Facebook Personal Social Media Audit

The Month of May seems to be a month about social media auditing – who to accept on LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter. I recommend revising your social media presence approximately once a month or at least once a quarter to make sure you are making connections that make sense. For those regular blog readers, as you know, I have actually written out my personal social media policy & have different views on how I want to use LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook. They all have different uses for me from a very professional space to a more personal space. Today’s blog post is about Facebook.

For brands, I’m a big believer in having a Facebook page and encouraging “likes” as this will help create WOM within the networks of those who “liked” you. As an indidual, I use Facebook for a very close group of friends to keep up on very personal details such as photos and travel news. Though I have hundreds of friends on Facebook, I lock down most contacts to limited profiles and typically indicate only close friends and family to see my photos.

Here are my thoughts on Facebook: I will have a personal & professional profile – I’m still sorting through if this is the right move for me

Personal Profile:

-          My personal profile will be very limited for search functionally

-          It will be separated from my professional uses of social media sites through the use of a separate name (my married name)

-          I will accept only those that I are actively a part of my personal life

-          I choose to share very limited information (like photos) as I feel that the world wide web is a very public forum for my personal life

-          I understand that even if deleted, the information does not cease to exist

Professional Profile:

-          Through my newly created professional profile, I will build my professional network and be very viewable on public searches

-          This profile will be connected with my twitter, foursquare, and LinkedIn profiles

-          This profile will adhere to my professional vision through my consistent professional head shot, profile information & status updates

-          No personal photos will be shared through this forum that does not adhere to my above social media policy

-          I understand that Facebook is more of a personal forum

How do you use Facebook for personal branding versus brand/cause marketing?

Thursday News Day: University & College Trends

I’m starting a new weekly Thursday post to share relevant news articles or blogs on the topics of talent management, recruiting, social media, & branding.  My goal is to provide you with interesting news articles and blogs resources. I hope you enjoy addition #1.

TALENT MANAGEMENT/RECRUITING:

“When a University Degree Just Isn’t Enough”

Featured in: Globe & Mail

Writer & Publishing date:  James Bradshaw; May 9, 2011

Link: http://bit.ly/k8uIsv

This article relates to my April 23, 2011 blog post on Balance Game for New Grads: Degree vs Experience vs Interest.  BA graduates are a shrinking portion of enrollment classes as students feel obligated to get graduate, professional or college credentials to prove their worth. – Do you think a BA still holds value? Are you hiring BA candidates?

“Job-Seeking University Graduates give it the Old College Try”

Featured in: Globe & Mail

Writer & Publishing date:  Tralee Pearce; May 10, 2011

Link: http://bit.ly/kTDgUH

This article speaks how colleges are seeing an increase in enrollment of students with university bachelors who are seeking specific job related training to be “job ready.” Colleges are essentially being used as finishing schools. - Colleges - are you using this trend in your marketing material?

Happy Reading! Any articles/resources you would like to share?

Career Services & Student Corporate Tours

University Career Services are trying to create new engagement with students and help prepare them for careers after school. One new offering I am seeing offered by career services is organizing corporate tours where they build relationships with relevant companies. Within this offering, a short office tour and information session is organized where students can talk to management and new hires to understand what a career at their company would look like.   I recently participated in one of these from a corporate standpoint & have some tips for students as well as for Career Services.

The students arrived looking dashing and all professionally attired to make a good impression. We started the introduction asking who had heard of our company before. I was shocked to see only 1 out of 15 students put up their hand. Would you really come into an interview without even visiting the company website & understanding their offerings, jobs and company vision or culture? Well these students did. Our first impression of the students was not good though they went on to have great questions throughout the tour.

Career Services: don’t assume that your students will do their due diligence in doing research on the companies you are visiting. Ensuring your students are prepared will make a great impression as this reflects on your campus & your services. This will help the company want to further engage your services to hire your students.

Students: Any time you are engaging with a potential employer, have your ducks in a row. Do your research.  Visit the company website, seek them out on Facebook & LinkedIn. Understand the basic values of the company and know why you might want to work for them. Remember, just because an interaction isn’t a job interview doesn’t mean it can’t get you a job! First impressions count more than ever now that the job market is picking up and companies have choices in the students they hire.

I applaud career services for connecting student’s to corporate life and building higher engagement between students and their campus services. Hopefully my above tips help make these offerings even stronger for all parties involved.

Brands: Finding Your Online Voice

Choosing the right voice for your brand is a very important step in your brand identity and building your social media efforts.

I recently spoke at a conference to an audience of University employees who are responsible for recruitment, enrollment, and student engagement in student services. I was speaking about how universities can use social media sites to boost their recruitment and engagement efforts. I started the presentation asking how many universities, by show of hands, had a social media policy. I was honestly shocked to see that only approximately 10% of 58 major colleges and universities had a policy as 100% of them were on social media sites!  Without a policy that creates a plan on your use of social media websites and helps define your values, purpose & voice, these universities are showcasing multiple personalities online as many different functions/teams within the campus are using these sites with no overall alignment.

Universities (or companies) wanting to use social media sites, must first go through an exercise of defining your brand voice.  Think of a playwright, building a character, you must think through things like Persona, Tone, Language & Purpose.

Here is a great article on Social Media Explorer by Stephanie Schwab that walks you through building your voice through the above 4 characteristics:  http://bit.ly/gTsbTS 

I hope my thoughts & the above resource help. I always love sharing a great article/resource. Don’t forget that your online voice must be a work in progress & you should visit it often to make sure you are adhering to your plan and having a consistent voice across multiple online mediums (i.e.: Facebook, twitter, blogs etc)

Accepting Connections on LinkedIn

I run a group on Linked In with almost 500 global members united to discuss Campus Recruiting, social media & attracting/retaining millennials. As a very active LinkedIn member and discussion lead in my group, I often have people from my group & other groups I belong to ask to connect on LinkedIn.  These are people that know my voice through the group but I don’t know theirs. It creates a conundrum. Do I accept? How many LinkedIn Connections are too many? How valuable is connecting with everyone? How guarded should you be of your connections?

I have spoken before about how important it is to sit down and write a personal social media policy to determine your voice & use of social media sites. I wrote mine approximately 8 months ago and visit it approximately once a quarter as the sites change so often that my usage must also adapt.

Looking back, this is how I had set out to use LinkedIn:

My Profile:

-     This is my 100% professional network

-     I will maintain my 100% completed profile

-     I will seek recommendations based on new opportunities like speaking engagements etc that will further my reputation/work in the field

-     I will not automatically recommend those that recommend me. I will limit my recommendations to only those that I truly want to highlight their skills and abilities to maintain my credibility

-     I will update my profile often with updated information and experiences

-     I will always write a personal connection note when connecting with someone new

-     I will only create introductions between connections I feel will benefit both parties. I will respect and guard my connection’s privacy.

-     I will accept only those connections I have emailed with personally, met at conferences or spoken with. I value these connections as people I can truly do business with.

My Group: Campus Recruiting & Social Media: Finding the Best Millennials:

-     I will create a new discussion topic once a week if one is not created

-     I will send each person requesting to be part of my Group a personal note based on their profile to outline the purpose of the group and how they can gain insights/participate

-     I will encourage my colleagues and new business connections to participate

-     I will promote my group via other sites & encourage new networks to participate but only through relevant engagements versus spamming

-     I will seek out relevant information to create cutting edge discussion topics and facilitate experts speaking in this forum

Note the last bolded bullet under my profile. I currently have over 25 connection requests sitting in my inbox that I haven’t responded to – am I being rude or indecisive in responding? Should I ask for more information on why we should connect or do I immediately decline without responding? I’m torn as some are members of a group I run. Most of these requests don’t send me a personalized message and they don’t try to build a relationship. I sat down today & decided to deal with these invites by sending the below message:

“Thank you for the invitation. Unfortunately I have to decline at this time as I have a personal LinkedIn Social Media policy that I only connect with individuals I know in order to protect my connections and build my network. I look forward to building up a relationship through contributions in our shared LinkedIn Group."

Geeky? Worthwhile? Does it help separate the valuable connections from the duds? If I’m not worth a response or a personalized invite (which none really had), then I have an answer right there. Only a few people have responded and started building a relationship creating value for me to connect. I don’t want to have 1,000 connections as then my connections lose value & I’m not respecting those people who have trusted me to connect.

How do you manage your LinkedIn requests & connections?