Two Cents

2009 was a tough year on the career front for many Australians. Redundancies were widespread as companies endeavoured to cope with an uncertain economic climate.
 
The employer marketing and recruitment advertising sectors were highly sensitive to the economic slowdown, with reduced marketing budgets calling for smarter thinking, greater ROI and diversification across the board. The job market had taken a big hit, shifting the dynamic for HR professionals who had previously been dealing with skills shortages and a candidate short market. Inevitably, print media suffered a free-fall in advertising revenue.

From our own agency experiences with employer marketing, the job market appeared to be in recovery late last year – hopefully a barometer of an improving economy – even prompting expert comments of forthcoming skills shortages in some sectors. The credible medium of print, still preferable for sourcing the elusive ‘passive’ candidates, should continue to perform when targeting the baby boomer and senior executive markets but for the rest, the migration to online looks set to continue.

Companies and recruiters alike are continuing to use popular job boards such as SEEK, CareerOne and MyCareer to advertise vacancies, as well as many other niche and industry specific boards.

Mirroring a shift in B2B and B2C communications, we are also seeing social media assist recruiters in candidate vetting and appraisal (so watch those privacy settings on Facebook!). Equally, job seekers are using networks such as LinkedIn – where it really is in their interests to publish (rather than hide) as much relevant information as possible – all to improve employment prospects.

A recent innovation, Brazen Careerist, allows the modern professional to not only showcase their CV but also share ideas and engage with peers in their field, giving them control in a social network that they are happy to share information with.

Another interesting site is KODA, the imaginatively titled “opportunity community”, where employers can take a closer look at young professionals with talents beyond posting a CV in Word format.

This brings me to the latest example: Hire me, HeadBlade (which unsurprisingly led to the sequel, HeadBlade Hired Me!).

This recent success story in how to score your dream job in the new economy is further proof that people can create their own cut-through in competitive fields if they treat job seeking like an industry project or campaign. The bottom line: identify what it is you want to do and where you belong, and go the extra mile.

With innovation and increased usage of social media channels by job seekers, so too increases the need for businesses (as employers) to understand and be actively using these channels to their benefit to source the best available candidates. As the economy improves and, if as predicted, skills shortages make their presence felt, so the spotlight will turn back on employers as they strive to position themselves ahead of the competition. We might then see increased traffic to employer review sites such as JobVent, Glassdoor.com or Vault – and a return to larger budget employer marketing websites and campaign microsites as employers work harder to attract the right candidates.

As every employer would be aware, their human capital is the most important asset they have.

Steve Jennings is an Account Manager at BCM Brisbane

If you are a regular Facebook user you may be wondering what is going on with all your gal friends.

Status updates stating a particular colour are currently the rage but if you are part of that 50% of the population that have the Y chromosome, you are probably clueless as to what is going on.

Here is what it’s all about….

We’re not really sure where it started. One theory is that it’s very clever marketing from one of the hundreds of Breast Cancer organisations across the globe (really??).

The fact is that this game of Chinese Whispers has massive potential for commercial use.

The precedent has been set with Twitterer Kim Kardashian being reportedly paid $10,000 US to Tweet brands to her 2.8 million followers.

Could this be the way to embrace Facebook as a channel and spread brand loyalty?

What do you think?

Sarah Ferguson is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

For those of you in Brisbane or Sydney, you may have thought you lived on Mars today with the eerie clouds of red dust over our skies – in fact both “Dune” and “Total Recall” have been referenced several times.

While we are all now pretty convinced of the marketing capabilities of Twitter, it is interesting to see how it is being used by the average Joe for events and things that are of real-time interest.

I tested this out following the Brisbane Riverfire fireworks display two weeks ago – by midnight on Saturday 12 September there were over 700 tweets related to Riverfire and there had been over 2,000 tweets by the Monday morning.

In the context of the whole twittersphere that might not have seemed like much – indeed Riverfire was only up as a trending topic for about an hour before it was knocked off, but this early in the piece I can only guess how many tweets there will be about this crazy dust storm.

Since the dust storm hit Brisbane around 11:45am this morning there have been over 250…no…276…no…289…345…426… (sheesh I’ve given up trying to count) tweets with a great collection of #duststorm photos to be found on the Twitcaps aggregator site:

While the Trendsmap website shows up an interesting collection of words being used this morning by Sydney twitter users:

So if you are still feeling nervous about Twitter because you feel the pressure to always talk about something witty and intelligent, remember that the real-time nature of Twitter has been a driving factor in its rapid growth in popularity – allowing users to group together over shared experiences, or collectively break news stories as they happen.

Sarah Ferguson is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

The social networking buzz continues with stories and predictions about MySpace, Facebook and more recently Twitter.

But the ‘quiet achiever’ of the social networking world is LinkedIn.

LinkedIn was only launched in 2003 with $25m in venture capital. In its first year it only drew a few hundred thousand users but by 2005 nearly 5 million people had joined.

