5 Social Media Activities for Your Next HR Training Session

There’s a new dilemma in today’s training world: Is it prudent to allow technology devices in the classroom? One school of thought is that there should be absolutely no distraction—technology won’t be tolerated and should not be incorporated into a professional training environment.
But a new way of thinking is to encourage smartphones, laptops and tablets. Make them a part of the session, since today’s training participants are multi-taskers. Trainees may want to tweet, post pictures and take notes to add a valuable interactive element to their own learning experience. In this new school of thought, trainers are becoming facilitators. It's a great opportunity to introduce trainees on how to properly engage with social media to add a professional benefit to not only their own employment but also to the company at large.
Adding social media is a terrific means to spark conversation before, during and after a training session. Here are five examples of training sessions that provide employees with a great grasp on how to wield social media for the good of the company.
1. Facebook before you train
Prior to a learning event, a trainer can create a Facebook group for participants. This page can be used to solicit and convey information about the program. In addition, videos can be posted prior to the session to provide background information for participants. You can also post materials using document sharing systems such as Google Docs or SlideShare.
Some of the advantages to using a Facebook group prior to training include: getting participants engaged with the trainer, breaking down any barriers between the group and starting a discussion about the subject prior to meeting. All of these are good ways to engage the group before the formal training session starts.
2. Start networking on LinkedIn
Objective: Recruiters are online, companies are online, job seekers are online and you should be too. A professional profile is a necessary tool in our social media-focused world, so there's no excuse not to have one.
Technology: LinkedIn
Activity: Ask participants to set up a LinkedIn account, then give them tasks. For example, ask them to connect with five people they know, update their profile with their current job, make at least one recommendation and join one group.
Discussion: Talk with new users about the experience. What did they learn about the platform? What tasks were easy and difficult? Where can they see the advantages of using this social networking site in the future?
3. A map of our team
Objective: Great for virtual teams to build a stronger sense of team identity and the individuals on the team.
Technology: A location-based map service like Google Maps or Bing Maps. If your company wants to implement a custom or branded map, OpenStreetMap is a great option.
Activity: Assign each team member a unique marker or pushpin. Team members can place the pushpins on the map anywhere to identify landmarks related to them, including details where appropriate.
Examples of relevant locations are where a person currently works, the location of corporate headquarters or regional offices and the locations of key customers or vendors. You could also include the city or campus where a participant went to college, the farthest place you’ve ever traveled or the location of your first job.
Discussion: Ask the group about how sharing information helps to build teams and how geography plays a role in a person’s work style.
Source: The Big Book of Virtual Team Building Games by Mary Scannell, Michael Abrams and Mike Mulvihill.
4. Customer service role play
Objective: To practice customer service recovery situations.
Technology: Twitter
Activity: Create a Twitter account that simulates angry customers. Then, assign participants the specific roles (customer, sales rep, manager and operations department) and give them an assignment. For example, a customer might complain that his equipment isn’t working. The team should work together to troubleshoot and offer a solution.
Discussion: Ask the group if they were able to solve the problem and how they accomplished the task. This can also be a great activity to discuss clarity in communications.
Source: Social Media for Trainers by Jane Bozarth.
5. Tweet your training
Another consideration is to create a Twitter hashtag for your training session so participants can read through all of the tweets. After the session, the hashtag can be used to post a summary of key points and articles or blogs of interest. Trainers can host Twitter chats or a guest speaker to keep the conversation going as a method of increasing learner retention.
Conclusion
Adding social media to training isn’t creating a distraction; it’s a way to engage people with the tools that most of us are already using in our lives. What better way is there to enhance the learning experience for everyone involved?

09:03 by Robert dawne · 0

LinkedIn Introduces Targeted Updates and Follower Statistics

LinkedIn’s 150m+ users worldwide are a marketers dream.  Professionals with lots of money and desperate me-too job seekers.  A marketer with the ability to craft intelligent relevant messaging would be able to do good business on the network.  But fortunately for everyone, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner is not necessarily keen on spamming the fragile LinkedIn ecosystem with ads.  But that doesn’t mean he’s not building better ways for brands to connect with people who are interested.
The new services give marketers access to targeting and analytics for advertising campaigns for LinkedIn company pages.  This is an attempt help brands that want to connect with interested users: a brand can now target and analyze whether they are attracting users of certain demographics to their brand pages.  LinkedIn can target “hyper-focused” follower lists based on industry, seniority, job function and other features.  And they can then deliver specific content to those users.  An image of the process of targeting is given below.

