Here’s a rundown of some of the most active niche professional networking sites online:

1) Stage32 – Social Network for Film, Theatre and Television Creatives

Has over 300,000 professionals from the entertainment industry across 180 countries. The site advertises that their members are made up of those with Academy, Emmy and Tony award winners as well as budding screenwriters, cast and crew members.  Members showcase their resumes, headshots, portfolios and work experience on their profiles as well as promoting any projects or reels they’re working on.

Apart from networking opportunities, Stage32 offers professionals a dedicated space to discuss various aspects of their craft as well as an area for learning, collaboration and employment opportunities. All members also earn Karma points based on their activity on the network.

Basic Boolean String: site:stage32.com/profile “job title” AND “lives * city name” -inurl:stage32.com/lounge

2) Doximity – Network for US Healthcare Professionals

Founded in 2011, Doximity is a US based network for medical professionals. It’s a platform where healthcare professionals can connect with each other and collaborate on patient care. The platform’s unique feature is the secure messaging service that allows physicians to refer patients to a colleague and send sensitive patient information over a secure network or through digital faxes. Given that the platform is only available to healthcare professionals and medical students, Doximity is ‘safe haven’ for doctors who’d rather not engage with patients or pharmaceutical reps on LinkedIn.

For recruiters, Doximity offers a service called Talent Finder which is priced at around $12,000 per year per license or “seat” to advertise jobs. Apart from receiving job opportunities, members are also able to take on consulting work and receive payment through the platform at average rates of $375 an hour.

Basic Boolean String: site:doximity.com/pub/ “speciality/job title” AND “hospital/university” intitle:city

3) Muck Rack – Social Media Site for Journalists

Muck Rack is a dedicated and vetted network of journalists which includes professionals from media outlets such as The New York Times, USA Today, Financial Times, etc. as well as freelancers from around the world.

All members are vetted by Muck Rack editors and are encouraged to network and showcase their published works within their portfolios. The site is free to use for journalists, with the biggest draw being its exclusivity and the management of PR spam within the platform.

Business executives, researchers, academics, public relations professionals, media consultants and salespeople, etc. are prohibited from creating profiles.  Instead, access to the database and the ability to pitch journalists through the site are reserved for those willing to pay a subscription fee that starts at $199 per month.

Basic Boolean String: site:muckrack.com/ “beat/location” AND keyword -inurl:topic -inurl:link -inurl:directory

4) ResearchGate – Collaboration platform for Scientists and Academics

Founded in 2008, Barlin-based ResearchGate is a site where scientists can interact, exchange knowledge and distribute their research. The network incorporates functionalities seen on other social networks like LinkedIn and Twittter as well as allowing members to share papers and data sets, give feedback on the reproducibility of research and finding solutions to research problems.

The network is a boon to the scientific community as it facilitates collaboration, transparency and reduces research redundancy. However as it stands, there isn’t a clear monetisation model for the network. Plans have been mentioned to charge universities and institutions for advertising jobs on the site as well as providing a marketplace for laboratory equipment.

Basic Boolean String: site:researchgate.net/profile/*/info “job title” AND “field of interest/skill/discipline” AND location -inurl:.pdf

5) RallyPoint – Professional Military Network

What started off as a class project is now a powerful platform that not only connects retired and active military servicemen and women but also helps them explore career opportunities within the military or out in the private sector.

A quick X-ray search shows approximately 200,000 profiles on the site. This is a relatively small number of users. However when you consider the size of the US military and veteran community, RallyPoint’s members make up a significant portion of the population.

To gain access to this community as a recruiter, your company can either advertise jobs on the network or purchase a license to access and search their database of members.

**Unfortunately, there is little information available in the publicly indexed profiles for RallyPoint, making a boolean search string redundant.

6) Kaggle – Community for Data Scientists

Kaggle is a social network with a twist. Unlike sites like Quora or StackOverflow where members gain reputation or ‘karma points’ from their peers for answering questions, Kaggle is all about the competition. It’s a platform where organisations can pose complex data science problems and invite the community to solve them in return for prize.

The site aims to match data scientists and statisticians looking to hone their skills with organisations that have real world data (and problems!) but don’t have access to advanced machine learning techniques.