Now, with over 30 million users representing 150 industries LinkedIn is one of the fastest growing social networking brands around the world.

According to the latest data from comScore, LinkedIn’s US unique visitors have shot up 22% t0 7.7million, up from 6.3 million in December.  And total minutes spent on the site (’engagement’ is the new currency online!) doubled in January to 96.8 million minutes, from 47.6 million minutes in December.

But why the recent growth?

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which are largely leisure based networks for sharing personal stories, photos etc, LinkedIn was developed as a networking tool for business professionals.  That in itself has driven interest in LinkedIn from the business world and confirms to the idea of social object theory.

LinkedIn co-founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman summed this up recently “People like to keep their work and professional lives separate from their personal lives. The functions we provide make professionals more effective. We don’t give people a way to spend their entertainment or idle time”

So its single minded focus has certainly helped it carve out a strong position as the professional social networking tool.

But, the recent surge in growth for LinkedIn has no doubt been caused by the global economic downturn and the resulting job losses. A total of 12.5 million people are now unemployed in the US, so it’s no surprise that professionals are looking to tools like LinkedIn to help.

So, will this boom in interest in LinkedIn occur here in Australia?

Australia is certainly mirroring the US with job losses (100,000 in the last 6 months alone) which will almost certainly be reflected in a massive rise in interest in LinkedIn.

As at June last year there were 440,000 LinkedIn members here in Australia.  Current data reveals that the June member base has grown to 637,000 members. That’s a 23% increase in 8 months!’

I predict continued huge growth for LinkedIn here in Australia.   Do you agree?

There’s no doubt that the rise of social networking and all of the great things it brings has changed the way we perceive security and personal safety.

When I was a kid if we were going away for the weekend mum would always leave a couple of lights on, burning away day and night to fool people into thinking that someone  was home. (I wonder how many people would admit to that these days? Especially using good old 100 watt globes at that!) If you were off for any longer than a weekend a trusted neighbour would be arranged to clear the letterbox, collect the newspapers off the front yard, be seen watering the plants etc all to create the illusion that this was somewhere burglars should avoid.

Now, thanks to Twitter and one simple question… ‘What are you doing?’ plenty of us are very happy to tell the rest of the world that we’re not home and for how long we might be out.

Which is fine if you use a handle that doesn’t identify you by your real name. But it gets interesting when the lines between professional and personal applications blur and you actually want people to know you by your real name. How many people with my name live in Brisbane? Not many. So if I tweet to the world that I’ve just had a great surf or I’m at a function or anything else that tells people I’m not home it seems to present a window of opportunity for an enterprising criminal to pay my home a little visit. Even more convenient is letting them know what I’m looking forward to doing on the weekend so they can plan to hire the mini-van ahead of time.

Of course the flip-side of this is actually letting strangers know when you are home. Maybe I’ve watched a few too many slasher movies in my time but the idea of, for example, a young girl freely sharing with strangers that she’s home alone for the night could be an open invitation to the wrong kind of visitor.

This isn’t intended to creep anyone out or suggest that I’m criminally inclined but there are plenty of folks out there who are just that. To my mind that’s a good reason to keep your handle description vague and anonymous.

The technology behind things such as Twitter is genuinely exciting. It will change the world for the better and it presents loads of innovative opportunities. But I find it fascinating how free we are with sharing information that not so long ago society was encouraged to keep secret.

Maybe just double check that you’ve locked the windows before you step out and tweet about it.

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This week:

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• For sale – by SMS
• Social networking passes email usage in uptake
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Journos love a good story about the latest social networking craze. News outlets have been full of stories about Facebook and Myspace for years. But now, it seems, there’s a new kids on the block. Twitter. The runt of the social media pack has finally gone mainstream, leaving nobody in any doubt that the micro-blogging upstart has arrived. Whether you ‘get it’ or actually use it is another matter altogether, but it doesn’t stop the media latching on. Witness the hysteria in the Sydney Morning Herald recently:

• Politicians twitter throughout address to Congress like bored schoolchildren
• Armstrong’s Twitter plea: find my stolen bike
• Twittering celebs tell all from Oscars parties

Despite the hype, Twitter is very much a David to the Facebook Goliath. A quick look at Google search volumes over the last 12 months shows us (click for larger image):

The above image tells us less about Twitter’s booming popularity, and more about the sheer volume of Facebook searches – an incredibly large amount. Twitter has some way to go before it comes anywhere near the popularity of a Facebook or Myspace.

Nonetheless, if you’re the kind of person that likes to make sure they’re abreast of what’s happening, take the Two Week Twitter Challenge (an idea stolen directly from BCM digital god and Twitter addict Michael) and give it a good solid go for a fortnight. Add all your friends and see if it sticks. It’s worth a try!

Put your hand up if you spent your entire Christmas day away from a PC.

I see. Not many of you.

Put your hand up if you went on Facebook.

Right. More than I thought.

