How to Use Social Media for Employee Referrals

The war for talent is more competitive than ever. Every company wants the best and the brightest on its team, but traditional candidate sourcing methods may not cut it anymore. As companies, we have to be bold, we have to put ourselves on the line and, most importantly, we have to sell our culture harder than in the past. 

That’s where you, the already-employed professional, come in. More than ever, recruiters and hiring managers are looking to their internal network to help them find the right fit. After all, the real cost of a hire can be around $100,000, when you factor in the non-direct costs, such as training and the productivity lost in finding a new employee and bringing him up to speed.

Many workers are passive candidates, meaning that they are silently looking or waiting for an attractive offer. And, there’s a large chance your friends are lumped into this group.

Pair that with the explosion of social networking and we have a recipe for talent acquisition success. Apart from a status update here and there, you can use social media to help your friends find jobs and earn anywhere between $1,000 to $15,000 as a referral bonus from your company. Check out these tips to get the most out of your friend circle.

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1. Look Beyond Your First Degree of Connections

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No matter what industry you’re in, you probably have tons of connections through your social networks. However, it may be in your company’s best interest to go past the base-level when you’re trying to help your friends find jobs. The right fit may lie beyond your direct connections, but you’d never know this if you just skim the surface.

Many social networks allow you to see beyond your primary network. For example, Facebook “suggests” friends while LinkedIn not only shows second and third degrees, but it also may bring you to the right candidate based on their employment history. This tactic allows you to reach thousands of potential candidates, which is probably a lot more efficient than scouring your friends or contacts list.

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2. Find a Perfectly Catered Match

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Do you think that all you need to do is tweet out a job listing to your friends? There’s actually more to it. Social media also comes with access to deeper technology and analytical insights, so take advantage of it.

You can easily search for the right connections on your social networks by looking for specific keywords. For instance, say your company is looking for a candidate with an extensive design background who knows Photoshop and is located in San Francisco. You can search for these job-specific keywords on your social networks to find a more catered match. Once you’ve found these matches, you can then, of course, check out their profiles and job history to ensure they are the perfect candidate to be your new co-worker.

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Show Off Your Company Culture

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You know your workplace better than anyone else. So, use social media to show why your organization and company culture is inviting and forward-thinking and how it helped progress the careers of its employees.

For instance many companies are using video testimonials to give a better insight into the journey a candidate takes within the company. This video could then, in turn, be posted on your social networks and blog. The aim here is to bring the organization down to a “human” level, free of typical corporate jargon. It makes it easier for your contacts to realize what your company is all about, and why they should consider the particular position. In a similar vein, recruitment videos, such as the one Twitter recently made, have been extremely successful in reaching potential candidates and giving them a better idea of what it’s like to work at a company.

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Share the Bonuses

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Most companies have a significant referral bonus if the contacts you suggest get hired, and the best way to reach beyond your direct contacts could be to pay it forward. If there’s a $5,000 referral bonus at your company, pick some of your well connected contacts and offer them half the bonus if they know anyone that might be a good fit — you’ll be surprised how many people are connected to talented people looking for new opportunities.

In addition, you can make the process easier and help your friends out by using job matching platforms. Many of these actually allow you to analyze what kind of worker someone may be based on their social network value and work experience. By using these platforms, you gain something that keyword searching can’t give you: thorough insight and background information based on the networks your friends are using on an everyday basis. After all, you can learn a lot about a person by what they’re saying on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If it matches what your company is saying, you may be on your way to finding the perfect colleague.

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Conclusion

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The combination of all of these gives your organization access to the highly sought-after professionals who’ll likely stick around for the long haul. Plus, you have the opportunity to help a friend who may be able to bring real value to your company, which is the ultimate goal for anyone looking to fill a coveted spot. It’s a win-win.

What do you think? What are some other ways you can use social media to help your friends get jobs?

Reference:  http://is.gd/ywuwn3

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5 Ways Facebook Can Boost Corporate Volunteering

With all the news swirling around Facebook’s messy IPO, it’s important to remember one thing: nothing has changed about the site…yet. Despite shareholder lawsuits, NASDAQ fumbles and a stock price faceplant, Facebook is still a powerful tool that can be used to affect positive social change. And when it comes to corporate volunteering, Facebook is a priceless way to stimulate employee engagement.

Similar to Pinterest, Facebook offers a dynamic way to gather support while highlighting your company’scorporate social responsibility efforts. Unlike Pinterest, however, Facebook provides the ability to make your content available strictly to those who join your fan page, which you can create exclusively for your corporate volunteer program.  Deciding ahead of time whether you want to use Facebook as a broad promotional vehicle or tailored outlet for your employees will help drive your privacy settings.

