HRmarketer.com Blog

Get To 1st Base (and beyond) With Your Social Marketing & PR

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Thu, 24 May 2012 07:53:31 PDT

   What are marketing and PR “wins” worth?

It depends. What does it depend on? Readership, reach and influence.

    We’ll explain using baseball terms.

    A bylined article placement in a prominent trade magazine read by your customers would be a grand slam. The magazine has big reach and influence, and the people you most want to reach are reading it. Article placements in other magazines could be a home run, a triple or a double, depending on the publication’s readership, reach and influence.

    A small mention in a publication could be a triple, double or a single, again, depending on the publication’s readership, reach and influence.

    Now another question: What are social media marketing and PR “wins” worth?

    The answer is the same: It depends, and it depends on readership, reach and influence. Social media, however, provides more ways to “win,” a whole new group of targets to “win” with, and even guaranteed “wins.”

    Here are some of the ways to “win” and their values:

     — A bylined article placement: Just like with traditional marketing and PR, this could be a grand slam, home run, triple or double, depending on the publication.

     — A small mention in a publication: Triple, double or single, depending on the publication.

     — A tweet, retweet, Facebook or LinkedIn share by someone else including a link to your content: This could be anything from a strikeout to a grand slam, depending on the readership, reach and influence of the person doing the tweet or share. If a key influencer tweets your news, the value can be more than an article mention. If the person who tweets your news has few followers and no influence, well, there’s always the next inning.

    — Following, being followed by (Twitter) or connecting with (LinkedIn) influencers: A single at best, but usually a walk. That’s OK because over time these can add up, increasing one’s social media footprint and chances for tweets and retweets of your news.

    — Your own tweet or LinkedIn or Facebook message referencing your news or content: This can be a single or more, provided you have built up the number of people who are following or connected with you. In other words, if you have built up your readership, reach and influence, without being a blowhard, your tweets and messages will have more value. Speaking of being a blowhard, if all your social communicating is about you and your great company/products, your tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn messages will likely be ignored or get you into trouble — that’s a balk.

    — A comment on a blog: Guaranteed single and maybe more, so long as it’s not a blatant commercial in which case you get traded for a marketer to be named later or worse, demoted to a losing minor league team.

    Marketing and PR (traditional or social media) is about effectively getting your news and brand before your desired audience. With traditional techniques, this is largely done through print, online and broadcast media, where there are usually gatekeepers involved. Social media offers new opportunities with fewer, if any, gatekeepers where you control your company’s influence and reach.

     To have the most success, marketers and PR pros should use a cohesive strategy of growing their social media footprints and networks on the various social media websites; authoring original content and sharing it on their social channels; curating other people’s content; commenting on blogs; and connecting with people (journalists, analysts and social influencers) when they have news to publicize.

    Go ahead, suit up and get into the ball game. Join the conversation. And remember, try to avoid strikeouts, balks and demotions.

Learn more about social media listening software and how these products can improve your marketing and PR in the latest HRmarketer white paper titled “Want People To Hear You? Then Listen”.

Fragmented Attention Spans? Hogwash. Great Messaging Resonates.

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:47:00 PDT

Marketing channels are growing like kudzu. To put it more precisely, they're fragmenting at a rapid rate. A recent Businessweek.com article by Steve McKee titled Integrated Marketing: If You Knew It, You'd Do It, offered an insightful overview of the best weapon to combat this fragmentation: an integrated marketing strategy and consistent identity/messaging.

It's quite a good piece and well worth reading. However, at one point the author writes that, along with the marketing channels themselves, “attention spans are becoming increasingly fragmented.” Nonsense.

Yes, there are more channels than ever vying for your buyers' attention. But that does not mean their attention spans are more fragmented. In fact, just as always, your buyers have perfectly adequate attention spans-if your messaging resonates with them.

Buyers can pay attention to only one channel and one vendor at a time. And the length of time they'll pay attention to a channel or a vendor is not a function of how many channels and vendors there are. It's a function of how effectively a channel or vendor is in sparking and holding a buyer's interest. Do a lousy job of appealing to your buyers and they'll change channels pretty quickly. But that's always been true, even when there were only a handful of channels.

Without question, the abundance of marketing channels changes the game. But this abundance doesn't fragment your buyers' attention spans. They'll pay attention to you … as long as you're saying something worth listening to.

Post written by Michael Civiello, corporate communications writer/copywriter

Noise, Noise, Go Away. Don’t Come Back Another Day.

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 21 May 2012 07:00:08 PDT


Social Listening and Conversation Analysis Software Like SocialEars Helps Marketer's Find the Right Conversations to Listen to.

     Let’s say you were interested in recruiting and wanted to find social media conversations about it as part of your marketing or PR efforts.

     Using a lot of the social monitoring tools out there (or even Google Alerts), you’d find comments, tweets and posts about employee and executive recruiting, but you’d also have to wade through a huge amount of unwanted chatter — noise — about college football and basketball recruiting and military recruiting, among other things.

     Unfortunately, recruiting isn’t the only topic for which noise is a major problem. In fact, it’s an issue for virtually every topic.

     The obvious question that arises is: Is there a way to get rid of the noise?

    It’s impossible to cut out all the noise, but it is possible to eliminate 95 percent of it, using social listening and conversation analysis software. Using this type of software in your marketing and PR allows you to do the following three steps, so you will waste less time on noise and instead, quickly find the best conversations to participate in and the best people to engage with.

1.    Reduce the social media ocean to a manageable pond. B2B marketers and PR pros are only interested in reaching out to a small subset of the people — B2B journalists, analysts and social influencers — using social media networks, so filter out everybody else’s conversations. The result: When you search recruiting, far fewer results about college football and basketball recruiting.

2.    Listen better. In addition to listening to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs, listen to online articles. Plus, don’t just listen to the 140 characters in a tweet, but also to the content tweets link to. This increases the number of good search results from what you’d get from many social monitoring tools. A tweet might not include the word “recruiting,” but it might link to an article about it. Conversely, a tweet may include the word recruiting but link to nothing of interest.

3.    Analyze. Context is crucial in conversations. If a person is tweeting about a topic, you want to know their level of influence and expertise and what else they’ve written about it on social media and in blog posts and online articles. This analysis helps you decide if you want to engage them; then, if you decide to engage them, it allows you to do so more intelligently and effectively.

     Social “conversation” analysis software, such as SocialEars HR Edition, does those three things, allowing you to spend less time with noise and more on marketing and PR. A new white paper by HRmarketer titled “Want People To Hear You? Then Listen” goes into more detail about using Social Listening technologies for marketing and PR pros. Get it here.

If You Have Nothing to Say, Change Your Social Strategy! Here's how.

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Thu, 17 May 2012 07:00:03 PDT

    What do you have to say? Your social marketing and PR strategy depends on the answer,

     As a marketer or a public relations professional, at a particular time or for a particular client, you either have news to promote or you don’t.

     As obvious as that statement is, it’s an important distinction to make when you engage in social media marketing and PR, because your efforts should be divided on that basis. Your goals are different, so your strategies and tactics should be as well.

     To demonstrate, what follows is a “how to” on doing social media marketing, showing the different approaches for what we refer to as routine social media marketing (no specific news to promote) and news-dependent social media marketing (when publicizing specific news, an event or other information).

     Due to the huge amount of social media usage, doing B2B social media marketing effectively requires technological help. For more on the available options, see this post. For the purposes of this blog post, we are going to examine the different social media marketing approaches through the use of social “conversation” analysis software. This type of social listening and engagement software listens to and analyzes the social conversations happening among journalists, analysts and social influencers in the B2B marketplace on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as related blogs and online news stories.

     We’ll begin with routine social media marketing. The goals here are to stay up-to-date with the news and social conversations taking place in your market; to participate in the social conversation, thereby expanding your company’s or client’s online visibility; to add to your network; and to discover opportunities to write or publicize existing content by finding hot topics.

     The process is relatively simple. Here are the steps we do each week for clients and for our own company. To do this, we use SocialEars HR Edition, social “conversation” analysis software:

    1.    Search for three or four specific topics that apply to your business. The results will return articles, blog posts, tweets, retweets, Facebook posts and other online conversations, sourced to journalists, analysts and social influencers. Examine the results and select the ones that are most relevant. Read the applicable articles and blog posts and comment on them (keep it non-promotional). Retweet them. Reference them in a blog post. Connect with the authors on LinkedIn or follow them on Twitter. Trust us, doing this a few hours each week has a snowballing impact on your brand visibility and social footprint.

    2.    Monitor Trends for your industry (or for a custom network of influencers important to you such as a geographic region or your favorite online influencers) to see if any topics applicable to your business are trending up. If any are, it’s a good time to write or publicize content related to those topics. Piggybacking on hot topics is a proven way to improve your social visibility. When publishing this content, share it with the people currently talking about it (see step 1), and transition to news-dependent social media marketing (see below).