Apart from the competitive framework, Kaggle provides the data science community with a place to meet, network and collaborate with each other.  Users are ranked according to three tiers; a Novice is new user, a Kaggler actively participates in competitions whilst a Master is a user with consistent and stellar competition results. The Tier System takes into account all-time performance on the network while a Rank System is used to compare active users based on points. However, it’s worth noting that unlike other sites, a user’s points on Kaggle deteriorate over time. Points are calculated with time decay fixed at the time of the most recent competition deadline. This basically means that users have to join competitions regularly if they wish to keep their points up.

Basic Boolean String: site:kaggle.com/users skills AND location AND “tier”

7) GrabCAD – Online Community and Marketplace for Mechanical Engineers

GrabCAD is essentially GitHub for mechanical engineers. It started off as a site where engineers and designers can share and upload 3D CAD models in an ‘open source’ way. Today, the platform has evolved beyond an open-network library to include cloud-based collaboration and data management tools as well as a Challenges section where companies crowdsource new designs and concepts from the community.

Following Github’s model, GrabCAD also offers a premium option called Workbench which teams can use to share information without uploading their designs into the public domain.

Basic Boolean String: site:grabcad.com “job title/skills/keywords” intitle:”country”  -inurl:(questions|tutorials|library|blog|requests|contentfiles)

The trend for niche social media sites will continue as professionals decamp to specialised platforms that offer a slightly different experience than on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or Google+. That’s not to say that any of the large social networks will become obsolete anytime soon. They still provide a common ground where users connect with acquaintances, friends and family online. However smaller, more focused professional networks give people the opportunity to connect with like-minded people who share their particular interests or work in the same industry. Niche networks are simply a new chapter in the social media story.

Know any other niche professional networking sites? Tell us about them in the comments.

At the core of it, Universal Analytics requires new tracking codes. By replacing the ga.js JavaScript library with the Analytics.js JavaScript library, updating the Google Analytics SDKs for mobile app tracking and introducing the Measurement Protocol for other digital devices, you can access new configuration options, custom dimensions and metrics.

How can the recruitment industry take advantage of these new features?

Identify data sources

Your website is probably the primary point of interaction for your candidates and clients. However, there might be other places where you already collect data from, such as:

• Your mobile app
• CRM and ATS data
• Social media interactions – likes, tweets, follows, etc.
• Form submissions – contact forms, applications, registrations, etc.

Identify knowledge gaps

What do you want to know about the candidates/visitors that interact with your company?

• What is the most lucrative online source of new candidates?
• Who are your audience? Candidates, existing clients or new business prospects?
• What combination of devices do candidates or clients use?
• What are the behaviours of potential clients that might indicate a higher likelihood to submit a vacancy request or ask for a sales meeting?
• What is the value of mobile? Of social media?
• Is a user more likely to apply for a job using a desktop only or a combination of desktop and mobile devices?

Universal Analytics can help us answer these questions, primarily by implementing a unique User ID for each user, common across touch-points.

Understanding the Measurement Protocol

The Measurement Protocol is a set of rules which Universal Analytics uses to collect data from any device or system. To implement this, you’ll need a web developer to create an application that retrieves events or hits from your chosen touch-points. The collected data is then sent to the Universal Analytics servers as Payload data.

Each payload must contain four parameters:

1. v – this indicates the measurement protocol version, which for now is ‘1’
2. tid –the tracking ID, which is the Universal Analytics instance you want to send the payload data to, unique to your organisation
3. userid – this is a unique identifier for each user assigned by you, the site owner
4. t – indicates the hit type, which can be ‘pageview’, ‘screenview’, ‘event’, ‘transaction’, ‘item’, ‘social’, ‘exception’, ‘timing’

You can add more parameters according to your needs but these four are mandatory. A list of other commonly used parameters are available here.

What is a User ID?

In the past, Google Analytics (GA) generated a random client ID when users visit a site. This information was stored in a cookie which allowed GA to identify returning visitors. Marketers never saw this ID. For the most part, it was a meaningless series of characters that only made sense in the cookie.

In contrast, the new User ID in Universal Analytics is a value determined by the site owner and associated with each user. It can be anything provided that it does not contain personally identifiable information, e.g. it cannot be an email address, name or social security number.

The key is to generate unique IDs which you consistently assign to users and include those IDs wherever and whenever you send data to UA.

