HRmarketer.com Blog

#Infographic -- The Exhibitor's Guide to #SHRM2013

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:00:05 PDT

The SHRM Annual Conference & Exposition is one of the largest and most important events in HR with more than 13,000 attendees from around the world (some other top HR conferences). So it's no surprise that it draws a huge crowd of exhibitors, with more than 700 slated to appear at the 2013 event, held June 16-19 in Chicago.

This infographic, "The Exhibitor's Guide to SHRM 2013," provides facts and resources about the event and the host city - including where to stay, what to do and where to eat - as well as tips that will help exhibiting companies avoid critical mistakes and maximize their ROI.

It is brought to you by HRmarketer and Fisher Vista. Enjoy.

And if you are exhibiting, you might want to read this article titled "Tradeshows are Expen$ive: 33 Tips to Maximize Your ROE (Return on Exhibiting)".

Tradeshows are Expen$ive: 33 Tips to Maximize Your ROE (Return on Exhibiting)

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:19:36 PDT

Article: 33 tips to become a better exhibitor

A vast space. Row after row after row of booths. Ten or more booths to a row.

At a major tradeshow, everything and everyone seems to blend together.

As an exhibitor, you’re spending too much money to get lost in the crowd. Snappy signage and cool matching shirts aren’t enough—and one of them might not even be a good idea to get the results you need. Hundreds of other exhibitors have hopes for their products and services just as high as you have for yours, and have focused their attention on the same show. Amidst this competition, to be a successful exhibitor, you need to go above and beyond the norm without being gimmicky; doing so requires a combination of strategy, tactics and interpersonal skills, plus a significant amount of preparation.

Our latest article gives you 33 tips to help you become a more successful exhibitor. The tips are organized into five sections:

1. Before You Decide to Exhibit
2. Picking Shows
3. Before a Show
4. During a Show
5. After a Show

Download today and enjoy (no registration required, compliments of HRmarketer and Fisher Vista).

You might also enjoy listening to the audio of a recent webinar we hosted on "Exhibiting Dos and Don’ts" with expert marketing speakers Craig Fisher (founder of #TalentNet Live social recruiting training conferences) and Jen Iliff (former Marketing and PR director at a leading RPO.

Visual Job Ads Pack a Punch & Get Results. So Does Our New Strategist, Craig Fisher.

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 10 May 2013 08:30:45 PDT

Craig Fisher Joins HRmarketer

In a recent post on his Fishdogs ,social business strategist, HR influencer, and recruiting expert Craig Fisher observed that employers are beginning to see the benefits of making job ads more visual. Those benefits include developing and strengthening employment brands, growing talent communities and driving traffic to employers’ career sites.

Craig also shared Most Wanted’s infographic, The Job Posting Field Guide, a one-stop guide to crafting the perfect job posting “to corral the most qualified applicants.” As Craig himself noted, he’s a huge proponent of adding visual appeal to job ads. His post, Pinterest Can Help Recruiting Get Visual, is another insightful resource on the topic.

To be honest, we’ve been fans of Craig for quite some time. He’s chock full of invaluable insights into social media, online brand visibility, and the HR marketplace. In fact, we’re such big fans of Craig that we wanted to hire him to be our new vice president of strategy and HR marketplace consulting. And lucky for us, he was equally excited about joining HRmarketer.

That’s great news for HRmarketer but it’s absolutely incredible news for our clients. Craig has literally helped to forge thought leadership around key issues in the HR marketplace, social media, and online brand visibility. With Craig’s addition to our already amazingly talented team, we’re basically providing HRmarketer clients with a game-changing advantage. The HR software and services brands we work with now have access to an expert whose knowledge of and relationships in the HR marketplace are among the very best.

As HRmarketer clients know, our agency services team already has some of the most seasoned and talented marketing and media relations professionals—people who know the HR marketplace and its unique challenges better than anyone out there. Adding Craig to this team is a phenomenal coup and makes our bench strength that much deeper.

Craig will be working closely with our agency clients to share his knowledge on brand visibility initiatives, social business strategy, HR influencer relations, lead generation and nurturing campaigns, content marketing and more.

If you’d like to read about Craig’s impressive background and his depth of experience in the HR marketplace, click here to read our recent press release.

And if you’d like to learn more about working with HRmarketer and how we can help grow your brand, please give us a call.

Post written by Mark Willaman, the founder and CEO of HRmarketer.com and Fisher Vista Marketing. Connect with Mark on LinkedIn.

Three Bold Predictions for the HR Department of 2020

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Thu, 09 May 2013 09:36:40 PDT

This is a guest post by Erin Osterhaus, the managing editor of Software Advice's HR blog, The New Talent Times. She focuses on the HR market, offering advice to industry professionals on the best recruiting, talent management and leadership techniques. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+, or contact her directly at erin@softwareadvice.com.

What will the HR department of 2020 look like? How will the HR function change and why? And what can HR professionals and HR software vendors do to prepare?

Earlier this month, Software Advice, a firm that serves as a matchmaker between HR software vendors and buyers, interviewed nine HR experts to see what they had to say in response to these questions. While some have predicted the demise of the HR function as a result of software, the experts see these changes more as an opportunity for HR professionals to expand their horizons and increase their value to the company.

Prediction 1: In-house HR will downsize and outsourcing will increase.
This prediction may seem somewhat, well, predictable. But the reasons experts give for the change might surprise you.

Industry analyst Brian Sommer, the founder of TechVentive, claims a shift to smaller HR departments will be caused by new technologies and increased employee participation in HR processes. He says, “Many businesses are going to get a lot of capability done by better technology, more self-service and the employee doing a lot on their own.” For instance, employees will increasingly input their own data into self-service systems.

In addition, many transaction-heavy HR jobs will be outsourced entirely to HR agencies or specialists. Dr. Janice Presser, CEO of The Gabriel Institute, goes so far as to say, “Entry-level HR jobs, as they currently exist, will all but disappear as transactional tasks are consigned to outsourced services.”

However, despite these changes, the internal HR function will survive. As Chip Luman, the COO of HireVue, explains, “Given the ongoing regulatory environment, the need to pay, provide benefits, manage employee relations issues, and process information will go on.”

Prediction 2: The pendulum will swing back to the specialist.
Janine Truitt, chief innovations officer of Talent Think Innovations, says she has observed a cyclical shift in the HR field over the years. As she explains, “Every decade or so we fluctuate back and forth from the paradigm of the independent contributor/specialist to the generalist practitioner. We were in a ‘generalist’ mode, and now I think the pendulum may be swinging back toward the specialist.”

Luman puts it even more directly: “HR generalists as we know them will disappear.”

Elizabeth Brashears, the director of Human Capital Consulting at TriNet HR, agrees, and notes, “There will be more specialized roles. I believe this to be the case as the employment landscape becomes more complex with changing regulations around employment law and benefit compliance with the Affordable Care Act.”

Prediction 3: HR will need to become more like marketing.
Sommer says that “recruiting is going to become more like marketing.” In particular, he suggests recruiters begin to “identify specific micro-segments of either job seekers or job holders that you want to target to bring into your firm, just like a marketing firm would.”

Meanwhile, Scot Marcotte, Barry Hall and Steve Coco at Buck Consultants predict the entire HR department will need to think like marketers. As they say, “HR will evolve the ‘internal marketing’ role to include social marketing coordination and brand ownership, that is, outside talent ‘buying’ into the brand — the company — to potentially work in the organization.”

Advice to Prepare for 2020
What can current HR professionals and software vendors begin doing now to prepare for these predicted changes? The experts all endorse one tactic: keep learning. Trying new things and actively networking will help, too.

Dr. Presser advises those in the HR field to "get ahead of the curve." “Realize that many of today’s ‘best practices’ evolved under very different business conditions, and may well become obsolete within this decade. Learn everything you can about your industry, your competitors and pending legislation that affects your business operations. Most of all, define yourself as a businessperson and act accordingly.”

Additionally, Luman encourages HR professionals to develop their own personal brand. As he says, “Network inside and outside of your field. Blog, communicate, read and help others achieve success. If you are not outside of your comfort zone, you are stagnating.”

As for software vendors, Sommer advises expansion, and emphasizes the need for the eventual creation of a single global HR solution. As he says, “Everybody can do business with people all over the planet now, and I think tech companies have no choice but to continue to expand into more and more countries. In time we might actually see a world getting closer and closer to a single product being able to support the needs and requirements of a global workforce. We’re not there yet, and we won’t be there for probably many years — if ever — but we’re gonna get closer to that over time. ”

The ideas in this blog post are covered in more detail in Erin Osterhaus' article "The HR Department of 2020: 6 Bold Predictions." For the full article, click here.

Remember the Past When Promoting Content on Social Media

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Wed, 01 May 2013 11:23:54 PDT

Social media is such a “now” thing that it’s easy to forget the past. That’s a mistake, especially when it comes to content.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media networks are great for promoting your latest content, but to maximize your brand exposure, you should consider sharing content you’re released previously.

There are, however, situations when, generally speaking, you should and shouldn’t share older content. And you should be careful where you share it.

Don’t share your older content if:

It’s outdated or not of high quality (if it was unpopular last year, why would it be popular this year?).
You are promoting other content, and are sharing little or no outside content.
You are heavily promoting other content, and the older content isn’t related to that content.

Do share your older content if:

It was a big hit the last time you promoted it.
It relates to content you are currently promoting or sharing. Social media is a conversation, and sharing older content that is relevant to current content (yours or someone else’s) can add to the conversation.
You aren’t promoting any other content.
Your social media followers have increased or changed significantly since you last promoted your older content, or you’ve never promoted it on social media.

Where to share older content:

Twitter is a great place. You have a lot of capacity, so it’s OK to tee up another dozen or so tweets (with different hashtags, of course).
Be careful with Facebook and LinkedIn, as there is less capacity and a higher risk of turning off people who already saw it.
Also consider social channels where you did NOT promote the content previously. For example, maybe you did not have a SlideShare account last year when you promoted your webinar archive. Now you can promote the slides on that channel.

