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Welcome to the Opt-In Age (You Have No Choice)

Geoff Peterson — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:44:23 +0000

Is it just me, or do you get an obscene amount of spam these days? I'm talking about digital spam (emails, direct messages and texts). It can't be just me! I'm getting unsolicited spam in my email, in my Twitter stream, in my Facebook profile and pages, in my LinkedIn account, even on my cell phone by way of text messages. It's everywhere! I'm getting signed-up and opted-in to everything I come into contact with directly or indirectly. With so much unwaranted, unsolicited and unasked for marketing messages, sale inquiries and junk hitting me every day, it makes me want to jump off the "grid" altogether.

Being in the recruiting industry, I've found that in order to be successful, you have to be open. This means dropping pieces of your digital identity everywhere you go online. My details are now everywhere. You can find my work and cell phone numbers, as well as personal and work emails in social and business network profiles, job postings, user groups, associations and countless other sites. In my experience, you need to find creative ways to attract talent and bring them to you. This means being open and sharing ways to reach out to you directly. Now while this has really helped my recruiting game over the past several years, it has also opened the flood gates for anyone and everyone to reach me. The reality is hundreds pieces of unsolicited spam find me every day.

Quick disclaimer: I admit that I've been guilty of sending a piece or two of unsolicited email in the past. Who hasn't? I bring this topic up because it has reached an unprecedented level. A great deal of individuals and companies have taken it upon themselves to "opt" anyone within their reach into their messages whether they want it or not.

Here are three specific examples of how we live in the "Opt-In Age" and why we have no choice:

1. Connections on social and business networks. Belong to a few? I bet you do. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are among the most popular for business or personal use today. These networks are by far and away the best places to grab contact information on you. This is the #1 place I've witnessed spam originating from. Why? Because it's so easy. If you leave your email address on any online profile, know that anyone can simply grab it and add you to their marketing list. It's unfortunate but it happens. I've noticed many LinkedIn members have become very opportunistic, with some putting "fine print" in their profiles. They state that if you connect with them, you are subject to "updates" from them. Updates? Huh? When you become 1st degree connections with another LinkedIn member, they can see your contact information, including your email addresses. Take a look at Chris Shoulet's profile on LinkedIn and see what I mean. Also, don't get me started on the rash of @ and direct message spam flowing on Twitter.

2. Companies you use products or services from currently. I'm currently a paying customer using products and services from several companies. You would think this would be enough for them, but it isn't. I get bombarded with newsletters, special offers, promotions and much more. I NEVER asked for it, but I've sure been getting it. I have purchased products or used services from Monster, Hilton Hotels, LinkedIn, Network Solutions, Sodexo, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes in 2009 to name a few recognizable companies. I was careful not to sign-up for any lists or give my consent to receive spam messages from these companies. Yet the unsolicited email marketing and messages were delivered to me anyway. Just know that if you use a product or service from any company, expect to be added to their supposed "opt-in" email lists whether you really did or not. It only gets worse if you are no longer a client. You will receive double the messages you did before to "come back."

3. Free items, Product Demonstrations and Beta Invites. You exchange your email address to receive a whitepaper or eBook on a hot or timely topic. You demo a new product or service online with any company. You sign-up to receive a beta invite for a new product or service online. In any of those cases, congratulations you're now on a list. Good luck getting off it. Why? Because nothing is really free. I'm sure you know that by know. There is a cost associated with everything. When an individual or company gives away content, products or services for free, the thinking is that a percentage of those people will upgrade to a paid product or service at some point. That's why you get hammered with spam from them, even if you try opting-out. Also note that if you sign-up for free webinars online, expect to get blitzed with unsolicited emails monthly.

Now I know you may be thinking I'm being very negative. These are some of my experiences (not all), but a sampling to give you an idea of my frustrations. So how do we fight back. Get a product like Postini which helps clear out spam, try Norton email products and cross your fingers. Make sure not to check the box that states you are opting-in for company messages, special promotions or newsletters next time you check out somewhere online, and also be careful to guard your privacy on online sites. Facebook for example recently put new measures into place for privacy control with your pages. But, no matter what you do, my experience has showed that most of this doesn't matter. Individuals and companies will either ignore your requests to opt-out, or just scale back what they send you, thinking you'll simply forget in a few weeks. As much as you try to limit the amount of spam you receive, more will continue to come your way as long as you leave a trail of information about yourself online, as I do.

What are you seeing? Weigh-in.

[ This post entitled Welcome to the Opt-In Age (You have no Choice) originated by the blog of social media consultant and recruiting leader Geoff Peterson. ]

Google Waves into Social Recruiting

Geoff Peterson — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:21:08 +0000

Heard of Google Wave yet? It's the latest product from this little company called Google, and it's the next step in their plan to dominate the world. Per Google, it's a place to "communicate and collaborate in real-time." To me, it's email and instant messenger rolled into a whiteboard.