How User ID works

The move from classic Google Analytics and Client ID to Universal Analytics and User ID shifts the focus away from visit-based data to visitor-based information – a subtle, but very important difference.

In a typical scenario, a user sees one of your jobs on a job board using their desktop during the day. On their way home, the user browses jobs using your mobile site. In the evening he then logs on LinkedIn from his tablet and clicks on an update from one of your recruiters which leads them back to your site.

Without a User ID, Google Analytics assigns each device a unique client ID and treats them as three unique visitors. This made it impossible to tell whether there were actually three people who used the site or the same person simply used three different devices.

With Universal Analytics, you can assign a User ID that is specific to each user who has registered for an account on your site. Given the scenario above, as long as the user is logged In, Universal Analytics would be able to link each session from each device to the same user.

Use Case

Websites already allow you to track web-based conversions. Within recruitment, the conversions are typically defined as applications received. However the recruitment cycle doesn’t really end when you receive a CV, the ‘real’ conversion occurs when a candidate is successfully placed into a job. However, this information is not captured within Google Analytics.

To rectify this, here’s a solution using Universal Analytics:

Registered users are assigned a User ID which is used to identify them during subsequent visits, regardless of the device they use to log in. When a user sends an application, recruiters will receive the CV as normal but in addition, the User ID is passed along to your CRM in a hidden field. The application submission is then tracked as an event in your analytics interface.

In the event that the user is successfully placed in a job, the recruiter changes the candidate status on the CRM. At this point, you can then use a ‘webhook’ to send information back to UA containing the User ID and the new event, ‘candidate placed’. Success! You’ve just tracked a full recruiting cycle for the first time.

Using this implementation,  you will be able to measure end-to-end metrics such as:

• Which digital channels drive the most placements
• Which referring sites assist the most conversions
• What online ads have the best ROI

If like most recruitment agencies you have been hampered by a lack of insight into the efficacy of your digital marketing efforts, Universal Analytics offers a sophisticated and relatively easy to implement opportunity to get full visibility of your marketing returns.

The Web has come a long way since then but have recruitment websites evolved as much? Have a look at some of the most popular job boards and recruitment websites as they once were.

What was your go-to job search site back in the 90’s? Share them in the comments section below.

1. Why are you ‘doing’ social media?

What is your business’ current situation and what problem are you trying to solve? By identifying the need within your organisation, you’ll have a better understanding of why social media is a tool that is best suited to the situation.

To begin with, examine your organisation or your processes. Identify what the key issues are. Then list the benefits of social media. Hopefully, between the two lists, you’ll see key areas where social media is the optimal tool to use.

For example:

• Problems could be low brand awareness, poor perception of the company or inability to specific audience types, etc.
• Benefits of social media include opportunities to reach a big (and relevant) audience, capability to form 1-to-many relationships, target users based  on preferences, opportunities to encourage brand advocacy, etc.

2. What are you doing?

Establish a goal. It’s imperative that you understand and establish goals which are simple, measurable and realistic. It serves no one if the main objective is to simply get on the social media bandwagon. By establishing measurable goals now, it will make it easy for you to know how successful your campaigns are 6, 12 or 18 months down the line.

A sample set of objectives could be:

• Use social networks as additional customer service tools
• Use social media to tell your brand story or share your company culture
• Use social media as a talent attraction tool

3. Where are you doing it?

Figure out what platforms are appropriate for your product, organisation or objectives.

LinkedIn – The primary network for professionals. Using LinkedIn for your talent attraction and referral scheme needs is a no-brainer. However if you’re looking for plumbers and electricians, you might have to rethink whether this network is really the best option.

Twitter – There’s a learning curve to engaging with people on Twitter but when you get to grips with it, it’s a great platform. It is an informal venue for conversing with people you wouldn’t normally be in the same room with. If you want a question answered quickly, Twitter is the best place to ask. A lot of established brands have taken to Twitter for this reason when answering customer support questions…with varying degrees of success.

The speed of exchanges on Twitter is the platform’s strength. However it could also spell the downfall for most brands if  time sensitive questions take hours to be addressed. You also need to consider a strategy for addressing tweets ‘out-of-hours’. Depending on your product or services, some customers may demand 24/7 availability from your support staff.

