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.
