Another fantastic post by Julian & Shannon at Exceler8ion, the premier blog covering marketing/advertising issues effecting the recruitment industry.

Published by Shannon, September 26th, 2006 in Interactive Recruitment Marketing, Blogs, employer brand, Social Media

I have been following Easton Ellsworth’s review of the 10 largest Fortune 500 companies. He has posted a list of his reviews of their ‘business blogging’ efforts so far:

1. ExxonMobil – Yawn
2. Wal-Mart – Ugly
3. General Motors Part 1 and Part 2 – Otay
4. Chevron – Mysterious
5. Ford – Iffy
6. ConocoPhillips – Nonexistent
7. General Electric – Aha!
8. Citigroup – Who?
9. AIG – Barf
10. IBM – Hallelujah!

Of Easton’s list:

* I only know of 2 that are using real blogs (very indirectly) to recruit talent: 1- Wal-mart (Life at Wal-Mart Blog – and there are some fishy things going on here that we will get into later) AND 2- GM (FYI Blog).

* While we know that IBM encourages its employees to blog (within company guidelines) – are there any recruiting focused / Heather Hamilton / JobsBlog equivalents out there for IBM? Maybe I’ve missed it?

* There are some that are blogging pretty well – but are clearly missing out on the opportunity to directly recruit talent from the blog – GE’s Global Research Blog, From Edison’s Desk, is one that needs to add a link to their job search and apply at the very least today.

According to the Fortune 500 Blogging Wiki, thirty, or 6%, of Fortune 500 companies have official corporate blogs (nearly double the number in December 2005)

Few company blogs are from the CEOs (which may be a good thing depending on the chief) and few seem to overtly use their corporate blogs to recruit talented people to join their team. Why are so many Fortune 500 companies failing to take advantage of this medium to engage in online conversations with potential candidates and applicants?

In the coming days I will begin reviewing the spectrum of F500 recruitment blogging efforts – from those that are just dipping their toes into the ‘recruitosphere’ to those that are doing cannonballs into recruitment blogging.

NOTE: Fortune 500 Blogger Wiki is planning to add share price data to create a Business Blogging Index, comparing the stock performance of companies that blog with those that don’t. Here’s why. A spreadsheet version of that with a snapshot of this list from 12/30/05 is here.

OTHER BUSINESS BLOG RESOURCES:

* The NewPR wiki: Corporate Blog List, | CEO Blog List | Product Blogs List
* CorporateBlogging.info: European Corporate Blogs list
* BlogsCorporativos.com: Corporate bloggging list and related blogs used for corporate internal and external communications.
* The NewPR Wiki: Business Blogging Policies | Blogging: Legal Challenges
* Charlene Li from Forrester’s Wiki : List of marketers using blogs, Blogger Code of Ethics and Corporate Blogging Policies
* BlogWriteForCEOs: Debbie Weil’s blog about CEO and corporate blogging, with a link to her forthcoming book, The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right (Penguin Portfolio Aug. 2006)
* Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business, a practical guide to business blogging (New Riders June 2006)
* BusinessBlogConsulting: Rick Bruner group blog on all things related to business blogging.
* BlogHer: A network of women bloggers and a daily surfing guide to blogging across a variety of topics, including business, technology and social media.
* Society For New Communications Research: Research society exploring corporate blogging and other forms of Internet related corporate communications.

Checkout accounting jobs, UK at AccountantCareers.co.uk.

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I had the pleasure of meeting Julian and Shannon at EXCELER8ion at Jobster’s ERE reception at Fluvio’s in Hollywood/Ft Lauderdale, FL. It’s been a unique pleasure getting to know them and I am exceptionally impressed with their new site look with interchangeable title banners. As for the substance of original content, it’s become required reading for all recruiting afficianados. I strongly encourage my friends at Six Degrees to visit Shannon and Julian at Exceler8ion for a thorough understanding of all things related to: interactive marketing, blogging, social networks, online recruitment advertising, marketing technology, word-of-mouth marketing, and online advertising operations.

Published by Shannon, September 14th, 2006 in Interactive Recruitment Marketing, Blogs, Social Media Optimization, Social Media

SMO – not Schmo“How do we measure it?”

When we talk to clients about the possibility of starting a recruiting blog, the question of ROI metrics is second only to, “Aren’t bloggers just a bunch of sexual predators and teenagers talking about their naughty escapades?”.

As blogs and social networking continue to grow and change the way that we connect with people in business – figuring out how to measure and optimize the interactions that occur will increasingly become a business imperative. Making a business case through metrics is the only way that we know how to sell ideas up the chain of command. But metrics are really just a jumble of numbers unless you can explain and understand the story that they tell – and then optimize based on what you’ve learned. There is a new exploding field that attempts to do just that. We have discussed Social Media Optimization previously here.

According to an article in ClickZ today, Omniture, a leading provider of Web Analytics & Online Business Performance Optimization software, is the first in the business to add “Web 2.0 business optimizations” – (their term, not mine) that package best practices expertise and technology for:

* Social Networking – Analyze the value and relevance of user-generated content
* Blogs – Measure consumption and influence of this new content medium
* Rich Internet Applications (RIA) – Quantify rich media engagement and abandonment
* Dynamic Site Search – Provide visitors with self-optimizing search results
* Visitor Interaction Profiling – 1:1 targeting with complete user profiles

What the hell does all that mean?

The social media optimization components will measure how your content is consumed and distributed online. Omniture’s software will track incoming links to analyze how your content is spread; how fast the community drops the content and it stops generating inbound links, and what day and time generates the most attention from the blogosphere and social networks. According to ClickZ:

“They want to understand what triggers a passive visitor to become a contributor to a blog or social network, and then they want to be able to optimize that experience,” he said. “By examining the interplay between various pieces of content within a site, our customers are able to better understand the role and relative value of blogs in their marketing mix.”

What is it that makes someone comment, or at what point did they go from being passive to active? How long before your current content gets old and you need to post again to turn up the incoming links? How valuable would this type of information be for a recruiting blog? If that information could be taken and used to optimize the site with the goal to encourage even more participation and activity – that will be really powerful – and help us make the business case more easily.

While the everyday Schmo out there can’t afford Omniture’s tracking capabilities – all large corporations that already have, or want to start, recruiting blogs should include this type of tracking as a mandatory component of their social media strategy. Whether or not Omniture’s new offering analyzes the RIGHT metrics to measure a blog’s value remains to be seen – but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Don’t have a strategy? Time to start thinking about that then.

Technorati Tags: socialmediaoptimization, social media optimization, recruiting blogs, social networking, blog metrics, web analytics, Omniture

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