Wendy Weber – Direct & Digital Marketing Headhunter

Marc Cenedella of TheLadders has written an interesting piece about the lifecycle of companies: click here.

It begins with Dell’s “going private”…and the rise and fall of Dell.

I actually shared a magazine honor with Michael Dell earlier in my career: We were both included in a listing of the Top 100 Most Influential Direct Marketers.

Here is the page with me on it:

Here is the page with Michael Dell on it:

Yes, I’ll agree Michael’s career took him to more impressive heights than mine. I was thrilled to be featured in the company of the direct marketers chosen for this article.

As Cenedella points out, “companies are born, companies live and thrive, and companies die, all the time. That’s capitalism.”

So Michael, I’m rooting for you, and I’m rooting for me.  Let us both provide the best products and services possible, and maybe we can once again be honored side by side in the future!

I am just fascinated by social media!

Yesterday one of the presentations I attended through Social Media Week was “Social Media Analytics Helps UNICEF Save Lives,” by:

Emily Chambliss – Data Analyst, Attention USA

Sebastian Majewski – Impact and Analysis Coordinator, United Nations

In recent years, UNICEF Central and Eastern Europe has been troubled with the rise of a strong anti-vaccine sentiment, which has found popular expression through digital and social media. They have pioneered in monitoring public social media discussions about anti-vaccination sentiments. The findings help to understand who influences opinions, what concerns are the strongest among parents, and how to best engage in communication and public advocacy efforts.

Through a detailed analysis of various social media, UNICEF was able to track, by country, the particular issues and concerns of anti-vaccination individuals and groups:

They could even track and monitor things like gender differences:

The ability to “see the conversation”, understand concerns, and follow the opinion influencers, has provided UNICEF with a wealth of very valuable information.

Though not a substitute or other types of research, the insights gained through social media are tremendously valuable. They expect that social media will continue to enhance their ability to learn about consumer thoughts, fears and concerns “from the field”.

If you are a social media practitioner living in or around NYC and are not aware of Social Media Week, you are missing out.

All over Manhattan, there are talks, and workshops, and meetings in which social media pros are presenting the latest and greatest in social media. And most of it is Free!

I’m spending the day at a “Social Media Action Camp” and have heard amazing speakers. Right at this moment, Scott Monty, Global Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager at Ford, who has been ranked by Forbes as one of the top 10 influencers in social media, is speaking.

Just this morning, presenters with real name recognition – and those who are not well known…yet – have shared their thoughts, experiences, and visions for the future.

The events continue all week, day and night. I attended a breakfast that began at 8:30, and there is an event at 6pm tonight called “Hiring for the Social Web” that sounds very interesting. I’m not sure I have the stamina to attend 6 more presentations this afternoon, and then run across town to that session…but I’m going to give it a go.

I will be attending other sessions throughout the week, with names such as “You’ve Built a Fan Base, Now What?”, “Social as the Great Equalizer: Interviews with Companies Large and Small”, and “Social Media Analytics Helps UNICEF Save Lives”. There are so many others that sound tempting!

I have learned a variety of interesting things, such as the “best times to Tweet are at 9am, noon, 3pm and 6pm est”…”keep Tweets to 120 characters, which allows space for others to ReTweet your Tweets”, and “The Library of Congress archives all Tweets”. And it is not just about Twitter…presenter Nathan Latka of Heyo offered dozens of tips about getting the most from your Facebook page.

If you are in NYC, and make your career in social media…or are a passionate practitioner of it…you’d be crazy not to check out Social Media Week NYC, or, as they call it around here, #smwSMAC.

The speaker at today’s meeting of the Long Island Social Media Association was John Murcott of Karma411. He spoke about “crowdfunding”.

In case you are not familiar with the term, crowdfunding is a way to “raise money from the crowd”…the collective effort of individuals who network and pool their money, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. It started with nonprofits to support their fundraising efforts, and then was brought to mass market by Obama in 2008.The latest trend is to leverage the same concepts for companies (Kickstarter is an example).

Murcott is launching an event management program by which fundraisers collaborate with Eventbrite to create personal individual and team pages, raising money and awareness for causes.

It’s an interesting concept, which appears to be gaining acceptance. I’ll follow Murcott’s venture with interest.

