Where you are is where it’s at, The new interaction engagement model

One of our sister practices at exceler8 is called LOCAL Na8ion where we help small businesses harness the web to get more customers from their local city. Our slogan at LOCAL Na8ion is where you are is where it’s at. The slogan hints at how our physical and virtual worlds have become intertwined. At times, where we are is a state of mind, such as when we’re contributing to an online community, while at others we are grounded in the context of our physical location and needs like when we go out to dinner or look for a plumber on Google.

Where your people are at has changed

The slogan is apt for our new service Brand Trampoline because where you are and where your people are (be they job seekers, consumers or buyers of your product or service) has radically changed…if you want your company to be where it’s at you have to participate.

Every aspect of life is converging and connecting

Connections are now happening in multiple contexts and dimensions including our physical proximity and shared interests to our social networks of friends and associates on Facebook, Twitter, email and blogs, and yes offline too. Perhaps the ultimate mashup of all these interactions is  TCFKAP – The computer in your pocket formerly known as a phone. Wait, did I just make a Prince reference?

Facebook is becoming the web’s top source of traffic

The web today is pretty search centric (that’s spelled G-O-O-G-L-E) but times are changing quickly, Facebook is fast becoming the web’s top source of traffic. Real time search results and social search are replacing the way we interact almost overnight. We have new interaction touch points, tools, and communication vehicles and in almost all cases consumers, job seekers, and local buyers are way out head of the typical enterprise - be they the mom and pop variety or the Fortune 500.

Companies of all sizes are making one of three mistakes

1. They’re failing to engage at all.
2. They not keeping pace with where people are moving due to budgets, expertise or red tape.
3. They’re failing to engage in a meaningful way, often in the form of broadcasting their information rather than following an interaction model (what we refer to as digital engagement)

We all need to let go of the paradigm where our company website is where it’s at. Not that we don’t need one, it’s just that your website has already become a spoke in the wheel as far as people are concerned while your business operations, marketing and PR are still treating it like sun that your customers all orbit around.

The new interaction engagement model

We’re going to take up the case of the new interaction engagement model in the coming week but you might not be surprised to learn that success in our new world is based not in technological expertise or marketing gimmicks but old fashioned common sense applied in a contextually thoughtful way. Not to sound smug but it’s called listening. Have you noticed how little room there is today for listening? It’s hard when everyone is an expert and all of us posses some fantasmic skill or solution for becoming wealthy, skinny or successful overnight. Listening and understanding are more important today than in any time in our history.

Rather than rushing to establish an online reputation it’s useful for us all to recognize that we already have one, just like we already have a company culture even if you HR team or CEO failed to launch a multi-million dollar culture initiative in the 90’s.

I look forward to picking up the conversation about the new engagement model (er, old) in the coming week. In the mean time we’ll be out there looking for threads of knowledge in this and other conversations and looking to engage in more understanding.

-Julian

Julian co-authors EXCELER8ion with his better half Shannon Seery Gude. EXCELER8ion is a blog about digital engagement.

Most of his time Julian works on behalf of his clients at exceler8 and LOCAL Na8ion. Julian is launching an evolving digital engagement practice called Brand Trampoline where his first client is John Sumser of HRExaminer.com.

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I have been writing about utilizing social media and social networking to connect to candidates and build candidate communities here on EXCELER8ion for about 3 years, and in just the last 6 months, I have felt a very powerful wave of corporate acceptance and understanding that they need to have a social recruiting strategy. Large corporate clients are asking en masse to have their teams educated on social recruiting techniques and it is the number one topic that I am asked to speak about.

Does this mean that you should launch a blog (like my favorite MicroSpotting.com), start a facebook page or use Twitter to hold public chats with candidates like E&Y, or should you develop a YouTube channel to distribute video like Deloitte? Should you create widgets to distribute your jobs, events, and other career related content? Should you develop a social game or an employee social network where candidates can interact and ask questions to get the insider’s perspective?

Maybe you should do all of this. But before you buy into the latest service trying to sell you a socket page or build you a community – Do you know the status of your Employer reputation online?

