Big data

4 easy tips to help graduate recruiters find their online audiences

Last week we told you about the story of Jon and Charlie, two regular guys with different approaches to making conversation. Jon got all the friends because he knew that everyone has a different point of view, a different set of preferences, motivators and behaviours and rather than talking about himself in the same way to everyone at the party (we’ve all met people who do that, right?), he listened to the conversation first and adapted what he wanted to say to match the people he was talking to at that particular moment.

The ability to do this is one of the characteristics that sets humans apart from other species. Empathy and understanding are basic principles of psychology. Jon knows that everyone is different and uses that to his advantage.

So why as employment marketers do so many organisations ignore this? Grouping people together into neat little boxes? Assuming that we all consume information in the same manner, hanging out in the same places, doing the same things – the things that marketers manipulate us to want to do.

Like sheep acting and thinking in the same way. It’s actually quite insulting when you stop and think about it.

Create a message. Identify an audience. Build a media plan. Penetrate that audience. Hope your message sticks. That just doesn’t work as a model any longer because in a world where we are bombarded with information all the time, content that’s not directly relevant becomes background noise.

Back to Jon’s point of view. We’re all motivated differently. We have unique interests and ambitions. As a result we hang out in different communities and consume information in different ways, having different conversations in different ways with different people.

And therein is the future of marketing (and especially employment marketing). People building real relationships with other people as a means of selling a product, service or career. Having conversations (dialogue rather than monologue), about mutually interesting topics, helping each other where possible, adding value all the time.

Where do those conversations happen? Wherever the people you need to speak with are hanging out. That could be at events, across the meeting room, on social media platforms – it’s a fragmented environment.

Where do you start? Well, there are two options here.

The first is to go to where they are. The second is to pull them to you and build your own community.

So where are they?

Here are four easy tips you can use right now to find where the right people for you are hanging out so you can start talking with them:

Twitter chats, Linkedin and Facebook groups and Google+ communities

These might seem obvious, but it’s quite rare to see employers make best use of these simple and effective options. Whatever your interest is – no matter how specific or oddball, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be an existing community that you can join, add value to and build your reputation. Google+ Communities are particularly useful for this, and we’ve talked about these before.

Facebook Graph Search

Graph search really allows you to effectively wade through the exabytes of data that Facebook has collected on people since launch. So for example, you can search for ‘Groups of people who like TOPIC and like PAGE NAME’ or ‘Favourite interests of people who like PAGE NAME’ to get a great understanding of where they spend their time online.

This can be particularly handy when researching the hobbies and interests of those who like your competitor’s pages, for example.

For a full list of the search possibilities and examples, it’s worth having a look here: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-graph-search-marketing/

Forums

Forums are an incredibly useful place when it comes to listening and contributing. Job boards like Indeed already post jobs on specialist forums – but why pay when you can do this for free? Taking the time to respond to questions and just generally being helpful will have a far greater impact on your reputation than just posting ads.

Take a look at all these students asking for help on Moneysavingexpert.com – they have a dedicated student money saving forum with plenty of questions waiting for you to answer: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=25

Boolean searching

This is more of a manual technique than a tool, and won’t work for everyone…but chances are you’ll find be able to find positive or negative conversations about you, and join in right away.

Try Google searching the below:

“like” + [your brand name]
“love” + [your brand name]
“I wish” + [your brand name]
“sucks” + [you or a competitors brand name]
“hate” + [you or a competitors brand name]

Some of the results might surprise you…

We hope these little tips help you find out where you should be spending your time online.

Next week we’ll be talking about the laws of attraction and how you can bring the party to you, so don’t forget to follow our blog using the follow button at the top right and you’ll get notified when we publish new content.

In the meantime, if you want to talk to us about how we can help you find and talk with the right talent, then give us a call on 020 7183 2556 or drop an email over to tam.salih@tonic-agency.com to set up a coffee.

http://www.tonic-agency.com

5 tools to help graduate recruiters make sure they’re not a proper Charlie.

A couple of weeks back, there was a party that Charlie and Jon decided to head to. Neither of them knew anyone that was going, except for the host of course.

As they arrived they got into the swing of things. Charlie, who was loud and gregarious, jumped right in – he started doing the rounds, interrupting people’s conversations to introduce himself, talking about his job, his girlfriend, where he lives and so on.

Jon however was a little less sure of himself. Being the shy type he was not so keen on interrupting people mid-party to talk about himself. He wanted to make a good impression, but he decided that maybe listening and understanding these people – background, personalities, preferences – was perhaps the more intelligent approach.

The night was going great, the two friends were enjoying themselves, the music was good and the drink was flowing. Jon had lots of people around him, engaging in good conversation, laughing at his jokes and buying him drinks. They wanted to spend the evening with him because they felt he understood them. He was connecting so well with other guests.

Charlie however was not having such a great time. He was speaking to lots of people, sure. But nobody was really listening. He found that after 5 minutes people would wander off and he’d be left looking for the next group of guests he could start talking to.

Jon left with a whole load of new friends and even a girl’s number…the lucky rascal.

Charlie on the other hand didn’t – and he couldn’t figure out why.