     3. Check the trending hashtags. Click those that are applicable to your business and see the latest tweets using those hashtags. Many tweets feature links to more valuable content to read, and you can choose to communicate with the authors via Twitter or email. And you can start using these hashtags in your own tweets to expand your social reach.

     Now we get to news-dependent social media marketing. You take advantage of some of the same tools, but in different ways because you have a different goal. The following are the steps we recommend (again, using social “conversation” analysis software).

    1. Identify the primary topics discussed in your latest content (blog,white paper, article, news announcement) and search those topics to find people to connect with and share your content with. You can also do searches to find the most popular content being shared on these respective topics — this can help you research and write your own content, and thereby develop thought leadership.

    2. Check the trending hashtags to find more people to share your news with. Then use these hashtags when tweeting your news.

    3. Use the “What’s Trending?” information to see if there are any trending topics to incorporate into your content that can expand the interest of your content and make it relevant to more influencers. In other words, piggyback on what’s hot.

    4. Put your content into SocialEars’ Content Analyzer (beta) to discover other keyword topics that you might want to include in your release use software like SocialEars’ Content Analyzer that identifies the trending topics used in your content (e.g., mobile recruiting, open enrollment, etc.) and points you to the people currently discussing those topics on social channels. The Content Analyzer also tells you what other trending topics your content relates to that you did not include in your content (e.g., employee privacy, social screening, etc.). You can then tailor your content and SEO strategies to these newly discovered keyword topics and share your content with the people writing about those topics online.

     A final thought on the “how to’s” of social media marketing: Like any marketing, the quality of you results will largely be determined by 1. The amount of intelligent effort you put into it, and 2. The quality, relevance and usefulness of what you have to offer, whether it be news or commentary. If you combine intelligent effort with quality, relevant and useful content, your rewards can be great. Check back soon to see how a PR professional used social media marketing to deliver a client high-profile article placements.

A new white paper by HRmarketer titled “Want People To Hear You? Then Listen” goes into more detail about using Social Listening technologies for marketing and PR pros. Get it here.

Fake Shakespeare — Why It Matters In Social Media

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:32:12 PDT

"Listen to many, speak to a few."

       Those words are often attributed to William Shakespeare, but, alas, he never wrote them and probably never spoke them. It’s fake Shakespeare, likely based on a line in “Hamlet,” “Giver every man thy ear but few thy voice.”

     Editing Shakespeare is generally a terrible idea. And whoever came up with this revision not only lost the elegance of the bard’s pen, but also altered his meaning.

    There is one way, however, that the fake Shakespeare is an improvement over the original: It’s better advice for B2B marketers and PR pros engaging in social media marketing.

    You don’t want to “giver every man thy ear,” that is, follow every conversation taking place on social media — that’s both impossible and a tremendous waste of time; those outside your marketplace — and many inside your marketplace — have little or no business value. Instead you want to “listen to many,” by focusing on the “right” conversations (and the context of those conversations) happening in the marketplace on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, as well as blogs and online news stories.

     Then you want to “speak to a few,” take the time to focus and participate in the “right” conversations that relate to your topic or news.

     But you need to find these “right” conversations first. And you need technology to do that, as there is far too much information out there for any one person—or 100 persons—to track. The best technology doesn’t just listen, it analyzes because social conversations don’t take place in a vacuum (as described here).

     Social “conversation” analysis software gives you the power to “listen to many” ongoing conversations, yet cuts out the unwanted chatter. For example, this type of software allows you to search for a topic and get a list of the people who are writing, commenting on and/or sharing related content about the topic — as well as data that gives you an understanding of their level of “influence” with respect to the topic based on things like their following, the amount of content they author on the topic, how often their content is shared, etc. From here, you can connect with the right people and share your news or make appropriate outreaches, thus improving both the quantity and the quality of your audience.

     You also want to find and join these right conversations, at the right time. What’s the use of finding a conversation if everyone has stopped talking. Social “conversation” analysis software gives you the ability to find hot topics because it constantly monitors the marketplace, showing which topics are trending among the most influential journalists, analysts and social influencers.

     Marketers can also use this type of software to analyze what’s trending in their own custom networks — say, for example, sales prospects or a certain geography — in order to be more selective and strategic in what conversations to join.

    Knowing what’s trending also allows you to tailor your content and SEO strategies to those topics. You can choose more timely and relevant subjects for your white papers, webcasts and blog posts, and watch them be more successful and impactful as a result. And when the content is ready to publish, you will know which journalists, analysts and influencers to share it with (the people currently talking about that topic online).

     The fake William Shakespeare surely wasn’t as elegant as the real thing. But the words “listen to many, speak to few” have real business value for B2B marketers and PR pros, provided you use the technology to take advantage of them.

     A new white paper by HRmarketer titled “Want People To Hear You? Then Listen” goes into more detail about these technologies and how these technologies can help marketing and PR pros. Get it here.

Avoid Horse Manure Results

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Thu, 10 May 2012 07:00:05 PDT

       “You have to read this!”

        “Check this out.”

        “Great article!”

        How often do we read tweets like this, which are concluded with a link to content?

        A lot.

        And this is a problem.

     It’s a problem because to do social media marketing effectively you need to be aware of — and make sense of — the social conversations spanning multiple social platforms and the articles and content referenced in these conversations. Let’s face it, how much information can be conveyed in 140 characters?

     There are numerous social monitoring software options available to marketers. Many allow you to listen to the tweets that mention your topic. However, what if your topic isn’t mentioned in the tweet, but is in the content that the tweet links to?

     Marketing and PR pros should approach social media marketing like a scientist, says HR consultant, DriveThruHR Show co-host and marketing thought leader William Tincup. To be effective, you need to have all relevant data and exclude all irrelevant data (noise). Fortunately, just as scientists benefit from the latest tools and technologies, so can marketers and PR pros with their social media marketing.

     Social “listening” is great, but social “conversation” analysis is better. These technologies not only monitor tweets, but also the content that tweets link to, so you get more relevant data. It’s the equivalent of “signature analysis” on conversations, looking at the context as well as the keywords, links and influence status of the information to determine whether or not a conversation is important to your brand or target audience. Also, it eliminates the noise coming from outside your marketplace.

     Let’s suppose your topic of interest is employee benefits. When you search this term using social “conversation” analysis software, like SocialEars HR Edition, you get a list of results, showing the journalists, analysts and social influencers actively taking part in the current conversation about the topic, and the related articles, blog posts, news stories, tweets, LinkedIn shares and Facebook updates directly related to the conversation.

     Looking closely at the results reveals a stunning finding: Of the 118 pieces of content sourced to the first 33 conversation participants returned in the search, none of the tweets, Facebook updates, articles or blog titles included “employee benefits.” Only the software’s ability to listen inside the content enables access to the full conversation.

     Now, 12 pieces of content did include the word “benefits.” One could do a search on “benefits” in social monitoring software – go ahead and try it and look at the results, some of which are for mature audiences only. Obviously, this would return huge amounts of irrelevant content. For example, there could be information on the benefits of nuclear power, of vitamins, of recycling, of quitting smoking, of horse manure.

And we don’t want horse manure results, do we?

     Social conversation analysis that analyzes the full context of conversations gives you the ability to join the conversations you want to take part in. For more on how to participate in these discussions, see Social Conversations: Don’t be a Blowhard, so you can maximize the results of your social efforts and accomplish your marketing and PR objectives.

     A new white paper by HRmarketer titled “Want People To Hear You? Then Listen” goes into more detail about Social Listening, Engagement and Conversation Analysis Software and how these technologies can help marketing and PR pros. Get it here.

This is your stuff, collected and curated for you

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:02:13 PDT

Ah, the favorite content you fell in love with…can be right there where you want it. Every minute of every day.

And it is today for many of you. Maybe you use your RSS reader of choice. Maybe you use one or more of a myriad of content aggregation tools available today, not to mention your streams, channels and groups in Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Maybe it's your slick infographics collected in Pinterest or your favorite videos on YouTube or your favorite podcasts on iTunes or maybe it's your favorite TV shows recorded on your DVR machine.

Speaking of favorite TV content, this morning I was watching The Today Show while working out in the home gym, and a Target Commercial came on.

The Shops at Target -- The shops we fell in love with. Collected and curated for you.

A brilliant niche play, don't you think? Not everyone who shops at Target is going to know what this boutique shops are unless they've had some direct experience with those brands. However, for those who frequent Target for regular stuff will now get the benefit of even more cool stuff.

Collected and curated for you.

Each of us has our own unique tastes, much to the chagrin of traditional media and print publications, and that means we want what we want when we want it and how we want it. Even when we don't, we want it.

And we'll get it today. Every minute of every day. Yes, there are still too many ways to get what you want when you want it and how you want it, and the universe is just too friggin' big. (Target can be too friggin' big for simple folk like me. Geesh.)

