Why HR Must Use LinkedIn for OnBoarding

HR Departments Should Use LinkedIn for More than Finding or Researching Recruits

HR Departments and recruiters use LinkedIn to locate and research their recruits, but isn’t there more they can be doing with LinkedIn. The truth is that HR must be looking beyond the obvious with LinkedIn to uncover the additional uses that will make their recruiting processes more successful.

LinkedIn Can Aid in Retention

We hear all the time about the expense of on-boarding and training new employees; but what are businesses and organizations in general doing to help new employees integrate into the organization and culture that will promote retention? It’s not that we want these individuals to be a clone of the others in the organization; but we do want them to feel that they are a part of the organization. With LinkedIn you can facilitate the process of the new employee becoming a part of the organization and part of their new department.

Create Internal Groups on LinkedIn

Most LinkedIn users are familiar with LinkedIn groups; at the same time most are not nearly familiar enough with how groups can be used internally. A case in point: most organizations follow the practice of taking the new employee around and introducing the employee to countless individuals in the organization. The are many problems with this process; to include, but not limited to:

1. The process can be intimidating, too many names and faces to remember;
2. They will not remember more than two or three people they meet;
3. They will not remember who does what;
4. They won’t be remembered either;
5. There will be embarrassment when a name is forgotten;
6. Initially they will be remembered as the new guy or gal.

How LinkedIn Can Help

Using LinkedIn Groups; the HR function, the organization, and departments can make the on-boarding process more friendly and welcoming to the new employee. Organizations can create LinkedIn Groups and sub-groups to facilitate the on-boarding process.

For the organization you would create the parent group and for each department, work group, or team you would create a subgroup of the parent where you would include all members of the department, work group, or team. New employees would immediately be invited to the appropriate subgroup where they would find the names, pictures, job titles, and a profile of the other members.

When the new employee needs to talk to someone they can look up the profile and feel more comfortable approaching the other team members. Through the profiles they may learn other non-business information that aligns with their non-business interests and helps them become more comfortable with their new surroundings.

LinkedIn has countless uses within businesses for enhancing on-boarding, operational, strategic, and team communications. It is up to you to look outside the normal uses for ways to apply the technology to your organization.

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Tom Staskiewicz consults with organizations on understanding Social Media and how it can be applied within the organization. Tom has MBAs in Marketing and Management to go along with his 30+ years developing and implementing IT solutions.

If you are looking for innovative ideas on how you can implement and apply Social Media within your organization you can email Tom or call him at (971) 678-8181.

What Can You Do with an Email Service

What Email Service Is Right for You

Have you thought about using an email service to stay in touch with your customers and prospects? I’m sure you have, if for no other reason than the intensive marketing being done by Constant Contact.

Before You Select a Service; Know What You Want to Do

The truth is that all email services are not created equal. Some have features that others do not. Some charge based upon the number of emails sent and others charge based upon the number of subscribers you have.

How Many Subscribers Do You Expect?

Knowing how many subscribers you will have and how often you plan on contacting those subscribers can make a huge difference in the cost.

How Many Email Lists Will You Have?

Another factor is how many email lists will you have? Will you have both a list of active customers and prospects? Will it be a single list? Will you have a list for customers of each type or category of product or service you offer?

Are You Going to Do Email Campaigns?

Maybe you are asking what is an email campaign, so I will give you a brief overview. A campaign is typically a series of emails sent to subscribers.

The campaign starts with a letter of invitation to join the list (usually an opt-in or double opt-in) process to make sure you have the correct person.

Following the opt-in there is an immediate follow-up with the additional promised information. A few (7-10) days later there is another follow-up to ensure that they received the information and provide a second promotion. 12-14 days later there is another follow-up typically with some type of incentive to sign up. That may be it or 60 days later there could be one last follow up. It’s really up to you.

Some email services support email campaigns, some do not, and others only limited email campaigns or a limited number of campaigns.

To Opt-In or Not; or Will You Spam

Opt-In basically says do you want to participate and lets the reader know that they can opt-out at any time.

Do you want an opt-in or double opt-in process where the people signing up must go to a sight or respond to an email and confirm that they want to be on your list. If you don’t have an opt-in some, maybe many will report you as spam and can get you blacklisted; opt-ins are preferable to blacklists. Unless you are closely monitoring the service you won’t know that your emails have been blocked.

