Everyone these days is a social media expert, and without getting on a soapbox about that, many companies are asking not IF they should get involved, but how.  I don’t profess to have all of the answers, but fortunately there is plenty of data to see how customers interact with brands.

Recently we saw the 2009 Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Study which gave us an interesting breakdown of the user perspective.  This report has more info then we are able to cover, but there are a few worth noting.  (Please note, all pictures/ graphics are from the report)

The group is a fairly good cross-section of both ages and geographic areas.  The sample group was split about 50/50 male and female.  Here are some of the questions:

Do you have a smartphone?  This is interesting because it shows how users are becoming more and more mobile, and the web is “real-time”.  No longer will people check Facebook once daily.  The new reality is an “always on” situation.  This gives marketers more tools to communicate with their customers.  (now use them!)

Have you ever participated in a contest or sweepstakes sponsored on the web?  The response here is a solid 70% of the respondents said they have.

What are results of the contests? Over 70% said it raised their awareness of the brands, and more than half would either purchase or recommend the brand to others.

Why do people choose to follow brands?  SALES!

We need to consider how our “brand” interacts with our customers, and each situation is unique.  What is your plan?

I recently attended a conference for CIEE which is a great company we work with in the international student exchange program, and an interesting discussion came out of a different topic. (Side note: the best companies and conferences are the ones that set the stage, and let valuable content evolve out of it).

Back to the topic – The talk was about how some of the best applicants came from the group who was being interviewed independently, not specifically by an employer.  The independent hiring consultant was able to talk about the APPLICANT and then match what they wanted to the job.

Think about how you do interviews.  We know the questions, and we know the correct answers.  And the questions – even the ones that we try to make about the applicant – are still about us.  This is one of the topics that we know the correct answer to.  Everyone I talk to about this is in denial, “NO, I don’t do that – our interview is about them”.  Is it?

In the privacy of your office/ cube/ desk/ coffee shop think about this.  What determines your decisions in hiring? Is it what the applicant wants, and where you think they will fit, or is it your/ your organization’s needs (We need 10 more people for food service in 13 days!!) Think about each question you ask in interviews.  Is it really about the applicant? Or are you setting them up for the answer you want to hear?

I am getting ready to write my own personal “State of the Industry”.  I am feeling a little pigeon-holed in my little HR world.  I think when we know and understand better the industry around us, we can make better decisions.   I will spend a week or so researching topics, and then the next month expounding on the topics.  If anyone is interested, I will be happy to share what I come up with.

Here are a few areas I will be looking at:

• Why do green technologies seem to have a hard time gaining traction the pool industry – especially in retrofitting older pools – where they could be very useful.
• What are new technologies for water conservation?
• What are the latest in management thought for our workforce? ( I hate to use “millennial”)

I have plenty others, but those are a few to start out with.  Do you have any ideas? I would love to look into them.

Thanks.

I recently fell behind on listening to podcasts.  I listen to podcasts from a bunch of different genres, from tech, to religious, to management and marketing stuff.  Since the podcasts run the gamut, they usually are pretty varied.  It came as a bit of a shock to me that this time 3 different podcasts talked about a similar thread -  What is your voice?

First came C.C. Chapman on Managing the Gray C.C. does a podcast I enjoy a lot.  His podcast was on Breaking Through the Clutter but in it, he talked about how someone had said that his podcast is more of a life coaching session then a marketing podcast.   He mentioned how that wasn’t the intent of it, but it clearly is an interest of his.

Then I listened to a sermon from Brian Houston from Hillsong Church in Australia which also talked about the same subject – What is your voice?

I followed that with a Podcast from Media Hacks talking about scalability, highlighting a recent hubbub where Guy Kawasaki was using “ghost twitters” and the impression was that they were coming from him.  The defense was that things written in Guy’s “voice” were him – while impersonal link tweets were not him.

This all reminds me of the old saying, “It’s not what you say, its how you say it”.  This was updated by Gary Vaynerchuk a few videos back when he said that the days of multiple personalities are over.  There is no such thing anymore as a persona for work, a persona at home, and a persona for the ladies.   You are who you are, and it is all out there for everyone to see.

This means that what is important to us – what drives us, what makes us tick – that is what comes out to those around us.