So closer to home, our home, the HR B2B realm with unique solar systems of people (analysts, media and social influencers) and content (white papers, articles and blog posts) that I need to understand how to:

Be a better informed HR and recruiting tech/services marketer, media relations, sales and business development professional.
Identify "influencers" to reach out to as well as possible speakers to invite to webinars and face-time events.
Curate content and create editorial calendars for your writing as an author and/or your publication as a media company.
Improve my real-time awareness and learning of what's topical to your profession as an HR and recruiting pro.

SocialEars does this now for all parties -- our social listening and engagement software -- and soon it will be even easier for you get what you want when you want it and how you want it (complete with pretty yet highly effective personally configured tag clouds).

This is your stuff, collected and curated for you.

No, you're welcome.

The Right Way to Join Social Conversations – 4 Must Do's

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:44:25 PDT

In blog posts last week we warned companies not to act like blowhards in their social marketing efforts — you need to listen before joining the conversation — and also not to be suckers and think that all “social” listening software is equal.

So - let’s assume that you are not acting like a social networking blowhard and that you’re listening to the social conversations taking place online using the technology that makes the most sense for your business objectives.

Now, you’re ready to join the online conversation.

And let’s further assume that your business objectives (as a marketing and/or PR professional) are to get publicity for your brand/news and to expand your social footprint and online visibility.

This blog post details one strategy to maximize the results of your social efforts (and accomplish your marketing and PR objectives). Four simple steps:

Find the journalists, analysts and other social voices/influencers who have recently written or shared content on the topic(s) relevant to your news. Social voices are people who don’t fit in the journalist or analyst categories — they can be consultants, human resource, IT and other B2B decision makers, recruiters or speakers — but they have online thought leadership, big visibility and a lot of “social” influence on topics that matter to B2B marketers and PR pros and their clients.
Share their content with your social media networks. And share your content and news with them (and give some context as to why you are sharing the information).
Comment on their blogs and news stories that relate to your news. Do so in a non-promotional manner while referencing and/or linking to yourcontent.
Connect with (LinkedIn) and/or follow (Twitter) them, thus expanding your network and social footprint.

And don’t forget to repeat, repeat, repeat. The more intelligent effort you put into your social media marketing, the more results you will get.

Be more effective in joining online conversations
by using Social Listening and Conversation Analysis
Software, like SocialEars HR Edition.

But how do you find the right people who are authoring and curating content on the topics important to you, at the time you have news to share on these topics?

The traditional techniques—such as sending press releases to a list of contacts and checking for story opportunities on EdCals and services like ProfNet and Help A Reporter Out (HARO)—still have their place. But they aren’t enough in a social world. Social “conversation” listening technology that monitors blogs, Tweets, Facebook updates, LinkedIn shares and other online social activity allows you to quickly find the right authors and content curators.

Companies that combine a social media strategy — using social “conversation” listening software (like SocialEars HR Edition) — with traditional techniques will have an advantage over those that don’t.

A new white paper by HRmarketer titled “Want People To Hear You? Then Listen” goes into more detail about Social Listening And Engagement Software and how these technologies can help marketing and PR pros. Get it here.

Listening Equality is for SUCKERS

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Thu, 03 May 2012 08:54:17 PDT

In our previous blog post, Social Conversations: Don’t be a Blowhard, we proposed that to succeed in today’s interconnected world, you need to listen to what the marketplace is saying. A spray-and-pray strategy whereby you blast an email or news release and hope that a few people come to your website never was a good tactic and is just bad marketing at this point. We’re numb and bored.

Today, marketing success demands uncovering opportunities in a complex network of social conversations beyond your control, but not outside of your influence.

But what exactly are these "conversations"? And what are the business opportunities one can obtain from these conversations?

Many Conversations, Meaningful Opportunity
The conversations are multiple. You must listen to conversations on social channels like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as well as on blogs and online news stories and the comments posted on these sites. As for the opportunities, well that depends. Is your goal to track the "mentions" of your company, your brand, or relevant keywords? The "sentiment" of these mentions? Or, is it to discover what topics are trending and the people or media outlets participating in these discussions so you can share your own news, curate other peoples’ news, comment on appropriate blogs and news stories, and connect with appropriate influencers?

All are important and each can make or break the reputation and impact of your brand online. There are a variety of technologies available to marketers to accomplish these goals, but unfortunately no single technology does it all. Here are some social technology categories you want to be aware of and the differences between them.

Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis allows you to track attitudes towards your brand or product. The goal of sentiment analysis is to assign a given social media comment with a degree of association to three basic categories: positive, negative or neutral. Sentiment measuring software is still in its infancy yet is a critical requirement for any consumer brand and software like Radian6 is an early leader in this field. But for most B2B companies there are not enough discussions about your brand to merit a large investment in sentiment measuring software. Setting up alerts for your company or brand on free software like Tweetdeck, Twilert, Hootsuite or Google News alerts is sufficient.

Social Monitoring
Don't confuse monitoring with metrics. Monitoring typically refers to tracking the conversations people are having about you, or the topics important to you, while metrics refers to measuring the impact you’re having by analyzing things like visits, tweets, registrations, and so on. The primary goal of social monitoring or listening software is to monitor the mentions of your company or the keyword topics important to your business. With this information you can identify your champions, your critics, prospecting opportunities, etc. And respond accordingly.

If all you want to do is track "mentions" of your company or brand you do not need to spend a lot of money. The same free services described above are sufficient. Some others we like include Social Mention and Addict-o-matic. And if all you care about is Twitter just use Twitter's Advanced Search. Some paid software as a service platforms like Hubspot and Radian6 (and way too many others to list here) can also help you automate your responses to these mentions using various 'triggers".

However, depending on your marketing and PR goals, social monitoring software (paid or free) may not be enough. For example, most of these technologies limit their monitoring to the 140 or so characters in a Tweet (or other social update) and this 'update' may not mention your brand or keywords but may link to content that does. But you'd miss it with basic monitoring applications. How often do you see tweets whose entirety is something like, “You have to read this!” followed by a link (shortened and without any inherent context to your brand). If that link is to your company or related to your topic or news, you want to know about it and the person tweeting about it, who may be a great target.

Another limitation of social monitoring technologies is noise. Let’s face it, most of what is being shared socially is, well, useless. It’s noise. Unfortunately even the most sophisticated social monitoring tools force you to wade through this noise to discover the few mentions or links that are important. This is especially the case with news alert services. A third limitation is that many social monitoring software technologies only monitor social. This may not satisfy the needs of marketing or PR departments that must monitor the broader and deeper conversations taking place online beyond the social networks, the context of these discussions, the types of people participating in these conversations and their level of engagement for a specific topic.

SocialEars uses the concept of a signature to identify
important information against a background of noise.

Consider military stealth technology where listening software is used to look for “signatures”. A signature is the echo of something identifiable or interesting. Often the object of interest itself is hidden in the noise of the environment. But the signature, if you can identify it, gives away its presence and also identifies the object. Social listening software that provides this level of “signature analysis” helps marketing and PR professionals identify meaningful business opportunities hidden in the background noise of social networks. The point is that information leaves clues about its origin. SocialEars is an example of social 'conversation' listening technology that uses the concept of a signature to identify important information against a background of noise.

This deeper level of analysis affords numerous opportunities for marketing and PR professionals, from being able to spot trending topics, the people who are most influencing these topics, the most popular or shared content on these topics, who is doing the sharing, and getting insights into the topics most discussed by individual influencers or groups of influencers relevant to your product category. Knowing this information gives you a competitive advantage by allowing you to be smarter, faster and more effective in all aspects of you marketing and media relations.

A new article by HRmarketer titled “Want People To Hear You? Then Listen” goes into more detail about Social Listening And Engagement Software and how these technologies can help marketing and PR pros. Get it here.

Social Conversations: Don’t be a Blowhard.

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:01:46 PDT

     Imagine you’re at a party enjoying a lively conversation, and some loudmouth walks in the front door, and immediately begins spewing out everything that he’s done over the past week.

     Everybody just wants this blowhard to leave. They hear his words, but they don’t want to listen. The reason: He hasn’t taken the time to read the room, to listen to the conversation, so what he has to say is completely inappropriate or of no interest to everyone in the room.

     You don’t want to be “that guy,” right? Well, the type of social marketing practiced by many companies today resembles “that guy.” These organizations are blowhards on social media because they make the same mistake as that loudmouth. They don’t take the time to listen to the conversation. If you show up and just provide a bunch of marketing speak, everyone is just going to ignore you.

     But you need to take part in these conversations. As social media expert Brian Solis wrote in a blog post, The Art of Conversation – It’s About Listening Not Marketing, “Influential conversations are taking place with or without you. If you’re not part of the conversation, then you’re leaving it to others, and possibly competitors, to answer questions and provide information, whether it’s accurate or incorrect.”