As you consider your strategy for sharing recycled content, keep in mind the 80:20 rule: For every piece of your content you promote, the best practice is to share at least four pieces of others’ high-quality content. Doing so keeps your audience more engaged, and makes them less likely to stop following you.

One other quick point about older content: If it’s outdated, perhaps take the time to update it, especially if it was successful when first released. It can take a lot less time to update older content pieces than it does to create entirely new ones. And, then, of course, you can promote it on your social media properties.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

Can You Predict What Will Be Hot in HR?

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:21:06 PDT

Occasionally.

That’s the answer to the question posed by the headline.

It’s not a high prediction standard, but, hey, it’s more success than seismologists have with predicting earthquakes.

What we mean by what’s hot in HR is the topics that HR movers and shakers are most engaged with on social media and are being intensely covered in articles and blogs. Using HRmarketer software, we identify the three hottest topics of each week and publish the list in our e-newsletter “What’s Hot in HR.” Register for the e-newsletter at http://www.hrmarketer.com/whats-hot-in-hr/.

The value of knowing what’s hot in HR is it’s a great idea to release content on topics when they are hot, when people are clamoring for content about them. For example, it would be a much better idea to release content about the SHRM Annual Conference in June, the month of the event, than in October.

To examine if you can predict what’s hot, we took a look through the week-by-week results (the results since October are shown at the bottom of the post), and examined them for any obvious, predictable hot topics. We found only a few, but also gleaned some other insights.

Some hot topics you can predict well in advance

1. Major HR conferences are likely to be hot topics around the time they are held. HR technology was a hot topic the week of Oct. 12, and the HR Technology Conference was hot the following week. The conference was, of course, held in October.

2. Some holiday-related content is bound to become hot. Veteran employment was on the list the week of Nov. 16, and Veterans Day was Nov. 12.

Because these topics are predictable, they aren’t likely to be exceptionally hot. Except, of course, if something unexpected happened, such as a major announcement at a major HR conference.

Some hot topics you know will be hot right away

The hottest HR topics, however, tend to come out of left field, and that they will become hot is HR circles is about as obvious as a baseball hitting you in the face.

Examples of this include:

1. A major company makes a headline-creating HR move. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced in February that the company would no longer permit telecommuting. That week, remote employees was a hot topic. The next week, telework was hot.

2. A major magazine covers HR. If a major publication puts HR news on its cover, it’s going to get heavy play. Bloggers will be chiming in with opinions, and influencers will be discussing it on social media. Remember last summer’s “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” commentary in The Atlantic and all the resulting conversations? Well, several related topics became hot as a result, including maternity leave.

Most of the time you just don’t know

Despite the above cases, most of the time it’s not obvious what will become hot.

Certainly, the topics covered in trade publication websites can become hot, but so can the topics of leading HR-related Twitter chats, such as #TChat. Or a blog post could go viral.

Unless you know what the leading trades are going to showcase, most of the time you can’t predict if a topic is going to be hot or not.

Now, certain topics do tend to stay in the limelight more than others. These are generally highly debated topics that publications, bloggers and others frequently produce content on, because they know there is demand. A prime example is employee wellness, which seems to become hot every month or two. But, when exactly, it will become hot again is hard to tell.

Then there are seasonal hot topics. For example, we saw flu shot become hot in January and sick leave in April. But again, it’s hard to tell, exactly, when they will become hot.

So, ultimately, most of the time we just don’t know what will become hot. Take a look for yourself below:

April 26, 2013: background check, mobile recruiting, predictive analytics

April 19, 2013: organizational culture, workplace violence, HRMS

April 12, 2013: HCM, temporary employees, wellness

April 5, 2013: employee morale, H-1B Visa, sick leave

March 29, 2013: return to work, reference checking, workers comp

March 22, 2013: referral program, skills gaps, employee attitudes

March 15, 2013: job growth, temporary workers, employment verification

March 8, 2013: employee appreciation, employee motivation, telework

March 1, 2013: remote employees, HR analytics, employee wellness

Feb. 22, 2013: ATS, employee referral, minimum wage

Feb. 15, 2013: workplace bullying, talent acquisition, Affordable Care Act

Feb. 8, 2013: employee development, qualified candidate, work culture

Feb. 1, 2013: applicant tracking, hiring interview, Twitter recruiting

Jan. 25, 2013: maternity leave, benefit communication, interview tips

Jan. 18, 2013: flu shot, employee recognition, corporate recruiting

Jan. 11, 2013: employment contract, performance review, personal productivity

Jan. 4, 2013: minimum wage, unpaid internships, work-life balance

Dec. 21, 2012: background check, career communities, HR certification

Dec. 14, 2012: right to work, social HR, telework

Dec. 7, 2012: stress management, wellness program, employee selection

Nov. 30, 2012: bad bosses, interview tips, skills gap

Nov. 16, 2012: veteran employment, health reform, salary increase

Nov. 9, 2012: workforce management, social learning, unemployment rate

Nov. 2, 2012: employee referral, social listening, talent community

Oct. 26, 2012: employee development, workplace bullying, work culture

Oct. 19, 2012: ATS, employee engagement, HR Technology Conference

Oct. 12, 2012: social network, HR technology, passive candidate

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

The 2 Types of Social Influencers

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:00:28 PDT

Like, I think, most people, I generally don’t like to be categorized. I’m me and I’m nobody else. Don’t box me in. But there are some boxes that I nonetheless fit into. Male, Caucasian, 30-40 years old, married, father, U.S. citizen, Californian, etc.

There is value to society to putting me in those boxes. That’s why we have Census and other forms.

As marketers (another box I fit into), we don’t tend to put social influencers in separate boxes. Instead, we tend to put them all in one giant social influencer box.

But there is tremendous value to marketers to make a distinction among online social influencers. There are actually two types of social influencers: content producers and content distributors. The two groups offer distinct potential benefits to marketers, and require different approaches from marketers.

What’s the difference?

Content producers write. A journalist is a content producer. Most analysts are content producers. A blogger is often a content producer. A content marketer is a content producer. So long as they have at least limited voices on social. On the other hand, writing tweets, Facebook status updates, etc. is not enough to make people content producers. They need to be producing content outside of social media networks, then using social media networks to promote that content. Content producers often share others’ content, but their own content is an important, if not primary, source of their influence. Many content producers have deep knowledge and expertise on the topics they write about — but not all do.

Content distributors, on the other hand, primarily or solely share others’ content. They share content written by content producers and other writers, and their influence comes from the size of their social networks, the quality of the content they share, and the high engagement of their networks. Most influential content distributors also have unique online personalities.

For both groups, how influential they are is tied to the scope, quality and engagement of their audiences.

Anyone can produce content. That alone doesn’t make them an influencer. The content that influential content producers publish is widely read, liked, commented on and shared — often by the most influential content distributors. The size of an influential content producer’s network doesn’t have to be large. The size of an influential content distributor’s network is always large. Elite influencers (a rare group) are top content producers and distributors.

Not every social influencer fits perfectly as a content producer or a content distributor. For example, an influencer might blog once per week, but might share others’ content hundreds of times. The best approach for marketers is to determine if the influencer’s value to them is primarily as a content producer or a content distributor, then work with him or her accordingly.

Why does the difference matter?

It’s important for marketers to think of content producers and content distributors separately because they offer separate benefits.

Content producers might write about what the marketers are promoting, or they might share it. If content producers write about what marketers are promoting, marketers get the benefit of exposure on the producers’ media outlets, blogs, etc., plus to the content producers’ social media audiences.

Content distributors generally won’t write about marketers’ content, but they have their social media audiences to offer. They generally are more likely to share content than content producers, whose sharing often takes a back seat to the promotion of their own content. Plus, since content distributors’ worth is connected so closely with their audiences, top distributors tend to have large followings.

Both types of influencers offer great value. Content producers offer the traditional value of an article placement, plus a varying amount of social media visibility. Content distributors tend to offer only social media visibility, but it generally is a good amount.

Another thing that differs between content producers and content distributors is marketers need to approach them differently.

To get content distributors working for them, marketers need to offer value. They can begin by following and communicating with distributors on their social media networks, but ultimately a pay-to-play sort of system is often necessary to get the full value from influential content distributors. This is perfectly acceptable. It’s how the game is played. It’s business. This can take the form of some sort of offer, perhaps a consultant agreement, with one of the benefits being them sharing marketers’ content.

With content creators, marketers need to earn their respect or attention with great content, deep subject matter expertise and thought leadership. Pay-to-play is rarely an option. A good way to start developing a relationship is social sharing of content creators’ work and commenting on their blogs, articles, etc., but ultimately marketers need to have quality content or information that the content creators will find interesting enough to write about or share. Some content creators might go along with a pay-to-play system content distributors profit from, but many, especially journalists, would be highly offended.

Final thought

It’s a challenge for marketers to work with influencers, but it’s one worth taking, as they can greatly help with the visibility of marketers’ brands and content.

It’s a process. Unless marketers have something truly amazing to offer, it takes time to develop relationships with influencers. But by recognizing the two types — content creators and content distributors — marketers will have a much better chance of succeeding in this endeavor.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

Is it Time for HR Vendors to Stop Talking About Big Data?

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:00:02 PDT

It’s becoming clear that HR software and services companies have a big “big data” problem.

Big data may be the “in” thing, but many HR businesses are struggling to successfully position themselves as big data providers.

The problem has three parts: scope, readiness and interest. Many HR businesses are getting into the big data game, but most don’t have big data products available yet. Until HR sees what big data can do, it doesn’t appear to have much interest.

First, let’s talk about scope (no, not the mouthwash, but about why the big data field has gotten so crowded).

It’s clear that big data has huge potential for a variety of industries. There are many examples of how different industries can benefit, but instead of listing them ad nauseam, here’s one example whose value should be clear to all: using big data to recommend specific actions to combat diseases could reduce health care costs by billions annually, according to McKinsey. Cool, right?

Many HR businesses certainly think big data is cool. They recognize the opportunity it provides, and many have the potential to provide big data solutions. Most vendors collect data from their customers, and by combining it with data from client and/or outside data sources, they can create big data with significant value.

