Tag Archives: youtube

Luring ‘Specialized’ candidates through social HR

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I’m really fortunate to be in a job that I love at a company that’s a great fit for me. But so many people in a variety of industries and careers are struggling right now to find a job — and they also want to make sure it’s the right job. Likewise, companies want to hire the best candidates who can get the work done but who also fit in with the company culture. Often this matchmaking is difficult because each side doesn’t effectively articulate what it’s looking for — especially on the company side.

Sure, plenty of corporate sites have dry and bland “Careers” sections that give a few paragraphs on the company environment with (sometimes stock) photos of happy looking people in generic conference rooms. Then they dump the job seeker into a dizzying maze of job search queries (function, business unit, department, location, etc.).

If finding the right talent is so important to companies, why are so few taking advantage of social media and other avenues to help them communicate to job seekers what they’re looking for? It’s fairly quick and easy these days to add context to a careers Web site and give candidates a lot more information about what to expect.

One company that is doing it right is Specialized (Disclaimer 1: I’m a loyal Jamis rider. But the Tarmac is one sexy bike. Disclaimer 2: Team Saxo Bank rides Specialized and I love Frank Schleck). The most prominent feature on the Careers section of its Web site? Videos. Embedded from YouTube, these videos interview employees and describe some of the interesting benefits Specialized employees receive. You get a nice sense of not only what the company offers, but also what the people who work there are like.

What’s most impressive is this video interview with Specialized’s director of HR. She tells candidates exactly what the company is looking for and what job seekers need to do to land a gig there:

She answers the real questions that most job seekers want to know. What kind of people are you looking for? What do you want to see in a cover letter? What are the steps in the hiring process? How can I impress you in the interview?

Specialized could have easily listed out this information on its site, but the video interview makes a much greater impact. What’s more, the videos on the site can be easily shared and linked to. Maybe a job seeker realizes that the company isn’t a good fit for him or her, but knows of someone who would be great at Specialized. A few clicks and that person can post a link to the YouTube video to a friend’s Facebook page.

Companies don’t have to dive headlong into a social media strategy before they’re ready, but quick hits like this are a relatively easy way to connect with an audience in a more personal and engaging way.

Making demand out of nothing at all

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Aaaaand, we’re back. Between a trip to Florida, visiting my family for Thanksgiving, and a nasty cold I’ve been fighting for about a week, my Musings have been limited. So while I passed on opportunities to blog about Who/What I’m Thankful For, Black Friday, World AIDS Day, and Tiger Woods, I’m jumping back into the icy blogging waters with a post on a very important topic.

Robotic Hamsters.

Like Furbies and Tickle Me Elmos of years past, robotic hamsters from Zhu Zhu Pets are, apparently, the hot holiday toy this season.The only conclusion I can draw from this is that nothing short of absolute marketing brilliance is behind Zhu Zhu Pets. ROBOTIC HAMSTERS, people! (It gets better. The name of the most popular model? Mr. Squiggles. You can’t make this stuff up).

I’ve written about fads before, and how a meteoric rise to popularity is usually followed by spectacular flame-out. But fads can tell us something about demand creation. Obviously (hopefully?) children weren’t wandering around saying, “You know what I really wish I had? What would make my life complete? A robotic hamster.” I doubt any focus groups would have revealed a latent need for Mr. Squiggles. So how did Zhu Zhu Pets do it?

For one, they started with exclusivity. Back in May, the company launched the toys only in the Phoenix market. They gave away free robotic hamsters at an Arizona Diamondbacks game. They selected local moms to host hamster-themed parties with games, activities, and opportunities for kids to built hamster habitats and play with the toys. They sent the toys to day care centers and hospitals in the Phoenix area. Phoenix-based mommy bloggers wrote about the toys and posted videos to YouTube. Somewhere in there the company changed the name from Go Go Pets to Zhu Zhu Pets. The word-of-mouth avalanche soon followed, laying the foundation for a national launch.zhu zhu pets robotic hamsters

And here we are, six months later, with a national hamster shortage on our hands.

Zhu Zhu Pets will likely not, if history is any indication, be able to sustain the holiday hype into long-term sales and growth (I would expect that the robotic hamster market is finite). But no doubt the company will make a good buck this year, so good on them.

I can only imagine what untapped demand will surface in 2010. Robotic field mice?

Update: A California-based consumer group is now claiming these furry automatons have unsafe levels of the chemical antimony (not to be confused with antipathy). Zhu Zhu Pets is denying the toys are unsafe. More from CNN.

What baby names can teach us about viral marketing

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hello-my-name-is_mIf you were born in the 1980s, how many Jennifers and Jasons did you go to school with? A lot, right? And then gradually, those names fell out of favor and were replaced by Ashley, Aidan, Madison, Ethan. Jennifer and Jason don’t even make the top 50 anymore. Other names have been more consistently popular, however. Think Michael, Daniel, Elizabeth.