As managers, we can’t be fake.  The world is more transparent then ever.  Your “voice” will come through loud and clear.  What is your voice saying?

• To employees – “It doesn’t matter, I think you will screw this up anyway”
• To employees – “I don’t want to do this job, so I am making you do it”
• To customers – “What? I really just want to go home”

Those are just a few, I’m sure you can come up with countless more examples.   Think about this next time you interact with someone.

This was originally published in the Starguard Newsletter.  For more information on Starguard Lifeguard Training Programs or Starfish Swimming Courses, please visit http://starfishaquatics.org/

Title: Are you listening or talking?

Cuts, Cuts, Cuts.  It seems wherever you turn these days, you are getting squeezed from one direction or the other.  The April issue of Aquatics International even ran a cover story titled “Cut Backs”.  The pressure is on facility operators and owners to evaluate all aspects of their business and decide where some spending can be trimmed.

One of the first areas that is usually scrutinized is spending on recruiting and advertising.  This year, there seem to be more applicants for seasonal positions then in years past, and this is making the advertising and marketing budget an easy target. 

As hard as this is, it can be a great opportunity for you to really examine how your marketing is set up, and whether or not it is right for you.  The atmosphere has changed.  The old ways of talking “at” your employees/ customers/ recruits is over.  There is a new era, and now is a time to make sure your message aligns with it.

After a recent conference, AdAge (who is the industry publication that covers marketing and media), came out with its “5 New Rules for Marketing” (www.AdAge.com ), and while not all five have direct application, it gives an interesting overview of where media and advertising currently is.

Here are a few of them:

• Listening to customers is more important then talking at them. 

For years we have carefully crafted marketing “messages” as we tell our client/customer/ employee what we KNOW they want to hear.  That game is over.  It is a conversation, and a conversation is two way. 

• You can’t separate the corporation from the brand

Gary Vaynerchuk (http://garyvaynerchuk.com/) has said that the days of multiple personalities are over.  You can no longer have a work personality, a web personality (Facebook, etc), and another for your friends – you are who you are, whether it is at home, at work, or online, and your passions will be transparent.  It is important you believe in what you do.

We are all salespeople, whether we sell anything or not.  We – and to a lesser (or greater) extent, our company is judged by how we act and what we do EVERY time we interact with someone.  There are no secrets anymore.  We need to live our lives like everything we do is being recorded and will be posted online – and much of it is. 

• Social Media is not a strategy

I feel strongly that EVERYONE needs to be involved in social media.  That being said, what is important is your product/ business, how it is run, and how you treat people – whether they be customers, recruits, or employees. As CC Chapman said on Managing the Gray, “Social Media will not save a crappy product”.  There are many tools out there – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and they should be part of the many areas you participate in, but they alone are not what is important.  

So what is important?  As I mentioned earlier, the “new rules” say a lot of old stuff.  What is important today is what has made businesses successful since the beginning of time.  Whether you look at Making Friends and Influencing People by Carnegie, or stories of how Bank of America was started, the important thing is the relationships, and today, more then ever there are tools to help you cultivate and grow those relationships.

Welcome new readers from StarGuard, great to have you.

Thanks

Josh

Wall Street Journal recently posted an article about the abundance of labor for seasonal positions due to the down economy.  I posted about this a while back.   Some employers in the article also say that this will affect their international/ J1 student hires. 

This could spell big trouble coming in the summer.  I predict many many J1 students will arrive and not have jobs that they were promised before they came.  This will be very bad for both some of the resort towns, as well for the students themselves, and the J1 program as a whole.

Article HERE

There is a webinar entitled “Getting a Grip on Gen Y” hosted by Lisa Orrell and Unbound Ideas that some readers may be interested in.  Get the details here

I have read Brad Feld’s blog for some time, he is a Venture Capitalist out of Boulder.  He always has some interesting insight.  I read a post this morning that has both personal and professional meaning.  It’s called “The Rhythms of My Life” and it details his personal schedule.  Good stuff. Check it out here

I was turned on to the Cult of Done by a post on The Practice of Leadership where they highlighted a recent manifesto called The Cult of Done by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark.  The main points:

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

It also was made into a cool poster by Joshua Rothaas.  Things that have posters are always cool.