SoMe Conference preview. What’s the Secret Social Sauce?

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It’s the SoMe graduate conference & awards do tomorrow (23rd Jan 2014). The conference agenda looks great; lots of case studies, market data and a bit of looking forward to what’s next  for us all too. There’s also the awards event later on in the evening – we’re short listed in several categories for a range of our work. We have our fingers crossed.

With the emphasis of the conference being on whether social is right (we hope that there are very few people that actually need convincing that they need to be active), the channels that can be used to serve content and their various merits, we’re going to take a slightly different perspective.

In the afternoon Tom is sharing the stage with Andrew from Mars and they’ll be looking at the HOW of content provision. How can we use the content generated to build conversation? How can we use those conversations to build community? How can we use social to convey our personality, our human brand, rather than simply pushing content? How does this change the dynamic of employer marketing altogether? How have Mars used this thinking to bring the people they need into the business?

We’ll share the slides we use later in the week but be warned that we’re not going to give away the magic ingredients, the secret sauce. You’ll have to talk to us to get that thinking…

Hope to see you tomorrow.

http://www.tonic-agency.com

+Tonic Agency

@tonictweeting

7 Social Media Sparks for 2014

Originally posted by Future Index. Thanks guys!

futureindex's avatarFuture Index Extra

Belated Happy New Year to you all! We thought we’d open our 2014 account with 7 social media sparks to inspire your planning for the year ahead.

One: Zombie Talk

FULL SAIL hunter-via-chat 2

If you can get a famous alumnus of your university to give up a few hours to chat to your current and potential students then why not host it all in Facebook. Yes, Snapchat and Instagram might be flavour of the month, but Facebook still retains some of the very best functionality and the 100% target audience penetration to make a real success of an online chat. Full Sail University certainly got it right when they benefited from the wisdom of Hunter M.Via, an editor on the Walking Dead TV series (highly acclaimed zombie drama), who shared his experiences as a student at Full Sail and how he then went on to get a career in television. 2,000 ‘likes’ for…

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First impressions count. Not just at uni, but for years afterwards.

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We’re big fans of the focus that employers place on hiring future talent. And why wouldn’t we be? We work with some of the world’s best-known employers to build their employer reputations. Graduate recruitment marketing – especially in the UK – is amongst the most competitive, most innovative, most dynamic and fun areas of employer marketing to be involved with.

Good news then that research released this week by HighFliers points to a resurgent graduate employment market in 2014. Hundreds if not thousands more roles will be open to those coming out of UK universities looking to start work in the autumn.

More good news. This time for those new graduates who just invested in paying tuition fees and living costs for the past few years and need to begin paying off that debt.

Some interesting changes have happened over the last few years however, suggesting that all may not be returning to the status quo as the economy improves.

The same research suggested that more than one in three of those vacancies will be filled by candidates who’ve already completed a placement of some sorts with their future employer. Good news again for the proactive, career minded student. Not so good if you’re less inclined toward planning your career and more inclined towards studying for your degree.

Just think. One third of all vacancies that are not open to application. What does that mean for graduate recruitment? And, what does it mean for those of us tasked with recruiting graduates? It’s clear that the future leaders we’re aiming to hire and develop (that’s why we hire graduates rather than those from earlier in education right?), are as keen as we are as employers to try out the working relationship before making a commitment.

So it seems that graduate recruitment through the milkround is not as tied to the concept of finding the next generation of leaders as it once was. And, if the annual autumn milkround circus is less important in finding the people that end up getting hired, what is all that marketing for? Come to think of it, if the decision to hire is made way before degrees are awarded, what is the purpose of recruiting graduates? Why not just hire earlier?

As one of our clients said to us recently it’s a bit more complicated than that. Graduate recruitment (and the associated marketing effort), serves many purposes.