What’s this got to do with marketing? Well, a new study looked at the speed at which baby names rose to popularity and also how quickly they declined. It turns out names that skyrocket to popularity are also fastest to fall into obscurity. The same behavioral drivers surrounding baby naming can translate into product and brand adoption. According to the study’s authors:

Fads tend to be viewed negatively, the authors point out. “And if people think that sharply increasing [popularity] will be short lived, they may avoid such items to avoid doing something that may later be seen as a flash in the pan.”

The paper points to examples in the music industry of new artists who bolt to the top of sales charts, but realize lower overall sales than those whose popularity grows more slowly. “This seemingly counterintuitive finding has important implications. One is that faster adoption is not only linked to faster abandonment, but may also hurt overall success,” the authors write.

Despite the excitement it generates for a few days, the video your brand launched that “went viral” on YouTube may be entirely forgotten in a few months or weeks and ultimately do nothing for long-term growth. But if you take a slower, measured approach to building a strong community of fans, your brand may remain popular for a lot longer. There’s no viral marketing campaign around Moleskine notebooks, for example, but the brand has built a dedicated group of fans that it continues to nurture and support.

Don’t mistake faddish-popularity as an indicator of long-term brand success. Fads rise to popularity quickly without any real reason – they’re not usually fulfilling a customer need (did anyone need snap-bracelets in elementary school in 1990?).

Instead of focusing on how to get as much buzz for your product or organization as fast as possible, think of how to meticulously build a community. It takes longer and can be more work, but the reward is much greater.

No one wants to be a flash in the pan. Not even Jennifer and Jason.

Social Media Smackdown: Tacoma Art Museum vs. Cincinnati Art Museum

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The summer is winding down, the kids will be back to school in days if they’re not there already, and you’re looking for a last-minute diversion. Something that mixes culture with fun, that’s not too expensive, and that will enrich your life just a little bit. Maybe something like your local art museum?

Most communities are lucky to have a museum of some sort, but often these museums struggle to get by on a combination of donations, fundraisers, grants and endowments. A big marketing budget is usually never an option. Social media offers a huge opportunity for local museums to tap into a community and try to build up word-of-mouth about current exhibits and events and drive foot traffic to the museum.

For this installment of Social Media Smackdown, I selected two art museums in smaller cities: Tacoma, Wash. and Cincinnati, Ohio. Let’s get down to it and see who comes out on top.

Cincinnatilogo

TacomaLogo


Round One: Twitter

Each museum is active on Twitter: @TacomaArtMuseum and @CincyArtMuseum. I like how each museum’s Twitter handle is pretty obvious and descriptive.

Tacoma Art Museum: Following 304; Follwers 1,577; Tweets 644
Tacoma Art Museum has a really nice, even mix of original content promoting museum events, retweets of general art news and items of interest, and passing along local area happenings. They also do a good job of replying to people, despite the fact that they are only following back about 20 percent of their followers (which isn’t specifically a bad thing). It seems that one person manages the account, as it has a singular voice to it, but the bio doesn’t state who that person is.

Tacoma Art Museum seems to do a good job of promoting events using Twitter. For example, a recent tweet on a Friday afternoon let followers know about a local movie and subsequent lecture being given by the museum curator. Another tweet let followers know that kids would be admitted free through the end of the month. Following events, the museum often asks people to post and share pictures at its other social outposts.

Cincinnati Art Museum: Following 351; Followers 4,434; Tweets 363
cincy2Cincinnati Art Museum’s twitter feed is slightly heavier on the tweeted news links, but they still seem to manage good interaction with followers. And the links aren’t automated from a feed source, so they’re typically well-crafted “teasers” that take you to interesting parts of the museum’s Web site. For example, each Wednesday they tweet a “Work of the Week” which takes you to a photo of some obscure piece in the museum’s collection.

The account seems to have lagged on actively replying to followers lately, but going back just a few weeks I found  replies thanking people for visiting, giving directions to nearby bus stops near the museum, and even responding to followers about the reduction in hours the museum made to save costs.

Both museums are doing a pretty decent job using Twitter to share news and get folks interested in their offerings. I think that while Tacoma does a good job mixing in other community events in its Twitter feed, it could even stand to do a little more self-promotion. Cincinnati has that part down, but it seems to have been slacking off on replies and interactions lately and needs to be careful not to become just a link feed. And both museums would benefit from adding the name the person or people behind the account to the bio so that followers have someone to identify. I also think it could benefit them to try and follow back more of their followers.

