I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a book for a while (an autobiographical novel) and it’s up towards the top of my list of things I’m worried I’ll never get to. How about you? I’d venture a guess that amongst our readers a brilliant book or two is distinctly possible. Cameron Moll, of Authentic Boredom an acclaimed designer, blogger, and pretty damn interesting person has a post today covering what it takes to publish your own book.
Let’s just stop and acknowledge the good fortune we all share today. If WE SO DESIRE, and IF WE WORK OUR ASSES OFF, we CAN publish our own book. Or produce and distribute our own music. Or make our own movies. We are living in a renaissance. But no one said it was easy being da Vinci.
And for inspiration? Begin with the first step I suppose. Then add a measure of fortitude, inspiration, sweat equity and resilience and you should arrive safely at your destination. Maybe…
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.
When asking employees why they like working for a company, one of the most common refrains is “because of the people, my co-workers, we are like a family”. Any recruitment advertising copywriter can attest to this and, after reading such feedback in the creative brief, will promptly roll their eyes and then try to find a new way to “spin” this age-old sentiment.
“Join Company X, and you not only get a great job, but you also gain a family”
Trite as it may be, employees are expressing a sentiment that is widespread and based in truth. The workplace is a community. A community made up of people that you often see more than your own family. There is an undeniable group cohesion that resembles “family” that the work company-employee work contract generates.
When making a career choice, candidates are searching for information about a potential employer and if they will spend time to look for it. Use your career site as a venue to publicly display your community of passionate employees. Lead the search results by authentically communicating your employer brand and providing a window into the “employee-experience” on your career web site. Openly illuminate your employee-experience by incorporating social features into your corporate career web site and encouraging employees to participate in online communities where your candidates are spending their time. Don’t fight the decentralization of your employer brand… *enable it*.
Controlling the flow of information to employees, customers, partners etc, used to be easy with newspapers, TV, radio, print, email, and the like. Today, your brand is being watched, augmented, and de-located. People are writing their own stories, thoughts, ideas, and developing new products and services using social media technologies. These simple technologies and services: Blogs, Wikis, Forums, Tagging, Podcasts, and RSS are connecting people and information in new ways, conversations, faster than you can say oh shit. (via Advancing Insights).
Companies try to hide what it is *really* like to work for them like they are a secret society that you get to have no real knowledge of until you are accepted and initiated. There is the reality of a group being its own worst enemy, and a need exists to balance the idealistic view that companies will suddenly open up and allow completely public free speech, with the freedom and open spirit needed to create a thriving online community.
Effectively communicating what your company’s community believes in, and what it is driven by, will determine the kinds of people you attract and keep. When it comes to communicating what the real employee experience is and helping to foster a public online community that potential candidates can explore when researching your company - do not put your head in the ground and fear your employee experience being public - embrace it and handle it with grace.
Thanks to one of Shannon’s partner’s in crime (hat tip Laura) we have the following representative example of old fashioned marketing colliding with today’s consumer.
The inspiration for the movie comes out of Microsoft. Surprised? You shouldn’t be - Microsoft has proven more than any other company that if you get out of the way of your people, your people can save your ass.
In this example Microsoft employee Geert Desager AND Microsoft’s Belgian communications agency Openhere have been turned loose in the blogosphere with some good ideas, a blog, and some video production talent. The result? Here’s what Geert has to say on their results after two weeks.
“Another small update:
more than 75.000 views of the movie
more than 240 incoming links
more than 250 comments on the blog”
What a couple of people at Microsoft did, and even more importantly, what Microsoft DID NOT DO (try to stop bloggers like Robert Scoble), is what makes it possible today for Geert and Openhere to do this.
Today this outreach continues and has continued to evolve with stories like Geert’s and Microsoft Recruitosphere pioneer Heather Hamilton. To these people, The Scoble’s, The Hamilton’s, their bosses, and bosses bosses go the thanks! Not only does Microsoft win in advancing their products and services but they also build a stronger employer brand and employee culture. Moves like this make it easier on the recruiters at Microsoft to land their next software guru. It’s a nice contrast to the tyranical employer brand that Apple is presently building for their abusive blogging and employee communication policies. Apple would do well to go back and watch their famous lemming commercials while consulting Wikipedia with a keyword search for “Orwellian.”
Well done Geert, and Robert and Heather and the legions of other Microsoft talent who have helped move us forward. Everyone in corporate america owes you and Microsoft our thanks, and not just for Excel or Word.
– Jules
p.s. Check out Openhere’s about page. I love their pitch (even if it isn’t a pitch).
“Openhere is an agency where open-minded people work for open-minded advertisers. “
You get the idea that soon the agencies that pretend to hold these values will be replaced by ones that really DO believe in what they’re selling. We believe.
Oh yeah, and this video coves user generated content, social media, personal publishing, blogs, online community, video, web publishing technologies like HTML, XML, and RSS and has same great music from deus to go along with it (oops, this is the deus I meant from the music in the video - two new music finds in one!).
When asking employees why they like working for a company, one of the most common refrains is “because of the people, my co-workers, we are like a family”. Any recruitment advertising copywriter can attest to this and, after reading such feedback in the creative brief, will promptly roll their eyes and then try to find a new way to “spin” this age-old sentiment.
AND Microsoft’s Belgian communications agency 
EXCELER8ion is where Julian and Shannon Seery Gude write on Social Media, Interactive Marketing, Technology and Internet Business Topics. 