That many HR businesses are jumping into the big data game is the first part of the problem. So many are positioning themselves as big data vendors that we have big overload about big data.

Stories about how big data is transforming business are endless. Making matters worse is the second part of the problem, that while it seems every HR business is touting its big data capabilities with white papers, webcasts, blog posts and other content, few actually have a big data product offering up and running. To get in on the trend (a Google search for “big data” returns 17,000,000 results), most are left to publish thought leadership content about what big data can do in the future.

As a result of this big data content overload, it is getting more difficult to get people to register for content (e.g., sign up for a webinar, download a white paper). And those who do are more likely to be from IT than HR.

This leads to the third part of HR vendors’ big “big data” problem: Many HR decision makers don’t care about big data per se. They don’t care about what big data is, or what it might be able to do someday (frankly, they might be more interested in reading about mouthwash). What interests them is what big data can do for them, now — specifically how they can leverage the HR data they already have from their talent, learning, recruiting, payroll, benefits, compensation and other systems (including data from outside their company) to make better talent management decisions and improve the performance of their business.

The way HR feels about big data is the same most of us feel about “Intel is Inside” campaigns. Why Intel is inside is not important; nobody outside of techies cares. What's important is all the great things I can do with my computer if Intel is inside.

What does this mean for targeting HR with a big data product? First, marketing messages that focus only on "big data" or get into a technical discussion (the "why") don't seem to perform as well as messages that focus on how big data can transform HR (the "what"). How big data can help me hire better employees and retain them, lower employee benefit costs, develop better leaders, reduce absenteeism/presenteeism, etc.

Also, while it’s important to incorporate certain technical keywords into your marketing copy and SEO strategies, it may not be a good idea to have them in your subject lines, content headlines or your product copy. Know your audience and buyer personas. Speak in language that resonates with them and talk about how your "big data" will impact their key performance indicators and/or business challenges.

For example,

What can big data do to help me attract, retain and develop a more effective workforce?
5 essential things HR professionals need to know about big data — before you go to SHRM

HR people don't want a technical white paper about what big data is. They want to know how it can make a difference — today.

Post written by Mark Willaman, the founder and CEO of HRmarketer.com and Fisher Vista Marketing. Connect with Mark on LinkedIn.

How Marketers Should React to the Thinning of Print Publications

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 05:00:07 PDT

When I see print publications in our HRmarketer headquarters office, I’m reminded of the novel “Thinner.”

For just like the protagonist in Stephen King’s book (he wrote it under his Richard Bachman pseudonym), many print publications are getting thinner and thinner and thinner. Some seem more like pamphlets than magazines.

In the novel, the man shrivels from obese to emaciated due to a gypsy’s curse. The thinning of print publications is mostly the Internet’s doing. The story doesn’t end well for the man, and with many newspapers and other publications folding or going online only (e.g. Newsweek), the story isn’t going so well for print publications, either. While the latter story is still unfolding, it has some important implications and takeaways for marketers.

First, here is a quick view of the process driving the thinning of publications:

1. People head to the Internet/social media first for content.

2. People read more content that is not from periodicals to which they subscribe.

3. People are less engaged with those print periodicals, since they have other sources of quality content.

The proliferation of online news sites has contributed
to the struggles of print publications.

4. People stop paying for print subscriptions, causing some publications to offer free subscriptions, which further reduces the engagement level of the average reader.

5. Advertisers move from print to online, or choose to stop advertising altogether.

6. Print publications get smaller due to decreased advertising.

The effects of the thinning of publications include:

- Not as many articles in many print publications.

- Struggling publications cut writers, meaning that they are in need of content.

- The value of placing articles in these publications is reduced due to having smaller, less-engaged audiences.

- Placements in the publications that still have large, highly engaged audiences are increasingly valuable, but are more difficult to get, as these publications have enough advertising dollars come in to pay for sufficient writers.

So what is the marketer to do? The best choice, as it often is, is to diversify your approach. Get your content out in as many ways as possible to maximize your readership. This means:

- Going for the “best bet.” With many smaller publications in need of content for both print and online, meet their needs with quality thought-leadership articles.

- Shooting for the stars. Pitch major publications, especially when you have a story to tell that is relevant to a hot topic in the news or your industry.

- Starting at home. Don’t forget your own ability as an online content distributor — be your own media outlet by becoming a content marketer. Develop your social media networks and your blog’s audience by sharing and writing quality content. Create white papers and other major pieces of content, and use a variety of tactics to promote them. Often times, you can transform these content pieces into articles suitable for publication, plus they give you ideas for pitches. Also, if you require registration for your major content pieces, the readers become sales leads, a benefit you don’t get from article placements. For more on this, see our article “Content Marketing: The Best Way to Reach and Influence HR.”

Ultimately, despite the thinning of print publications, article placements remain an important part of a successful media strategy. On average, print placements have become less important and online placements have become more valuable. Also, with online opportunities allowing companies to become their own media outlets, to maximize one’s audience (and sales leads), it’s necessary to take advantage of content marketing.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

Where to Begin With Measurement — and Why You Should Never Finish

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 07:00:05 PDT

During the Q&A portion of a recent webinar we held on the content marketing process, we received a question about where to even begin with measurement.

This isn’t a surprise, as measurement may be the hardest and least understood part of content marketing. One could try to avoid measurement, but it’s critical for understanding how your content marketing is (or isn’t) working over time, what content is and isn’t working and what tactics are most successful.

Measuring intelligently and effectively allows you to:

1. Make better and quicker adjustments to content creation and tactical strategies that aren’t working.

2. Identify content creation and tactical strategies that are working, so you will be sure to continue or expand them.

Due to these benefits, we consider measurement an essential part of the content marketing process. To learn more about measurement and the content marketing process, check out our recorded webinar and our article “Content Marketing: The Best Way to Influence and Reach HR.”

Measurement questions can be grouped into two broader questions:

1. What should I be measuring?

2. What tools should I use?

Let’s take these two questions one at a time.

What should I be measuring?

The short answer: Measure outcomes against goals, and only measure information that is actionable.

The detailed answer:

Visier Chief Strategy Officer Dave Weisbeck was our webinar’s expert panelist on measurement, and one of his main points was content marketers should measure outcomes, not tasks. In other words, measure the end results against your goals, which might be more sales leads, more web traffic, more engagement, etc.

Dave provided a few examples of things Visier, a workforce analytics and planning company, measures. One was visits to Visier’s website over time. This helps Visier see if content is driving people to its site. Another is the lead conversion rate. A third is which activities and strategies (such as particular content pieces and landing page practices) are the most successful in converting leads.

That’s just a small sample of what Visier measures, and really there are so many things content marketers can measure. And there is no one-size-fits-all list of what to measure because companies approach content marketing differently.

It’s important, also, that when content marketers determine what measurements make sense for them to use given their desired outcomes, to remember another point Dave made: measurements are always somewhat of an approximation. Don’t get too wrapped up in minor changes, but do pay attention to trends.

What tools should I use?

If you have the budget for them, the marketing automation systems Hubspot and Marketo have analytics built into them, and both are oriented toward content, meaning that they are ideal for content marketers. They allow you to determine how content pieces (blog posts, white papers, webinars) are resulting in activities, such as website traffic, lead capture and ultimately sales.

For those who don’t have the budget, we suggest Google Analytics, which provides reports on website traffic, how that traffic got to your site, time on site by country, social activity and other measures.

Also, many social media sites have measurements that can help you beyond just how many likes, friends and followers you have. For example, Facebook offers Facebook Insights, Twitter offers Twitter Analytics and Pinterest offers Pinterest Web Analytics.

Most blog platforms also offer some degree of analytics, and there are also many third-party solutions.

Be a scientist

As marketers, we are like scientists. We need to hypothesize and experiment. Can you imagine good scientists not measuring their results? We need to measure our results, too. By measuring, we can evaluate our results, and get data that can help us generate new hypotheses. Then we test and measure again.

Content marketing is an ongoing process of creation and experimentation. And effective measurement is critical for making it work.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

Pitch(ing) Perfect: Three Tips for Getting Media Coverage

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 06:00:07 PDT

At HRmarketer, one task we do for clients is media relations; you could say we relate to the media for a living. This means we can sometimes take it for granted that everyone knows how to do it.

HRmarketer offers many resources companies can use to get their names known and their news out, but that doesn’t mean everyone knows how to use those tools efficiently or properly. Here is our blueprint for success:

1. Read a lot
Try to keep up with what’s going on in your (or your client’s) domain, for example, the world of recruiting. That means reading a lot, which can be too time-consuming if you don’t manage it just right. Using RSS feeds of blogs and media outlet websites, news aggregators for your targeted industry and social media search, listening and analysis tools (such as our own SocialEars HR), you can narrow your reading list to the relevant and timely news you need.

Being decent and pleasant in all your
communication with media contacts will
help you develop valuable relationships.

Using these tools, find headlines about new developments in the relevant industry. Read those articles, combine that information with your (or your client’s) expertise and pitch thought leadership pieces to appropriate media outlets. Doing this intelligently vastly increases your pitches’ chances of being accepted.

2. Create relationships
Being friendly with reporters and editors can have long-lasting benefits, but it also can take time to reap the benefits.

A great way to create relationships with media contacts is the same way you do so in day-to-day life: by being decent and pleasant with them in all your communication, whether via email, social media, phone, etc. If they’re located in your area or they’re going to be at the same conference as you, consider inviting them to coffee or for a meal, with no strings (or pitch) attached.

While our general advice is to start now and be prepared to wait, some relationships are formed quickly when, for instance, you do Tip No. 1 and send out good pitches. Editors like to work with people who’ve done their homework and don’t waste their time. Cultivating relationships in today’s social media age has never been easier. Follow influential bloggers, thought leaders, journalists and editors on Twitter, and interact with them. Tweet or email them links to third-party content you think they’d be interested in. You can join LinkedIn groups they run or take part in, read and comment on their blog posts and articles—you get the idea. Yes, this also takes time, but take the long view. This pays off eventually, for both parties.