Point: It’s really close. While I like that Tacoma uses its Twitter feed to be a source of community info, I think Cincinnati does a better job of using Twitter to drive interest in the museum itself, which really should be the primary goal for these organizations. But Cincinnati doesn’t engage as much as Tacoma and in some ways is too focused on just tweeting links. I’m going to wimp out and call this a tie for now.

Round Two: Facebook

Tacoma1The Facebook fan page for Tacoma Art Museum has 325 fans. The info tab includes hours, public transportation information and directions, and links to all the museum’s social outposts. They’ve created an “Extended Info” tab that has links to all current and upcoming exhibitions and dates. The events tab is chock-full of events that range from simply admissions deals to community festivals, art camps and lectures. Tacoma Art Museum’s fan page only has a handful of photos, and with all the events they have you’d think they’d populate with more. They have also listed 21 other pages as favorites, many of them other museums or other popular places in the Tacoma area.

On the wall (which is the landing tab of their fan page), Tacoma frequently posts new content that often includes news articles about the museum and art-infused happenings other locations in Tacoma. It doesn’t seem that many fans are interacting with the page yet (very few likes or comments on the items), but hopefully the 325 fans are catching the fun tidbits that Tacoma Art Museum is pushing into their stream through its fan page.

Cincinnati Art Museum’s fan page, with 2,301 fans, has very basic info including location, transportation and hours, and they also have an extended info tab that goes into great detail (including images) of current special exhibits with descriptions, pricing, dates and links. It’s almost a little cluttered, though, and I wonder if that tab could benefit from less information overall and instead serve as teasers and send folks to a more detailed exhibit site. The page includes more than 100 photos from exhibit openings that the museum has posted, plus a couple from fans. On the boxes tab, there’s a feed from Flickr with more pictures. The events tab is also full of activities at the museum.

On the page wall (also the landing page), the content is primarily an automated feed of its Twitter account. I’m not really sure what purpose this serves, and it just comes off as looking robotic. It would be much more effective if a “real person” managed the page and selectively posted status updates and posts that allowed for more interaction among the fans.

Point: The pages are almost identical in type of content and structure expect for the walls. Tacoma wins here for keeping the wall posts frequent and interesting but not automating.

Round Three: Web site

I found the Web sites of each to be visually pleasing (which you would expect for art museums, right?) and relatively simple to navigate. I was specifically looking for how “social” the sites were: how interactive, innovative and how easy it is for users to share and save content.

The Web site for Tacoma Art Museum allows you to translate it into one of six languages from a flag icon on the home page. They’ve also installed the “Add this” widget to the home page to allow you to share the content to Facebook, etc. However, on subsequent pages the widget just appears as a tiny orange cross and I didn’t even realize what it was until I accidentally moused over it. I can imagine that someone less used to sharing content on the Web than I am would ignore this completely. But at least it is there as an option. The site invites you to sign-up for eNewsletters via a link in the sidebar.

One of the best sections of their site is the “Connect with us” area that alerts visitors about the museum’s social outpost. Icons at the bottom of the page invite visitors to become a fan on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. Separate pages detail the museum’s Flickr and YouTube account with an embedded slideshow of photos and video. The museum has free WiFi and they encourage visitors to share their experiences from right within the museum. However, this section is buried in the site. I think it would be much more effective to have a large “Connect” icon somewhere on the home page or even have social profile links right in the sidebar so people didn’t have to go searching.

Cincy1Over on Cincinnati’s site, there appears to be a disconnect with social media. They do a few things well — an RSS feed icon in the upper corner takes you to a page where you can subscribe to events and news feeds and also includes a link to explain what RSS is and how to set up a feed reader — helpful. They also have some neat podcasts that they’ve produced that are available in the iTunes store and a video podcast that’s embedded on the site.

However, basically none of the content on the rest of the site is easily shareable. They have photos of thousands and thousands of the pieces in their collection cataloged on the site, but no one-click sharing option (to be fair, copyright may be at issue here). None of the events or exhibit pages have an opportunity to share, and despite sifting through their site I could not find any mention of their Facebook page, Twitter feed or other social outposts. Even the contact page was missing that info.

Point: Tacoma wins here for making visitors to its Web site aware of its social media presence (though not obviously) and for installing the Add This widget to allow visitors to share content across the Web. Cincinnati still has a very traditional site with little to no social media integration.

Round Four: Other social sites (Flickr, YouTube, etc.)

On Flickr, Tacoma Art Museum has both its own account/photostream and has also created a group pool that visitors can add pictures to. More than 385 people have joined the museum’s group pool and uploaded more than 1,700 images! On the museum’s own photostream, they’ve done something pretty cool — they uploaded more than 40 images of the museum plaza so that artists, architects and designers who were entering a competitive bid to redesign the space could visualize it and get a sense of the opportunity and hopefully capture it in their proposals.