It is partly about filling actual vacancies of course. Those people hired may or may not choose to stay with that employer for the whole of their career, if they do it’s a good investment to pay more in attracting, training, paying a higher salary and associated benefits. Unfortunately, statistically they’re more likely to move in a few years time. In which case it’s not. The investment simply serves to get people ready for their next job – perhaps in a competitor organisation.

However, as a means of providing early insight into the reasons to join a business, the process of the marketing of graduate vacancies is difficult to beat. If we are seen as a great place to work in those formative years then this memory of our offer will stay with the people we need for the whole of their career- irrespective of whether they join us or not immediately.

The future leaders we hire are influenced by their first impressions and do remember the good and the bad. I’m certain that we all can recall from our own experience who we’d work for if we had the chance. How would you respond if that company approached you now? Do you feel any more positive or negative about them?

Graduate recruitment is changing. We have to think both ahead of the curve and for the long- term if we are to maximise our ROI. Very little of our energy should be focused on being part of the final year application fest that happens each autumn. We won’t hire the best people that way.

We’re going to start exploring the traditional and contemporary models of graduate recruitment over the next few weeks – which is better and why. We hope you’ll enjoy the blog series over the next few weeks and hearing what you have to say.

Don’t forget to follow our blog to keep up to date with the latest thinking and pop over to http://www.tonic-agency.com to get in touch.

+Tonic Agency Ltd

Sponsoring the RAD Awards

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When we were approached to see if we’d like to sponsor a category at this years RAD Awards it didn’t take too much thinking about. Tonic, a little brand consultancy, sponsoring a category at the Oscars of the Recruitment industry? Yes, absolutely!

But, it had to be the right category. It had to align with our values and the work that we do. And that’s why we’ve chosen Employee Engagement. You see the bottom line for us is that the work that we do in building brand, articulating the things that make our clients special and executing the best candidate experiences we can, must continue into the experiences of the people hired, once they’re hired. It can’t just be about attraction.

If we can get the hiring bit right, and then make sure that those promises are fulfilled on we’ll be hiring advocates. People who will be positive about us, people who will deliver growth and profitability, people who will make the attraction of more new people easier in the future. Employee engagement is critical to the way that recruitment happens now and in the future. Can you tell that we’re passionate about it?

We can’t wait for the night. Not only are we short-listed for four awards in our own right, but we also get to celebrate with the winner when they’re announced. Exciting times.

Good luck then to Accenture and 106, HCA and Pink Squid, Manpower and Carve, Ovo and Aesop, and finally Sony Music and Blackbridge.

See one of you on the 30th January.

How can Google+ help employers get found by people that matter?

Being found online

Hello, and welcome to our final thoughts on Google Plus. Thanks to those who’ve been keeping up to date with this series, we hope you’ve enjoyed the content and found it insightful. For those of you who’ve just joined us, each week we’ve been sharing thoughts on the social network, around how employers can make best use of this largely overlooked channel, to become more social, personal, human and ultimately more valuable to the people they hope to begin a conversation with.

Let’s start off with a quick re-cap.

Google Plus has a big user base. Surprisingly big, in fact. It’s now the second largest of the lot and is growing faster than its competitors. It’s predicted to outgrow Facebook in 2016.

It’s not too hard to understand why – it has some really useful and unique features that may just be the difference when it comes to building your employer reputation in the social space.

We’ve already talked about how Circles help you be more personal, how Hangouts help you be more human and how Communities can help you become more valuable.  So what else is it keeping up its sleeve?

Well, there is one last hidden gem that Google Plus offers. It’s not as obvious as the ones we’ve mentioned, and you probably have no idea it exists unless you’re a bit of a techie.

It’s visibility.

If you want your website to appear on page one of someone’s search, Google Plus can help. And here’s how…

Google Plus content is treated exactly the same as a regular page on the web. Meaning it will appear in any Google search. And as Google is keen to give priority to content that has validation, it can also gain in page rank. How does that happen? Well, social networks are populated by real people who share, re-tweet, +1 and Like. These are called social signals and Google’s search engine watches these signals like a hawk, which help dictate popularity of content and thus search rankings. So if you share something with your community, and it receives plenty of +1’s, Google will automatically give that priority in any Google search.