     Here is what you need to do so that you can be accepted into the conversation: 1. Listen. 2. Contribute to, rather than detract from, the conversation. Avoid marketing speak, and reference or link to your content at the appropriate time(s).

     Simple, right?

     Well, not always. Many marketers and PR pros ignore “social” (e.g., they don’t listen) and instead fish the same pond they always have, using their lure or bait – the news or press release – and casting it about for whatever fish – journalist or analyst – might bite.

     The first problem with this approach is it’s untargeted. The second problem is that many others have lines in the water so it is difficult to reel a fish in, that is, get an article placement, interview or other form of engagement. And as conversations move from traditional to social channels, it is only getting more challenging.

     With all the competition, any advantage is significant. Think of how valuable it would be if there was a better way to secure interest in and placements of your “news,” or if you could increase the number of people interested in this news.

     It’s possible to do both using social media. And to use social media effectively, again, you need to start by listening. By “listening” to journalists and analysts’ published online news stories, blogs, Tweets, LinkedIn shares, Facebook updates and other social discussions, you can be more informed and more targeted in whom you present your news to.

     Those who are most likely to be interested in your content at a given moment are the people who are conversing about that topic at that precise moment.

     And what about increasing the size of the audience that is interested in what you have to communicate? Journalists and analysts are valuable resources, but social media has given us another group that has similar sway: social influencers, or as we like to refer to them, social voices. These are people who don’t fit in the journalist or analyst categories — they can be consultants, human resource, IT and other B2B decision makers, recruiters, speakers and even solution providers — but they have online thought leadership, big visibility and a lot of “social” influence on topics that matter to B2B marketers and PR pros and their clients.

     Getting attention in social voices’ blogs and social communications gets your news before their audiences, just as getting a story placement in a trade magazine gets your news before its readership.

     But the addition of all these new online influencers and the terabytes of information shared on their many social channels have made the pond a lot bigger and a lot harder to navigate. You need to listen to the online conversations that matter to your business so you can target and pique the interest of the right online influencers —at the right time— who are most likely to have interest in and/or share your news.

     To even begin to make sense of these conversations you have to first be able to access them. Then you need to filter out all the noise, the massive number of conversations that have nothing to do with your business. Only then can you properly identify the right audiences to engage with.

    A new article by HRmarketer and SocialEars titled “Want People To Hear You? Then Listen” shows how Social Listening And Engagement Software can help marketing and PR pros do just this. Get it here.

Post by Eric Anderson, researcher at HRmarketer | SocialEars

The Consummate Telescopic Content Curator

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:33:17 PDT

Like we need more silly crap in space. Unfortunately, many folks think we do, which is why we’re sending up more and more of it into our atmosphere every day, cluttering the view of the heavens. That’s why it’s comical that one of the latest objects to be sent into space is a rubber chicken.

Yes, a group of California students launched a rubber chicken into space, all in the name of science, and they named it Camilla.

And then I dreamt that I received this e-mail:

Hi Kevin,

Camilla added a pin to Space-Bound Rubber Chicken Infographics.

Click here to check it out.

- Ben and the Pinterest Team

Yes, it was a bad dream, one that I’m never “pinterested” in having again. Because there’s enough silly crap in our own atmosphere, closer to home, online.

In 2010, we traveled through 1.2 zettabytes of digital bits and bytes space. And then in 2011, the volume was expected to hit 1.8 zettabytes. Keep in mind that a zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes, which means a 1 with 21 zeros behind it. That’s a whole heck of a lot of space.

Beyond the big three of social networks – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – some new social networks on the scene have grown quickly and dramatically. While I’m not an active user of Pinterest (like I need another social network like a rubber chicken through my head), according to a recent Fast Company article Content Curators Are The New Superheros Of The Web:

The two-year-old visual clipping and publishing platform has now surpassed 10 million users, making it the fastest-growing web service on the web ever, according to Comscore. Comscore reported that Pinterest was the fastest independent site to hit 10 million monthly uniques in the U.S.

What comes next? Noise and spam. A lot of it. That’s what happens when any new social channel gets big enough to bring regular value to early adopters and early mainstreamers – more content shared means more noise means more spam. The spam comes because it gets more difficult these days to differentiate between what’s legitimate and what’s garbage.

Check out the recent Pinterest e-mail that Mark Willaman received:

Hi Mark Willaman!

Ivana Tosten mentioned you on a new pin that was added to "My Style":

"I never thought losing weight could be so easy, but it turns out that theres products that actually work! See newsrapid2012.com its AMAZING!"

Click here to reply.

Click Here to follow back Ivana

- Ben & the Pinterest Team

Sure, many of you would get the fact that this was contextual spam, but there are those who wouldn’t and pulled into the outer rings of crappy space.

Content curation isn’t new, but today more than ever it’s vital to use smart social research services (and smart humans to power them) to aggregate, filter and share relevant content from across the realms of junked up space – including Tweets, Blog Posts, News Articles, Facebook Shares, LinkedIn Shares, Pinterest posts and tons more (including truckloads of rubber chickens).

Quality content curation means you’ve got to be able to put a lens on all this data. More specifically and to be metaphorically correct for this article, you need to put a telescope on it, to see past the space junk and focus in on what exactly you want curate and use (like a social Hubble telescope). You want to be able to listen, discover and engage with your part of the HR B2B marketplace.

Listen to the people that matter, the ones who influence your industry. Not the space junk.
Discover what's trending, what's hot and what's not. Understand the context and meaning of the discussions.
Engage, interact and build relationships with the people that matter.

Producing, finding, commenting and sharing great content -- with the right audience -- is the foundation of an effective social marketing and PR effort. SocialEars is the social listening and engagement software you need today. It’s the consummate telescopic content curator, our very own social Hubble.

And if you really want to engage with Camilla, then good for you. Make sure to put a pin in it for me.

New Video: What Does Social Influence Mean? We ask the Influencers.

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 11:45:18 PDT

What do you think? Wait, you don't think online influence makes a bit of difference in business these days?

Think again. It does in many industries and even more so now in the HR B2B space than ever before.

Come on over here for a minute. Don't be shy. Sit down and watch this video with me and I'll show you what I mean...

Enjoy!

A special thank you to Peter Clayton, host of TotalPicture Radio, who helped us put this video together! We asked a group Human Resource, Recruiting and HR Technology thought leaders about influence, including what online social influence means, how the new realm of social influence has affected recruiting and talent management, its affects on brand management, and more. It was recorded at the HRmarketer / SocialEars booth at TLNT Transform 2012.

A very special thank you to our video participants:

Participants: Chris Young, Jason Lauritsen, Kimberly Roden, Kristen Wright, Matt Charney, Sarah White, Nikki Newman, Crystal Miller, Bill Glenn, Kurt Ballard, James Thomas and little ol' me (Kevin W. Grossman).

Last Week's Most Widely Shared (online) HR Content: Powered by SocialEars

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 14:16:11 PDT

We thought it would be interesting to show you some of the most widely shared HR content on social networks during the last week. The list is below.

To determine what was most popular we looked at a sampling of several thousand active online HR influencers and then analyzed within this group the number of original tweets linking to an article, the number of re-tweets linking to the article (removing duplicates - e.g., the same person linking multiple times to same article - shame on you:-), LinkedIn posts linking to the article, and lastly, Facebook updates linking to the article. Is it an exact science? Nope - nothing is when it comes to measuring popularity online. It's a snapshot. For example, we did not factor in "likes". Will these articles have staying power? Who knows, but they sure were popular last week. Congrats to the authors.

To do the analysis, we used SocialEars HR Edition which analyzes the online social content and conversations in the human resources marketplace, including:

News articles from publications including HR trades, business periodicals, daily newspapers and other "articles" on the web relating to the field of HR.
Blogs in the HR marketplace and other industries as they relate to HR such as IT.
The "social" activity (Tweets, Facebook, LinkedIn) of people in the HR marketplace including journalists, analysts and other "voices" that aren't journalists or analysts by profession but regularly author and/or share content relating to HR. These could be solution providers, consultants, HR professionals, etc.

At it's core, SocialEars allows you see what topics are trending and the people and media outlets that are participating in and driving these discussions - as well as what the most popular content is for a respective topic.

HR is a big space. In just 7 months SocialEars has indexed and analyzed just under 2 million sources of original "content" from the above sources (includes tweets).

Here is the list:

1. Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs opinion piece from the New York Times (@nytimes)

2. 5 Ways Leaders Botch Communication – Without Saying a Word by Amy Beth Miller on Todd Nielson's blog (@toddbnielsen)

3. Red tape is OK for Christians, it seems by Rick (@FlipChartRick)

4. Lessons on Leadership and Life from a Football Match by David Hain (@davidhain) - another one from Todd's blog. Popular blog.

5. Sacrificial Lambs (pt1. Henry) by Chris Fields (@new_resource)

Also worth pointing out was an article by Sharlyn Lauby (@sharlyn_lauby) titled Human Resources Drives Technology Innovation as it was only a few shares from making the list.