Facebook – There are valid arguments for and against using Facebook. For a brand, the site is useful for creating and interacting with a large “fan base” with the minimum friction. Some companies have seen success with it when hiring for entry-level and graduate jobs. Brands like Coke, Oreo and Starbucks use the platform to strengthen their brand awareness and customer loyalty efforts while online fashion retailer ASOS.com actively promotes and drives sales on the platform.

A blog – A blog is a valuable traffic driver for some businesses. It allows you to inform, educate and capture the attention of customers even while they are out of the ‘buying mode’. A great example is Econsultancy and Moz.com’s respective blogs. Both have established themselves as subject matter experts and thought leaders within digital marketing.

If your business provides a niche product or unique service, blogging is a great tool to use as part of your marketing strategy. It also provides you with valuable content to share on your social media channels. The key however is providing value in whatever type of content you decide to produce.

There’s a host of other networks that have sprung up such as Pinterest, Snapchat, Vine, Instagram, etc. Each one offers a unique feature that companies can leverage in different ways. It’s just up to you to figure out the best way you can relate to the network’s user base without alienating your existing customers.

4. What does success look like?

ROI (return on investment) of social media is one of those words that every CEO tends to ask for when defining the success of any initiative. Using the strictest definition of the word, ROI is the net profits divided by costs.  But how do we attribute monetary value to online interactions? Are retailers seeing dollars immediately after a fan likes their update on Facebook? Do airlines sell more seats by responding to questions on Twitter? The truth is, ROI measurement is still evolving.

It’s not that the impact of social media isn’t measurable. It’s the most data rich tool in your marketing arsenal so there is a ton of information you can use to benchmark and measure to your heart’s content. However, there also plenty of confounding variables that contribute to a single purchase decision. So instead of focusing on tracking the ROI of social media to measure your success,  focus on having measurable goals.

For an organisation, success can be in terms of growth in membership and online interactions, which could then translate to increased event attendance. For service provider, success could be an increase in favourable company reviews as support queries are dealt with on Twitter. For a one-man consultancy, success could be an increase in leads off the back of a single blog post. For an HR team, success could be measured from the number of online applications coming from a social network.

If you didn’t set measurable goals at the start no amount of social media analytics will tell you how successful you are. Achieving a 3% engagement on LinkedIn is arbitrary of measure of your success if it was never established as a goal.

5. What are the potential pitfalls?

There is no way of planning every single step and misstep during a campaign. But, identifying and planning around the possible pitfalls will help in the long run. Always have a contingency plan.

Identifying the pitfalls during the planning stage immediately lowers the risks. Even the most well intentioned social media initiative can backfire and turn into a huge PR disaster when you fail to consider worst-case scenarios of a public backlash. Social media campaigns offer companies a lot of bandwidth for interacting with the public directly. However, some pitfalls are just too risky to justify.

Even if you know you’ll be working with a social media agency, it’s important that you have an idea of how to answer the questions above. This not only saves you time in the process but  will also help the agency understand what you want to achieve from your partnership.

Connect your accounts

On the free version, you can connect up to 5 different social media profiles on a single account. You can also connect any company/brand page on Facebook or Google+ as long as you are a page administrator or owner.

Pro tip: You can add your favourite LinkedIn groups to Hootsuite and change them as often as you need to.

Get organised

The easiest way to organise your dashboard is to use a different tab for each social network. For example, within each tab you can create separate streams for each LinkedIn group that you have connected to your Hootsuite account. The streams will then show you the discussions happening within each LinkedIn group.

You can also add an additional stream that shows all the updates you have scheduled to go out and gives you quick access in case you need to edit anything.

If you’re using Twitter, you can create a stream for each keyword, hashtag  or brands that you are monitoring. You should also set up separate streams for your scheduled or sent updates and any Direct Messages (DMs) your receive.

Hootsuite, let’s you add up to 10 streams in a single tab so you can also include a tab for “Mentions” and “My Tweets, Retweeted”. By adding these streams, you can easily track tweets that are related to you and respond accordingly.

Pro tip: Instead of just sending a thank you whenever someone retweets or mentions you, you can also follow them or “Favourite” one of their tweets as a sign of gratitude.

Compose an update

Hootsuite’s real strength is obviously in allowing you to schedule and post to multiple networks, profiles or groups with a single click. When creating a new post, just select the profiles you want to use at the top of the page.  Enter your message in the compose box. If you’re sharing an article or a job advertisement, use the handy link shortener to attach the link to your update.

