Digital Recruiting

Buntika Social Media Policy

So, you've realised that your employees are among the best resources to manage your online reputation but also potentially can damage your brand reputation if not guided correctly.

What to do?

Worry not, by answering twelve simple questions in sequence here at Policy Tool,

http://socialmedia.policytool.net/

you will have a full and legally sound, company social media policy to circulate to employees in a matter of moments. Yay!

Whats more, I got to make up a name for my make-believe company - Buntika - sounds like a fun place to work.

Nice article at mashable on why your company should have a social media policy.

The September Issue - on iPad

So, on Sunday night, I watched the TV premiere of The September Issue -a behind the scenes documentary on US Vogue magazine's Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour.

Wow! - it was compulsive viewing - I watched it initially thinking of a very stylish friend of mine who I knew would be ideal to work at Vogue.

By the end of it, despite not having a stylish, fashionable bone in my body, I was wishing I had a job there myself!

This was pretty much due to me loving Anna Wintour's right hand woman - Grace Coddington - the Creative Director, who was such a fantastic, talented person, who did these amazingly creative fashion shoots. They were like modern art...am I gushing? yes, I am..see... I belong in the world of fashion.

I loved Coddington and Wintour's relationship of begrudging admiration and respect mixed with wanting to give each other a good slap, their friction and passion for their jobs, obviously results in a great product.

Anyway, it got me thinking of the creativity that published magazines facilitate and excel at.

If we are going toward e-readers and a digital age that supplants published newspapers and magazines, what does this mean for creative spreads and layouts in magazines such as Vogue?

Have a look at the following link of how the magazine Sports Illustrated will look on the new Apple iPad.

Looks like the lovely work of Coddington will still live on. Phew Daarling!

Crowdsourcing Apathy

Ah, election year....the prospect of shiny new change or focusing your current leaders to deliver on past promises they have made...how exciting! or really....it used to be, but not so much this year.

I don't think I can ever recall being this apathethic about a general election. It's a sad state of affairs to be in, feeling that neither party offers any particular hope.

Just as well then, we have something of interest we can watch from our seats of indifference - how each party fayres in their use of social media in helping to get elected. After Obama came to power on the wave of hope and an amazing social media campaign, the bar has been set very high.

So, first to have piqued my interest and get off the starting blocks is Labour.

Just read that Labour are launching a crowdsourcing campaign Change we See

Insead of talking about what they are going to change - 'Yes We Can' like, they are doing a 'Yes, We Did' type scenario.

Well, they have been in power for donkeys years now, should have done something to be fair.

Nice idea...but as with all social media, content is key....will they have the content for crowds to source? -we'll soon see.

Over to Tory HQ.

Delicious Ambiguity

'...some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.'

Gilda Radner

I love a good quotation and I think the above is a good way to look at life and all that it presents us with, especially after a year like 2009 and a rather uncertain world in 2010.

At this time of year, people tend to make predictions about whats going to happen in the upcoming year.

I obviously don't know whats going to happen in the upcoming months, but reading different blogs and research, it would seem a given, that mobile, real-time and social are the key trends in technology, business and communication (more on that to come).

Whatever happens, I hope 2010 is a great year and we all appreciate and enjoy the delicious ambiguity that it has to offer.

Digital Dinner Party - WebSquared

Every now and then you come across a site, a white paper, a new technology etc that makes you a bit excited and you wonder how you can use it or tailor it for your company and clients.

I came across the site http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/ the other week, late in the evening and was on it for a good few hours until I had to go to sleep.

The site details the Web 2.0 summit that happened in October in San Francisco. The summit is organised by the guy who coined the web 2.0 term- Tim O'Reilly.

Web 2.0 has become Web squared - all about collective intelligence, and the web integrating with the physical world. 'The Web is no longer an industry unto itself – the Web is now the world.'

The list of speakers at this conference is like your dream digital dinner party line-up. Pretty impressive. Some great content on here.