3. ABC: Always Be Cruising (for new outlets)
If you’re reading this, you probably have at least one media list, but don’t just rely on media lists, especially if they haven’t been updated in awhile. At HRmarketer, one thing we do is update and monitor press contacts and blogs, and believe us, reporters and editors move around a lot and blogs appear and disappear all the time.

So make sure you’re not missing anything. Search for top blogs in your (or your client’s) industry. If you find “top” blog lists, check out the blogs on them and find out their guest post policies. This can take several hours of work, but if you keep hitting the same outlets over and over, you miss the opportunity to broadcast your story (or your client’s story) as far and wide as possible.

In closing, doing quality pitching takes time, and not every pitch is going to result in a placement. However, if you take the time to read and listen, cultivate relationships, and keep on the lookout for new opportunities, your placement percentage will absolutely increase.

7 Tactics to Get More People to Read Your Content

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 06:00:04 PDT

Author's note: This post is part of a series on the content marketing process. Previous posts in the series covered define, plan, budget, website elements and content creation. We also wrote an overview article (no registration required) that shows how to use content marketing to sell to HR.

Creating a great piece of content doesn't guarantee success in content marketing. Sure, it helps a lot, but you still have a lot of work in front of you.

It's crucial that you get your content, whether it’s a white paper or an e-book or a number of other possibilities, in front of your target audiences. Putting your content up on your website and doing nothing else doesn't cut it. Fortunately, there are many ways to spread the word about your content.

Here are seven tactics you should at least consider using:

1. Direct email marketing: Send an email campaign about your content. It’s a quick way to reach large groups of potential buyers, and content emails tend to fare well, much better than those for product announcements, for example.

Factors in success: A. The size, quality and engagement level of your list(s). B. The quality of your subject line and email. C. The level of interest in your topic.

Tips: http://www.copyblogger.com/email-marketing/

2. Blogging: Blog posts are a type of content, but also a marketing tactic. Writing blog posts on topics or sections of your content piece, then linking to your content or its landing page, is a great way to get your content in front of more people.

Factors in success: A. The amount and quality of traffic your blog receives. B. The quality of the blog post and its headline. C. How much and by whom your post gets shared on social.

Tips: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/content-marketing-made-easy-7-blog-post-formats-you-can-copy/57390/

3. Search-optimized news releases: Send out a news release in hopes of getting picked up by websites and publications, and make it search-optimized so that your release comes up in search results.

Factors in success: A. How newsworthy your topic is. B. How much other online content uses the same keywords. C. The quality of your press release distribution service. D. Whether your release is syndicated on popular sites.

Tips: http://www.highervisibility.com/blog/top-5-seo-tips-for-press-releases/

4. Media placements: Pitch the topic in your content to media outlets. Either give them the content to modify into an article, or write the article yourself.

Factors in success: A. How newsworthy your topic is. B. The quality of your content. C. The quality and quantity of the readership of the media outlets where you place articles.

Tips: http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-to-pitch-6-things-you-must-know.html

5. Online advertising: You’ve probably noticed that certain ads related to your marketplace tend to follow you around when you’re online. You can use these targeted ads to offer access to your content to people in targeted demographics. Another method is to advertise on particular sites that are popular among your desired audience.

Factors in success: A. The level of targeting. B. The popularity and demographics of the sites where you advertise. C. How eye-catching and easy to read your advertisement is. D. The clarity level of your call to action/request for download.

Tips: http://www.d3webdesigns.com/targeted-advertising.html

6. Podcasts: Interview or chat with a social influencer on subjects related to your content. It’s a great way to develop relationships with people who can help spread the word about your content and your company. Plus, podcast listeners tend to be highly engaged.

Factors in success: A. The level of interest in your topic. B. How well you market the podcast. C. The quality and quantity of the audience that the social influencer will help bring to the podcast.

Tips: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/07/podcasting-101-for-content-marketers/

7. Social Media: We’re saving a big one for last. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. are great ways to expand the reach of your content and your ideas.

Factors in success: A. The size and quality of your social media network. B. How well you use social media strategies such as hashtags and promoted posts to reach people outside your network. C. The level of interest in your topic. D. How often your content gets shared and the size of the networks of the people who share it.

Tips: http://www.forbes.com/sites/brentgleeson/2012/10/31/6-ways-brands-build-trust-through-social-media/

Ultimately, the goal is to reach a large, quality audience, so how successful these tactics will be for your content marketing depends largely on the size and quality of the audience you can reach with them.

This is not surprising, but it brings us to an important point. A great way for content marketers to have more success over time is to develop their ability to take full advantage of these tactics. This means, for example, working to improve email lists and to expand social media networks. Different people access content in different ways, so you need to use a variety of tactics to maximize your content's readership.

A few ideas for improving your tactic capabilities:

1. Create/rent better email lists
2. Regularly update your blog
3. Make developing a social media network a priority
4. Develop relationships with social influencers in your niche
5. Develop relationships with key editors/reporters

A great thing about improving your tactic capabilities is that these tactics begin reinforcing themselves. For example, if you develop a strong social media network, your blog will get more traffic, provided you share your posts on your social sites.

That wraps up tactics. Next, we’ll look into measuring the results of your content marketing, the final step of the process, but one that also marks a new beginning.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

How to Mix Premium and Supporting Content (and Why it Better Be Good)

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 05:30:01 PDT

it’s time to get serious — kind of.

In our series on the content marketing process, we’ve already written about the first two steps:

1. Define, plan, budget
2. Website elements

Both are vital for success, but Step 3 is content creation, and this is where your money will be made or lost, but it also can be fun. Just make sure you do it well. Here’s why:

Quality content helps drive traffic to your website and establish thought leadership, both of which boost sales.

Having no content is better than having lousy content. Just as good content reflects well on your company, lousy content makes your company look bad. If your content sucks or is mediocre, people won’t engage with you and might even be less likely to buy your product(s).

If you don’t have the will or the ability to create quality content in house, either don’t bother trying or find an agency to do the work for you.

Let’s assume that you decide to go ahead with content creation. It’s vital to understand that it’s best to think of content in two categories: premium content and supporting content. Premium content is material that requires registration (usually name and email address) in exchange for access. Supporting content does not require registration.

There has been some debate about premium and supporting content. The principal argument for keeping content free (not requiring registration) is more people will consume and spread your content. David Meerman Scott did research indicating a 50:1 ratio in downloads in free vs. premium content — e.g. a behind-a-form offer that got 1,000 downloads would get 50,000 downloads if not behind a form. The argument for premium content is you need leads. There is no way to track, qualify or nurture leads if you don’t have at least a name and an email address.

We choose to take both sides. That is, you should do both, and mix premium and supporting content. You need premium content to acquire leads, and you need supporting content to increase your audience and for lead nurturing. There isn’t one perfect mix — the mix is something to experiment with — but generally speaking, it’s a good idea to have more supporting content than premium content. Here are five reasons why:

1. It takes just one piece of premium content to acquire a lead, but it takes multiple pieces of supporting content to properly nurture a lead and earn a sales discussion. (By the way, if you want to drive someone away, have a sales person call them right after they first download a piece of your premium content. Works almost every time!)

2. Many supporting content pieces don’t require as many resources to produce. You take the time to research and create a large premium content piece, and then can modify, rework and add to the material to create a variety of supporting pieces.

3. A series of blog posts, an example of supporting content, can serve to promote your premium content. After you write a premium content piece, it’s a good idea to write 3-5 blog posts that link to the landing page.

4. Producing quality supporting content will help your premium content get more downloads. A registration form is a barrier to entry, but if people love supporting content you’ve written, they will be more likely to fill out a form.

5. Supporting content is more shareable on social. People generally don’t link to landing pages on social; social shares of your supporting content expand your reach.

In the graphic above, you can see examples of content types that are most often used as premium content and supporting content. Any content type, however, can be either premium content or supporting content. That said, we don’t recommend putting your blog posts and infographics behind a registration page, since people aren’t used to having to register to view them and because both benefit heavily from social shares.

In closing, while it’s important to create quality content, you won’t be perfect from the start, and there is a lot of experimentation. At the very least, you should create a quality content piece and have a regularly updated blog, but also consider creating an infographic, writing an article or holding a webinar. See what works and what doesn’t, then learn, adjust and try again.

Of course, creating content isn’t the end of the process. Our next post on the process will be on tactics to promote your content, including things like email marketing, news releases and social media. Then we will conclude with measurement, which will help you make adjustments, so that your content marketing will get better and better over time.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

How to Promote Company Benefits for Better Recruiting

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:58:55 PDT

This guest blog contribution comes from Business.com's Erica Bell.

Job seekers want to work for the best companies. These companies allow employees to grow as individuals while contributing to overall development of the business. These companies often offer great benefits. While the perks of being an employee will vary from company to company, no one can deny that the benefits of each company factor into their decision of where they accept an offer. In one survey, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that nearly one-third (31%) of businesses use their benefits programs to recruit highly skilled employees. Don’t be left out. Promote your benefits for better recruiting.

Social Media

Without selling, you can share information on social networks about the benefits your business offers through employment branding. Some companies match contributions to 401(k) plans, while others have successful office happy hours. Today’s society is connected; smartphones, tablets, and social networks are just a few of the reasons why. If your business has a stronger social presence, chances are that the perfect candidate is following your business on these networks, especially after they see a job posting online. By sharing benefits information, such as quarterly company outings, when tweeting open positions, you’re sharing attention-grabbing information that can attract top talent. Employment branding is similar to business branding. Use social media in such a way that when applicants think of your business, they don’t just see the business brand, but instead think of the employment brand and what being a part of your team means.

Job Postings

People are concerned about healthcare benefits the most, according to SHRM and Monster, as well as retirement and savings plans and vacation time. If your business has benefits in these areas, you can include that information to appeal to more people. While this type of information isn’t as social as office happy hours and company outings, it is valuable to job seekers and should be included with your job postings. High-quality candidates are hard to attract and recruit, so it’s up to your job postings to catch their attention. While a description of the position and qualifications needed for the job can weed out some candidates, you can catch the eyes of top talent by including information about benefits your business offers.

