Justin Flitter

This is a jolly good question. Do you like social media enough to be committed in a long term relationship? Because if you're not your brand might suffer. I can be quite convincing, I can give you all the reasons why social is important, how it can grow your business but at the end of the day if your business is not committed to the program there's no point starting. We've all seen them. Twitter and Facebook pages that once had a life fully of potential, optimistic and energetic but after months of neglect and awkward stares a social media divorce seems imminent. Remember a few years back when all the digital junkies were telling you that Google was your new home page? Well now you need to add Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, GooglePlus, (soon) and Google Places. People are searching for your business, your brands on many platforms, if you're not there what do you think they will do? Look somewhere else or look for the next best option.

If you have a presence you have potential

Commitment has many shapes and sizes. You can still have a highly engaged social network posting once or twice a day on Twitter, once on LinkedIn and 2-3 times a week on Facebook. Add to that engagement, influencers to follow and chat to and perhaps you have 30 min a day. Or you can have 2-10 people all contributing to your social networks feeding in 5-20 items on Twitter per day, actively contributing to groups and discussions on LinkedIn and building a rollicking community on Facebook. What ever path you choose, commitment is essential to consistency. Consistency grows engagement and active communities. Take the bull by the horns and get stuck in. The results will speak for themselves.

Today in the NZHERALD Kate Ross director of Kinetic Recruitment wrote about Social Media in the Recruitment industry I think Kate makes some good comments

Facebook is a complicated one. It can be key to tracking the younger candidate because it has become such a habit to that generation, as they are constantly "online", be it via a computer or the cellphone application. Overall social media is a fantastic way to provide more options for the recruitment industry and employers to source talent, but like anything, if you invest in it you will be successful. If you are "non-committal" it will be a failure. Choice is yours on how you embrace it.

As with any business looking for the right way to integrate social media, it needs to be done properly or not at all. Half arsed is always going to be half arsed so if you're not really that in to it, it could reflect poorly on your brand. The recruitment industry poses some unique challenges though. Some companies struggle with LinkedIn and make their staff delete the account when they exit the business, others find that LinkedIn stalkers poach contacts so privacy is a concern especially if several agencies are fighting to place people in the same position. Facebook is useful, but you have to get the structure and content plan right. The recruitment agency often needs to look at a wider variety of activities to make Facebook useful and then it still depends on the target market. If you're focused on senior level positions Facebook probably is not going to add much value. Traditionally your relationship with a recruitment agency is momentary. You find and apply for a job and you either do or don't get an interview and if you're good you get the job. Either way the relationship ends at the point, or takes a break. With social media recruitment agencies and consultants have the opportunity to create more enduring relationships, making it easier to spot when someone is moving or ready for a new challenge. When you place someone in a job they might become the employer, so maintaining a strong connection with your candidates could mean repeat business. Social Networks offer all businesses a unique way to find people, create a connection and foster a relationship. If I was a recruiter I'd be taking social very seriously The following is the comment I left on the article, published here just in case it gets 'moderated' With over 2 million Kiwis using Facebook, over 50k actively using Twitter and almost 400k on Linkedin Social Media offers huge potential to connect with Candidates and Recruiters. There is no ONE solution. These tools are at your disposal. If you chose to use them creatively that could give you the advantage. Many job seekers are looking to rise above the crowd and stand out by being social, building personal networks that could be great for them and beneficial to an employer. It's not what you know, it's who you know...right? And networks help make things happen.

You need to know how to drive before you go racing.

So if you're unsure about Twitter or how to apply Facebook to your business, ask an expert and get some ideas. You might say that not many Kiwi's use Twitter. But you should look at who is, what they do, and how connected they are on and offline and you'll quickly realise that being there could make a huge difference to your career, I'm a walking talking example. Social media is all about the conversations, building an audience, meeting people, sharing content and helping each other. Isn't that what you do offline? It's easy to over complicate social media.   I'd love to hear your comments on this. Please note: I have a relationship with Jobs.co.nz offering Social Media workshops and advice to their clients. 

From the "That's Awesome" File and the folder of "I wish I'd thought of that" ideas comes the

Twitter Job Hustle

Bas van de Poel and Daan Van Dam of Wonder Years knew that creative directors spent a lot of time on Twitter. So they came up with a unique tactic to get their attention. Daan and Bas created five Twitter accounts with profile images of each letter so that when placed in succession, spelled out ‘HIRE US’. They then followed creative directors from each account, which resulted in ‘HIRE US’ being spelled out in the Followers section of each director’s Twitter page.

Twitter Job Hustle from Wonder Years on Vimeo.

When ever you talk to PNUT (People not using Twitter - thanks @vaughndavis) a common string of conversation about Twitter is

I don't want to hear what you had for breakfast, when you used the bathroom or what tricks your dog is up to

And fair enough Twitter did kind of used to be like that. But I'd like to think that we've matured a little since the early days and have learnt more robust conversation tactics... Given my love for stats (even though I'm terrible at maths) I though it would be interesting to track the keyword "breakfast" to see once and for all if mentions had dropped Percentage of users talking about their breakfast In the graph above the numbers highlighted are the number of Twitter's Users announced around that time.

Jan 2010 - %2.83

April 2010 - %1.98

September 2010 - % 1.71

March 2011 - %2.48

June 2011 - %3.61

So more people are talking about what they had for breakfast than ever before. I guess the simple answer is - If you don't want to hear what someone had for breakfast...don't follow them. What would also be interesting is engagement stats resulting from breakfast tweets. Because if responses are high that would indicate a high level of engagement from 'breakfast' tweets and that would be very very depressing.