If the service isn’t offering an opt-in option that can be a problem. Maybe you don’t irritate the users but that doesn’t mean that someone else using the service won’t irritate their recipients and the backlash can hit you!

Opt-ins protect you as much or even more than they protect your recipients.

Will You Have Mini-Memberships?

A Mini-Membership has people sign-up typically paying a fee for a limited-term-membership (compare it to a four – 12 week class and sometimes up to one-year). Each week or month they will have the next part of their course delivered to their email box.

Some email services support this and some do not. Some will support several limited-term-memberships and others will support only one.

Before you select a service know what you services you are expecting them to provide.

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Tom Staskiewicz speaks and coaches on Social Media/Social Networking topics helping businesses, organizations, and individuals establish and manage their Social Media presence. Your Social Media presence doesn’t just happen and will not take care of itself. Tom helps you with those processes so your Social Media efforts will work for you.

Putting Power into Your Reviews and Testimonials

Negating the Negatives

Negative Internet Reviews

If you are like many businesses today you have experienced the negative review on Google, CitySearch, Yelp, or a plethora of other sites. In the process you have most likely noticed that these reviews hide behind an alias. The reality is that they, the reviewers, are cowards or even worse competitors.

To top it off Google, CitySearch, and the others make it difficult and costly to respond. This may be a good thing, because your immediate response would be a “knee-jerk” reaction and probably end up hurting your more than helping. You must remember that you are in the age of the Internet and the person who wrote the review will NOT be the only one reading your response. In your attempt to respond you may end up hurting future business from the eves droppers.

What Do You Do

One of the best ways to counteract a negative review is to get a good review; but not just any good review. Get one where the individual writing the review is willing to give their name and their city and state. You want credibility behind the review!

Get Credible Reviews

When you have credible reviews and someone points to Google, CitySearch, or whomever and it is a review that hides behind an alias; you can point to your reviews (good, just okay, or even bad) and say that YOUR reviews have quality. You can say that these are people you can talk to and they will answer your questions honestly. These are people that have nothing to hide.

You can, with the writer’s permission, use these reviews in your marketing and sales materials as testimonials of the work that you do and they way your customers/clients/patients feel about you, your business, your products, and your services.

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Tom Staskiewicz speaks and coaches on Social Media/Social Networking topics helping businesses, organizations, and individuals establish and manage their Social Media presence. Your Social Media presence doesn’t just happen and will not take care of itself. Tom helps you with those processes so your Social Media efforts will work for you.

Does Your Social Networking Answer the WIIFM Question?

What’s In It For Me?

The reality is that people are always looking to understand how they will benefit from any activity or action undertaken. They may be totally supportive of an idea or a plan, but their own interests will eventually come into play. With that in mind do you have the WIIFM answer for your customers and prospects?

Does Your Offer Answer Your Customer’s WIIFM Question?

If you can answer that question for them and answer it repeatedly with a benefit that they perceive has value and is of interest; you will get their attention. We are all bombarded with information constantly and one of the easiest ways to weed through the information is by looking for those messages that quickly tell them what is in it for them and make if very clear what they have to gain.

They will take that information and then weigh it against their cost. If the benefit out weighs the cost, they will be interested and act. If the perceived benefit does not outweigh the cost, they will move on to the next offer.

Do You Struggle with the WIIFM Question for Yourself?

So whether you are promoting yourself, your business, your service, or your product; you must be able to provide your reader with an answer to the WIIFM question. If you can’t or you don’t it is wasted effort on your part and you then need to look at the WIIFM question for yourself.

If you don’t want to put the work into your own activities then YOU must be failing your own WIIFM question. For whatever reason you do not feel that putting the effort into your own activities is worth the benefit you will receive.

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Tom Staskiewicz creates networking strategies that help you build your individual and business brands. Ask him how! Check out the UP^PROACH website.

STOP! Before You Take a Step Forward on Your Social Marketing – Read This!

Social Media Marketing Reality

First, do not get me wrong; I am a proponent of Social Media Marketing and I encourage the behavior. The problem is that it is being sold to you incorrectly. Social Networking Consultants, Specialists, Experts, or whatever you want to call them are not telling you the truth!

Social Media Marketing Is Not a Rainmaker Proposition

Social Media Marketing has the potential to drive business, and, yes, even massive business through your doors. The caveat is that it takes work; lots of work. It takes commitment; lots of commitment. It takes time; lots of time.