Don’t worry, if you had a cheeky look at Facebook on Christmas Day, you weren’t alone. In fact, as the above chart shows, Christmas Day proved to be Facebook’s busiest day of the year! I must admit, this surprised me. I assumed the combination of being away from work, being amongst family and generally falling out of routine on Christmas day would diminish the appeal of social networking. How wrong I was. Instead, as it turns out, the need to communicate with your nearest and dearest everywhere – not just around the Christmas turkey – makes social networking through sites like Facebook a highly attractive option for many people on Christmas Day.

As this article points out, some other factors probably play a part – the very cold weather in the northern hemisphere, and plain old boredom. Anything to escape from the relatives for a little while I guess.

What this really tells us, though, is that Facebook is less about attacking people with vampires, poking, and stalking, and much more about being a highly functional utility for staying in touch. It’s an intuitive platform for communicating that has been embraced by at least three generations (only the seniors are yet to come on board in large numbers). And despite what seems to be a growing number of detractors, I think it has a bright future, if they can get their revenue-raising off the ground this year.

Admit it – if you had a Facebook account, you logged in on Christmas Day, didn’t you?

As consumers’ media choices multiply and fragment, many in our industry fear an increasingly complex media landscape, a higher degree of difficulty in reaching prospects, and a big challenge in capturing attention.  And they’d be dead right in identifying these issues and being concerned about dealing with them.

As consumers’ attention increasingly skips across media channels from television to social networking, to online entertainment and news, to RSS feeds to mobile telephony, to interactive outdoor, we marketers face the real possibility of not being where the eyeballs are and even if we are, then not making a persuasive connection with them.  We’re now dealing with individuals who are often on their Facebook page, listening to a live radio feed, shopping online and ‘Twittering’ all at the same time!

It’s like trying to get an A.D.D. child to stop what they’re doing, listen to us and then change their behaviour based on what we say. It can be done but it takes a great deal of specialist skill.

But like most complex problems, and in tune with Occam’s Razor, the best solution is often the simplest one.

In this case, it’s a one word solution.

Relevance.

A powerful, relevant proposition put to most of us will be quite compelling most of the time.  Then, deliver it in the right place, at the right time with the right approach and you are probably going to make a meaningful connection.  Do it in a thoughtful way which engages the prospect and it’s going to work even harder.

For example, why would an eBay shopper consider listening to a message from an online retailer? They’ll probably listen in the first place if they’re served up a product message in the category they’re browsing, when they’re browsing.  But, when the key message of free delivery is served up to an audience who are only too aware of the costs of shipping products that are purchased on ebay, then they’ll really take notice.

So, what’s happening out there right now is that the media is continuing to fragment into smaller and smaller pieces, but that actually provides an incredibly exciting opportunity to finetune more and more relevant messages to tighter prospect clusters.  Relevance reigns and affinity is close behind.  A pretty powerful combo.

There is no doubt that this environment is more complex, more time consuming and more difficult to plan and manage.  But the opportunity to connect highly relevant messaging, often in the form of entertaining dialogue, is undeniable.

This is exciting. This is a massive opportunity for all of us.

Fragmentation.  Bring it on!

Ah, the heady days of 1998, just a decade ago. The year Australia held a Constitutional Convention, John Howard was re-elected for the first time, and Bill Clinton faced the music over his dalliances. Doesn’t seem that long ago, does it?

In 1998, there was no such thing as Napster, and the music industry was happily resting on its laurels – MP3 was yet to become a household term (the cool kids had discmans, Apple was that weirdo company trailing behind Microsoft, and the notion of storing your entire music collection on a device called an iPod was laughable). To access the internet, you crossed your fingers and hoped your 56k modem would connect, and then not drop out – broadband was but a geek’s wildest dream. You couldn’t attach a photo to an email without it taking hours to send and receive. If you were lucky, your brand new PC might have had a new-fangled USB drive. Your mobile phone was just that – a phone.

Google was born. There was no Myspace or Facebook – social networking involved going to the pub. No Youtube – watching video online was a horrid affair. No such thing as a blog. Nobody knew if sites like Amazon and Ebay would ever turn a profit, let alone survive.

It is by looking to the recent past that we can take stock of the incredible impact that the internet has had on our lives in such a short space of time, and the way in which it continues to change us. It is a phenomenon that everyone is a part of. It is inescapable.

This nostalgia was inspired by the release of a report by Pew this week called Networked Families which highlighted just how much impact the internet is having on our daily lives. One quarter of American adults say they now watch less TV as a result of the internet. 47 percent of households say new technologies have increased the quality of communication between family members. The internet, not TV, is now the hub of conversation for the water cooler – “Have you seen that latest video? Have you seen that cool website?”

Indeed, the very notion of a family sitting down in front of the TV with dinner to watch a show on free-to-air TV may soon seem as quaint as the idea of 56k modems. PVRs, video on demand, IPTV, cheap laptops – all are drawing people away from the TV and into a far more interactive world.

My, how things have changed. Anyone care to guess what the world of 2018 will look like? Good luck!