LinkedIn Opens up at Last

After announcing it would open up its platform ages ago - LinkedIn finally lets outside developers have access.

All the pro's and con's are detailed here - including the t & c's that they are imposing which may be a bit stifling and limiting.

But nonetheless- really interesting development for our clients. Watch this space.

Mash-Up my Career

So, I read this article today about how you can use technology/sites to map your life history.

I like this idea - overlay your life on a map of places you have visited, schools you attended, where you have lived etc add relevant content, photo's, links to friends etc

Instead of carving your name on a tree (maybe with another name, date and a heart around it) you can create your life history in a dynamic, visual and interactive way - a 3G biography - a personal diary or history.

Surely this is the future of logging your career experience? - a digital, real-time, resume: charting your work history, where you have worked, who you have worked with and examples of campaigns, clients, innovations you have worked on etc? An interface that will bring this to life.

A digital Career portfolio.

Is this the service that job boards can offer to ensure they are still a valid and relevant avenue for future candidates and employers?

An evolution of sites such as LinkedIn?

Surely it is.

Twitter & LinkedIn Partnership Merges Professional with Personal

One of the best pastimes I've read on a CV from a prospective candidate was;

 'reading, socialising and...thinking.

In an evening/weekend they liked nothing better, than to sit down and have a good think.........this certainly put some thoughts into my head.

It would seem that the anouncement that you can share your Tweets on your LinkedIn profile will also provide employers with an insight into your personality, pastimes and what makes you tick. As Biz Stone, Co-founder of twitter states; people are finding:

'the personna they create for themselves on the web is part of their resume in many ways'.

 
This certainly goes some way to blurring the line between your professional social web presence - LinkedIn and your more personal presence - or 'brand' on the web, on a site such as Twitter.

The partnership is great for LinkedIn in terms of making it a more dynamic 'real' time stream of info and super for twitter and its expansion plans for 'putting a little twitter in everything'.

'Real time' insights are what its all about.

Will we get real-time insights on real thoughts and real personna's or up-to-the minute insights on a contrived personal/professional brand?

Perhaps it will be like Big Brother - where after a while, you just don't notice that the camera's are there anymore.....oops.

Its not Y!ou...it's..er....

What's a brand all about?

Well,...employer brands, they are a representation and reflection of an existing, living, breathing organisation and its' culture, no? its actual values, it's reality...it's aspirations to an extent.

I was in San Francisco on holiday recently and the Yahoo  -'It's 'Y!ou' campaign was literally everywhere you went. I thought it was maybe a west coast of America, Silicon Valley-type campaign, but sure enough, when I got back to London and climbed into my cab and had a look around - it was eveywhere to be seen too. I thought...big media budget....hmnn...wonder who has that account...:o)

Seemingly the media budget was in the region of a huge $100 million - certainly it got my attention (on two different continents) but what impact did it make? 

It was interesting to be shown this chart below when I got back to work:

It would appear that for all the investment in the campaign, it's just not having a postive impact on the brand, quite the opposite in fact.

I guess the issue with the message is, it's not telling me anything about Yahoo! and who and what it is - what it stands for. Yes, personalisation is the future, and I like that you tailor your product/company to me...but that's if its relevant to me as an individual person - telling everyone its all about them...well, it just doesn't resonate. Perhaps our tribal instinct gives us a desire to pin our badge to something we identify with - and this goes for both consumer and employer brands.

p.s. nice article and debate about campaign here.

Social Web v. Destination Sites

Hey there, I'm back after a bit of a break - on hols and busy busy at work.

Here's something I wanted to share which is really interesting - its a post noting how traffic to brands destination sites is declining compared to the rising traffic on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Its all about the content and where its being consumed i.e. in the social web and less so at a brands own website.

Is the writing on the wall for a company's website?

Maybe not just yet, but it does reinforce the fact that clients should be engaging with their target audience where they are consuming media - on the social web. A considered, well thought-out social media strategy, where a clients site is integrated is key.