Monthly Archives: July 2009

Why small brands are kicking butt with Facebook ads

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Most Facebook users have seen their fair share of irrelevant or inappropriately targeted ads show up in the sidebar (perhaps none as notorious as the man who saw his wife’s picture next to a Facebook dating ad). Most of the time I ignore the ads and don’t go through the trouble to “thumbs down” an ad and give a reason.

Lately, however, I’ve started to notice more and more genuinely good ads. They aren’t coming from huge brands with big budgets, either. Small organizations looking for an inexpensive way to precisely target audiences are turning to Facebook. Check out this ad that was served up to me earlier in the week:

FBad1

This ad worked for me because it was:

  1. Local: It somewhat startled me to see the town of East Greenbush mentioned in an ad. I thought, “Hey, I know where that is!”
  2. Relevant: I like going to plays and the theater. I had updated my Facebook status last week before heading in to a play at a different local theater, so Facebook knows it’s something I like to do. It wasn’t an ad for a local Monster Truck Derby.
  3. Quaint: Perhaps not the best term, but it was kind of refreshing to see an ad from a small, local organization versus big national brands. I had been getting sick of Facebook ads pushing summer blockbusters or TV shows or “Become a Fan of Megabrand X.”

I would likely never have heard about this production had it not been for the Facebook ad. I’d actually never heard of the organization (The Spotlight Players) putting on the play before until I saw this ad. It caused me to do a little searching and it turns out the organization, a small community theater group, doesn’t even have a Web site. Just about its entire online presence is via Facebook. They have a great fan page that includes several photo albums of previous productions and they use the wall to announce calls for auditions and post links to reviews. The page has 137 fans, which is pretty decent for a niche theater group that caters to a small suburban town.

I’m sure the Spotlight Players also take advantage of many traditional means of promoting shows (community calendar announcements in local newspapers, flyers, etc.) but since I don’t live in the specific community where they operate I’m unlikely to see those. Facebook ads are an easy and inexpensive way for them to expand their geographic reach and hopefully increase attendance at their productions.

Social media isn’t just for big companies and big brands with unlimited budgets. Nor is it only for organizations that have dedicated marketing staff or social media “expertise.” I doubt that The Spotlight Players have much of a budget at all and probably no dedicated marketing team or “social media experts” in their organization. Still, they’ve figured out an effective way to get the word out about who they are and what they do.

Last week I didn’t even know The Spotlight Players existed. Thanks to their Facebook efforts, I just may be going to see The Producers this weekend.

3 reasons even “social media types” still need a resume

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Remember Elle Woods and her scented, pink-paper resume in Legally Blonde? She’d be an anomoly today, as most people don’t print paper resumes anymore. But despite lamentations that “Google is the new resume” or “Resumes are useless in the Internet age,” you still need one if you plan to apply for a position at a large company. Even a social media position.

While those of us who blog, tweet, post, message and tag each other all day long would like to think that our online presence is enough to stand on its own as a testament to how smart and savvy we are, the human resources department is still going to want you to submit a formal application, which often includes uploading a resume. If you’re trying to land a job with a funky little start-up or a tiny shop with a handful of employees, then the resume matters less and all of your other online work will likely be a bigger factor. But if you’re looking for a job with a big brand or company, have it ready.

I’ve worked very closely with the HR department in some of my previous jobs, so I’ve had the chance to observe some of the machinations that go along with trying to hire someone at a large company. Here are three reasons why, no matter how sexy your blog, Posterous, Facebook page, LinkedIn profile or “personal brand’ might be, you still need to have a resume:

1. Your blog can’t be entered into a corporate resume database

There are several reasons big corporations use resume database-systems like BrassRing or HireGround. Probably the most important one is compliance. In order to be in compliance with myraid hiring laws with acronyms like OFCCP, EEO, and FLSA, companies with more than 100 employees need to show ratios of applicants to interviewees to hires, show that they have consistent hiring practices across the company, and show that they actively sought out diverse candidates.

Making each candidate go through an online hiring system, which usually includes a resume upload and screening questions, allows for easy data collection for compliance purposes. Companies can’t run your blog or Google profile through its screening processes when it comes time to file compliance reports each year.

2. The first cut of candidates may be made by someone who doesn’t know what a blog is

Often an HR associate sorts through the company resume database– sometimes arbitrarily, sometimes by keyword– to find an initial group of candidates to screen. This is where networking is huge. If you submit your resume online, it can be a total crapshoot whether it even gets viewed. But if you know the hiring manager or someone who can pass your resume along and help it move to the top of the pile, you’re in a much better position.

In all likelihood, however, the HR associate probably isn’t going to find and read your blog. It would be extremely time consuming to do that for each candidate in an initial screen. They may check you out on Google or LinkedIn in a cursory manner, but their goal is to fill the role as quickly as possible. That’s their metric. So unless someone tells them to flag your resume, you’re at the mercy of whether or not you appear in the database search results (so make sure you have the appropriate keywords in your resume).

3. Many companies still aren’t comfortable with social media for the hiring process

The mere fact that a company would hire for a social media position is a step in the right direction, but if they’re looking for someone with expertise in the area, it’s because they lack it. The hiring manager may not know where or how to start screening candidates based on their social presence. Should they be looking for quantity or quality of blog posts? Does number of Twitter followers matter? How many LinkedIn connections should the candidate have? Why aren’t they on FriendFeed? What is FriendFeed? Corporate HR and hiring managers are used to resumes, comfortable with resumes, and still expect resumes. They’re not quite sure yet how to integrate social media into established hiring practices.