I was thinking about the fact that despite advances in technology, Crandall Associates is rarely asked to arrange a video interview.

The general progression of the interview process is that we arrange an initial telephone call, and if all goes well, that is followed by an in-person meeting.  Sometimes if the candidate is local, the hiring manager will initiate the process with an in-person meeting.  Conversely, if the candidate requires relocation, sometimes the process begins with several sequential telephone calls; perhaps first with human resources, then with the hiring manager(s).

Despite the ubiquity of Skype and FaceTime, video interviews are few and far between.

I am told that some companies utilize video interviews to ask several candidates the same questions, and find it useful to “play back videos” and compare the way several candidates answer the same question.  And there is certainly a cost consideration; interviewing via video means there is no expenditure of airfare to “meet with” a candidate who requires relocation.

Not sure why this hasn’t caught on.

Inc. magazine piece by Julie Strickland offers tips for dealing with what the article characterizes as “one of the least productive days of the work year”: click here.

According to the article, “‘the post-party haze will cost U.S. businesses an estimated $820 million in lost productivity.  That statistic, and the prospect of sleeping in after a big night out, has inspired 10,000 Americans to sign a petition to make the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday. If the petition reaches 100,000 signatures, the Obama administration will have to formally respond.”

I hope it’s a productive day at your office!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had just become acquainted with Facebook Graph Search.  I am still learning about it, and I just read a helpful post on how small businesses can optimize this new technology: click here.

Tara Banda does an excellent job of providing specific tips on how to optimize a Facebook page for Graph Search.

Check out this piece from today’s New York Times: click here.

Good advice.

I cannot imagine why someone would not have a LinkedIn Profile in this day and age.  Even if you are happily employed, why would you choose to avoid the opportunity to reconnect/stay in touch with professional colleagues… and prevent yourself from even being on the radar of an employer or recruiter who might have an even more enticing career opportunity to discuss with you?  (I did encounter one job seeker who came from a prominent family, and did not want to reveal too much information on social networks.  He chose not to post a profile on LinkedIn).

One area of disagreement:  Although one of the “job search specialists” quoted in the piece felt that cover letters were “a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition”, I disagree.  I think the resume should tell the story, and that cover letters are generally fluff, or are written in an attempt to explain away a weakness in the candidate’s background.  I don’t read cover letters.

A tip in terms of “being searchable” online:  Make sure you have keywords on your Profile that an employer or headhunter might use to find you.  For example, if you do search engine optimization for a company that sells their products through a catalog and an ecommerce website, include the terms “search engine optimization”, “seo”, “organic search”, “catalog”, “ecommerce” and “multichannel” in your Profile.  Make it easy for a new career opportunity to come your way!

Last night the temperature in my neck of the woods was about 21 degrees.  I debated with myself about whether venturing out to  attend the January meeting of my local Social Media Club was worth it.  I’m glad I went.

Steve Haweeli, founder and president of WordHampton Public Relations, was the speaker.  He and his colleague Lindsey Myers discussed the impact that social media, particularly Facebook, has had on improving the business of their restaurant clients.

We have a client, Fishbowl, that provides email and social media marketing solutions to the restaurant industry, so this topic was of particular interest to me.

One new thing I learned is about Facebook Graph Search, now in beta.  The idea is to find “like minded” people.  According to Facebook, “With graph search you can look up anything shared with you on Facebook, and others can find stuff you’ve shared with them. Each person sees unique results.”  The examples they provide are, “find people who like cycling and live in Seattle Washington”…”photos of my friends in NY”…”restaurants in London my friends have been to”.   But as I dug a little deeper, a google search revealed a darker side to this new option.  A search of “married people who like prostitutes” and “mothers of Jews who like bacon”.  This could be amusing to some, and humiliating to others.

Just as interesting was something I learned from a fellow attendee of the event, Kevin Hageman.  Kevin recently set up a Twitter Advertising account, and ran his first ad.  For a $50 expenditure, Promoted Tweets allowed his tweets to be seen by nearly 4.5K people, driving 126 people to his website, and catching the eye of Business Insider, resulting in even more exposure.  Here is a link to Kevin’s blog post about his experience advertising on Twitter:  case study.

I love to get out and learn new things.  I walked away from this evening feeling that the venture out “into the cold” was well worth my while.