels like they are responding to what you’ve posted. Try it and see. Of course, it helps if you have enough people in your network to begin with!

• LinkedIn posts the ‘what you’re working on now’ post in their status update feed, which functions as a newsfeed and populates this information across your existing network—increasing the odds that someone will notice what you are doing and engage a dialog with you.

3. Add connections. This is where LinkedIn has made ‘connecting your network’ easy. You have a choice of inviting contacts one by one, importing contacts from Microsoft Outlook or from your webmail accounts such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail, or even connect with past or present colleagues/classmate by viewing a list of individuals already using LinkedIn. This single connectivity feature will help jumpstart your LinkedIn connections like no other.

4. Join a group. Better yet, join lots of groups that are of interest to you. You may not get accepted into all of the groups you solicit, but try anyway (many groups require that you have a background related to the group’s charter…again a robust profile listing listing all your experience will aid you here). Joining a group is free and there is nothing to lose by participating. I have found that by becoming a member of a group, you immediately increase your odds of meeting people with common interests. And by reading and engaging in the group’s discussions, you can learn about the people, issues and subjects that are of interest to participants.

5. Offer something of value/Give of yourself. Help someone in a group by answering a question or contributing to a discussion topic. Not only does this show good will on your part, but this act of giving has a positive ripple effect on your LinkedIn network that may surprise you. For example, yesterday I answered a question posted by a member of the LinkEds & writers group who inquired about getting a literary agent. I provided some brief advice, plus included a link to a few articles on my blog that were related to the topic. From this simple act of helping this one LinkedIn user, here is the impact I have been able to measure so far (in a single day, mind you):

• 3 new LinkedIn connections
• 1 invitation to join a related group by the host
• 17 visits to my blog
• 2 favorable blog comments left by satisfied readers
• 1blog comment asking if I’d be interested in being interview for a new non-fiction book being written by an writer in the UK
• 2 new links to by blog
• 3 Delicious referrals to my blog
• 4 Twitter referrals to my blog
• 2 StumbleUpon referrals to my blog
• 1 kind message from an editor at a major national magazine thanking me for ‘pointing the group to these helpful resources’

Not too shabby considering I only answered a single question for a single person on LinkedIn. Multiply this by 10 times and you can quickly see how the act of giving can have a huge impact on your social networking goals.

6. Include your contact info. I am continually surprised by the number of LinkedIn users do not include their contact information for all to see (phone #, email address, website URL, blog link—include all or a cobination of contact methods, whatever you are comfortable posting). LinkedIn has become this generation’s Rolodex. It’s not enough to simply post you profile. You need to make it easy for people to get in touch with you.

For example, by not including your email address in plain view on your profile page, it may be hard for someone to add you to their network (LinkedIn will ask how this person knows you and if they select ‘other’ they will be prompted to submit your email address—if they don’t have it, the request can be denied). By including a link to your blog or company website, a LinkedIn user can visit your site at a later date and time when it’s most convenient to them.

7. Add an application (or two). LinkedIn has teamed up with premier companies to embed their applications into your profile. Connect your Wordpress blog, collaborate with Huddle workspaces, display your Slideshare presentations, and even display your current location, upcoming trips and travel stats via TripIt. Getting started is pretty simple. You’ll be able to install and use your new applications in only a few seconds.

Now that you’ve read all about expanding your LinkedIn social network by utilizing some simple pointers, try them out for yourself. I am confident that within a few days or weeks, you’ll start seeing results.

Keep in mind that results are subjective. Some people just want to connect with old friends and colleagues on LinkedIn and they are not trying to grow a large social network. Others are trying to utilize LinkedIn to promote their company/blog, land a new job, or generate new clients. And then there are others who aspire to become a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION) with 2500+ connections.

Whatever your ultimate goal, keep in mind that as your LinkedIn network grows, you may experience ancillary benefits too, such as increase visits to your blog, business partnership opportunities, guest speaking offers, ReTweets, inquiries from recruiters, a ‘hello’ email from a prior romantic interest, and more. You’ll never know what’s possible until you try.

What type of website experience causes visitors to come back repeatedly? Great ones! Oh, if creating awesome website were only that easy, we’d all have one. Right?

While tactical approaches to designing websites vary widely, successful web strategies are based on a few simple principles –– something I first wrote about nine years ago in a book I co-authored with Laurie Windham about doing business online. In that book, “Dead Ahead: The Web Dilemma and the New Rules of Business,” Laurie and I warned businesses that they needed to fulfill the demands of their site visitors, or face their wrath.

The four demands of the empowered customer are:

1. Give me what I need when I need it
2. Don’t waste my time
3. Give me meaningful content, not fluff
4. Don’t exploit me

When you factor the demands of the empowered customer together, you realize that people want a Holistic Experience that is based on their interpretation of the rules. Playing on that concept, a Holistic Website integrates marketing, sales and customer usage activities to enable shopping, buying, receiving, and consuming –– in one cohesive site. It puts the user in the center of the universe, anticipating, stimulating and facilitating their behavior. It fulfills the promise of the company’s value proposition by satisfying user needs.

Companies who can combine these holistic insights with solid user centric design and testing will find themselves much better prepared to develop a website that truly delights their customers.