Another "article" that made the list wasn't really an article so we removed it from the above list. This was a request to take a survey from Achievers titled "Achievers Insights: Understanding Today's Workforce." While it is not an article per se it does show how effective Achievers was in promoting the survey on social channels - it was quite popular so kudos to their online marketing and PR team for generating such a high amount of online visibility for the survey.

Is this Monday? It's awesome!

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 07:00:04 PDT

Picture this scene:

It's Monday evening at a large restaurant. It's packed, it's loud and it's standing-room only as people wait for tables. I'm eating alone at the bar and I have a great view of the kitchen where servers - lots of them - are in constant, rapid motion and in continuous communication with other staff. It's remarkable that people aren't running into each other let alone hearing one another. It's that crazy. Like an ant colony. The energy level is off the charts. To the casual observer it would seem like total chaos but nobody seems to notice because nothing is wrong. Customers are happy. Food and drink arrive when they should. Service is great.

Then I hear the following exchange between two employees behind the bar as they quickly pass each other tending to their responsibilities:

Employee One (smiling and chipper): "Is this a Monday?" (an obvious reference to how crazy crowded it is).
Employee Two: Yeah, isn't it awesome!"

As I more closely observe the restaurant staff - hostesses, servers, bartenders, cooks - I noticed a few things:

Everyone is visibly happy, upbeat and cheerful. They seemed to be having a great time.
Everyone is working fast, hard and with remarkable efficiency, yet still able to make eye contact with patrons and have short but personable exchanges.

Crowds like this bring most restaurants to a standstill and employees to a breaking point - or at least to the point of being visibly stressed, unhappy and short-tempered with customers. Yet, this crew seemed to thrive on it.

All right, what's going on? I had to find out. I asked my server/bartender a few questions which I paraphrase below. She politely answered all of my questions while tending to her job of pouring drinks, processing checks, removing empty plates, wiping down the bar, etc. etc.

Me: Was it hard to get a job here?
Her: Not really, if you have some experience.
Me: What was the interviewing process like? Did you have to take any assessments?
Her: Assessments? (as in what the #$%@ are you talking about?) No, just an application and an interview.
Me: Is the pay good?
Her (smiling): Pay? I'm a waitress.

Then I explained why I was asking the questions, how impressed I was with the operation and how I just wanted to understand what made this place work so effectively.

Her: We get a lot of training and our managers are really good and supportive.
Me: But it's nuts here tonight and I don't see any of the staff the slightest bit frazzled or upset.
Her (looking me in the eye and smiling): We're not allowed to.

I'm now getting it. These are professionals. They excel at their job, even in adversity. They take their work very seriously. And they have great management and they get lots of support and training.

We can sometimes make HR so complicated - and it can be. But on this Monday evening, I was reminded of the basics by five words exchanged between two twenty-somethings: Is this Monday? It's awesome!

Hire the right people.
Train them.
Provide them with great management.

Post by HRmarketer / SocialEars Founder and CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Free-Fallin' (print ad revenue)

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:13:04 PDT

Full disclosure: I love print media. When I was growing up in tiny Fontana, California, my only goal was to write for a newspaper or magazine. I studied journalism in college. I did internships at the local papers. Then I found out how badly journalists were paid, and promptly took a left turn into PR.

So when our CEO Mark Willaman sent me a link to an article by The Atlantic titled "The Collapse of Print Advertising in 1 Graph," I steeled myself for another depressing round of shoot-the-newspaper. Believe me, it's no secret that print media is on a slow, sad, and unrelenting decline. Print isn't dead, but the dominance of online media is no longer a question. Heck, we wrote a white paper on media relations and social influence that charted the transition from traditional to new media. Inside the article was a cool infographic by artist extraordinaire Ray Sumser that illustrated the free fall of print media.

It's not pretty. The chart that accompanies the Atlantic article proves that things aren't getting better. Print newspaper ads have fallen from $60 billion in the late 1990s to $20 billion in 2011. But writer Derek Thompson adds a new wrinkle. He rightly points out that for most businesses, "$20 billion is the kind of 'dead' most people would trade their lives for." The problem is the newspaper industry's business model. It was built to support $50 to $60 billion in total advertising with the kind of staff and resources that a $50 billion industry can afford.

Last year's ad revenues of about $21 billion were less than half of the $46 billion spent just four years ago in 2007. The layoffs, buyouts and bankruptcies you've read about are the collective sound of an industry correcting itself for the 21st century.

In our white paper, we wrote: "The media industry pendulum is swinging from print to online media and we’re still in transition. Page counts are shrinking, which means more competition for less coverage." That coverage is actually spilling out across the Internet, where it's much harder to keep track of (sorting through this big data of noise to find the people and content that matter is what SocialEars does so effectively).

So there's hope for newspapers in an online world. Like Derek, I'm rooting that papers and magazines continue to invest in their websites and develop new pricing models that will preserve the independent journalism I grew up admiring. "Otherwise," he adds, "one hopes that rich people continue to be fond of paying for the production of great writing on bundles of ink and paper."

PS: Sign up for a great panel discussion on Tuesday, March 13 -- "Social PR: Rising Above the Noise" -- featuring Jeanne Achille, CEO of The Devon Group, David McInnis, founder of PRWeb, and Sarah-Beth Anders, Sr. Manager of Communications at Achievers. Register HERE.

Written by Elrond Lawrence, APR

Can Social Media Predict the Future?

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:07:22 PST

USA today ran an article Tuesday titled "Can social media predict election outcomes?"

The article predicted that on Super Tuesday Romney would be the top vote-getter in seven states and each of the other candidates would win one state:

Massachusetts: Romney
Virginia: Romney
Idaho: Romney
Ohio: Romney
Oklahoma: Romney
Tennessee: Romney
North Dakota: Romney
Georgia: Gingrich
Alaska: Ron Paul
Vermont: Santorum

These predictions were according to an analysis of Twitter by a social analytics software product. The research drew from more than 800,000 tweets from the past week. The social analysis measured positive sentiment and the share of voice for each candidate.

Were the predictions right?

No.

Half the predictions were incorrect. A failing grade.

The obvious reason is that social media data does not yet provide a representative sample of the general population. But even if it did, making predictions based solely on the 140 characters in a bunch of Tweets is really hard, no matter how sophisticated your linguistic and sentiment algorithms are. We're just not there yet.

There's a lot of talk these days about measuring "online sentiment". What exactly is sentiment and how can companies use it? Here is an excerpt from an article that talks about how one such company, NetBase, measures sentiment:

"To assign a sentiment score, NetBase calculates the difference between each company's positive and negative remarks, divided by the overall number of those comments. That generated a "net sentiment" score. Companies that had fewer than 10,000 mentions were excluded."

Software applications that help measure sentiment are expensive. If you're a large consumer brand it's a must. It can lead to more proactive customer support, better brand management, and even uncovering sales opportunities. Think of it as a real-time clipping service on steroids.

But most B2B companies and I'm guessing 95% of HR software and services providers don't come anywhere near 10,000 mentions in a lifetime. And most of their online mentions have nothing to do with "sentiment". If you want to know who is talking about your brand most companies will be fine using free services like Tweetdeck to monitor how often their brand is being discussed on Twitter. Similar free services exist for other social network monitoring.

Can businesses make predictions using data from other social networking sites?

In the above referenced USA Today article a sub-headline said "Romney's 1.5 Million Facebook Fans Give Him the Edge". But your total number of "fans" is a result of how effective your marketing has been. Romney's 1.5 million Facebook fans is the RESULT of this success, not the reason for it. So the business value in trying to make predictions based on "fans" or "likes" is questionable. Again, we're just not there yet.

What is valuable - and critical for companies to be doing - is knowing what's trending in their marketplace and discovering the people who are engaged with and talking about the topics important to their business. If you sell workforce planning technologies there is tremendous value in knowing who is talking about topics related to workforce planning on their various social channels.

And this can't be done effectively by just analyzing tweets or the "sentiment" of those tweets. Most tweets don't include a company or brand name or even mention the topic (e.g., workforce planning) by name - but they may link to articles that do mention your brand and discuss topics of interest to you.

These are the people that you want to discover - the ones engaged with the topics important to your business. From there, you can begin to build meaningful relationships that in turn will increase your visibility, your "likes", your "fans", etc. And this is how you ultimately win your elections - and grow your business.

This is what we built SocialEars to do. Allowing you to produce, find, comment on and share your information with the right audiences. The audience in your solar system, not the noise of the outside universe. And this is a representative sample.

To learn more about SocialEars, join us for a webinar on March 9th or March 20 at 1pm - 1:30pm PST.

Redefining Public Relations

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 05:14:41 PST

For those who missed the breaking news on Friday, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) announced a new official definition of public relations.