Google Wave launched a few weeks back by "invitation only" and getting up on the site was difficult. Google has since opened the flood gates, and invitations can be found by asking friends and colleagues, or doing a little digging in communities like Twitter and Facebook. Still no luck? Request an invitation here. You'll want to get on, as the recruiting flock has moved that way and fast.

On Monday, November 16th, ERE is hosting their second #socialrecruiting summit in NYC. I attended their first summit earlier this year at the Google headquarters in Silicon Valley and thought the speaker lineup, presentations and attendees made for a groundbreaking event. Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend the second physically, but living in the digital era, doesn't mean I can't attend virtually. For starters, ERE will be offering a livestream of the event on their website. Tools such as Twazzup offer you a second option with a real-time look into the conversation happening from the event on Twitter (look up #socialrecruiting). And that brings me to the third selection: Google Wave. Chris Hoyt (aka TheRecruiterGuy) took the initiative to set-up a wave dedicated solely to the #socialrecruiting summit, and it acts as a great landing spot for recruiters to meet and share their thoughts around the hot social media topic and recruiting.

Recruiters have always found ways to interact at events before, whether it be face-to-face networking, texting, emailing, or using Twitter and other social networks. With Google Wave, recruiters can now interact and share in a wave: an online collaborative environment in real-time. The information captured in a wave can come in many forms, including text, video, links, polls, maps and much more. You can edit, markup and highlight your piece of the wave as well as others too. The possibilities are nearly endless. If you miss the #socialrecruiting summit, you can join the wave at a later date, and see the "archive" of notes and messages from the contributors. By using Google Wave, recruiters are seeing a true example of social media at its best.

Moving forward, there are many references available online about Google Wave. Take advantage of them. Check out "The Complete Guide to Google Wave" and "Google Wave: A Complete Guide." Before diving in, these two reads can give you a quick feel for the product and how to use it. Also, see how others are using Google Wave. 5 real-time use cases can be found at Mashable, and gives great insight into what other industry leaders are doing with Google Wave since it hit the web. Finally, find my profile on Google and send me a wave.

[ This post entitled Google Waves into Social Recruiting originated by the blog of social media consultant and recruiting leader Geoff Peterson. ]

My Mobile Recruiting Starter Guide

Geoff Peterson — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:53:02 +0000

Piggybacking on my panel discussion, "Leveraging Mobile as a Supplement to Recruiting" at the Onrec Expo, I wanted to share several tips to help you get started in the mobile space, as well as give you plenty of resources to work with.

Over the past year I have gone from 0-60 miles per hour with my mobile adoption, not only for recruiting, but for also marketing myself and my businesses (General Lead & RecruitChute). I mobilized this website with Everywhereigo, set-up QR (2D bar code) campaigns with ScanLife, and ran several text campaigns with TextMarks.

From my experiences, here are some starter tips for getting into mobile recruiting:

1) Get familiar with the mobile scene. A good start on this front would be to research the terms SMS, MMS, short codes and QR codes via Wikipedia. These three have become synonymous with mobile technologies. Another good outlet for "mobile" information is CloudRecruiting.net. Continue by reading up on industry leading blogs such as Mobile Marketer, Mobile Marketing Watch, Mobile Marketing Profits, IntoMobile, Communities Dominate Brands and mTrends. In addition, check out these four books: The Mobile Marketing Handbook, Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market, Mobile Marketing: Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Wireless Technology, and Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media. Finally, don't forget to stop by the Mobile Marketing Association which has a wealth of resources to soak up.

2) Decide your mobile recruiting goals. Decide who you are trying to market to first: active or passive job seekers, new clients for your business or someone else altogether. What is the outcome you are looking for? Are you trying to get job seekers to apply to your open positions? Are you building a stable of active and passive job seekers in certain fields? Are you trying to get more brand awareness in your space? Retain employees? There is an endless amount of creative ways to utilize mobile campaigns to your advantage. In my case, I use mobile campaigns to both drive more traffic to my open positions online (and ultimately get more applications/submissions), as well as get more brand awareness for my company and myself. I accomplish this not with one campaign as a catch-all for everything, but by breaking my goals into several campaigns and trying to reach that audience accordingly.

