Diary of a Recruiter

Picking up where I left off… I was thoroughly impressed with the speakers at SocialBBC.  I honestly found myself 100% engrossed in each presentation… there was never a dull moment.  Here are some highlights:

1.  Gangway Advertising’s, Cynthia Smoot.  What an informative presentation on the importance of Personal Branding!  She began with five (5) key steps to improving visibility, and checking one’s own reputation and credibility on the web.  1. Google Yourself  2. Claim Your Name  3. Create Public Profiles on Social Sites  4. Build a Website/Blog  5. Populate Your Social Sites with Fresh Content (she emphasizes that this is a lifestyle one must adopt!).  In addition, I learned what a GREAT tool www.posterous.com can be for putting just about anything online via email.  They’ve made it oh so simple.

Cynthia offered some thought-provoking comments on social media, explaining that “the people are now the media” and we must learn to “leverage social media to markets.”  We are all “micro-journalists” and it is now simpler than ever to voice our opinions, and through proper execution, attract a loyal audience.

2.  The Marketing Zen Group’s President, and author, Shama Kabani.  She presented some invaluable information focusing on how to establish your expertise and offer value on the web.  It’s all about nurturing a community of fans and followers; experimenting with different content and mediums to find out what types of “delivery” will make the most sense.  This is the most effective use of social media.  Shama says “we are all story tellers at heart.”

When marketing a service or product, Shama listed three (3) things that are crucial for success:  1. Quality and usefulness of the product  2. An excellent web site (with a blog as an added bonus–as long as the content is constantly updated!)  3. A thorough understanding of your company’s BOD [Brand Outcome Differentiator].

Shama also shared some ideas about the ways in which social media can truly benefit an individual or company.  They included, blogging about the usefulness of LinkedIn for recruiters/job seekers, utilizing a Facebook fan page that focuses on going after your company’s demographic; joint venturing–and getting exposure to one another’s audiences, using Twitter as a “global human search engine”; using LinkedIn for gathering recommendations, joining various groups & sharing information on LinkedIn Answers, and utilizing online video (YouTube, etc.) for creating content and ease of distribution.  Learn more from Shama at http://shama.tv/.

3.  Huddle Production’s, Chris Yates.  Everyone should have a chance to meet Chris.  His enthusiasm and charismatic personality are infectious.  And, he let me hold the EMMY he had won for his Gameday Rivals production, “In Search of the Ultimate Tailgater” [see below photo].  Chris started off his presentation with a great quote: “Google is a monster.  Feed that monster.”

As a guy who specializes in video for creating social media solutions for clients, Chris understands the importance of “live” marketing on the web.  He urges his audience to “speak from the heart, and talk about what you know best.” He reiterated the fact that YouTube is the 2nd most search site, next to Google.  Needless to say, businesses can benefit from this!  After learning that people share video 2.5 times more than the written word, this makes sense.  Chris emphasizes that “a product is what a consumer is telling people it is.”  With ease of distribution to large audiences (at low cost), and the fact that video helps search engine optimization, business owners need to seriously consider utilizing this medium as a key marketing tool.

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I have one more speaker I would like to talk about before moving on to the next topic, so hopefully I will get to this tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Events, People, Places. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.