Let’s put this into context. You’re a law firm that’s looking to engage talent earlier. You’ve created your own community for law students in their first year and you’re regularly sharing content, writing blogs and delivering thought leadership on all things legal. There’s a high level of interaction because you’re using Circles and Hangouts to deliver personalised content to the community and, as a result, you’re having meaningful, two-way conversations. Naturally, people +1 your content, share and then re-share (which you can monitor with Google Ripples… remember?) with their own Circles and Communities.

Now, let’s take Sarah, an 18-year-old who’s just finished her A Levels and is interested in a career in law. She wants to join a graduate scheme but is unsure which firms would be right for her. She decides to do a Google search: “Undergraduate law firm internships”.

Google begins to send out the crawlers and the usual suspects come back – such as ratemyplacement.co.uk, summerinternships.co.uk – but then your page appears three spots down.

You’ve not done anything extraordinary in terms of SEOing your site; you’ve not paid for sponsored Ads or Pay Per Click campaigns. Quite simply, Google has given you priority because of your effective use of Google Plus.

And why wouldn’t it? It’s a Google product!

Naturally, Sarah sees that this must be directly related to her search and decides to check out your page. Of course, she finds a wealth of information there to help her along her journey, and people in the same position as her from all over the world. Naturally, she decides to take part in the conversation and turn to your firm as a source of advice, comfort and thought leadership.

In today’s crowded marketplace, being visible is half the battle won. In a world where employers are trying to shout louder and harder to get their message heard, surely it makes sense to make best use of the tools available and begin to build conversations that count, in a more effective (and cost effective!) way.

Please do let us know what you think and of course, feel free to share thoughts on whether you think Google Plus offers businesses a new dynamic – we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Don’t forget to like and follow us for more content. We’ll be back next week to share more tonicthinking around employer reputation.

Thanks for reading!

http://www.tonic-agency.com

How can Google Communities help position employers as a source of value?

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Welcome to the penultimate part of our 5-part blog on how employers can make best use of Google Plus. We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading and viewing our content as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it.

Last week we shared a video blog that talked about Google Hangouts and how employers can use them to be more personal. If you missed that, take a look at the video here.

This week we’ll be discussing Google Communities, and how they can be used to help position employers as thought leaders and a source of value amongst their audience.

For those who are unsure, a Google+ Community is something that resembles a traditional message board that focuses around a central theme. This could be “I love my cat” or “Manchester United fans” – literally anything. In these communities, followers can interact with other like-minded individuals while allowing the community moderator to share personalised content with that specific community.

Google+ already has a large variety of communities to choose from, whether they focus on engineering, computer science or quantum mechanics. If there’s nothing that suits your needs already, you’re able to begin building your own community and driving the conversation yourself. This can be open to the public or invitation only – whichever suits your purposes.

Communities on Google are fairly young, but as interest in G+ grows, so does the number of communities. And when you consider the rate at which the network is growing, you’d expect the current figure (100,000+) to grow extremely rapidly, largely due to the Google Eco-system, but also due to the way communities differ compared to groups on other social networks.

So what does this mean for employers?

Let’s take John, an Engineering graduate in his second year at Kingston University. What exactly makes an employer valuable to John? Is it the fact that they’ll be making him plenty of job offers in the future and filling his Facebook page and Twitter feeds with current vacancies? Or will helping John with careers advice and guidance be more helpful? How about giving John the latest thinking around an interesting Electrical Engineering project? Or perhaps sharing useful resources for him to visit online? The bottom line is that people will talk to you if they perceive value in it for them. By helping people, you automatically gain the status of a good source of value and naturally, you’re front of mind.

If you missed our thinking about how HelpMarketing can tie into your attraction and reputation strategy, then have a look here.