Pro tip: If you want to add an image thumbnail to your LinkedIn updates, select a Google+ or Facebook account at the same time. This will force Hootsuite to look for an image to accompany your LinkedIn post. Once a thumbnail is generated, you can then deselect the Facebook or Google+ account if you don’t need them and hit send.

Posting an update

Once you’ve finished composing your message, you can choose to send it out immediately or you can choose a specific date and time in the future. This feature is especially useful if you want to queue updates that will go out later in the week or while you’re away on holiday.

Pro tip: Use the AutoSchedule feature when posting to multiple LinkedIn groups. The AutoSchedule feature chooses the optimal time to post on each channel. This means that your update will be posted to the group when it is most active; with the added benefit of not spamming your followers’ news feed with multiple simultaneous updates.

Contacts

If you’re a Twitter user and/or a Google+ page administrator, Hootsuite gives you handy access to a contacts list from your Twitter and Google+ networks. From this page, you can easily follow them or check out their bio.

Apps

Although Hootsuite only supports Twitter, Facebook, Google+ Pages, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress and Mixi, you can still use it to monitor other networks. You can install Apps as streams and monitor your feed on Youtube, Xing, Viadeo, Instagram, Flickr, etc. Depending on the app, some will allow you to post an update from within the stream although you won’t be able to use Hootsuite’s scheduling feature.

Hootsuite Syndicator

The Hootsuite Syndicator is Hootsuite’s RSS app. It was built as a replacement for the now defunct Google reader. Once you’ve set up  your Hootsuite Syndicator Streams, all the content you want will be available to read and share straight from your dashboard.

Hootlet Extension

Hootsuite offers browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. The Hootlet extension lets you share any webpage without having to open Hootsuite on another tab or window.

Mobile

If you’re so inclined, Hootsuite also offers a mobile app for Android an iOS. The functionality is very similar to the desktop version so you can rely on an uninterrupted workflow, regardless of the device you’re using.

The free Hootsuite account is a powerful tool for any social media user’s toolbox. For added features such as analytics reports, bulk scheduling, team accounts and approval processes, you can easily upgrade to the Pro version.

Auditory hallucinations have always been defined in text books as a symptom of Schizophrenia. An aberration. An abnormal alteration of one’s mental state which needs to be corrected, quashed, cured.

However, in this inspiring talk by Eleanor Longden, she makes the case that hearing voices is not necessarily a departure from the norm. But instead, a sane reaction to insane life events. It is the mind’s coping mechanism for otherwise traumatic incidents that have been left to fester unobserved or unaddressed.

Regardless of their origin, the voices people hear in their heads should not dictate the initial diagnosis of schizophrenia as not all voices are malevolent in nature. Unless the existence of voices in someone’s mind threaten the person’s safety or those around him, why should we persecute or deem their condition as an immediate illness?

Is it not but a thin line between an auditory hallucination and a stroke of inspiration?

As rational human beings, it is not unsurprising that we tend to see any unusual behaviour as a threat to our existence. However it is then up to us to try and understand and qualify whether that odd behaviour is in fact a threat or just another feature of that human’s condition.

Graduate recruiters are using LinkedIn to fill jobs and tech savvy job hunters have been using the site to network with other professionals in the field or to ‘follow’ companies they wish to work for.

Edit: I originally wrote this post in 2011 and thought it was time for an update since LinkedIn has gone through a few changes since then. However, in as much as LinkedIn’s look and feel has changed over the last two years,  the basics of creating an All-Star profile still remains the same.

Top 10 tips for a killer LinkedIn graduate profile:

1. Write your headline – LinkedIn automatically puts your current position as your profile headline. Change it. Try to stand out by stating what you have to offer and identifying your unique selling point to attract recruiters. 

Do: “Psychology Graduate, Specialising in Survey Design. Interested in Market Research and Analysis”

Don’t: “Motivated Graduate Looking to Work in Market Research”

2. Choose an appropriate photo – LinkedIn is not Facebook, so having a photo of you holding a glass of wine is a no-no. Neither should you feel that you have to put your passport photo up. Choose a good headshot with a neutral/inoffensive background. You want to be personable and yet professional. People will make assumptions based on your photos so you might as well make it a good one.