Interviews

If your social media subtleties and job posting propositions have led to an in-person interview with top talent, make sure you make the most of the opportunity in front of you. Just as job seekers want to find great companies, your business wants to find great new hires. When it comes to interviews, don’t hold back on the potential benefits candidates can receive. You don’t want your top prospects going to another company because you failed to ingrain the perks of being an employee at your company. In your interviews, make sure to note what employees will be eligible for and when. This could be the final push in their decision.

It is your company culture and benefits that will make an employee want to stay, especially when it is a less-than-rare position. The benefits your business offers, which contribute to culture, need to be promoted on social networks, job postings and interviews as a distinguishing factor. These things can set your business above others in the job seeker’s eyes. If you want to recruit the best, your benefits can help.

Author Bio: Erica Bell is a web copywriter for Business.com. She covers a range of topics including social recruiting and HR software solutions. Find Business.com on Google+.

Website nuts and bolts. Don’t screw your content marketing by not having them!

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 09:08:42 PDT

“Nuts and bolts. Nuts and bolts. We got screwed!!!”

So goes a derisive chant fans make to basketball referees after a perceived bad call.

Today, let’s talk about some other nuts and bolts, the website elements you need in place to not only maximize the reach and visibility of your content marketing, but to also make it a huge driver in your sales process. In other words, you need these elements, at least some of them, to turn content into dollars. Indelicately put, if you don’t have most of these nuts and bolts, you’ll be the one who’s screwed.

Before we break down the individual elements, it’s important to note this post is the third part of a series on the content marketing process, and we also wrote a cool overview article, “Content Marketing: The Best Way to Reach Today’s HR Buyer” (no registration required), detailing why content marketing is the best way to engage and and influence HR so you earn the right to discuss how you may do business together. There is some information in it that we’re not including in this blog post series, so we suggest you check it out.

We started the series with an overview of the process, before getting into the nitty-gritty with “Define, Plan, Budget.” That first step in the process is to define your brand, develop a content marketing plan and come up with a realistic content marketing budget. If you haven’t done those things, go check out that post, then come back here. For the rest of you, let’s begin the big reveal of website elements:

Buyer persona research: The concept of buyer personas is vital to understand for inbound marketing, a category that includes content marketing. The idea is pretty simple: All those wonderful people who potentially would be interested in giving you money for your product(s) can be put into a few different categories based on different pain points and other factors. You flesh each category into a persona — you can even give the personas names — then target your marketing and sales to the specific personas. For content marketing, this means you should write content for specific personas, both for your lead generation and lead nurturing processes (more on these later). One company reported a targeted persona strategy lifted their sales leads 124 percent. To determine your buyer personas, an excellent tool is Hubspot’s “Persona Development Worksheet.”

Keyword list: You need people to find your website and your content, right? To maximize your visibility, research keywords and habitually put them into your content and on your website. As noted in Copyblogger’s keyword research guide, choosing “the right words” is critical. A quote: “Choose the right words, and you’ll receive traffic, subscribers, revenue, influence… everything you need to be a success. Choose the wrong words, and you’ll be just another nobody that doesn’t get it, forever clamoring for attention but forever ignored.” A caveat: It’s important that when you choose keywords you choose ones that you can rank highly for; there’s no value in being on page 200 of search results.

Search-optimized copywriting: While it’s important to use keywords, again referencing Copyblogger, “much of what determines the ranking position of any page is due to what happens off the page, in the form of links from other sites … Put simply: If your content isn’t good enough to attract good, natural links, it doesn’t matter how 'optimized' that content is.” So, you need writers who know how to use keywords and to write compelling content that not only attracts your buyer personas, but also generates links from other content creators.

Call-to-action buttons: When people visit your site, you want them to take action. You get them to do this with call-to-action buttons. For content marketing, a common CTA is a download. Minor changes in CTA buttons can dramatically affect conversion rates, so let’s talk best practices. According to Onboardly, there are four elements to consider with CTA buttons: color, shape, placement and message. Color: connect your aesthetics to your core brand (except never use red, which often stops people from clicking). Shape: rounded corners work best. Placement: make sure your CTA is visible and distinct. Message: tell people what they get (“get your free whitepaper”), so they feel in control, instead of ordering them around (“download”), in which case they might be more resistant.

Landing pages/lead collection: For content marketing, landing pages are used to capture leads. A landing page, sometimes referred to as a registration page, consists of a registration form and a short description of what people get in exchange for filling it out. In content marketing, people receive major content pieces, such as white papers, e-books, research reports and webinars. Typically, people are asked for their name and email address; you can choose to request more information, but doing so can reduce registrants. See Unbounce for a great list of landing page tips, and for a larger guide, see Hubspot’s e-book “Optimizing Landing Pages for Lead Generation and Conversion."

Thank-you pages: As Hubspot noted, after a person fills out a registration form and becomes an instant new lead, you should always send them to a thank-you’ page, which delivers the content you promised on the landing page. The four most important components of a thank-you page, according to Hubspot, are access to your offer, social media sharing links, secondary calls-to-action and auto-response emails. Access to your offer: Reassure people they are on the right page by including the title of the offer in the title of your thank-you page, then provide a means to download or view your content. Social media sharing links: People are more likely to share your content after having consumed it, but make sure your share buttons link to your landing page, not your thank-you page, or you will lose out on lead generation. Secondary calls-to-action: Offer further offers, such as subscribing to your blog, other content they might be interested in, or perhaps a free trial. People who take this secondary step show more engagement with your brand, and thus are better leads than those who don’t. Auto-response emails: Set up automatic emails to provide more offers, which is another way of increasing engagement and evaluating/nurturing leads.

CRM integration and lead tracking: Once someone has filled out a registration form and become a lead, it’s important to track their activities on your site. Software options such as Hubspot and Marketo do this. By tracking the pages they visit, you get a good idea of leads’ level of interest in your brand and products, which is a precursor for effective lead nurturing, which, not coincidentally, is the next element on our list.

Nurturing campaigns: A few stats: MarketingSherpa: 65 percent of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing. Forrester Research: Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50 percent more sales leads at 33 percent lower cost. The Annuitas Group: Nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. Clearly, lead nurturing is important. The challenge of lead nurturing is it requires having enough supporting (aka no registration required) content (articles, case studies, blog posts, infographics, etc.) to send to leads. Essentially, your lead nurturing in content marketing should consist of distributing content that establishes and supports your value proposition, and also addresses potential sticking points. That way, leads become more receptive to sales discussions. For advanced lead nurturing, vary the content depending on the persona.

And those are the website elements that will help you maximize your success with content marketing. You can choose to create and maintain them on your own, but there are also a number of vendors, such as Hubspot and Salesforce, that can help you with different aspects. This is important stuff. Doing it well and doing it poorly can be the difference between success and failure. Don’t let a lack of website elements, or poorly executed ones, be the undoing of your content marketing.

Next up in our discussion on the content marketing process will be content, split into two categories, premium (registration required) and supporting (no registration required). Content is obviously the foundation of the process, so if you liked this post, you’ll probably want to check it out.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

Marketing lessons from Elvis, a flashy T-shirt and TalentNet Live

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:18:16 PDT

ELVIS and Katrina (with her LED T-shirt)
View more photos of the party here

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I attended my first TalentNet Live Interactive Conference last week with HRmarketer CEO Mark Willaman. We helped sponsor the event, and came away very impressed. The conference took place in downtown Austin, Texas, at a bar/restaurant during SXSW, which added energy, creativity and fun to the experience.

What do an Elvis impersonator and wearing a daring T-shirt have in common?

So here I am at TalentNet Live in Austin — at Dice’s Wanna be a Rockstar conference after-party. I’m sporting my LED T-shirt. Picture this if you can, the shirt is all black except for a green Statue of Liberty. There are bright bars of light that pulse to the beat of the music. Sometimes the bars are at the base of the Statue of Liberty, and sometimes they shine through to her torch.

“Elvis” is also at the party. A polyester-clad guy who sings a song or two, but mostly is going around and posing with the likes of me.

I don’t know about Elvis — but my pulsating Statue of Liberty is a hit — I’m getting “great shirt” and thumbs up from across the room.

So what do Elvis and I have in common with the rest of the attendees at TalentNet Live?.

We are both about getting noticed. And it turns out, to attract the talent you want, you need to put yourself (or your company) out there and you need to have people remember you.

That’s what the daylong conference was all about — using creative, social-savvy strategies to spark interest in an employer brand, get noticed and attract talent. The attendees were a lively bunch: a nice mix of outside recruiters and recruiters within companies, solution providers and media/analysts/influencers. Everyone came looking for new strategies to source, attract and engage talent, and the presenters brought the goods.

Speakers we listened to included:

Lance Sapera from 24-Hour Fitness
Sarah White from Sarah White and Associates
Matt Charney from Talent Technology Corporation
Jonathan Campbell from Social Talent
Joe Gerstandt
Stacy Zapar from tenfold social training

I venture no one left disappointed. I know I didn’t, but here’s what I took away.

You have a choice as marketers. Play it safe — or go a little farther. Put yourself out there. Put your company out there. Show the personality of your brand. Get noticed.

It works.

Post written by Fisher Vista / HRmarketer team member Katrina Busselle.

3 Questions You Must Answer to Succeed at Content Marketing

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:30:37 PDT

When you build a house, it’s vital to start with a good foundation. But even before you lay the foundation, you need to have a plan and a reasonable budget. Otherwise, the house probably won’t turn out well, or you’ll never finish it.

The same principles apply to content marketing. Before you start, you need to do some thinking, planning and budgeting. Failing to do so sets you up for disappointment.

Here are the three big questions you need to answer:

DEFINE: What does my brand stand for, and how does it differentiate itself from competitors?
PLAN: What are my goals for my marketing, and what’s my plan for achieving them?
BUDGET: What is a realistic budget to achieve my goals?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you’re ready to begin laying the foundation (creating the website infrastructure) for the content marketing process. For an overview of the process, see the graphic below and our article “Content Marketing: The Best Way to Reach Today’s HR Buyer” (no registration required).