Cincinnati has a group pool on Flickr with 38 members and 400+ images posted. It looks like the admin for the Flickr group has actively sought out images to add to the pool, and there are some really nice shots there. They also have their own Flickr account and have posted 195 snaps from exhibit openings and museum events.

Tacoma2Over on YouTube, both museums have dedicated channels (Tacoma’s is here and Cincinnati’s is here). Each has nearly identical number of channel views (3,200) and, haha, they are “friends” with eachothers’ channels on YouTube. Tacoma has posted 11 videos ranging from museum commercials to video depictions of how they actually install some of their exhibitions (like this Ship in a Bottle clip). They’ve added several related videos to favorites and have 78 subscribers to their channel. Their most recent video was posted seven months ago. Tacoma has also created a playlist of videos from a recent cinema competition that were shot at its museum.

Cincinnati’s YouTube channel has 100 subscribers but only three videos and the most recent one is a year old. They did attempt a video podcast two years ago that appeared to be in conjunction with an exhibition opening – it’s a 10-minute clip that contains an interview with an art fashion collector. It’s an interesting piece, but a bit on the long side and since there’s only one it appears that they abandoned the video podcast format. The other two videos are short promos for museum exhibitions.

Point: Again, it’s close, but I think I’ve got to go with Tacoma again. They seem to have kept a little more up to date with their Flickr and YouTube accounts and have more fresh and recent content. . I like how Tacoma does a good job aggregating other people’s content (like the playlist from the film contest)

The Final Verdict: Tacoma comes out ahead of Cincinnati in this smackdown. It’s great that both museums are dabbling in social media and seeing how they can get it to work (that certainly can’t be said for all arts organizations). Tacoma seems to be a little ahead of the curve on making sure that it is allowing visitors to share its content and avoiding automation of information, which can turn people off quickly. Cincinnati has made a good start, but could go much further by tying their Web site to their social outposts.

Previous Smackdown: Cannondale vs. Trek
Previous Smackdown: Columbus, Ohio vs. Columbia, S.C.
Previous Smackdown: Mountain Hardwear vs. The North Face
Previous Smackdown: Magic Hat vs. Bell’s Beer


The secret to avoiding a YouTube crisis – revealed!

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It’s not a matter of if. It’s when. With user-generated content easier and more common than ever, it’s only a matter of time before someone in your organization does something that rubs someone (or a lot of people) the wrong way and soon millions of people are watching the travesty on YouTube.

Latest entry: United Breaks Guitars

This video, out only since Monday, already has half-a-million views, 3,200+ comments and has been picked up by several mainstream news outlets, and many bloggers are going to town on it, too. United is apparently talking to the video’s creator and trying to make things right, but I think the catchy ” ‘Cuz United breaks guitars” refrain is going to be quick to the lips of lots of passengers from now on.

There have been countless posts on how to handle reputation crises like these, so I won’t rehash some of those principles in depth (respond quickly, take it seriously, respond using the same medium by which you were attacked, etc.).

But here’s my number one observation on how to prepare your organization ahead of time for when something like this happens. Ready for it? It’s simple:

Don’t suck so much in the first place!

Typically these attacks come from people with a real bone to pick. The United Breaks Guitars guy tried for more than nine months to get his guitar fixed and was stonewalled all the way. If his claim had been honored, or if an astute United customer service rep had gone out of their way to help him, despite what “policy” and “procedure” said, there’s a much lower chance he would have made this video.

What’s more, if United was generally known for having great, attentive customer service, even if the guy had made the video there possibly would have been a group of customers who’ve had positive experiences with United who could have come out and defended the company. Instead, check out the YouTube comments. Everyone just kept piling on with their own “United sucks” stories.

What if someone had made a video like this about Zappos? Maybe Zappos lost a guy’s order or something. First, I doubt he would have been stonewalled when he called, so it probably would never get to the level of him feeling like he needed to make a music video about bad service. But if he had, Zappos would have already had a rabid community of fans in place who had received great customer service in the past and who might have been willing to defend the company.

With United, so many passengers likely had a similar negative story that it was easy for them to relate to the video and pass it along, helping it to go viral so quickly. Videos that don’t resonate with people don’t go viral. Try not to frequently give your customers reasons to create this kind of content. Even if most never will, many will read, share and comment on the content that does get created (check out Forrester’s Social Technographics Profiles for more).

Unfortunately, not a lot of “this company is so awesome and great” videos go viral (but when they do, be ready to capitalize and use it to help tell your organization’s story, the way Mayo Clinic did). But you can keep some of the negative ones at bay by not giving people a reason to make them in the first place and creating enough brand defenders that even when those videos do get made, they’ll get very little traction.

Yes, you have to manage a reputation crisis when it comes up, but shouldn’t part of preparedness include preventing those crises from ever happening in the first place?