It's a big deal (for the PRSA). The last time they updated their definition of public relations was 1982, when they adopted this vague phrase: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

Attempts to write new definitions in 2003 and 2007 fell short.

Now, after months of debate, they have agreed on a new definition:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

Publics?

It's actually a big improvement. But there are so many definitions of public relations. In her blog, Heidi Cohen lists 31 of them. She also compiled a list of 71 marketing definitions.

Does any of this really matter?

Mr. Corbett, chairman and chief executive of an agency of Redphlag, says: “Like beauty, the definition of ‘public relations’ is in the eye of the beholder.”

The greatest value in these efforts to define "public relations" (or any functional area of an organization) is the effort itself. It forces a department/profession to think hard about its purpose and how it can best support the company's success. And of course, how this work will be measured.

And this is different at every company. "Public" relations for the brand managers at Tide Detergent is completely different from the PR function at a B2B HR software or services company. Their tactics are different, their toolkits are different and how they are measured is different.

Trying to water down a definition of public relations so it has some sort of relevance to all organizations is a waste of time.

Besides, you cannot define/discuss public relations in a silo. It must be viewed together with marketing - you can't separate the two. This is especially true in B2B.

And does the term "public relations" even make sense today? Professional associations are allowed to change with the times. The Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) was founded as the American Society for Personnel Administration (ASPA). Perhaps the PRSA should have put energies toward redefining the profession.

For those who make their career in "public relations" don't spend too much time memorizing the new definition of your profession. Rather, spend your time defining outcomes and what exactly it is you are trying to accomplish and how this will support your company's success.

This type of discussion focuses on business needs (unique to every company) and from here management can more effectively assemble the teams and allocate the resources necessary to meet the goals of the organization. These goals ultimately "define" the department and the function of public relations, not the other way around. It's a subtle but important distinction. And it helps to eliminate redundancies.

In a social world, this has become increasingly challenging. You must listen to many audiences, filter out the noise from the growing big data of information and determine who and what really matters. You must then engage, interact, and build relationships with the right audiences.

And there is no single definition that describes this function. Every company must define and approach it differently.

Here are a sampling of questions you'll want to think about:

Who are your "publics"? (e.g., customers, prospects, partners, media, other influencers, etc.)
What are you trying to accomplish with each of these audiences? Why? What are your desired outcomes? What are the inter-dependencies of these outcomes and how does each support the company's success?
What are the tactics you will use to accomplish these goals?
What tools and resources will you need to support these tactics?
How will you know if you are successful?
How will management measure this success? How often?

There are many more questions you'll want to answer but the ultimate goal is to hone in on what needs to be done to support the company's success and what people, tactics and resources will be required to insure it happens.

Call it what you want but this - and only this - will define your "public relations" success.

Post by HRmarketer / SocialEars Founder and CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Transform 2012: "We've always done it that way" = Failure

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:44:02 PST

Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane
at Transform 2012. (EL photos - click to enlarge)

We just returned from the first annual “Transform” HR conference in Austin, Texas, produced by TLNT.com. First, congratulations to John Hollon, Ron Thomas, Scott Baxt, and the many others at TLNT and ERE who pulled off a terrific two days. Transform 2012 had the goods: great speakers, great networking, and fresh ideas that propelled conversations long after each day had wrapped and attendees descended on Austin’s amazing dining scene (think mind-blowing BBQ and Tex-Mex).

The bad news: crowds were small. But that’s typical for many first-time events. The good news: crowds were passionate about HR and learning new ways to transform their craft (pun intended). Isn’t that what matters most? People traveled to Austin to sweep their minds of stale ideas, listen to new and different perspectives, and get re-energized. Using that criteria, Transform was a home run.

Since HRmarketer was a gold sponsor and exhibitor, we didn’t get to many sessions, but two keynotes easily stood out: Jim Knight, senior director of training for Hard Rock International, and Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A’s baseball club and the focus of the book/movie Moneyball.

Knight gave us a look inside Hard Rock’s employee culture and rocked (ahem) the house with slides, videos, and stories about how the company conveys their service philosophy to new employees and keeps people committed. A little irreverence goes a long way when it’s married with clear and visually exciting communications. Best of all, they never lose sight of their Rock ’n Roll spirit.

Billy Beane’s talk, “The Moneyball Approach to Talent Management,” was even better (then again, I’m a lifelong baseball fan, so this was heaven!). After sharing what it’s like to be played by Brad Pitt in an Oscar-nominated movie (fast answer = pretty cool), Beane shared stories and statistics about his people management philosophy in Oakland. Aided by assistant Paul DePodesta, he used baseball’s vast amounts of data and statistics to make the A’s competitive with far wealthier teams who were making purely emotional decisions.

The greatest struggle Beane faced was overcoming 150 years of “We’ve always done it that way.” He didn’t force the parallels between baseball and HR in his talk because he didn’t need to.

After two days of showing SocialEars to media, analysts, and attendees, we can relate. We're thrilled that buyers are beginning to understand its strategic benefits, but the reality is that any progressive vision – whether technology, a new service, or a philosophy – is greeted by a mix of awe and skepticism, followed by a nervous look around the room for something comforting and familiar.

The HR space is changing fast, and watching an expo hall filled with thought leaders, media, bloggers, analysts, and practitioners was a sharp reminder that marketers and PR pros need to be connected with these people on a daily basis. You need to know the topics they care about and engage them in conversations of substance. Because business is changing constantly and you don’t have time to market your goods using the same-old, same-old.

“We’ve always done it this way” is a big, fat fail. Thanks to TLNT for inspiring HR to think different.

See below for photos of Transform 2012. To view videos and slides from the event, visit http://transform.tlnt.com/2012/agenda-at-a-glance/

John Hollon of TLNT and Nick Fishman of EmployeeScreenIQ look on
as Kevin Grossman shows SocialEars in action.

The HRmarketer booth stayed busy, filming conversations with vendors and
HR thought leaders about social influence and marketing. Above, Peter Clayton
of TotalPicture Radio interviews Matt Charney of Cornerstone OnDemand.

Blogger Crystal Miller displays good advice for any HR pro (and marketer!)

In the end, it's all about the candy. Thanks, Pinstripe!

Posted by Elrond Lawrence, HRmarketer media relations

And the winner is . . .

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 06:05:16 PST

We recently held an iPad giveaway for our HRmarketer software subscribers. After our Beta launch of SocialEars in late 2011, we wanted to collect some feedback on how our clients were using and benefiting from SocialEars in their marketing and PR efforts.

When developing our new social media listening and analytics software, we had our own ideas of how people could use the one million (and counting!) pieces of content we’ve archived and analyzed. We’re encouraged by the variety of ways our clients are using SocialEars to filter through “the noise,” quickly discover what’s trending in the HR space, find new content and “influencers,” and more!

After collecting testimonials for several weeks, we want to congratulate Stephen Anderson, Vice President of AFI International Group, whose name was drawn for the iPad giveaway!

Here is a sampling of what our clients are saying about SocialEars:

“Social Ears is the only tool that allows me to see who is a true digital influencer in the topics important to my business. Other tools only let you see the most recent influencers, but Social Ears allows you to choose which metrics to review. This is the most user friendly social media tool I've ever used.” – Ashley Hurney, MTM Recognition
“My favorite part about SocialEars is the way you can really customize what you're looking for, from the tag cloud to adjustable timeframes. It's just what I need as I start my own HR blog -- I can find credible voices talking about the issues I'm concerned about, all in one spot. No more endless googling! Thanks for this intuitive addition to your services!” – Jessica Wauhaus, CompData Surveys
“SocialEars saved much time and headache by allowing me to seamlessly identify relevant industry editors to invite to an upcoming conference.” – Stephen Anderson, AFI International, IMAC
“What a great new product to help thought leaders and companies connect with others who have similar interests and to best practice share! On the web, so many people are talking, but it is difficult to figure out who to listen to and where to spend your time! SocialEars really helps you make sense of how to do this and helps to maximize your time, as well as review your own impact on social media and your industry. I can’t wait to spend more time surfing this site and using the tool!” – Zachary Misko, Kelly OCG
“Amazing tool to identify trending topics and influential people! Making my day that little bit easier! Thanks!” – Aoife Gorey, Profiles International
“We are using SocialEars to identify what's being discussed in the industry to tailor our web content to what people want, and improve SEO.” – Geoff Simpson, Presagia

For more information about SocialEars, check out this recent TotalPicture Radio Podcast interview with our CEO Mark Willaman and SocialEars Lead Developer Peter Odryna.

Thanks to all of our clients who participated. And congrats again to Stephen! Enjoy your iPad!

Social Media and Word-of-Eye Marketing

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:35:11 PST

We tend to prattle on about the marketing power of social media, but Anne Reuss is living proof that it’s the great equalizer.