First, let’s briefly go through Define, Plan, Budget one-by-one.

DEFINE

To succeed in content marketing, you need to have something to say, a point of view.

Your brand can’t have a point of view if you don’t know what your brand stands for. That’s why the first requirement in content marketing is to have a defined brand; it’s also important that as you define your brand that you differentiate it from your competitors.

“My product is cool” is not a point of view as far as content marketing is concerned, as content marketing shouldn’t be overly promotional (you want to maximize readership among potential buyers). Your point of view, however, might be related to what your product would help potential customers do. A firm that offers big data solutions, for example, could focus their content marketing on the benefits of big data.

For help in defining your brand, see these resources:
- Hubspot's “The Marketer’s Guide to Developing a Strong Brand Identity”
- Entrepreneur's “The Basics of Branding”
- Inc's “2 Simple Keys to Define Your Brand”

PLAN

You probably have come across the following quote by businessman and author Harvey Mackay: “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.”

It’s important advice for content marketers to follow. The plan does not need to be overly specific, but you need to set goals and determine how you plan to reach them. If you fail to set goals, you don’t know when you’ve succeeded or failed. If you fail to determine a plan, then reaching any goals you have will be by accident.

There are a number of goals you can set. For example, you could attempt to increase your page views by a certain percentage or to get a certain number of sales leads.

Once you set those goals, you then can make a plan to meet them. How many content pieces, blog posts, etc. will I need to reach those goals? What tactics do I need to invest in?

Of course, even if you have a plan, your results may or may not reach your goals. But having goals and a plan allows you to make strategic adjustments.

For you visual learners, check out Smart Insights' great infographic on creating a B2B marketing plan.

BUDGET

Having a plan is also crucial for budgeting.

We recently wrote about how many companies determine an overall marketing budget in an arbitrary fashion, when they should instead use an evidence-based five-question process to come up with a realistic budget.

The first step in that process was determining an overall revenue goal. After that, the questions worked backward to figure out the marketing costs that would allow you to reach that goal.

We recommend a similar process for determining a content marketing budget. Begin with your goals for your content marketing. Then figure out what content and tactics you need to put resources into to reach those goals. Lastly, figure out what the content/tactics will cost.

Ultimately, don’t expect that you can just set aside a random dollar figure and expect to reach your goals. If you fail to establish a realistic content marketing budget, you will never reach your goals.

COMING UP

Once you have defined your brand, come up with a marketing plan and implemented a reasonable budget, you have completed step 1 of the content marketing process. We will go over the other four steps in upcoming posts, with website infrastructure (vital for lead acquisition and nurturing) next in the series.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

You Can't Influence HR With an Empty Box

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 10:40:26 PST

What is a container without content? An empty box. A cat would love it, a toddler too. But adults would have little interest.

Picture your website as a box. To get potential buyers to engage with you, you need them to A. Discover it. B. Find what’s in it interesting or useful.

If your website has nothing but product information and sales offers, to most potential buyers it will be no more interesting than an empty box. The only ones who’d be likely to engage with you are those who have already decided to at least consider making a purchase, but given Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, they are less and less likely to find you.

To get found online and to engage and influence more potential buyers, you need to create quality content for your website, for that’s what Google and potential buyers both value. The more quality content you put before them, the higher you will rank in search results and in interest among potential buyers.

As a result, creating quality content is the way to influence HR, to make buyers associate your brand with quality. That way, when they are ready, they will want to have a sales discussion with you, instead of with one of your competitors.

It’s not so simple as just creating quality content. There is a vital content marketing process, which we’ll briefly outline below, and you can see in more detail in the graphic below and in our article (no registration required) “Content Marketing: The Best Way to Reach Today’s HR Buyer.”

1. Define, Plan, Budget. Define and differentiate your brand, fine-tune your messaging, create a marketing plan with clear goals and determine a realistic budget to meet those goals.

2. Website. For your content marketing process to meet its potential, you need a solid foundation from which to build on. Think of your website as this foundation. Your website needs to be set up to take advantage of content marketing. This includes, among other things, having a search-optimized site, clear calls-to-action, landing pages, CRM integration, lead tracking and analytics — all of which are necessary prerequisites for lead capturing and nurturing campaigns.

3. Content. There are two categories of content you need to create: premium and supporting. Premium content requires registration, with common types including white papers, e-books, research reports and webinars. It generates your sales leads. Supporting content does not require registration, with common types including articles, case studies, infographics and blog posts. It nurtures your leads.

4. Tactics. You have a plan, strong messaging, a search-optimized website designed for lead collection and lead nurturing, and systems in place to produce lots of great content. Now what? Time to get the word out and put that content in places where your buyers will find it. Distribute your content through a variety of methods including direct email marketing, blogging, search-optimized news releases and social media.

5. Measure, Adjust, Refresh and Repeat. See how your content performed by measuring your online visibility, website traffic, sales leads and social engagement. Determine any adjustments that need to be made, then return to step 3.

Let’s briefly focus on sales. For ultimately, while it’s great to get a lot of page views and to be a recognized as a thought leader, we all need sales. Turning page views into dollars is critical. It's also inexpensive, relatively speaking, as leads generated through inbound marketing ($143) cost well less than half the average for outbound marketing ($373), and also close at a higher rate. But how exactly does effective content marketing turn into sales?

Take a look back at the first two steps above. They are vital for setting up a sales-driving content marketing infrastructure. Then leads pour into the sales funnel through premium content, and appropriate supporting content is delivered to nurture them toward the point of sale. For leads that appear on the verge of a purchase, consider offering something of value (e.g. a product trial) to encourage them to buy. See the graphic at the top of the page for a visual representation.

It’s important to recognize that this takes time, but an effective content marketing process (generally four major premium content pieces per year, plus supporting content) can transform a website that interests most potential buyers no more than an empty box into one that churns out leads, nurtures them and helps maximize sales.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

Water Cooler Or Bust: Marissa Mayer, What Were You Thinking?

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:21:03 PST

WATER COOLER OR BUST!

Many are familiar with Yahoo's recent decision to ban telecommuting. In an ironic twist, the internet company with state-of-art communication and collaboration technology rolled out a new policy that requires employees to be physically present at company facilities during their workweek.

The new policy, designed to enhance communication and collaboration, will presumably take place around low-tech water coolers staged at various locations at the company's facilities.

THE REALITY OF LONG COMMUTES

In reality, the new rule translates into more employees clogging roads commuting to and from work — hours that could be spent with their families or better yet, working more hours for Yahoo! For parents with young children, the policy brings back an era when spouses spent long hours at the workplace and were rarely seen at home.

The policy penalizes full-time remote workers even more, requiring them to relocate closer to Yahoo! offices. Moreover, the status of remote workers with disabilities may come into question as well.

THE REAL DEAL

Strangely, the decree does not take into account the studies that cite telecommuters as often more engaged and productive than their in-office counterparts. I suspect the policy is really not about face-to-face collaboration at the office. Rather, it's about reinventing the existing workforce (read: workforce streamlining).

A BOLD RESPONSE IMAGINED

That said, bold statements demand bold responses. Yahoo! employees, we applaud your collective effort in advance for your work in erecting a 20-foot-high water cooler at the Yahoo! world headquarters and chaining yourselves to it (date and time TBA). With that fun act, the swift IMs, tweets and blog reactions will span the globe in seconds. Oh Marissa Mayer, how's that for a collaborative experience that could only be possible at the office?

Not surprisingly, social content marketing software SocialEars HR identified the following topics as the top upwardly trending this week:

remote employees
telework
managing remotely
work authorization
mental health (relationship?)

And here is some of the most widely shared content on these topics amongst HR influencers, as identified by SocialEars HR:

Marissa Mayer Is No Fool

Yahoo kills telecommuting. Three cheers for Marissa Mayer!

New Research: What Yahoo Should Know About Good Managers and Remote

Why Remote Workers Are More (Yes, More) Engaged

Why We (Still) Believe in Working Remotely

Post written by HRmarketer.com team member Monica Meyer (from home, on the couch).

5 Questions to Help Determine Your Marketing Budget

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:48:48 PST

“The most common source of management mistakes is not the failure to find the right answer. It is the failure to ask the right questions.” ~Peter Drucker

How do you decide what to spend on marketing? Ask the right questions.

An HR software company recently asked our Fisher Vista agency for a proposal to do its marketing — all of it. The company wanted to close five deals per quarter and would be relying — if we chose to respond — on our proposed marketing activities to deliver the leads that would help its one sales person close these five deals. What was the budget? About $3,500 per month. How did their executives come up with this number? No idea. It was simply what they budgeted for the year. And these were really smart people — engineers.

Determining a marketing budget is one of the most difficult tasks of management, yet it is my experience that many marketing budgets are more or less arbitrarily set and are therefore flawed. One common method of setting a marketing budget is percentage of revenues. Here are some averages, by industry, that I found from various sources:

Industrial B2B: 1% of gross sales
Software: 9-12%
Retail: 4-10% of net revenues
Banks/Credit Unions: 2-5% of assets
Law firms: 1-4% of gross revenues
Pharmaceuticals: Up to 20% of net sales
Hospitals: 1% of net revenues

Another source suggested that a proper marketing budget was between 2% and 10% of sales, but noted that for B2C, retail and pharmaceuticals this percentage can exceed 20% during peak brand-building years.

Percent of revenue is an interesting benchmark for comparison reasons AFTER you have set your budget but not what I advise as the starting point to set the budget. A better approach for setting a marketing budget, especially for mid-size HR B2B companies, is to work backward and ask five critical questions:

What is our revenue goal for the year?
How many new deals per month do we need to reach this goal?
What is the number of sales leads we need to close one deal?
How many leads do we need per month to reach our revenue goal?*
What marketing activities are most likely to give us this amount of leads?

(* The answer to question 4 is the result of multiplying the answer to question 2 by the answer to question 3.)

