Recruitment: How Do You Solve A Problem Like Millennials?

February 7, 2019 Leave a comment

Talent Acquisition of the Largest Labor Segment in the Age of Social Media

Millennials, the the generation born between 1981 and 1997 today represent 35 percent of the workforce. This compares to Gen X at 34 percent, boomers at 29 percent and the silent generation (pre-boomer) at 2 percent. (Pew Research)

It stands to reason that a greater percentage of millennials use social media than, say, baby boomers, and they do so on mobile devices while on the go. So, where to reach them on social media? Pop quiz: What social media site is best for reaching job seekers? If you said LinkedIn you’d be right — but that’s best for older, more experienced hires. For recent graduates and those with under two years of experience Facebook, as well as YouTube, is where you have to go to reach them best.

What does this prime pool of potential employees want out of a job? Reports site short term rewards and long term relationships as key attractants (SHRM), but from my experience you cannot understate the role company culture plays in attracting millennial job seekers.

That’s why you need to build a relationship with them online now, in order to attract them to fill spots later. Things like an inside look at what it’s like to be an employee at your company. What freedom-friendly policies do you have (e.g. flex hours, work from home)? What on-site amenities (e.g. health club, game room, free food/snacks, etc.) can they enjoy every day on the job? What team building and other fun events can they expect to participate in if they worked here?

When you share these and, eventually, job openings, you need to optimize your social media posts for mobile devices as part of an overall mobile-first digital strategy.

The golden rule for attracting millennials to your company using social media is the same as successfully marketing to any potential customer — know your audience.

Filed under business, hr, social media, social media marketing, Uncategorized Tagged with , ,

LinkedIn 201 Basics: How To Share Thought Leadership [Infographic]

July 12, 2013 Leave a comment

Four easy steps to building your online subject matter reputation by sharing informative articles on LinkedIn

Four easy steps to building your online subject matter reputation by sharing informative articles on LinkedIn

Filed under B2B, business, digital marketing, LinkedIn, social media, social media marketing, web2.0 Tagged with , , ,

No Time For Social Media? Why You Should Make Some

March 7, 2013 1 Comment

Pocket watch, savonette-type. Italiano: Orolog...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I came across this article, How to Make Space for Social Media,  published on Harvard Business Review by Alexandra Samuel, Vice-President of Social Media at Vision Critical, a market research technology provider (@awsamuel). She had me from the first sentence:

Few professionals were sitting at their desks in 2004, eyeing the empty slots in their calendars and wishing that somebody would just invent a new way of communicating to fill those long and lonely minutes.

Nice. And, something I wanted to share in a way more robust than a simple tweet or LinkedIn update, which is why I’ve based this entry on her’s.

In the article she takes an honest look not at not just the reasons why it makes sense for today’s executives to be active on social media, but why it’s worth giving up other activities in order to find the time to participate. It’s powerful stuff. She supported one of my recurring mantras regarding social business for companies — hire a social media professional to lead the way — but goes on to address the individual executive’s reason for doing so.

Here are the four questions she says execs need to ask themselves in order to realize the value spending (more) time on social networks:

  1. What am I learning from social media?
  2. Who am I meeting through social media?
  3. Who am I reaching through social media?
  4. How am I replenished by social media?

Please read the article for the reasoning behind the questions. There’s a lot to learn — and to teach others resistant to the idea of devoting time and energy to social media — that you will be able to use.

After all, the best way to get senior management “buy-in” for your social media initiatives is to first explain the “why” before the “what, how and when”.

Filed under business, digital marketing, social media, social media marketing, work Tagged with ,

It’s Marketing; It’s Social Media; It’s Social Media Marketing

December 20, 2012 4 Comments

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing

I’ve written before about who “owns” social media in any given organization (see: Who Owns Social Media? Ultimate Answer: The Opposites) During my decade at AOL (Community and Social Messaging), we worked in the Product dept., although viewing “product” as the home of social media may have been  unique to the situation, both in the company (one of the first online community hubs) and the time (mid ’90s — mid ’00s). At BusinessWeek, it was the digital dept and for sure, what better place for a digital tool like social media to live? But at Bloomberg LP it was the Communications dept and that certainly made sense and where I am now, KPMG LLP, it resides in marketing.

So, I can tell you from experience, there are arguments for social media being based in whichever department I (or perhaps, you) work in at the time. As stated in my prior post it the goal should be that social media live everywhere in a modern organization and so usually I try to stay departmental-agnostic. So I am always on the lookout for some function-based thought leadership piece that makes a good case for why social is a key tool for them.

That brings us to this article,’12 From ’12: The Ultimate List Of The Year’s Top Marketing Lessons‘ on Forbes written by Lisa Arthur (CMO of Aprimo), where she lists her key marketing developments from 2012:

1) Marketing is transforming 2) It’s all about engagement 3) Accountability means transparency
4) Social is a strategy 5) Mobile is moving to the top of the agenda 6) Showrooming is here to stay
7) Zombies live among us 8) Technology rules 9) If you don’t have expertise, partner with someone who does
10) We’re stronger together 11) It’s never too late to start changing the game 12) Stay agile

It struck me that, without exception, what she is saying about marketing is also true about social media. Read more of this post

Filed under digital marketing, social media, social media marketing Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

%d bloggers like this: