Friday, January 27, 2012

For jobs be aware of social media rather than beware

For some time now there have been stories about people, particularly youngsters, being identified in embarrassing social media entries ( videos on YouTube, pictures on Facebook or Flickr, blog posts on WordPress or Blogger, tweets on Twitter) which causes problems with their employers or, if they are still teenagers, could cause problems when they come to look for their first job. My wife and I have been telling our children for a while that they need to careful what they publish even when they are young, since it might come to the surface and count against them in five or ten years time.

But this article in imedia made me think again. It talks about employers starting to look at Klout scores and favouring those who score highly. Those who are active and engaged on social media are demonstrating their ability to communicate and to influence others, which can be important characteristics for some jobs such as marketing. This leads to the conclusion that it might be useful to be active in social media to give yourself an edge when applying for jobs.

Also the fear of embarrassing incidents from the past being visible on social media and being a major disadvantage in finding employment may reduce over time. We have all had embarrassing episodes in our past, but until recently they have only been seen by a few people. Yet the younger generation are growing up with a more open idea of what can or should be shared. In a few years, those hiring may well think it as normal that the embarrassing incidents can be viewed online as we now think it is normal that they happened at all.

So instead of telling people to beware of their social media profile and to keep it low, we should be telling people to be aware of their profile and raise it in the right way

Monday, January 23, 2012

First step provides momentum

The idea for MovingMarketing (as described on this blog on Monday http://rogerstonemarketing.blogspot.com/2012/01/movingmarketing.html) has been pinging around in my brain for a few months now and I have even started an alpha test producing a video for a company I know. But the distractions of other projects and a Christmas break have slowed my progress.

On Monday I pushed other projects to the side and registered domain names, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Small steps but they helped make me much more focused on rolling out the service quickly and effectively.

It's amazing how commitments (money, public announcements, telling family and friends or even just writing down your intentions) however small can create momentum and a positive force to move forward

MovingMarketing

MovingMarketing is a new project I have been planning for a while. Its focus is to provide all businesses, but particularly small businesses (SMEs) with a simple method of producing and publishing videos (and also podcasts) that promote their brand, views, product and services.

What will set my service apart from the many existing video production services which nowadays are affordable for small businesses is combination of guidelines for how to produce messages which have impact together with tools for producing videos (and podcasts) as well as for promoting them.

And of course, the use of social media to engage and involve customers will be a key element, as will the ability to harness the power and connnectivity of mobile devices.

There will be great deal more detail in future posts