3. Use keywords – Use keywords when describing your work. The more industry relevant keywords you have in your profile, the higher you are on a recruiter’s search rankings. This increases the chances of your profile getting noticed. Breakout the keywords in the skills section since this will come up in search as well, extra points if you can rack up endorsements for your skills.

Keywords is not just about industry buzzwords. Often graduates forget that the programming languages, or industry specific tools like Google Analytics, Photoshop, etc. are keywords that should be found on their profile rather than just something like “campaign management”.

4. Only include relevant jobs – If you’re applying to be an accountant for one of the Big 4 you probably don’t need to say you served Big Macs at 16.

5. Complete the summary – Treat it like your short personal advertisement/covering letter. Assert your personality and sell yourself. There’s also a lot of scope to be creative here, why not try embedding a short video clip where you talk about yourself?

6. Highlight what you can do – LinkedIn has introduced a new section where you can add your skills, languages, certifications and publications.  The skills section allows recruiters to search for a particular combination of skills, which you may well have. As above, get endorsements for your skills where you can.

Do: Brag about your achievements

Don’t: Lie or stretch the truth about the number and extent of your skills

You can also make your profile a bit more visual by adding links, Slideshare presentations, videos and images to showcase your work. As in the example below, I have included links to other websites I’ve worked on as well as information about each individual project I’ve been involved in.

7. Get recommendations – If you did an internship and made a great impression on your employers, don’t be afraid to approach them for a recommendation. It basically lends your profile more credibility. Plus, what’s better than a third-party endorsement?

8. Claim your vanity URL – Personalise the web address for your LinkedIn profile. This helps your results especially if employers search for you on Google.

9. Adjust your public profile settings – Go to the settings and select which sections are visible on your public profile. I would recommend having the summary, your current position, skills and education visible. There’s no point in crafting a killer profile and then hiding it under a bushel.

10. Update regularly – Your profile should evolve with you. It’s been a while since I’ve been a fresh graduate so I’ve made sure to update my own LinkedIn profile at appropriate points in my career to reflect the changes. By constantly updating your profile, you’ll have a handy jump-off point whenever you need to update your CV and look for a new challenge. 

If you live in Switzerland, which network should you focus on?

Current statistics show that Xing has 600’000+ users in Switzerland while a quick Google X-ray search of LinkedIn profiles show over 1.2 million members. And that’s just the indexed profiles.

Search engine data also reveal a very clear winner.  According to Chris Reynolds, SEM expert of QforQuery.com, “Querying search engines for the number of times a brand is searched for can provide a significantly better gauge of a brand’s awareness among its target population.”

By comparing the search volumes in the graph below, it’s apparent that interest or at least brand awareness for LinkedIn is on a steady rise in Switzerland. In comparison search interest for Xing which peaked in 2009 has since reached a plateau. The search volumes can also be used as a rough measure of the daily traffic that each site receives and is a good indicator of the level of activity generated by the registered users.

[trends h=”330″ w=”500″ q=”+linkedin,+xing” geo=”CH”]

It remains to be seen whether Xing can expand their reach to match LinkedIn’s presence in country where language easily defines preferences. A drill down to subregions shows Xing’s popularity in the German speaking parts of Switzerland; while LinkedIn’s penetration, though overall proportionally greater, is still most pronounced in Suisse Romande and Ticino.

Both networks are  aggressively going after business customers as they expand their offerings to include employer branding and more robust recruitment tools.

LinkedIn has had several changes on the platform this year including an overhaul of the profile pages, homepage, search engine and a complete redesign of their mobile app. Other notable changes include acquisitions of companies such as Pulse and Slideshare which integrate beautifully with the LinkedIn ecosystem to expand content accessibility.

Meanwhile Xing is trying to keep pace with UI changes as well as the recent release of  Talent Centre and the acquisition of the employer review site Kununu. They have also recently opened their first local office in Switzerland which shows the company making big strides to regain and retain market share before LinkedIn takes over completely. Whether Xing will succeed as a sizeable competitor to LinkedIn or fold to turn into a smaller niche social network is something yet to be determined.

(27.03.2014) Erratum: An earlier version of this article stated that LinkedIn has 1.4 million users in Switzerland. Contrary to that statement, as of March 2014 there are only 1.2+ million users on the network.

