As mentioned in the last post, Tidemark is in the process of pre-launching RecruitingSocial—the new social media recruiting tool that has been under development for the past few months.
As we constructed this tool, one of the business trends that we chose
to take advantage of was the introduction (and now aggressive growth)
of private social networks for business applications.
As you may know, there has been a “land grab” for technologies that equip businesses to build and maintain private social networks. In June, I wrote a detailed blog on this topic. If you don’t remember this discussion, you may want to re-read it before digesting the rest of this article.
In the private social networking arena, there are more than 50 companies that are all competing for attention in this (now) crowded business demographic. As you might imagine, each company tries to differentiate itself with a unique approach and focus, but the over-arching theme is arming businesses to harness the promise of social networking technology.
The alternative to focusing on a private social network approach, is to attempt to build tools that help managers make sense of and navigate the major public social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. There are some outstanding companies that have consultancies focused on this model. One such company is Social Media Examiner. It is amazing the number of good ideas this company generates in the area of marketing businesses on public social networks. There is much to learn.
In developing RecruitingSocial, one of the early decisions we had to make was whether to put our emphasis on a private social network approach, or on public social network methodologies. Both concepts have advantages and disadvantages, and both methodologies have compelling examples of success.
We ended up choosing the private network approach because we believe this gives the individual real estate manager a way of building a platform that he/she can optimize for recruiting success.
So where does that leave public social networks in this process? We believe that these environments are best used as support mechanisms for a manager’s private social network.
Although we didn’t realize it at the time we conceptualized this model, there were other thought leaders who were heading down the same path. One of the individuals who does a great job of articulating this philosophy is Michael Hyatt in his best-selling book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World:
“A good social media strategy has three components:
1. A Homebase. This is a digital property you own and control. It is where your loyal fans gather. It can be as simple as a blog or as complex as a self-hosted community. Regardless, it is where you direct all internet traffic. Why? Because this is the place where you can best sell your ideas or products. You control the borders and determine who has access.
2. Embassies. These are places you don’t own, but where you have a registered profile. In other words, you have a regular presence on someone else’s property. You engage in conversations with those who congregate there. Examples would include Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, or even other blogs you follow. You generally need a “Passport” (verified credentials) granted by the site owner to maintain residency or participate in conversations.
3. Outposts. These are places you don’t own nor have a regular presence. Instead, you simply listen into conversations about you, your brand, your company, or topics that interest you. For example, I have search columns in HootSuite that monitor mentions of both my name and my company. I also have Google Alerts that monitor the same information wherever it may occur on the Web.
The bottom line is that all the social media tools available fit into one of these three buckets. If you are just involved in social media for the sake of entertainment, you may not need a homebase. But if you are serious about building a platform, that’s precisely where you need to start. From there you can set up embassies and outposts.”
RecruitingSocial has been designed to be the “Homebase” for the real estate manager who wants to develop a social media platform for engaging competitive agents (candidates) in their local market.
Sound overwhelming? It would be if you had to conceptualize and build everything yourself. That’s why RecruitingSocial was built—to simplify the process of building and maintaining a social media platform for your office.
In the upcoming blogs, we’ll discuss the details of how all this works.
Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.
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