On Friday, April 27 I’ll be presenting at the Social Media Club Knoxville’s Social Slam 2012. This year, Social Slam aims to showcase the brightest new voices in the field by offering several innovative panels and “slams” that will put a spotlight on up and coming thinkers in social media marketing. I am honored to be a part of one these panels — 50 Huge New Ideas in 50 Minutes — at which I’ll be discussing 10 big ideas on Community Management in 10 minutes.
As community managers, it’s an exciting time to explore new tools and embrace new strategies that can help us better serve the communities we manage. It’s not just about facilitating conversations, though; it’s about leveraging the information gleaned from our engagement to enhance the services we provide. An interesting article came across my Twitter feed this morning that reinforces the need for incorporating customers’ needs into the design of goods and services. In Our Economy Is Mostly Services. But How Do You Design Great Service Experiences? Craig LaRosa writes:
Executing successful service experiences requires all silos of an organization–marketing, operations, sales, finance, and so on. But these silos most often only connect at the top of the organization; they’re not communicating with one another at the consumer level. Successful service design depends upon getting one empowered person from each of these silos in the room.
I agree fully. Community management is only as good as what results from customer engagement. When companies ask questions of their customers, it’s important that they care about the answer. If they don’t, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and does nothing to further engagement or build trust.
In my presentation at Social Slam 2012 I hope that such insights will inspire community managers and engagement strategists. I look forward to seeing you there.
2 thoughts on “Social Slam 2012”
Raghav, this is the best explanation of Social Media Recruiting I have seen since it bmeace a recognized concept in the last 3 years or so BRAVO!The Gallop research proving that Customer Engagement (Prospect Engagement )drives Social Engagement (sharing of Employment Brand/Candidate Experience )is ground breaking and I could feel the earth quaking under my feet as I read it. The promise of online “Prospect” Engagement for careers will be realized when we emulate the interactions we experience in real life (Howard is spot-on, its “human speak”). People attend industry events to primarily enhance their careers by developing peer/mentor relationships. If companies provided similar Engagement Experiences online, they could attract a group of prospects they wouldn’t get from any other source. (If this seems like too much work its not reach out and I’ll show you…)A “real” Talent Community should be a group with similar functional backgrounds who see value in networking with employees of a specific company for possible career advancement. Masking the “ Job Agent” in your ATS as a Talent Community and blasting job ads to this database isn’t. Used as a job ad tool as Raghav so aptly stated is merely Talent Community spam!
I think social media is a grand meeeripxnt, the results of which are still to be determined. In this age of its all about me , job preservation,risk averse, apathy etc., I am having a difficult time seeing that we are going to have this magical sharing and collaboration suddenly appear. Most corporations are slow to change in engaging with their current employees, changing the way they hire people, gaining a sense of urgency, upgrading the quality of their organizations, instituting training and mentoring programs. Everyone seems to be pursing passive candidates passively. This is demonstrated in a recent report that showed 70%$ of the people in a survey preferring email communication rather that telephone or voice mail. In the technology segment,it has been stated that 92% of the engineering community does not engage in twitter because of the premise- follow me . Facebook and twitter are not available in China. Direct email marketing resulted in 99% of the business driven to websites and brick and mortar facilities during the last holiday season. Do you honestly think that average performers are going to refer quality individuals to their employers when job loss is an issue in today’s society? We live in an attention deficit society where if our needs are not instantly being met, we move on to other issues. With reports of passive candidates not be contacted by companies and terrible follow up during and after the interview process, people are dis-engaging rather than embracing this process. I have seen more reports of failure than success in this meeeripxnt. Where is the pro activity and sense of urgency needed to become all we can be? Have we become content with mediocrity? The question becomes, will the continued investment and interest in social media pay dividends before the effects of the hype wear off?