As per Xing’s most recent press release from January 2014, they have announced that they have reached 600’000 members in Switzerland. The article has since been amended to reflect that announcement

Now, imagine a world where search optimisation, social media and mobile can be pulled together into a single integrated digital campaign. How can this be achieved? Here’s a big idea, use Google+ to bring everything together!

What you need:

1. Company website – your company website should be able to publish every open job that your recruiters have
2. Google+ Profiles – every recruiter in your organisation would need to have an active Google+ account and in their “About” page under the “Contributor To” section, would link to your company homepage
3. Google Authorship Tags – snippets of code that provides verification between a Google+ profile and that individual’s published online content. For each advertised job there should be a link to the recruiter’s Google+ profile which includes the rel=”author” tag

Using the free Google Rich Snippet Testing Tool can verify whether or not Google Authorship has been set up successfully.

Once implemented, a typical search result should look like this:

 Disclaimer: The author is currently employed by Experis Switzerland as a Digital Marketing Assistant.

The Theory:

A typical recruitment agency website will have SEO “champion pages” based around skill sets or job types, e.g. a page optimised for the phrase “.NET jobs” will list all the open vacancies relevant to that skill. For agencies where recruiters specialise in sourcing for one or two skills, it’s a great opportunity to showcase their authority in that area, and increase the exposure for their advertisements. By adding the Google+ authorship tags to these champion pages, you can increase the traffic to your website easily without having to constantly fight your way up the page ranking.

Basically, the headshot of the recruiter which appears alongside the text listing in search results draws the eye and attracts clicks. The user’s attention is naturally drawn to the image of the person, which makes the issue of position in the search results ranking almost irrelevant.

Google hasn’t explicitly stated this, but “Author rank” may influence search results further. So it is in the recruiters’ best interest to publish high-quality and shareable content in the form of job postings as well as stimulating interaction on their own posts on Google+. At the very least, this should increase the recruiters’ activity and number of connections on the network.

So where does mobile come into play?

Google has recently expanded the reach for the Google+ platform by introducing a content recommendation for mobile sites. By adding a single line of code to your mobile site, Recommendations will start to appear on your site. Google has aimed to make content discovery as seamless as possible so that when a user reaches the bottom of an article and starts to scroll up (indicating that they have finished reading), recommendations for similar type of content will appear.

The recommendations are based on content from your Google+ circles (if you’re signed in), what the content was about and the content’s author.

What does this mean for a recruiter? As long as the authorship tags have been added, jobseekers will get recommendations for similar jobs published by the same recruiter as they browse through the company’s mobile site.

From a candidate’s perspective, this will offer a better experience as they seamlessly discover other jobs which are more relevant to them or have been endorsed by their circle.

As search results are increasingly influenced by social media, recruitment agencies can take advantage of Google+’s features to differentiate themselves in search results instead of competing solely on rankings against other agencies and job boards. By using the authorship function, it inherently promotes the recruiters and creates brand ambassadors out of them. It should also drive traffic and engagement both on the website and the recruiters’ Google+ profiles. This strategy essentially creates an ongoing loop that supports the website and the recruiters’ online visibility and credibility.

You can log into the dashboard through http://analytics.twitter.com. The first thing you will notice is that the page looks exactly like the interface for Twitter Ads. Indeed, the analytics dashboard is accessible from http://ads.twitter.com too and shows the same data.

From the analytics drop-down menu, you can access data for your tweets as well as followers. At the moment, the data available is quite thin in comparison to Facebook or LinkedIn Insights. You can get information on your follower and unfollower counts as well as number of mentions on. The summary report shows an overview of your Twitter history while  under “Timeline Activity” you can see more information relating to individual tweets, such as Favourites, RTs, Replies and the click count for any links shared. You can also use the “Best” and “Good” filters to isolate your well-performing tweets.

The timeline data can also be exported in CSV format although do not expect to see your follower/unfollower stats.

It’s fairly early days before you can rely on Twitter analytics for some data-driven decisions so don’t unsubscribe from any of your third-party tools  just yet. However at the very least, you should have a clearer idea of what kind of tweets are popular with your followers.

EDIT: Data on your followers/unfollowers will not be available until after you’ve launched a promoted account campaign.