After this content is sent out to those users, brands can look at their analytics dashboard which can track engagement metrics such as likes, shares, comments and more.  LinkedIn has provided some more data about the new follower ecosystem, as they’re calling it, below.  Check it out and let us know if you agree that this is an effective way for brands to engage on LI.
Additional Information about LinkedIn’s Follower Ecosystem:

• LinkedIn’s Unique Follower Ecosystem: LinkedIn’s follower ecosystem has been designed to enable marketers to: identify and acquire the right followers; more effectively engage and communicate with followers on a regular basis via relevant content; and analyze and optimize the impact of their follower relationships.
• LinkedIn’s Follow Company Button: LinkedIn Targeted Updates and Follower Statistics’ launch follows on the heels of the introduction of the LinkedIn Follow Company button – the first phase of LinkedIn’s follower ecosystem strategy – in February.  It facilitates engagement through a button added to businesses’ Web pages and other marketing materials.

Additional Research about LinkedIn Members and the Value of LinkedIn’s Follower Ecosystem:

• Members expect companies to have a presence and engage on LinkedIn:

o   63% of LinkedIn members expect companies to have a presence on LinkedIn.

• Members are “following” companies and want to maintain these relationships:

o   70% of LinkedIn members follow or would follow companies on LinkedIn.
o   Two out of three LinkedIn followers (64%) would follow companies “indefinitely.”

• Followers are active on LinkedIn:

o   LinkedIn followers are 2x more connected than the average member.
o   LinkedIn followers are in 2x more LinkedIn groups than the average member.

• Engaging followers on LinkedIn significantly impacts brand metrics:

o   Half (49%) of current followers state that they are more likely to purchase products or services from a company that is more engaged with its followers.

• Members are motivated to follow companies on LinkedIn in contrast to other social platforms:

o   Half (47%) of current followers agree that LinkedIn is a more appropriate social environment for hearing company news and updates.

10:39 by Robert dawne · 0

LinkedIn Chairman Sells Small Stake of Facebook Stock

Bloomberg is reporting that Reid Hoffman, the visionary CEO of LinkedIn, is selling some of his Facebook stock that he had purchased as an early investor in the social network.  It only represents a minority of his overall share in the company, and he claims it is part of a “general diversification strategy.”  This makes sense, but it does raise the question about whether Facebook will actually maintain its current valuation of nearly $100 billion.
Hoffman was part of the seed funding round in 2004, and has held on to the stock since then.  An estimate of his stake is 0.5% of the company, and seeing as he’s holding on to the majority of his shares we can estimate his sale to be up to 0.24% of Facebook – a hefty amount.  Reid is also the largest shareholder of LinkedIn (LNKD) with $1.9 billion of stock given its current price of $99 giving it a market capitalization of 9.8B.
Facebook’s IPO looks to be about $5B worth of stock, and at about 5% of the company, which gives them the $100B valuation.  For more news about the IPO, check out AllFacebook.

16:48 by Robert dawne · 0

The Value of Being LinkedIn [Infographic]

When Twitter and LinkedIn were hitting their first wave of buzz, waves of critics surfaced to let everyone know it was ‘too little, too late’ — social was already done by Facebook and better.  That juvenile analysis has given way to the realization that social is not just a single stream, but rather a rushing river of which there will be several branches.  One of those branches is the professional social space, of which LinkedIn is king.
So just how epic is LinkedIn?  An infographic from the infographic pundits at OnlineMBA shows a whole lot of interesting stats about LinkedIn, including:

• 1 million new users every 12 days means 1 new user per second
• 69% of users make at least $60K
• 39% make over $100K
• 2 Billion people searches on LinkedIn in 2010

Check out the infographic below.

16:14 by Robert dawne · 0

The 5 Fastest Growing Social Media Skills on LinkedIn

If you’ve been on LinkedIn lately, you might have noticed that you can add keywords that describe your skills and expertise to your profile. It’s a great way to help prospective employers find your name in the search results, especially when your job title doesn’t fully capture your essence. Here are some of the social media-related skills that have taken off in the last year:

1. Social Media Monitoring – 52% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Public Relations and Communications
“A media monitoring service provides clients with documentation, analysis, or copies of media content of interest to the clients. Services tend to specialize by media type or content type. For example, some services monitor news and public affairs content while others monitor advertising, sports sponsorships, product placement, video or audio news releases, use of copyrighted video or audio, infomercials, “watermarked” video/audio, and even billboards.”