Anne is deaf and a champion of social media. She’s got an amazing passion which quickly shines through in her series of YouTube videos -- where she shares her views about content curation, Pinterest, the accessibility of social media and more. As you’d guess, she’s got a unique perspective: social media has once again connected her to marketing and the world, and her voice is as loud and clear as anyone else. Rather than word-of-mouth marketing, she’s benefiting from “word of hand” or even “word-of-eye” marketing . . . billions of eyeballs trained on computers and phones.

Let Anne tell you in her own words – it’s less than two minutes long and worth every second:

The way we learned about Anne is pretty cool, too: her video appeared in a recent blog post by Mark Schaefer, a social media marketing consultant. Peter, our lead developer on SocialEars, was scanning SocialEars this week (he’s a confessed addict) and discovered Anne’s video. And now we’re sharing it with you.

I love how Anne describes social media as her form of background noise, in the same way we flip on a TV or a radio to stay connected while working or doing chores. When we talk about noise at HRmarketer, it’s usually in the context of helping companies get noticed in this crazy world of online noise. Yes, there’s an unlimited world of information is at our fingertips but it can be incredibly deafening. With so much online chatter, sometimes you can’t hear anything at all.

If you’re a marketer trying to research the favorite story topics of a journalist / analyst / social voice, or determine what topics are trending (and the people and stories influencing those topics) -- or simply get connected -- it’s hard to know where to start.......

That’s why we created SocialEars. I think Anne would enjoy the irony.

Posted by Elrond Lawrence, VP of media relations for HRmarketer.

Fifteen Minutes of [online] Influence

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:23:28 PST

I'm willing to bet that the word “influencer” has been used more often during the last few years than at any point in human history.

Everyone is creating influencer lists these days. Top 25 here, Top 100 there . . . someone has probably published a top 10 list of top influencer lists! And the software to identify influencers is endless: Klout, PeerIndex, Kred, plus many more. While these lists are certainly great visibility tools for the publishers who create them, their value to marketing and PR professionals is questionable and most certainly overblown.

For starters, many of these lists are out of date soon after they appear. As John Sumser (who not only ranks on top influencer lists but publishes his own) says, "the Internet is the ultimate ‘what have you done for me lately’ media form."

These lists oversimplify the landscape. Many marketers who plan online social campaigns mistakenly assume that they only need to focus on people who make these top lists. As a result, they miss opportunities by ignoring others who may actually care more about their information, and who are more likely to engage with them. Let’s face it -- the dance cards of most top influencers are full.

As an example, I did a little experiment. Using HRmarketer's information databases that include thousands of journalists and social voices in the HR and related sectors, I created two separate lists of:

(1) Journalists
(2) Social Voices (analysts, consultants, HR professionals, vendors and others who aren’t employed by a traditional media outlet)

Everyone on these lists "publishes" online content and information about a variety of human resource topics via blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. After I created these lists I used SocialEars to obtain each person's "influence" scores from services like Klout and Peerindex. I then averaged them all together to come up with one single "influence" score for each person. Then I combined the two lists and sorted from high to low based on these scores.

What I found was interesting.

Every single person in the top 20 was a Social Voice. Not a single journalist made the top 20. The list of these top 20 Social Voices was a mix of prominent HR speakers, CEOs, consultants, analysts, recruiters, entrepreneurs and HR practitioners.

I'm willing to bet these people are not on most vendors’ radar.

So the first takeaway from this little experiment is that media relations has changed big-time in our social world. You can no longer rely entirely on a traditional distribution list of journalists. This was the focus of a recent HRmarketer white paper titled: “Social Influence: Thriving in a New World of Media Relations” (download PDF).

But be careful: this doesn’t mean you should ignore the journalists in your PR and social outreach! Although no journalist made the list, most writers and editors are constantly creating content for their publications -- some with big circulations -- and that content gets shared on social channels. Maybe Joe Journalist at Big Industry Trade magazine doesn't do social, but his content gets tweeted. So, yes, you still need to pursue traditional media opportunities, but that alone is not enough -- and that's the point.

The next part of my experiment was to pick a few trending HR topics. I chose “cloud computing,” “phased retirement” and “workplace bullying.” Again, using SocialEars I generated a list of people who have been actively authoring and curating content on these topics -- as they relate to HR -- within the last few weeks.

What I found was, again, interesting.

Nearly everyone who made these list had not shown up on my earlier list of top HR influencers -- and most have never appeared on any other Top HR list that I've seen. Yet, virtually everyone on my list is an influencer – as defined by thousands of Twitter followers, LinkedIn networks of 250-plus and prolific authors and curators of HR content.

Our takeaway? The definition of an “influencer” is always in flux, and the top names are always changing. Depending on the topic(s) you care about -- and when you care about them --, you can almost always discover new names (people not on your immediate radar) who may already be influencing specific topics and audiences.

So instead of relying on one traditional (read: stale) media list, shake things up: build several small lists that focus on media, analysts, bloggers, HR practitioners, and online personalities at the time you want to share news. Think of each list as a work in progress and refresh them as often as you can.

Remember, influence is a moving target.

Post by HRmarketer / SocialEars Founder and CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Put a lens on the world for me

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:38:19 PST

"Put a lens on it for me."

I sat across from him at the table, his team and mine along the periphery, waiting for him to expound on the statement.

He kept flipping back and forth in the proposal pages as if magical insight would jump forth and say, here I am -- buy me!

"Yes, that's what I need to see -- put a lens on this for me so I understand what to expect."

That was only a few weeks ago and has stuck with me ever sense. That's what any of us need in business, right? Give me a lens on "information" I'm interested in so I can make fact-based correlations, recommendations, decisions and predictions.

The ol' what's in it for me schtick. Really this time, in real-time. Because Googling, managing spreadsheets and guessing is so 2007.

Managing data is mind-bending. Even though the human brain can store vast amounts of information, our working memory can only recall up to 7 things at one time.

Easy peasy. But recalling vast amounts of data to make fact-based decisions?

Not gonna happen humanly (yet). Imagine the sheer volume along and you'll pass out. A petabyte of information is equal to one quadrillion bytes, or 1000 terabytes. My goodness that's a lot of information. Our minds have a hard enough fathoming a gig much less a handful of megabytes.

Or up to 7 items at once.

But today we can put a lenses on the vast amounts of data we deal with in business and again make fact-based correlations, recommendations, decisions and predictions. We have the storage space and the magic algorithms that make it all happen.

For example, Dovetail Software offers an HR case management system designed to carefully track, audit, automate and deliver analytics on employee complaints and grievances. The software puts a lens on the organization and helps to mitigate legal risks while giving employers insights into hidden and potentially dangerous employee relations trends and patterns.

Another example is Visier Workforce Analytics, a software system that integrates business and workforce data from all sources in an organization. It comes pre-built with "best practices" so companies can focus on making better decision immediately to impact their most important asset: their people. Today most high-performance companies use workforce analytics to measure and manage a wide range of things including recruiting, turnover and employee performance.

And you're not going to get away without again hearing about SocialEars again, our social listening software product. SocialEars is all about listening to the social conversations, discovering trending topics and the media outlets and people participating in and influencing those discussions, being able to read their shared and authored “content” and most importantly – joining in conversations and engaging the right people.

Today, social analytics software makes it possible to monitor, analyze and comprehend an increasingly complex marketplace and vast amounts of information while delivering more effective marketing and media relations insight -- in only hours, not months.

"Put a lens on the world for me, would you?"

Absolutely. We can do that now.

(In full disclosure, we're working with the two companies referenced above, which is a lens of another kind, don't you think?)

Why Big Data is a Big Deal for Marketers - and HR

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:50:11 PST

Big Data is a big topic these days. Hype? We don't think so.

Nor does a recent Wall Street Journal article titled “So, What's Your Algorithm?”

Consider this: a petabyte is equal to one quadrillion bytes, or 1000 terabytes. The banking industry alone stores over 600 petrabytes of information. Health care providers store over 400 petabytes. Professional services? Over 400 petrabytes.

Thanks to cloud computing we can now harvest and analyze massive amounts of information from multiple databases to make better business decisions - something not possible as recent as a few years ago. This is Big Data analytics and it’s about to change your world. Cloud computing makes it possible to handle big data and help us reduce human biases from our decision-making.

It means fewer hunches and more facts.

Take the Schwan Food Company. The WSJ article talks about how Schwan’s home delivery sales were listless for four straight years – until they started using data analytics. Now, they are sending more than 1.2 million dynamically-generated customer recommendations every day and matching seemingly disparate customers with similar purchase patterns in their past. Sales are rising.

The CEO of the data analytics firm they work with says, "A few years ago it might take a month to run a project involving 30 billion separate calculations. Today it can be done in two to three hours."

Another example in the WSJ article comes from the Rx industry: "Soon, a drug saleswoman will have real-time analytics that tell her to focus on the doctors who spent time on social networks that morning, and who are thus more apt to influence colleagues.”