G+ communities allow you to develop or participate in a community conversation around a specific shared interest. This not only raises awareness around your brand, but allows you to develop authority as an industry expert, share advice and latest thinking and furthermore, allows you to engage directly with potential talent and begin following them or adding them to your circles to continue the conversation you’ve begun.

A few other nifty features of G+ communities that similar platforms such as LinkedIn groups don’t offer are:

  • Using #hashtags to tie posts to specific searches on the platform and to a broader audience outside of G+
  • Creating categories within communities to allow you to group and allocate content as you see fit
  • With Google Ripples you can create an interactive graphic to see how a particular post has been shared and re-shared over a period of time, useful to assess the reach your content has
  • Posts within a community are indexed by Google and will be found easily via anyone searching for that topic on a Google Search
  • As with most of the G+ platform, the ‘plus one’ gives an indication of the popularity of the content you share – a good indicator to see if your content is resonating with your community

All of the above go a long way when it comes to helping employer’s position themselves as a source of value amongst the people they hope to begin a conversation with. And ensuring you remain font of mind means half the battle is won.

Next week will be the final of our 5-part blog, and we’ll be talking about the beneficial impact of G+ on your SEO and search visibility and tying together all the features we’ve discussed so far.

If you’d like to talk to us about any aspect of G+, or simply find out how you can be more valuable to talent, then pop over to http://www.tonic-thinking.com and get in touch.

How employers can make use of G+ hangouts to be more personal and human

The 3rd installment of our 5 part blog on G+. This week we look at how employers can make best use of G+ Hangouts to be more human and more personal with talent.

How can you use Google Circles to be more personal?

ImageIn the first edition of our five part blog focusing on G+ we asked if employers could afford to ignore what’s set to become the most used social media. In this, the second part, we’re going to talk about Google Circles and why they’re a really useful feature when it comes to delivering truly personalised content to your audience.

Quite simply a Circle is a group of friends, followers or contacts. Much like Facebook or Twitter, but with a difference. Unlike Facebook or Twitter there is no limit to the number of circles you can operate – each receiving a unique content feed. This offers endless opportunity to segment and personalise your messages and conversation to each of the communities you’ve built.

This allows you to be much more specific about what you share with each group. Facebook offers a single stream of content as does Twitter – G+ however, allows you to share engineering content with your Engineering circle, Marketing content with your circle of marketeers and information about what you’re planning to do at St Andrew’s University with your St Andrew’s University circle. You get the idea?

In context everyone wins. Your community get more relevant content – relevant posts that mean your message will be heard. And that’s a good thing – in a world where our attention spans are getting shorter and we’re demanding tailored content delivered faster, the ability to deliver information that is interesting, relevant and insightful is key to building brand advocacy.

So what’s our recommendation? Here are some ideas:

  • Treat your Public circle in the way it’s intended – give broad-brush information that is designed to engage and attract. You need to attract followers too.
  • Sub-divide the people that follow you into circles based on your target communities and develop content plans for each group
  • Use the opportunity to add value – see our blog on HelpMarketing for more about this
  • Think for the long-term. The objective here is to build engagement and then hire. Don’t simply broadcast a long list of vacancy announcements. This serves no-one and is a sure fire way of turning the people that you want to hire off.
  • Content is king, and delivering the right information, in the right way at the right time is something many employers find difficult. G+ Circles make that easier.

If you want to have a quick look at Circles being used intelligently, then I’d recommend looking at what Cadbury achieved with their ‘Tasters Circle.’ It’s a great example of a community that was quickly built and united by the same passion.

Cadbury went on to further engage this community using another of Google’s handy features – the Hangout. We’ll be looking into those in more detail next week.

If you’ve got any questions about G+ in the meantime, or simply want to keep up to date with our latest thinking then why not add us to one of your circles at +Tonic Agency Ltd? Alternatively you can visit http://www.tonic-agency.com for further contact details.