There is no getting around it; Social Media Marketing is not for the faint of heart.

Case in Point

Earlier this year I was talking to a friend about Social Media Marketing and the opportunities that it offers a business. While I am firmly committed to that statement; I have since come to realize that most business owners do not have the level of commitment necessary to make it successful.

This friend changed the website; it was not necessarily for the better. In fact, the old site, to me, was far more aesthetically pleasing. The content from the old page to the new page is not significantly different, but they can say things have changed.

As part of the new look they created a blog. Blogs are great but again they require commitment and dedication. This is not a stop-start proposition; this is a commitment and your audience is expecting regular postings. This friend created three or four articles over the span of four or five days in February and has done nothing since.

The truth is they should pull down the blog. This minimal effort gives the impression that there is no follow through within the organization and does not help them and, in fact, does more damage. It is like jumping into the deep part of the lake and making a big splash and then not coming back to the surface because you were not prepared and had not made the prior commitment to learn how to swim.

Social Media Marketing Requires Commitment

It is not that these owners are not committed to their business; it is the commitment to Social Media Marketing that is lacking. Not surprisingly business owners have many other day-to-day tasks that occupy their time and it is hard to think about Social Media Marketing when your biggest customer is getting ready to bail on you or your top salesperson is considering a new opportunity.

Obviously those situations loom larger and their immediate impact on the business is far more important and the effect is far more quickly realized and felt. The truth is that most business owners and managers do not have the time available to put into Social Media Marketing.

Before You Jump In; Ask Yourself If You Are Ready to Follow Through

Do not just stick your toe into the water to determine the temperature. This is a situation where you make the commitment, jump in, and stay there for the long-haul.

Next Time I Will Talk About Trying To Do Too Much

Social Media Consultants talk about using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Mashable, Websites, Blogs, Digg, Del-i-cious, YouTube, and others. The truth is that it takes an entire department or staff to monitor all of those sites and a tremendous commitment. Trying to do too much; too fast will leave you frustrated and unsatisfied. Do not do it!

Are You Talking To Your Prospects or At Your Prospects?

“You” Is The Word That Is Key To Your Success

The most important word when you are talking to your prospects and customers is “YOU”. I do not mean talking about you; I mean using the word YOU in YOUR communications as it refers to YOUR customers, prospects, or future employers. If your message is not using this word YOU are not connecting on the level YOUR customers/clients/patients and prospects want.

Look at the messages you create; are they process oriented or results oriented? Are they talking about what you can do for your future employers and customers; or do you spend your time talking about how you do it?

Your customers and prospects want to know what you can do for them. In addition to wanting to know what you can do for them; they want to know what you have done for others and therefore what they should expect from you. This is results oriented. This is talking to your customer.

Are You Process or Results Oriented in Your Communications?

If you spend your time talking about how you do things you are talking process and, although that is important, your customers consider it just that: talk. They want to know how THEY will benefit if they work with you and that is what YOU must be communicating.

Whether you are a job seeker, a professional, a sales person, a small business owner, or whatever; you must be able to convey your value based upon the results that you have achieved previously for your former employers and organizations or your former/current customers, clients, and patients.

Are Your Messages Focused On You or Are They Focused on Your Customers or Prospective Employers?

If your messages are not focused on prospective employers and customers/clients/patients the message must be changed. You want to impress those prospects with your stories of accomplishments and results. You want your prospects to be able to take your message and translate into results for them.

When your customer sincerely believes that they are first and foremost on your mind you are building your credibility, your reliability, your trust, and your brand.

Remember that facts tell, but stories sell! What is your story?

Are You Managing Your Internet Reputation?

Are You Or Is Your Business On the Social Networks?

Most businesses and individuals are becoming increasingly involved in Social Networking; whether you like it or not. You may have created your Social Networking presence or it may have been created for you (read Coca Cola). Regardless it is out there and you must be paying attention.

Reputations Can Be Brought Down Quickly

You and/or your business have a reputation that has been developed over a long period of time with a great deal of effort and energy; are you ready to give that up? Definitely not, yet there are many companies and individuals that spend no time monitoring and tracking their Internet presence.

This is a huge mistake! It does not take much effort to malign an individual or organization and if you are not monitoring; you lose your ability to respond.

All it takes is one customer, patient, client, etc. to misunderstand a part of the agreement and become incensed enough to write something and you are into react mode.