I know that I am oversimplifying and that other variables like sales cycles, competitive behavior, market maturity, product life cycles, strength of brand, buyer demographics, quality of leads, etc. come into play, but the point is to have a logical approach to setting a realistic marketing budget. And these five questions get you thinking the right way so that the approach is not arbitrary.

Let's take a closer look at questions three and five. These are the tough ones.

In order to answer the question “what is the number of sales leads we need to close one deal,” you need to study your average closing ratio, which is typically defined as the number of deals you close compared to the baseline you use, the most common being the number of leads, calls or presentations. This can be tricky because the ratio will vary considerably depending on whether you use leads, calls or presentations.

Lets assume you use demos (presentations). If the average sales rep gives 10 demos per week and closes two deals, then their close ratio is 2/10, or 20 percent. But this does not factor in the amount of marketing necessary to create those demo opportunities. After all, a salesperson is only as good as his/her leads — right :-) So let’s focus on leads. Quality of leads is never a constant, but if your marketing is targeting the right audience (we'll get to that in a moment) then you can come up with some decent estimates. For example, one might determine that for every 20 sales leads your marketing is currently delivering, 10 are worthy of your time, 5 will talk with you, 3 will want more information and 1 is likely to buy (5% leads to close ratio). So if you want to close 10 deals per quarter, you need to generate 200 qualified leads.

Now for the question of what marketing activities are most likely to give us these 200 qualified leads per quarter. Let’s not forget that you can have the right budget but spend it on the wrong things. This is the most challenging question of the five because there are so many available tactics. Popular tactics for many HR B2B companies include:

Print & online advertising
Direct email marketing
Tradeshow exhibiting
Speaking
Search-optimized news releases
PR/media relations
Webinars
Blogging
Social (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+, SlideShare, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.)

To learn more about the role of various marketing tactics in the buying process please see our e-book, the B2B Marketing Allocation Guide.

As you can see there are many tactics to choose from and each tactic serves a different purpose. Some tactics, like direct email marketing, are all about immediate lead generation, while others, like social media, function more like advertising (brand building). So if you spend your entire marketing budget on social, you run the risk of not getting your 200 leads. But spending nothing on social may also prevent you from reaching your goals. Remember those little things like strength of brand and the interrelationships between branding and lead generation...? Hey, nobody said this was easy.

According to MarketingSherpa, 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to sales, yet only 27% of those leads will be qualified. So a critical first step toward improving closing ratios (and determining a realistic marketing budget) is to target marketing efforts to bring in better-qualified leads. And the best way to do this is to nurture all your qualified leads. Consider these facts:

Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads - DemandGen.
Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. - The Annuitas Group

After asking the five questions listed above and giving considerable thought to the types — and amounts — of marketing tactics necessary to reach your sales goals most companies will, or at least should, conclude that:

(1) they need to invest in a variety of marketing and PR tactics to meet their goals

(2) they need some sort of lead nurturing program in place to warm up their leads before handing them over to sales and

(3) a steady amount of fresh, engaging "content" (blog posts, articles, white papers, etc.) will be required to support the marketing activities and lead nurturing.

Doing this well is not inexpensive but is more likely to deliver long-term, sustainable results. Doing it poorly is potentially a recipe for blowing your entire marketing budget. Your choice.

Learn more about using content and lead nurturing to boost your marketing and sales by reading our latest article (no registration required), “Content Marketing — The Best Way to Reach and Influence HR.”

Post written by Mark Willaman, the founder and CEO of HRmarketer.com, SocialEars HR and Fisher Vista Marketing. Connect with Mark on LinkedIn.

13 Great Content Marketing Infographics

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 06:00:08 PST

Infographics are cool. For viewers/readers: they present valuable information that is easily digestible and quick to consume. For publishers, they generate a lot of traffic and social shares, and they’re fun to make.

Content marketing is also popular. Many brands are finding they can reach more of their target audience with content than through other methods such as advertising and conferences. Plus, becoming a trusted source by delivering strong content can earn sales discussions.

Let’s combine the two and look at content marketing infographics. We’ve been pinning the best of them to our Pinterest account for some time now, and we thought we’d present some of our favorites to you now.

The Contentious State of B2B Content Marketing (Marketo)

Is Content Marketing Traditional Advertising’s New Rival (Marketo)

Content Diversity in Online Marketing (Pinfographics)

Content Marketing Media Matrix for Small Businesses (Copyblogger)

What Makes Content Go Viral? (ProBlogger)

Content Life Cycle (Digital C4)

The Anatomy of Content Marketing (Content Plus)

A Brief History of Content Marketing (Content Marketing Institute)

Why Content for SEO (Brafton)

Pinterest Deconstructed for eTailers and Content Marketers (maxymiser)

Content Marketing: The Game (HRmarketer/Fisher Vista)

Selling to HR (HRmarketer/Fisher Vista)

Fortune 500 B2B Marketing Scorecard (Pardot)

We hope you’ve enjoyed this look at content marketing infographics. Did we miss any of your favorites? Or, maybe you’ve created one that you think we should have mentioned? Let us know with a comment.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

Lessons in Customer Service: Don’t Act Like the Post Office

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:46:25 PST

The United States Postal Service recently announced it would suspend Saturday mail delivery in an attempt to save about $2 billion—and its own skin. That’s sad, but I’m not surprised. The organization is fraught with bureaucratic and pricing structure problems, which are its primary issues. But when an organization also has institutionally poor customer service—well, it’s another nail in the coffin. I’m not talking about the individual employees who serve customers each day; many of them are wonderful. I’m referring to the way the institution thinks about meeting customers’ needs.

Here’s an example. Recently, I needed to send out an event mailing for a client that involved a book and an invitation. The mailing required 12x15 padded envelopes. I called the local post office to ask if there were 60 such envelopes there. The lady who answered said she was busy but would call me back.

She did not call back. As I was on a tight timeline, I called her back later that afternoon. I was informed that they did not keep this size of envelope in stock, but that I could order them online. Hooray, I thought, and went to the USPS website.

Whereupon I learned that I could order a maximum of one package of 10 envelopes. Not the 60 that I needed. No explanation was given for this limit. In addition, the envelopes would arrive in 7-10 days. On the bright side, the envelopes were free. Well, that’s because they have “United States Postal Service” plastered all over them, so you have to go the post office to use them.

Fair enough, except that I couldn’t use them, because I needed 60, and soon! I called the USPS customer service line to see if any exception could be made, but who was I kidding? Inflexible government-style regulation all the way. Rules are rules.

In short, the USPS literally made it impossible for me to do business with them. So I called FedEx. The woman who answered put me on hold while she went and hand-counted how many 12x15 envelopes she had in stock, and then told me that she would call around to other local stores to gather the rest. They would be available the next day.

She called me the next morning to let me know that my envelopes were in. I went in, and the envelopes were actually there, bundled and with my name on them. Easy. Business 101.

This is a clear example of how the USPS violates basic customer service practices—especially this number one tip from Arnold Sanow at Customer Service Manager:

How can we make it easier for our customers to do business with us? The USPS made it impossible! FedEx did everything possible for me to give them my business.

A few of Sanow’s other customer service considerations:

Do what you say you are going to do. If you say you’ll call back, then call back. This seems like common sense as well as common courtesy, but…Lack of follow-through says, “You are not important to us.” It also suggests, “We are not a reliable organization.” Or even, “We are a sinking ship that can’t afford to hire enough people to take care of our dwindling customer base.” I am not keen to work with organizations sending me any of these messages.

Good, timely response. This goes for your call center, HR department, website—any point of contact with your “customers.” For good or ill, we live in a 24/7, high-speed world. Whoever your stakeholders are—employees, clients, the public—they have been weaned on microwave dinners, drive-through custom coffee and Instagram. Everything is available instantly all the time. If you keep people waiting, they will go elsewhere.

And one of my own:

Rules were made to be broken. Of course you have to create standard operating procedures. But beware the dangers of inflexibility. I’m sure the post office thought it was delivering awesome customer service by offering “free” envelopes to customers but its inability or unwillingness to meet my particular need cost them hundreds of dollars. The larger rule to keep top of mind is, “If our customers don’t get what they need, they will leave and our enterprise will fail.”

I hate to see Benjamin Franklin’s dream die, but that seems to be what’s happening at post offices across the country. Of course poor customer service isn’t the only reason why the USPS is doomed, but it doesn’t help. Don’t be like them.

Post written by HRmarketer staff member Heath Havlick.

Diving Deep Into …PPACA

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:58:56 PST

Author’s note: This blog post is part of an ongoing series called “Diving Deep Into …” Each post explores a topic beyond just the surface, looking at the trending articles, the people engaged with it and the media outlets covering it. To assemble the information we use SocialEars HR (social content marketing software). Past topics include HR big data, HR technology, employee engagement and workplace wellness. Today we continue with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also often referred to as Obamacare.

No matter what you call it, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, PPACA or Obamacare, the federal health care reform law has wide-ranging and powerful implications for employers, employees, insurers, employee benefit brokers and consultants and employee benefit vendors.

Some parts of the act are already in effect, but the most disruptive changes are still to come. There is significant debate and discussion about issues related to PPACA, especially whether companies with 50 or more full-time employers should offer medical coverage or elect not to and pay a penalty under PPACA.

Read on to learn about the PPACA-related news that has resonated among HR social influencers, as well as about the influencers authoring and sharing content about PPACA, and the media outlets covering the topic. The information and graphics were assembled using SocialEars HR (social content marketing software for the human resources and employee benefits marketplace).

The Content

Below are some of the most-shared articles related to PPACA, and their main points.

1. Play or Pay With Obamacare? 7 Reasons Why Pay is Not the Easy Answer, TLNT, by Thomas Mangan of United Benefits Advisors

Main point(s): Employers with 50 or more full-time employees need to decide whether to offer medical coverage or pay a penalty under PPACA. Many are considering the “pay” option, but there are issues to consider when making that choice, including: lost tax advantages; reporting burdens remain; recruitment and retention challenges; counting employees can be complex (business that think they are under the employee requirement should make certain); there are options to reduce the cost of coverage; employees may demand additional compensation for picking up healthcare costs; and carriers will address plan designs, so plan design criteria won’t likely be a burden on many employers.