We see a lot of approaches to social from a broad range of employers who ask us to plan their strategy and begin conversations. The key trend we always seem to spot is that they all want to jump right into the party, much like Charlie. They want to use social media as a megaphone to shout about their message. When what they should be doing is taking a leaf out of Jon’s book and using it instead as a set of speakers to listen to what people are saying.

Social listening is quite literally that. Listening to what’s being said about your brand online within social communities – blogs, forums, corporate pages and social channels. It can help you understand where you’ve been mentioned, and in what context. You can then begin to compare that to those you compete for talent with which is incredibly useful for benchmarking your strengths and weaknesses.

Knowledge is power as they say and understanding the good, the bad and the ugly will put you in a great position to build out a plan of action – whether that plan focuses on being disruptive, challenging misconceptions or outright education – you need to truly listen before you speak.

Here are a few free tools to help ensure you don’t make a proper Charlie out of yourself.

Hootsuite & Tweetdeck – widely used to plan outbound messages, but have some functionality to monitor and allow you to gather data and respond in real-time.

Twazzup – great for beginners looking for a Twitter monitoring tool

Social Mention – allows you to monitor and collect data across multiple platforms with basic analytics to help you measure positive and negative sentiment

Icerocket – specialises in blog searches but has the functionality to watch Facebook and Twitter too

Google alerts – a very basic way to discover when a websites is posting about you. Doesn’t cover social and is probably the least useful in a recruitment sense

We hope you’ve found this little introduction to buzz monitoring useful. If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help you really listen, then pop over to http://www.tonic-agency.com and get in touch.

10 steps to becoming a more attractive graduate employer

Reputation is a funny old thing. By definition it’s a widespread belief that someone or something has a particular characteristic – something that makes it unique.

In today’s employer marketing arena, being unique is a commodity that many simply don’t have. When it comes to standing out from the crowd, being heard and generating real space between you and the competition, many employers think they’re #winning, but in reality they’re out there sounding and acting just like everyone else.

There’s a Dutch photographer called Hans Eijkelboom. He’s created a collection of ‘anti-sartorial’ photographs entitled, ‘People of the 21^st Century.’ He walked round town with a camera round his neck and the trigger in his pocket, snapping people while they were unaware. Sounds a little stalkerish but the way he arranged these photo’s is what we’re focusing on here.

In a world where we all think we’re individuals choosing to look, dress and act in a way that reflects our personality and celebrates our individuality, it’s remarkable just how identical we all actually look.

Have a quick look here to see what we mean.

So where are we going with this?

How can you grab someone’s attention, and keep it, when you’re only as appealing as the next employer down the road? How do you really take that step from aspiring to be different, to truly leading the pack and setting a great example? How do you become the envy of the competition?

In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing 10 pieces of content with you, the graduate recruiter, as you begin to assess your recent performance, define goals and objectives and plan for the year ahead.

Our aim is to make your life easier, so we’ll be sharing success stories, examples of client work and the results achieved, as well as some of the latest thinking that will help you to effectively manage your reputation, persuade and influence your audience and build those all important conversations on and offline.

Follow us on Twitter, Linked In or Google + to stay up to date, or follow our blog using the follow button to the top right of this post to receive an email each week when new content drops.

Of course, if there’s any topics you’re particularly interested in then be sure let us know, and we’ll even create your own personal bit of content around that topic and share it with our wider community to fire up a discussion and get our readers input.

See you next week and have a fabulous weekend!

The team at Tonic

http://www.tonic-agency.com

Everyone’s talking about big data

In a rather marvellous article (Recruitment 5.0: The Future of Recruiting — the Final Chapter ), published recently, Matthew Jeffrey and Amy McKee of Autodesk lay out their vision of the future (see here if you’re interested). It’s a good read, but you may want to get a cup of tea before you begin.

Their article is the latest in a series that charts the evolutionary journey of recruitment as it’s moved from a process primarily about building relationships (1.0), through a developing over-reliance on technology (2.0), which pushed the candidate away and then back again (3.0 & 4.0). The future, they argue,will see employers able to re-forge their relationships with the people they need by understanding their needs in detail, tailoring the way they interact with them accordingly.

One of the main points here is that there’s now the technology and data available to do this – data that’s derived from the information about our preferences, motivations and behaviours, the data that we all leave behind us as we go about our social media led lives. Of course there are those people who’ll argue that not everyone has a social footprint – but then you’re reading our blog, and we know you are, so there! But don’t worry; this is not as ‘big brother’ as it sounds. The fact that we leave this data trail behind us is good news.

Good news for the employers that embrace this changing environment. They’ll build communities of engaged, talented people that they can approach when the right role becomes vacant, reducing the time and cost of each hire to their business. They’ll be able to communicate the human nature of their brand through the relationships they build – hiring more of the right people based on fact and understanding. In effect they’ll become talent spotters and talent managers rather than advertisers or recruiters.

Good news for us all as job seekers too. Our world is more social and more mobile; we want and demand information when and where we want it, and if employers can cut through the clutter because they understand us better, we’ll be getting what we want too. It’ll be easier to spot the employers that suit us and make informed decisions about our careers. A real win-win situation.

We’re big fans of Matthew and his work, and hope that you have a chance to read his article. It ties in with our thinking and the way we work to uncover our client’s unique human brand, building conversations and relationships that benefit us all.

So, have a read, and if you’d like to begin a conversation you’ll know where to come.

Tonic-agency.com