You Must Be Proactive

You must be proactive in the defense of your reputation and brand. You cannot afford to let your guard down for a minute or you may pay a steep price. This is not the time to think that playing ostrich is an option; you cannot bury your head and hope that the negatives do not come your way. Unfortunately they will; right, wrong, or indifferent and you must be prepared to respond.

One way to monitor is to create Google alerts that are sent whenever something related to you or your company hits the Internet. You can receive alerts daily or weekly; obviously you should choose daily, you cannot afford to wait to learn about a negative comment.

Another way to monitor is to periodically perform your own Google, Yahoo, and Bing searches to see how much of the search results front page you own (how many of the entries pertain to you?).

Proactive efforts on your part will help stop the negatives before they have time to become huge issues. You must be vigilante in your efforts to protect your good name.

Do Not Delete Negative Posts

The response of some individuals and organizations is to delete anything that is negative. This is a mistake! If the complaint is legitimate let the individual and the world know what you are doing to resolve the complaint. Even if you have the ability to delete posts; you must have the determination to leave it and respond positively and effectively.

Remember these are conversations not just dialogs between you and the complainer. There can be tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people that will read this information the issue and watch for your response. A solid, thoughtful, complete acknowledgement, followed by an explanation or a meas culpa must be forthcoming and must absolutely be sincere.

Do not allow someone else to create or destroy your reputation and brand. Stay on top of it and be one of the informed!

Exploit Change – Create Opportunities

Change: Where Your Opportunities Lie

Change is ever present in our lives and in our world and as long as change exists; opportunities will exist. With every change there is a multitude of opportunities that surface. Those that are prepared will see the opportunities, while those that are unprepared will lament the changes.

Your Ability To Recognize Opportunity Is Dependent Upon Your Ability To Recognize Change

Opportunities come along as the result of change. If you are seeing opportunities look for the underlying changes that are occurring. Once you find those underlying changes; you can look for the opportunities.

Embracing Change

When a change is announced within your organization embrace it, jump at it, volunteer to be part of it. In today’s world you must be looking for every competitive advantage you can have and change is one of the things that will bring opportunities your way.

If your company is adopting a new technology, not just new to them, but new period. Raise your hand early and often to participate in learning about the technology and bringing it into your organization. Somewhere, someone made a commitment to this new technology and the implementation will take leaders; be one of them.

Get excited about the new technology and take every opportunity to learn about it. If you are in a department within the organization that is not directly involved; find out how it might impact your department and become the local resident expert on the technology. Do whatever you can to learn about the technology and be able to apply it in your area.

Often times new technology comes with unfriendly user manuals; identify the problem, and then start developing the customer manuals and training that will make your department members more productive faster. Be the innovator and the catalyst as the early adopter of the technology.

Change Be Your Friend

Did you know that change can be your friend? Typically it is because of change that we have the opportunity to pick up new skills or attend new training. Because of those new skills or training our value to our current and future employers increases.

We now have one more skill or trait to add to our resume. We have one more class to add to our educational profile. Adding skills, abilities, and training makes us more desirable as an employee and we should seek out these opportunities wherever we might find them.

How To Exploit Change

Change always needs a leader and those that raise the issue and make the justified case for change often become the leaders for the change process. Opportunities lie in change and when you can foster and lead the process you raise your visibility. When you are successful; you raise your value.

How Can You Benefit From Change?

Your willingness and ability to dig into and learn the details will set you apart from others within your organization. By getting in on the ground floor you can also become a sought after expert. Other organizations that are not the early adopters will be looking for people that are experienced with the technology when they are ready to implement. If you have taken the opportunity to create your brand and increase your sphere of influence can lead to many lucrative opportunities with other organizations.

How Do I Get A Response From My Network – Start Adding Value

How Do You Rectify Your Lack of Networking

First you must get involved with your network. There are several things that you can do:

1. Answer and ask questions.
2. Add your expertise to the conversations.
3. Share valuable information.
4. Add friends, connections, and followers.
5. Post articles and other information that is relevant to your network.

These actions all contribute to the overall value of your network and the benefit you provide to your network members.

Therefore to be an effective networker you must be adding value to your network.

Answer and Ask Questions

The Internet is full of people with questions and people looking for questions to answer. Everyone of these is an opportunity for you. Find out what questions exist; then draw either upon your previous knowledge or research the answer. When you find that answer post it. And then do it again and again.