Are you regularly monitoring what people find in Google when they search for information about working for your company? (and they are searching – to the tune of hundreds of thousands of career related searches every month.) Do you know what people are talking about as it relates to working for your company? Do you know who is talking, where they are talking, if it is positive – negative – or just neutral, and why?

No, this isn’t a test. Auditing, analyzing, understanding, and monitoring your online employer reputation should be the first step to developing a successful social recruiting strategy. Without first listening to and understanding what people are already saying about you as an employer, without knowing what issues exist or topics that are already being discussed – your company is in no position to begin effectively participating.

Launching social recruiting initiatives without understanding the state of your online reputation first can be a recipe for disaster. You may discover that launching a recruiting blog is the way to go, but you might also discover that there are issues that are actively being discussed that should be addressed as a first step.

So how do you gather this info about your online reputation? Google “Online Reputation Management” and you will find a myriad of resources from how to set up Google Alerts to full monitoring software packages such as Radian6 and SM2.

The information that candidates find online about you as an employer can be highly influential and considered more credible than the info they find on your corporate career site. I will cover these options, time needed, and how to tailor/focus your monitoring efforts to discussions that affect Employer Brand and candidate opinions specifically in the weeks to come.

Shannon co-authors EXCELER8ion with her other half Julian Seery Gude. EXCELER8ion is a blog about digital engagement.

Shannon is a regular speaker in the HR & Talent Acquisition space where she’s known for her work in social media and integrated digital engagement. By day Shannon works at a Recruitment Marketing Agency.

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River of Reputation

Blogs. Tumblr. Twitter. Vlogs. Google. FaceBook. Syndication. Jaiku. Pownce. YouTube. Myspace. User-Generated Content. Indigenous Content. Del.icio.us. Online Community…. Data streams flowing via RSS, ATOM and furiously converging to create a River of Reputation…. a River of Relevance.

I started playing with Slideroll yesterday and ended up creating this slide show regarding how Employer Brands are affected by ‘Rivers of Reputation’.

This is a work in progress meant to get across the concept of the decentralization of the Employer Brand via the flow of easily accessible information regarding your brand that is being generated by individuals everyday. Let me know your thoughts.

Hat tip to a twitter mention of a conversation between Scoble and Anil Dash. I was also influenced by Brian Solis’s post Lifestreams Channel Online Activity, Creating Rivers of Relevance, discussing data streams and one’s personal brand.

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Watch the video.

Great creative, great concept, great content. Love it! But, where are the viral hooks for people to share the video? No email to a friend, no embed code for a blog, Facebook, or MySpace, no nada. WTF? From a social media perspective this is like calling a Quarter Pounder with Cheese a Royale with Cheese.

Shannon, thanks for showing this to me luv – it made my day!

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What’s your metaphor?

I read a great post some time ago over on Creativethink.com by Roger von Oech . Roger uses a metaphor exercise during his workshop to get his participants to think about their company culture and persona (my own extrapolation of what Roger is saying). Here’s the original post on his blog.

Roger inspired me to fire up my favorite text editor and write a couple metaphors for exceler8. Make one of your own and post it on your blog or here (I’d love to hear from you). Be serious or have some fun (or both).

exceler8 as a science lab

Our company is a like a science lab at Princeton. There are a bunch of smart people from all different walks of life all mixing up ingredients in the belief that we’ll invent the next wonder drug. We enjoy it when our experiment blows up because the explosion is both entertaining and educational and because we know we’ve just moved one step closer to creating our vision.

exceler8 as an API for people

exceler8 is like an API for people. We know how to plug in or connect systems (people) that speak different languages (knowledge) with divergent protocols (practices) but share a common end and are both stronger from the combination in achieving it.

Hmmm. What do you think? I like the blowing up/science lab metaphor because it seems like real life and captures some of my real nature. The second one is attractive to me because it’s a little clever and cheeky which is also like me (well, I said a little didn’t I!)

Technorati Tags: Corporate Culture, Strategic Planning, Employer Branding

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