3) Get your websites mobilized. I think the most important thing you or your company needs to consider when entering the mobile space is mobilizing your website, blog and career sites. Without a mobile presence, I wouldn't jump into any type of campaigns at all. Most saavy people, whether they are job candidates or potential leads for your business, will check your website through their mobile web browser. If your site is not mobilized, they will probably find it very difficult to navigate on such a small screen. Ultimately users will get frustrated in the first few seconds of entering your site, and walk away with a negative impression of your business. I used Everywhereigo to mobilize this website because it offered great features such as the ability to hook up my Twitter feed, and had great customization options. Other options to consider are MoFuse, MOBIFY, Winksite, UBIK and Movylo. Also check out mobiForge, the world's largest independent mobile development community. A quick point to consider: most of these sites offer free and fee versions of their services. In most cases, you pay for what you get. The free versions are usually very lightweight with no frills and very little options to work with. They barely offer you what you need. I'd strongly urge you to consider a fee version that can work for you and your budget.

4) Build "opt-in" mobile marketing lists. You have to treat marketing in the mobile space much differently than other forms of marketing, such as email marketing. You must get people to "opt-in" to your marketing efforts, whether it be SMS, MMS or any other form. If you decide to send out marketing messages at random without permission, you run the risk of negative perceptions of you and your company, there could also be heavy fines associated with it, and even suspension or banishment from wireless carriers. This list won't grow easily, and it won't grow overnight either, so you must have patience. Over the past year, I have built several respectable sized opt-in lists to market to. I accomplished this in several key ways: making job seekers aware of my mobile programs, placing information about my mobile campaigns with links in each job posting online, using my social and business networks (i.e. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc), working my mobile campaign information into my blog, and offering free content online (such as whitepapers, webinars and presentations) related to mobile recruiting. Another simple, yet effective strategy is to place information inside your email signature. Integrate your mobile efforts into everything you do if you want to be successful. A great example of mobile recruiting success is AT&T. One way AT&T built their mobile marketing list, was integrating with their ATS, Taleo. So, every time a candidate filled out a job application online in Taleo, they would be given the option to subscribe to mobile alerts for programs and job openings. They had over 105,000+ mobile subscribers as of last week! Check out this mobile recruiting presentation from Chris Hoyt (aka RecruiterGuy) who works in Talent Acquisition for AT&T.

5) Plug 'n play with mobile campaigns. Get a survey of different services and solutions that are available for your marketing efforts. Discover what can help you accomplish your goals and what will work into your budget. This will include services and solutions for text messages, voice, mobile web promotion, social networking and proximity marketing. Two services I use for conducting mobile marketing campaigns are TextMarks and ScanLife. I run a business with a small budget set aside for marketing, including mobile efforts. Finding solutions to market effectively in the mobile space on the cheap was important to me. TextMarks offers both fee and free options for sending text messages to your opt-in lists. The free version was limited (only giving 120 out of the possible 160 characters to text with due to TextMarks advertisements). I upgraded to one of their fee plans, which was a minimal investment, and offers all 160 characters to work with and no advertisements. It was crucial getting those extra 40 characters to work with. ScanLife is a service offering 2D and 3D bar codes you create and use anywhere, including websites, email signatures, business cards and more. Using 2D bar codes has offered a more interactive way to engage my audience, as they have to use their cell phones (camera phones specifically) to get the message. While not as widely adopted as text campaigns, 2D bar codes offer a very creative way to reach your audience. Other services and solutions to consider are: Mobivity, mobileStorm, Joopz, QRapp, Jumptap, ipsh! and Punchkick Interactive.

On a final note, here is a great 90-second video clip on TAT Augmented ID that shows the not too distant future of virtual networking and also gives great insight into the possibilities for mobile recruiting (original video can be found here):

[ This post entitled My Mobile Recruiting Starter Guide originated by the blog of social media consultant and recruiting leader Geoff Peterson. ]

TweetTwainer: Breakthrough Training Video on Twitter

Geoff Peterson — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:06:46 +0000

TweetTwainer is an hour long training session I gave to 1,500 people in the staffing community this summer, and it was very well received. I recorded the webinar event, and wanted to share with visitors of my newly launched site. My twitter profile can be found here. This is the first of many TweetTwainer webinars and events I plan to do, with more coming in 2010. Twitter is a constantly evolving community, and can benefit not only those in HR and recruiting, but in all other fields as well (see my post "Twitter is Changing the World").

TweetTwainer: Tips, Tools, Tactics and Strategies for Twitter has a runtime of roughly 60 or so minutes, and offers the following:

Understanding of what Twitter is and a view of the social media landscape
Strategies for following other members of Twitter and how to get followed back
How to use the "Information Superhighway"
Discover several ways to search and source for talent
The Art of The Tweet
Tools you need to use at home, the office or on the go
Twitter resources, marketing tips and action items to put in play immediately

TweetTwainerVideo

Here is the PowerPoint slide deck. Please share with your friends and colleagues. Tweet about it and use the hash sign #tweettwainer when you do. Let me know your thoughts and feedback.

[ This post entitled TweetTwainer: Breakthrough Training Video on Twitter originated by the blog of social media consultant and recruiting leader Geoff Peterson. ]