The truth is there are a lot of lazy people out there looking for someone that will answer or find the answers to their questions. Be that person and you will start building a reputation of being a benefit to your network.

Make sure that you get good answers and if, for some reason you post something that turns out to be incorrect, fix it immediately! We all make mistakes; you just need to make sure you correct them immediately.

The more questions you answer correctly and the better the answers you provide; will add to your credibility, reputation, and brand.

Add your Expertise to the Conversations

The Internet is full of conversations and therefore opportunities to share your expertise. Join Social Networking groups that are relevant to your expertise and join in. Your group members are always looking for members that will add value to existing conversations and start relevant conversations of their own.

Make sure that what you add is of value. Many people participate with one or two line statements; although that may be appropriate sometimes, but you cannot do that regularly or you will jeopardize your credibility.

Web 2.0 applications, like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc are predicated upon conversations; get involved and demonstrate your networking value.

Share Valuable Information

When you are participating share valuable information. Many people are afraid to add anything of value because they believe that if they wait long enough they will be able to sell the information. Although that may be true, your audience will eventually recognize you as someone that participates but adds little or no value.

If your goal is to develop relationships that are based upon credibility and trust; you must be willing to give valuable information.

Add Friends, Connections, and Followers

One very valuable contribution that you can make to you network is adding friends, connections, and followers. Your first level connections are the weak connections for your other first level connections. Through your relationships with new people you extend the breadth and scope of that person’s network and the networks of all of your other contacts.

The reality is that most opportunities are found one or two levels removed from your immediate connections so network growth increases everyone’s opportunities. Grow your network and expand the sphere of influence for yourself and the members of your network.

Post Articles and Other Information That Is Relevant to Your Network

The last method of adding value that I will discuss is the process of posting articles and other information that is relevant to your network. When you encounter information that you find of value, chances are other members of your network will find value as well. As one who disseminates information you increase your value to your network and raise your value in their eyes.

Build your brand, create credibility and trust, by adding value to your network. It will generate rewards that will pay you back over and over.

Where Businesses Go Wrong With Social Networking

Note To Readers

I will be making some statements in this article and some people will say; I am sure happy I never got into that! If you start to think that way, you need to read all the way to the end because you cannot afford to not be on Social Networking; it is just that you must do it correctly.

Many Businesses Do Not Understand Social Networking

Many, if not most, businesses fail to grasp the primary Social Networking and Web 2.0 concept: this is the concept that Social Networking is about conversations.

Social Networking is not a monologue, it is not even a dialog, Social Networking is a conversation and not only that it is a conversation with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of eavesdroppers.

Businesses must realize that every Social Networking conversation they have can be read or even heard by anybody with current and future access to the conversation. They may not be active participants in the conversation, but they will be able to read it none-the-less.

Compare Social Networking to the Email Reply to All Capability

Have you ever done a “Reply to All” on an email and then learned that there were many people that were blind copied? I have had that happen and there is nothing more embarrassing than to have something that you thought was a private conversation be put in front of a whole lot of people.

In many ways your Social Networking conversations are like that email and the “Reply to All”; with some important differences. Although the email may have a life of its own there is no guarantee of that. With Social Networking you can count on it having a life of its own. That conversation can live on in infamy.

Does that mean that you do not converse? Absolutely not! It means that you converse with the idea in mind that you may be responding to one, but there are lots of people that will potentially see your response. All that means is that you must craft your response with that in mind. You must carefully consider your words, no matter how frustrated you may be.

No Reply Is Not Acceptable

There is a major toy company that we all know that has a Facebook Fan Page and from my perspective they are doing it ALL wrong.

They use their site to broadcast specials and advertise products. Their customers on the other hand use the Fan Page to lodge criticisms and complaints about specific stores, products, policies, treatment, bad promotions, and a host of other things. Where this company is missing the Social Networking boat is that they are not responding to these customer comments and complaints.

Even worse when one customer lodges a complaint another customer will chime in with their you think that was bad, listen to what happened to me. These conversations go on and on in a forum sponsored by the company but with no involvement by any representatives of the company.

This is an example of Social Networking at its worst! Social Networking is about building credibility, reliability, and trust with the goal being to extend the brand; this company is doing none of that and is actually doing the opposite.

This is an example of Social Networking being done at its worst!