Even a company like BestBuy, ahead of the curve on social media adoption, didn’t quite know how to structure a traditional job posting for its Emerging Media Manager role. Kudos to them for reaching out to the community and crowdsourcing ideas for key skills and requirements for the position. But anyone who applies  for the role must do so by submitting an application and uploading a resume via BestBuy’s corporate career site.

Yes, it would be great if someday we could all just let our work stand on its on merit wherever it happens to live online and not have to put together verbose and formal resumes. You certainly should mention and even highlight your online outposts on your resume (at least your blog and LinkedIn profile), and as you move further along in the hiring process there’s a greater chance that someone in the hiring process will take the time to look at your work. Just don’t expect the traditional resume to disappear any time soon.

A new look for Mengel Musings

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If you’re reading this post in a feed reader, stop! Click over to the site right now and check out my new design. I purchased the Thesis theme for WordPress about a month ago and have been mired in CSS and PHP mods for the last month trying to come up with a fresh look for the site. I’m pretty happy with the result and I hope you all like it.

In addition to wanting to upgrade to a theme that allowed for more flexibility and customization and better SEO, I also wanted to give the blog a more professional look as I start to take on more freelance work and consulting projects. I’ve rearranged my work schedule such that I have more time for these kinds of opportunities now, so you’ll notice the consulting tab above. If your organization could benefit from some brainstorming on marketing, PR or social media strategies, please contact me (there’s a tab for that, too).

I’ve also spelled-out a comment policy and moved the site’s archive from the sidebar to its own page. The SMB-TV link above is where I’ll continue to post updates about Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley (I’m close to nailing down the details of our second SMB).

So what do you think? Take a look around and let me know how else I can improve.

Thanks for coming along with me on this blogging adventure for the last six months. I appreciate all the comments, feedback, tweets, links and just general love. You guys are the best!

Michael Arrington isn’t a journalist

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Twitter Boxing GlovesIf you’ve been obsessed with the Tour de France and haven’t been checking any other media outlets this week (raises hand), you may have missed the Internet scandal/dust-up/spat of the week between Michael Arrington at TechCrunch and the boys at Twitter. It’s been blogged to death, so I’ll keep this one short.

The :20 second summary is that a hacker got access to Twitter’s corporate Google accounts, got hold of a bunch of confidential documents about Twitter’s strategic plan and financials, e-mailed them to TechCrunch, and Arrington published (some of) them. Ev, Jack and Biz at Twitter cried foul and are getting lawyers involved. Many people have denounced Arrington’s decision as unethical. He’s keeping some of the documents suppressed (for now) at Twitter’s request.

Guy Kawasaki (seriously, this is the most name-dropping post I’ve ever written) slapped up a copy of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics up on his Posterous page last night, circling the following tenet:

Journalists should avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public. Use of such methods should be explained as part of the story

But, let’s all remember that bloggers, like Arrington, aren’t journalists. They don’t operate under a professional code of ethics. they don’t report to an editor or publisher who tells them what to write about or what they can or can’t reveal. Many of them are ethical, many of them are former journalists, many of them would have chosen not to publish the documents.

Credibility is what’s keeping traditional media alive. Readers respect and trust publications and news outlets that do operate under a code of ethics like SPJ’s. This may be a short-term win for Arrington, but over time stunts like this are going to erode (what’s left of) reader’s respect for TechCrunch.

From the standpoint of a PR professional or a corporate communicator, we can’t forget that bloggers operate under their own rules. They aren’t necessarily motivated by the truth or by serving the public or by being objective.

We can’t count on them doing the right thing.

Image via Flickr user KayVee.INC

Don’t feed the Twitter spammers

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I saw a tweet from @RohitBhargava this afternoon that gave me pause:

rohitbhargava

Rohit’s definitely on the money in that often the people who offer the most value on Twitter are the ones who actually interact, engage and respond. I love getting replies from followers and discovering new people that way.

But I don’t think I want to automate any sort of follow-back.  I’m actually not in favor of automating much of anything on Twitter, but I’m especially wary of trying to auto follow-back those who reply to me, because unfortunately, reply spam is quickly becoming the hottest form of spam on Twitter.

I’ve been seeing too many unsolicited “click my junk” replies. Sometimes these can be cleverly disguised to look like they’re tweets that were genuinely intended for me until I click over to the sender’s Twitter page to see an entire stream of identical messages aimed at different users. Check out @ShapiroHealth:

Shapiro Health Twitter Spam

At least with reply spam it’s pretty easy to view the user’s page and see pretty quickly whether they’re worth your time or not (unlike spam direct messages). @ShapiroHealth is clearly not, but this account has more than 800 followers! I’m sure that most are due to auto-follows, because honestly, what value does this account provide?

Auto-following just allows more opportunity for spammers to game the system. I understand the reasons why many people employ an auto-follow strategy and follow-back anyone who follows them, but it’s not what works for me. Like Rohit, I’d love to be sure I’m following back all the people who are reaching out to me and interacting through replies. But I think I’ll continue to make my own decisions instead of automating follow-backs to @ replies and giving the spammers an easy target.

What are your thoughts? Would you use an auto follow-back service for @ replies? Have you noticed more reply spam? Do you ignore it, block it, respond? Let me know in the comments.