2. Boobs and Babes in the Workplace, Blogging4Jobs, by Mike Haberman

Main point(s): Some HR pros, especially those in smaller companies, might not know that an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act was included in PPACA that requires that nursing mothers be provided break time and space in order to express breast milk as needed. The law does exempt employers with fewer than 50 employees if providing the time or space would impose an “undue hardship,” defined as “causing the employer significant difficulty or expense”; however, for those who plan to use the exemption, it would be a good idea to have significant documentation on “how or why it is an undue hardship.”

3. Just Give Me the Cash, Compensation Café, by E. James (Jim) Brennan

Main point(s): W-2s in 2013 include the cost of employee health care coverage as a result of PPACA, and many employees, especially those who received coverage they didn’t use, will prefer that those dollars be deposited in their pockets.

4. Regulating Wellness, SHRM.org, by Joanne Sammer

Main point(s): A key part of PPACA is its emphasis on preventive care and wellness. PPACA regulations would bring together and expand on existing regulations, giving employers more guidance as wellness programs expand and become more widespread.

5. 50% of Staffing Company Owners Surveyed Say They Expect Revenues to Rise Because of Obamacare, Staffing Talk, by David Gee

Main point(s): In a survey, 50 percent of staffing company owners say they expect their revenue to increase as a result of Obamacare, while just 7.8 percent expect it to decrease. Also, 20.7 percent they have decided to participate in PPACA, 12.1 percent have decided not to and instead pay the penalty, with 63.8 percent undecided.

6. More Employees Covered by Self-Insured Health Plans, SHRM, by Stephen Miller

Main point(s): The percentage of U.S. workers in private-sector self-insured health plans is increasing, and following the passage and implementation of PPACA, there is speculation that more smaller employers will opt for self-insurance as a way of controlling expected health coverage cost increases.

7. Prepare for PPACA’s Transitional Reinsurance Fee, SHRM, by Chadron J. Patton

Main point(s): PPACA’s “transitional reinsurance program,” designed to help stabilize premiums in the individual health insurance market for those with pre-existing conditions, will result in another significant fee that sponsors of group health plans must now prepare to calculate and pay.

The People

- Dal Watson: Based in Texas, is an independent broker/agent and a health care reform adviser.

- Jennifer Benz: Jennifer is the chief strategist and founder of Benz Communications, and specializes in employee benefits, health care and strategic HR communication. She has a popular blog that covers health- and benefits-related topics.

- Dwane Lay: Dwane is the head of HR process design at Dovetail Software and also is a writer at the Lean HR Blog. He wrote a popular post, “HR 101 for StartUps,” http://leanhrblog.com/hr-101-for-startups/ that mentioned PPACA changed the health insurance landscape significantly for both employees and employers, the latter of which faces the burden of compliance.

- Dave Ryan: Dave is the director of HR for Mel-O-Cream Donuts International and also has a popular blog, the HR Official.

- Thomas Mangan: The CEO of United Benefit Advisors. Mangan is an 20-year veteran in the employee benefits field. A recognized leader in his field, Mangan was voted as one of the top-10 most influential people in the healthcare industry by Employee Benefits News. Visit his blog, Insights into Healthcare and Employee Benefits.

- Fran Melmed: Fran is an HR consultant specializing in workplace wellness and healthcare consumerism.

- Robin Schooling: Robin is a senior HR leader and blogs at HR Schoolhouse.

What you can do with this information:

• Reach out to them with targeted PR
• Build your network
• Develop valuable relationships/partnerships

The Media Outlets

The media outlets covering PPACA-related news include:

- LifeHealthPro.com
- National Underwriter: Life & Health
- HealthCare Consumerism Solutions
- Employee Benefit Adviser
- Employee Benefit News USA
- Senior Market Advisor
- Insurance & Financial Advisor — Virginia Edition
- BenefitsPro.com
- Insurance Newscast
- HealthLeaders
- Total Compensation & Benefits Update (SHRM)
- PEO Insider
- HR News (SHRM)
- HR Magazine (SHRM)
- InsuranceNewsNet

What you can do with this information:
• Traditional PR and media relations activities

Conclusion

As many of the more controversial aspects of PPACA are still to go into effect, health care reform promises to remain a much-talked-about and much-written-about topic, at minimum, for the rest of 2013 and into 2014.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

5 Quick Ways to Expand Your Content Marketing Reach

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:42:43 PST

My 2-year-old daughter hasn’t been a big talker (at least in the form of words that adults can understand), mostly just a word or two at a time.

Last week, however, she started singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” and as toddlers are known to do when they find something they like, she does so repeatedly, and oh so cutely, I might add. Over the weekend, she added singing her “ABCs” to her repertoire, to the delight of my wife and I.

It got me thinking. It was a big change in little time that expanded the reach of what my little girl could do. Content marketers should also be able to do some quick things that expand their reach — with HR influencers — too. What would they be? Well. Read on.

1. Create social media partnerships

Bring more traffic to your blog and other content is
a crucial part of making your content marketing
efforts successful.

I’ve been a fan of the Fistful of Talent blog since I first encountered it. It has strong writers with strong opinions about HR topics. That’s one part of Fistful of Talent’s not-so-secret sauce. Another is that there is strength in numbers. The individual bloggers get more readers by being part of the “Fist,” than if they were just one finger going it alone.

Content marketers should apply the strength-in-numbers concept to social media. Create partnerships with others who have content to promote. There are four key things to remember for determining potential partners: 1. They should not be direct competitors. 2. They should have the same target audience. 3. They need to be marketing quality content. 4. They need to have social media following of similar size and quality to your own (you both need to benefit relatively equally), but that is not made up of the exact same people.

You, of course, also need to create quality content, to be worthy of the partnership.

What you do with these social media partnerships: You share each other’s content, thereby improving the reach of both parties’ content marketing. For example, set up automatic retweets of each other’s blog posts — it’s one of the best ways to increase your page views (by the way, Fistful of Talent’s bloggers retweet each other’s posts to put them in front of their combined followings).

How to set them up: Reach agreements with those already in your network. Find potential social media partners, then add them to your network via social media (e.g. retweets, blog comments), before engaging them in a social media partnership discussion.

2. Focus on certain keywords in blog, tweets, etc.

We’ve found that by using specific keywords in our own blogs and social media conversations that were getting more followers in areas related to these keywords (e.g., SEO, content marketing, marketing to human resources). Figure out the keywords that matter to your business and to your target audience, then make sure to use them as often as you can in quality content, blogs and social media posts.

3. Find great links for your blog

Make your blog more attractive by finding relevant links to send readers to great, related content. If people find your blog a place where they can find good content — not just your own, but others’ content as well — they will be more likely to return. Also, let the authors of the content your linking to know via social media, and perhaps they’ll give you a social media lift (e.g. a tweet/retweet).

4. Use JustUnfollow.com’s “Copy Followers” feature

Are there companies and influencers whose follower lists you are envious of? Sign up for JustUnfollow.com (it’s free, and they didn’t pay us — or even ask us — to say this, and we’re not partners in any way), and use the “Copy Followers” feature to add their followers to the people you follow. Some people will follow you back, and if your Twitter feed includes quality content that they find useful, many of them might do so.

5. Use SocialEars HR

This is our own social content marketing software, but SocialEars HR can help with each of the first four tips above. For setting up social media partnerships, the “What’s Hot?” tool will help you identify good, timely blog topics. The “Find Influencers” feature will help you identify people who are influencing the topics relevant to your business (e.g., mobile recruiting, big data, PPACA, leadership development, social recruiting, etc.) on social and may be willing to form partnerships. For focusing on keywords, the software’s Content Analyzer identifies the keywords in your content, and suggests other related keywords that are popular among HR influencers. The “Find Content” feature is a great way to help find quality, popular content for any HR topic to link to in your blog, and will also give you great content for your Twitter feed, which will encourage people to follow you back.

Conclusion

These were just five ways to quickly improve the reach of your content marketing. Each can provide you a significant boost and if you like them, you can do them repeatedly (but not as often as my daughter sings “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” — it’s just not possible). Ultimately, however, the best way to benefit from each of the five ways above, and to enjoy success in your content marketing, is to create quality content.

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.

Content Marketing & Inbound Links: Gifts That Keep on Giving

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 12:13:13 PST

The other day someone came to our HRmarketer website from a 2005 post on MarketingSherpa that referenced our site and included a link to it. That link is over seven years old!

The visitor clicked the link, landed on our website, visited seven different pages, then engaged with us by signing up for one of our offerings. Thank you, 2005 inbound link. And thank you, MarketingSherpa.

Quality inbound links help deliver quality traffic
to your website.

Inbound links are gifts that keep on giving. As the story above illustrates, inbound links can bring continuous traffic to your site. Plus, that traffic tends to be of relatively high quality; visitors arrive after viewing content from another website, coming to you only after showing an interest in what you have to offer.

Another benefit is that inbound links help in SERP (search engine ranking position), provided that they are from quality sites that enjoy high rankings.

But how does one go about getting quality inbound links? You may receive emails from spammers and others looking to share links, but that’s not the way to go; those generally aren’t quality links and may do more harm than help with your SERP.

The best and most sustainable method for generating quality inbound links is to create quality content that others will find valuable and link to from their content. To maximize these inbound links, implement an aggressive year-round content marketing strategy to create and distribute content that gets you noticed not only by prospects, but also by the people you want links from: other content producers and HR influencers in your niche.

It’s also a good idea to link to other sites’ quality content from your content. Not only does it associate your content with quality content, but those sites will appreciate the inbound link that you gave them, and might be willing to reciprocate. I know that we appreciated the link from MarketingSherpa (and look, we just reciprocated). It’s still sending us traffic, more than seven years later!

To learn more about content marketing, check out our infographics “Content Marketing: The Game” and “Selling to HR.”

Post written by HRmarketer / SocialEars HR team member Eric Anderson.