This is the 25th fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. Of the 11,000 professionals who claim social media monitoring as one of their selling points, 58 percent of them are between the ages of 25 and 34, while 20 percent are between 18 and 24.
2. Social Media – 47% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Marketing and Advertising
“Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.”

This general term is the 86th most popular skill on LinkedIn and also the 49th fastest growing.  There are 751,000 people who count social media as an area of expertise. The age ranges are a little more varied for this category, with 20 percent of them being between 35 and 44, which is slightly less than the 23 percent of social media professionals who are between 18 and 25.  The largest group was still the 25 to 34-year-old crowd, at 47 percent.
3. Online Community Management – 44% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Computer Games
“The online community manager role is a growing and developing profession. People in this position are working to build, grow and manage communities around a brand or cause. While the term “online community manager” may not have been used at the time, the role has existing since online systems first began offering features and functions that allowed for community creation.”

This is the 63rd fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are 3,000 professionals who have added online community management to their lists of skills. The 25 to 34-year-old age range still dominated the group at 59 percent, with 35 to 44-year-olds training behind at 22 percent.
4. Community Management – 44% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Computer Games
“Community management is the functional control of systems by communities or their representatives. It can and often does, but does not have to, include elements of community ownership, and involvement in day-to-day operation and maintenance. It is particularly reliant on clarity of ownership of schemes.”

Some skills sound so similar to one another that it’s good to read the description first for before you add it to your profile to see which one is the best fit. This is the 76th fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are currently 21,000 professionals who list community management as one of their skills, with 64 percent of them being between the ages of 25 and 34. Some congratulations are in order for the 1 percent who are between 55 and 64.

5. Social Media Marketing – 42% growth year-over-year

Primary Industry: Marketing and Advertising
“Social media marketing is a term that describes use of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.”

This is the 71st fastest growing skill on LinkedIn. There are 259,000 professionals who have this skill in their arsenals and once again, half of them are between the ages of 25 and 34.
The “skills and expertise” option is great for social media professionals because they don’t all work at Facebook and Twitter.   And not all 751,000 people who are claim to be experts in social media are going to be right for any one position. there are a number of other keywords, like “social media development,” “social networking,” and “social outreach” that also made the list, but don’t have descriptions yet. Make sure that employers can drill down to what it is that you actually do – and be sure to have evidence to back it up.
Image by Elnur via Shutterstock.

15:40 by Robert dawne · 0

Get More Business With LinkedIn

When LinkedIn went live in 2003, it made its mark as a place for professionals to network and job hunt. People signed up, posted their resumes and waited for good things to happen. Now the social networking site is evolving into a robust tool for helping individuals and businesses succeed.
That’s right, businesses. There are 2 million business pages on LinkedIn. Viewers can learn about a business, “follow it” to hear about its latest products, and of course, search for job openings. Many employees also are linked to their employer’s company page, making it easier for businesses to find connections and sales prospects.
If you’ve kept a passive LinkedIn account for years, consider strategies for using the service to benefit yourself and your company. "Is there a place for small business on LinkedIn? Absolutely, yes,” says Lori Ruff, a social media trainer who wrote the book Rock the World with Your Online Presence with her partner, Mike O’Neil.
“If you ask small business people where their business and leads come from, most will tell you it’s from referrals,” Ruff says. “They can mimic that same behavior in the online space, and they will be more successful because it just enhances everything. You can speak to 10 to 15 people at a networking event, but on LinkedIn you can speak to hundreds of people and tell them so much more.”
O’Neil and Ruff own Integrated Alliances, a consulting firm that trains people and companies on effectively using LinkedIn. Here they share their tips and tricks for boosting sales, finding new opportunities and making a better name for your company.
Spiff up your profile
Add detail to your job descriptions and make sure to use keywords that are relevant to your industry. That way, your name or company page will show up more often in search engines, says O’Neil. Include details like organizations you belong to, specific accomplishments, the value your company brings to clients and complete contact information so that people can reach you.
Use LinkedIn’s tools to their full advantage
Write a snappy headline and use the 120 available characters to describe what you do in an attention-grabbing way, Ruff says. Also, be sure to use all 2,000 characters allotted in the summary space under your bio. Compose an elevator pitch that tells prospects who you are and how you can help them. Then end with a call to action.
“That call to action really makes a difference,” Ruff adds. “You’re telling people, ‘Here’s how you can do business with us.’”
Build your network
At a minimum, your company should have 500 connections or followers to make sure you’re generating traffic to your profile or company page, O’Neil says. Once you achieve 500, aim for 1,000. The more people you’re connected to, the bigger your network—because your network is made up of your connections’ connections (second-degree connections) as well as their connections (third-degree connections).
When you meet someone at an industry or social event, drop him or her a personal note to connect. “It should be a regular process for you to invite people you meet. It just cements those relationships,” O’Neil adds. “Being connected on LinkedIn causes you to look at each other from a business perspective.”
Be a joiner
Connect with industry groups and organizations to which you belong or want to belong. All other members of these groups or organizations then become part of your network, even if you’re not directly connected to them. This vastly broadens the number of people who can see your profile or company updates, O’Neil says, and you can e-mail them through LinkedIn’s InMail.
Work the tools
Use your newly robust network for recruiting or sales. “Now we get to have some fun,” says O’Neil. “It’s like in sports—you’ve built the stadium and the team, and now the team is going to play.” LinkedIn can be used for territory selling; plug in a ZIP code and a few keywords to find prospects. Then you can view their profiles to gather information about them to use in sales calls, he says. The best part? It’s all free.
Reach out
Build stronger connections with your connections. Follow their companies and “like” their status updates. On a group’s page, join an ongoing discussion by making a comment. “It gets your name out there,” says Ruff. “Show yourself to be a listener—someone else commenting on the discussion posts will take notice of you.”
Eventually, you might find yourself with new clients, stronger relationships with your customers, and a whole different way of hiring new employees who can help grow your organization.
Suzy Frisch is a Twin Cities–based freelance writer. She’s covered business, politics, law and many other topics for a range of publications, including Twin Cities Business magazine, the Star Tribune and the Chicago Tribune.