The predictive power of Big Data is enormous -- and just beginning to be understood. Consider this: researchers using data analytics found a spike in Google search requests for terms like “flu symptoms” and “flu treatments” weeks BEFORE there was an increase in flu patients coming to hospital emergency rooms in a particular region.

What about Big Data in the human capital space?

In his article “Get Your Head Out of the Clouds (and into Big Data)” Jason Averbook states that most organizations utilize less than 5% of available data because the rest has been too costly to access or effectively utilize. Jason writes that HR functions today have approximately 10,000% more data than they had only 3-5 years ago and that Big Data will give employers the tools and techniques to affordably exploit the other 95%.

This means better hiring decisions, better allocation of human capital, better talent management, better rewards and recognition, better compensation and benefits, better productivity – better everything that relates to the recruiting, retention, management and use of people.

HR thought leader John Sumser, who was recently named a top 20 Big Data influencer by Forbes says this about Big Data and HR: "A universe of sensors will blow the lid off of HR as we know it."

OK – this is a marketing blog so let’s talk about what Big Data means for marketing and PR departments in the HR space. Big Data analysis is a lot more than just measuring your "social footprint" or monitoring who's talking about your brand.

To make the point, let's leave the clouds and get down into the weeds of media relations.

Too many in this profession assume they know who to reach out to with their latest pitches. They blast announcements the same way they did five years ago – to a tired, stale distribution list – or worse, they post it to a press release wire service and walk away. More savvy PR pros will share the news on their social channels and maybe send a few personal "pitches" to journalists, analysts and others. They typically aim at their same small universe of contacts. But these pleas for recognition are rarely targeted and often have little impact.

Until recently, there was no choice. Too much data and not enough time – or technology – to make much sense of it. Social media only compounds the problem.

Enter big data.

Noise to Signal Cartoon

Now, in near real-time, you can custom build targeted "lists" (which change daily) to include only those who share an interest and are influencing the topics or news you want to talk about. This includes many people you’ve likely never heard of before. And you can slice and dice the information in a variety of ways. Our SocialEars software is an example of a technology that allows this level of insight.

But this is just a small sliver of how Big Data will help marketers. Similar to how it impacts HR management, it also impacts all aspects of marketing: Pricing, Promotion, Product and Place.

The implications for sales departments are equally huge. Imagine being able to monitor the online "social" activity of your prospects to see what they most frequently talk about, learn their product needs, or the events they plan on attending? Again, technologies like SocialEars make this possible.

This is Big Data and it’s a Big Deal for marketing and PR departments.

In his blog post, Jason Averbook wrote:

“OK, it’s official. I’m calling it right now. I am betting ‘Big Data’ will unseat ‘Cloud Computing’ as the top buzzword in 2012 that will get HR people talking. Any takers?”

I'm a taker, Jason. And I'll make my own call (at least the first time publicly): I am betting “Big Data” will be the top buzzword in 2012 that gets marketing and PR people talking. Any takers?

By the way, if you’re interested in this topic (as it relates to marketing and PR), join the Social Listening Analytics Group at LinkedIn:

Post by HRmarketer / SocialEars Founder and CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Showing Our Social Colors. Cool? Yes, But So What?

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:00:03 PST

Since its BETA launch in November, SocialEars has created a lot of buzz in the HR marketplace.
Most people who see it say, "Wow, that is so cool!"

But then come questions like, "What's the business value?"

It reminds me of the World Wide Web in 1995 (check out PeopleSoft in 1996) when companies first started to introduce websites. Wow, that's cool! What's the business value? (Yes, people did ask.) Those that pioneered the Web were in prime shape when their audiences finally “got” it and climbed aboard en masse. The rest had to scramble to catch up.

For marketers and PR pros, social listening and analytics software is every bit as game-changing as the Web. Or, as I like to say, software that helps you listen, discover and engage.

At its core, SocialEars, like many social listening software products, is about listening to the social conversations, discovering trending topics and the media outlets and people participating in and influencing those discussions, being able to read their shared and authored “content” and most importantly – joining in conversations and engaging the right people.

While talking with the CEO of a leading social recruiting firm, he echoed a line that we’ve repeated to our own clients: “media relations in the age of social media isn’t rocket science, but it takes time and effort to ensure you’re engaging the influencers that want to hear your story.”

How true! More than ever, companies need to:

Author a steady stream of original online content
Promote / share this content via their social properties
Share and comment on other thought leaders’ content, and
Get thought leaders (we call them social voices) to share and comment on their content.

SocialEars Tag Cloud Shows What's Trending

As recently as five years ago, doing this effectively wasn't really possible. Sure, you could scan through online magazines and carry out “brute force” searches for topics, as well as the people who covered your products – but it was incredibly time-consuming. Then came social media and an overwhelming “fire hose” of information. Analyzing this big data was a challenge beyond most companies’ ability – unless they had the computing power of IBM’s Big Blue.

Now we have cloud computing, which finally makes it possible to handle big data but has created a new problem: noise. With millions of bytes of information being pumped through these fire hoses daily, making sense of it all has become a real challenge. Computing power and algorithms alone can't yet solve this problem. This is where people with industry-specific expertise are needed – as well as the ability to choose which data to analyze.

Social listening and analytics software makes all of this possible. Our SocialEars software is uniquely qualified to capture and present such information in the human capital marketplace because it sits on top of HRmarketer's information databases that focus on media outlets, press contacts, analysts, and social "voices" (consultants, HR professionals, vendors, and thought leaders) in the HR marketplace. And for each of these sources we track the "content" they author and/or share via their media outlets, social networks, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn, Facebook (coming in a few weeks) and blogs. All told, it's analyzing thousands of highly targeted fire hoses and millions of pieces of data.

Again, what’s the business value?


SocialEars: Listen - Discover - Engage

Let’s say you’re preparing campaigns to market a HR product launch. There’s no point in crafting the greatest press announcement on Earth if you send it to journalists who don’t cover your space. Or analysts. Or if you miss the HR blogger with 500 followers who have been dreaming of the very product you’re about to unveil. SocialEars allows you to quickly find the people that have an interest in your topic, gives you access to their recent authored or shared content and allows you to engage with them.
The value goes beyond marketing and PR. Market research firms and even HR professionals are finding SocialEars of value as they discover peers, solution providers and consultants with influence or expertise on particular subjects. Vendors are researching topics for white papers and webcasts at blazing speed. Many of our customers are revealing new ways to use this information each week.

Just this week we introduced some colorful new tag clouds that reveal whether or not a particular HR topic is trending up, down, or flat -- and related sparklines to show those trends over six-month time frames. We can do this with literally thousands of topics.

Here’s the bottom line: social analytics makes it possible to make sense of an increasingly complex marketplace and deliver more effective marketing and media relations. And you can navigate vast amounts of information in hours, as opposed to weeks or months.

Now that's really cool.

Post by HRmarketer / SocialEars Founder and CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Influencer Relations is still relationship building

HRmarketer.com Blog (HRmarketer.com Blog) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:21:58 PST

Sure, you've done the messaging work as it relates to your products and services. In fact, you've spent a lot of time on it to ensure you've gone from best practice to business case.

So why are you picking up the shotgun? Spraying your content pellets all over the room won't buy you much other than a lucky hit here and there and a lot of backlash grief.

Is that really the attention you want to attract?

I understand, though. You're under a lot of pressure to secure visibility and generate leads. The powers that be think that if you hit an industry influencer just hard enough, you'll get his or her attention.

You will all right. But not always in a good way.

Relationship building is the critical foundation for generating organic visibility and creating evangelists. That means taking the time to identifying who you want to engage and why. Really make that time for why.

Paying for advertorials or analyst work isn't what I mean either, although that will get you visibility as well, just not necessarily the relationships that can help your business grow long-term.

My colleague Elrond Lawrence hit it right on the money this week with his post Size Isn't Everything -- Relationships Are.

Media relations in the age of social media isn’t rocket science, but it takes time and effort to ensure you’re engaging the influencers that want to hear your story. (It's all in our new white paper Social Influence – Thriving in a New World of Media Relations as well.)

In fact, I'll go a step further and call relationship building with folks who aren't by trade journalists or analysts, those we call Social Voices that we track and analyze with SocialEars -- I'll call it Influencer Relations.

These are HR and recruiting pros, solutions providers and consultants, like me. I've played all these roles on B2B TV and know what it's like to get bumbling and fumbling inappropriate pitches from time to time.

Except this week I received one from a nice young man named Ian Alas pitching the on "The Start-Up of You", a new book coming out by LinkedIn cofounder and chairman Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur/author Ben Casnocha.

He did his homework and even read and referred to a relevant article on my more obscure Daddy blog:

I found your blog and was impressed that your writing, particularly this post, aligns so well with our book's ideas.

Right on, Brother Ian. Well done. I will participate in the companion webinar as well as read the book when it comes out.

Influencer Relations is still relationship building. Make the time and tell the powers to be to chillax.

What? The kids don't still say that?