11:39 by Robert dawne · 0

A History of the Business of Social Media

Social media has come a long way since it's humble beginnings over 30 years ago. This infographic gives us a short history of the many innovative companies that have helped shape the environment that we so heavily rely on to communicate and also takes a look at some of the business deals behind them. What's next? You decide.

14:07 by Robert dawne · 0

LinkedIn Revenue Surges Over Analyst Expectations; Stock Jumps

LinkedIn has announced that revenue has more than doubled in the last quarter and they’ve increased their 2012 revenues, and the stock has jumped accordingly.  The social network reported $167.7 million in revenue for the fourth quarter, beating the average analyst estimate of $159.8 million in the quarter.  The good news also comes at a time where people are piling into social media stocks, with Zynga hovering around 30% higher than it’s IPO price and LinkedIn now almost 200% over it’s $45 IPO price, placing it’s market cap at $8.67 billion.
The non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $13.3 million which represents an increase in profitability.  For the fourth quarter of 2010 the net income was $5.2 million.  LinkedIn earns it’s revenue from a variety of products.  They have Hiring Solutions, Marketing Solutions and Premium Subscriptions.  Looking at the fiscal report, we can see that revenue increased in all three areas.  A promising factor here is also that they are a diversified company: they are increasing revenue on all fronts.
Hiring solutions, which are their tools which help recruiters find solid candidates using the network, increased over Q42010 by 136% to $84.9 million.  Marketing solutions increased 77% to $49.5 million.  Revenue from Premium subscriptions increased 87% to $33.3 million.
This is incredible news for LinkedIn but also for the social sector as a whole.  It’s clear that revenue is a real possibility, and LinkedIn is demonstrating that.  Facebook’s IPO is gaining steam and recently broke the $100B valuation mark, and with news like this investors are all going to believe in the power of the network.  The one factor here is that LinkedIn is a professional network who have excelled at keeping their user base professional and keeping distractions out of the way — it’s a great place to find quality people.  LinkedIn also focuses on hiring products that they are explicitly selling to companies which is not part of Facebook’s arsenal at this point.
However, Facebook has Facebook credits in the wings, and if they’re able to launch that it could become a huge force on the web for e-commerce.  That may be a driving force that could help Facebook increase their revenues in place of having a specific product.
LinkedIn has also announced it hit 150 million members and is continuing to grow at a staggering pace.

16:00 by Robert dawne · 0

LinkedIn Plans Mobile Ads This Year

LinkedIn just became the second social media giant this month to signal plans for ads in mobile.
During its quarterly earnings call Thursday, CEO Jeff Weiner said mobile access represents an ever-growing share of time users spend with LinkedIn. He said the company is investigating ways to monetize those page views.
“We’re going to start to run some tests with regard to advertising some of our marketing solutions within the mobile environment,” Weiner said.
When those ads will appear and what they’ll look like is anybody’s guess. LinkedIn did not immediately reply to a request for more information.
Weiner’s remarks come one week after reports surfaced that Facebook will begin serving ads to its 420 million-strong mobile audience. The Financial Times cited unnamed sources who pinpointed a launch date of early March, ahead of the company’s planned public offering in May. Those sources referred to the pending ads as “‘featured stories’ in the news feed.”
In August, LinkedIn revamped its mobile presence with new apps for Android and iOS and a new mobile site. As a result, Weiner said mobile is the fastest growing service on LinkedIn, accounting for more than 15% of total unique number visits.
“Because members need LinkedIn to work wherever they work we’ve made great strides in our platform in mobile offerings in 2011,” said Weiner.
LinkedIn is the number three social networking platform in the U.S., with 33.5 million unique viewers, according to comScore. Throughout much of 2011 the company vied with Twitter for number two, but Twitter pulled away by year’s end with 37.5 million unique viewers.
– Zachary Rodgers, ClickZ

12:30 by Robert dawne · 0

Is It Time to Finally Ditch Your Paper Business Card?

If you've ever returned from a business trip with a stack of business cards, you've no doubt wondered–as you're manually typing in all those names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses–if there's a better way.
It turns out there are lots of better ways. Too many, in fact, and that's the problem. The lack of a standard means that a great solution like the Bump app will only work if the person you're trying to link up with has the app, not to mention an iPhone or Android-based smartphone. You could, of course, use your phone's camera to take a picture of the other person's business card, but that would still require that he or she has a business card in the first place. And after you do that, you'll still have to manually enter the information anyway.
In November, LinkedIn announced an alternative that avoids the lack-of-a-standard conundrum by essentially digitizing an analog card. As the video below outlines, the CardMunch iPhone app works by capturing the image of a business card, recognizing it and then saving it on your phone as a contact. In another nice perk, LinkedIn also integrates that person's information from his or her profile on the network.
Sid Viswanathan, a product manager at LinkedIn, says that CardMunch began with the pragmatic realization that the paper business card is not going away any time soon. "We understand that business cards still exist," he says. "They're still used out in the field when you're attending conferences." Viswanathan says that 10 billion business cards are printed annually–that's more than one for every person on Earth.As great as LinkedIn's solution is to the business card dilemma, you'll note that CardMunch still requires one of the parties to have a standard business card. It's also quite possible that you will run into someone who doesn't have the CardMunch app and will still need a paper card.
On the other hand, if you're in the tech industry, the type of business card you use says something about you. Perhaps this isn't the case now, but some time down the road, handing out a paper card will have all the cachet of an @aol.com e-mail address. Viswanathan says that, with 130 million members, that's not a big issue for LinkedIn. "We maintain that the social protocol of exchanging business cards is still intact," he notes.
There are a few good options for businesspeople who want to set aside their business cards, once and for all. The following two-step solution will allow you to do just that:
First, use CardMunch to capture business card information that's presented to you. This way, you don't have to ever take a business card home again. (Of course, you might have to take one if you're not getting good reception on your phone, but once you're in range, you can process the card and pitch it.)
If you want to present your business card, meanwhile, there's another free app called Cardcloud. As outlined in the video below, Cardcloud lets you create a digital card that you can e-mail to your prospective contact. Cardcloud also boasts LinkedIn integration–new users can sign in via their LinkedIn profile. (You can also use your Facebook account.)
That's the dream, at least. In my own experience, I could not, despite multiple attempts using my LinkediIn and Facebook data, create an account on Cardcloud. Nor could I create one manually. Renato Valdés Olmos, co-founder and CEO of Cardcloud, says that the iPhone app had "a little bug" in mid-January, when I tried to register. He said the bug should be fixed "within the next few weeks."
On the other hand, I found CardMunch worked exactly as advertised, connecting me to my LinkedIn account on the first try. And if you don't have an account, the app directs you to start one, which is is a great recruiting tool for the brand. The app also recognized my paper cards and quickly integrated that information as well. If CardMunch could emulate Cardcloud's functionality (on a good day), then LinkedIn will offer a great end-to-end solution. But when Cardcloud gets up and running again, the two will do just fine. Despite that, it would be unrealistic to expect everyone to go completely digital. We'll just have to accept that paper business cards will be with us for a little while longer.
openforum

10:48 by Robert dawne · 0