Haven’t begun using Facebook to drive corporate volunteering? Here are five ways to get started:

1. Display Purpose: Without a clear goal in mind, corporate volunteers won’t understand why they should be using your program’s Facebook page. State your reason for this page in the “About” section and make it clear in the content as well. If you’re crafting the page to highlight your corporate volunteering efforts then stay focused on that topic.
2. Tell Everyone: Most social media efforts that fail do so because the team forgot to inform their targeted users about the new feed, page or site. If you want employees to join your efforts, highlight the Facebook page within your volunteer management software, in your newsletter or on any other marketing material that gets distributed internally.
3. Be Active: There’s a reason members of your community joined the page — they want to learn more about your corporate volunteer program. Remind them with content that encourages employees to dive in and get involved.  Fun tips on how to help out or stats on the importance of giving can go a long way, but remember to update the page daily or else it will lose its impact. Respond quickly to users who interact on the page.
4. Show Off: People are encouraged by others’ goodwill. Your program’s Facebook page is a great way to get the inspiration flowing, with minimal work. Post pictures at the next volunteer outing and you’ll get the ball rolling; other followers will “Like” the picture and send it to their Facebook communities, which will encourage still others to join your page and volunteering efforts. Then lather, rinse, and repeat often.
5. Get Help: After you’ve built your page, it’s important to tap into the energy of your members. Sending out challenges to your page (“we need 100 volunteers for our next blood drive, can you help?”) can motivate your community to assist.  Point users to the right volunteer management tool so they can sign up without forcing you to coordinate and keep people involved; if users see that you’re close to your goal, you’ll be surprised at how much support comes from your online community.

Reference: http://is.gd/zlJmHn

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10 Lessons You Can Learn from a Pinterest Spammer

What do you think of when you think of spamming?  No, I’m not talking about the meat product that comes in a can, although I do kind of like that Spam.  You may think that a spammer sends a bunch of junk e-mail to your in-box, but what if I tell you there’s another kind?  A spammer who bombards social sites with information that leads to him making money.  Check out 10 lessons you can learn from a Pinterest Spammer. 

1. A Lot of money is being made: Spammers are making anywhere from $500-$2000 a day on Pinterest.  As they do more spamming their earnings grow.  No wonder they are interested in doing this.  If they kept this up for even a year they would make over a half a million dollars
2. It takes very little money to get started: No big investments are needed to do this.  You need to have a computer with a lot of bandwidth.  So you do need to have already purchased a decent computer and have excellent Internet service.  Other than that it’s all know-how.
3. Spammers use bots: I really had no idea that spammers use bots to do their ‘dirty’ work.  Apparently they have the knowledge to create a program that will pin photos onto Pinterest and note a link on that photo.
4. Not invitation only: When you go to www.pinterest.com you can look around at photos, but you can’t start pinning them to different boards until you become a user.  It says right up front that becoming a user is by “invitation only”.  The spammer tells that this is not true and that if you make a request from a valid e-mail address that you will get your invitation no matter what or you can invite yourself from a different e-mail account.
5. Easy to spot: If you spend enough time on Pinterest the bot postings are pretty easy to spot.  There’s a picture, but the words under it have nothing to do with what’s in the picture.   You’ll see a cute photo of puppies and the link will be for hand bags.  Unless you are making hand bags out of the puppies like Cruella Deville I don’t think the link really relates to the photo.
6. Pinterest not shutting spammer down: Out of the thousands of bots this spammer uses he’s only had one shut down.  His very first bot because he was posting too many photos.  He modified his approach and has had no more problems.  This seems surprising to even the spammer so why isn’t Pinterest shutting down his bots?
7. Money made through Amazon: There’s a long-time existing affiliate referral program through Amazon where they will pay a referral fee to you if you refer someone to their site who buys something.  By creating links to Amazon products this spammer gets people to buy stuff on Amazon and he gets the affiliate money from them.  You’d think they could track down anyone who is making a great deal of money from them and make sure they are not cheating the system.  This spammer is cheating Amazon.
8. Crowding out real posts: While this spammer doesn’t feel any guilt about how he’s making his living because he says he’s not hurting anyone.  He makes a point to say that he’s not uploading viruses or scamming anyone.  But he is hurting the intention of Pinterest.  When I go on to Pinterest I want to see real comments from real people.  I don’t want the site to fill up with fake stuff.
9. Artificially raising photos to popular: On Pinterest the more a photo gets pinned the more popular that it is deemed to be.  Makes sense right?  Wrong, this doesn’t work when bots are posting pictures from fake accounts and then pinning and repinning those same photos to increase their popularity so that they are more visible.  Yet another way that Pinterest could stop this spammer.  Putting in a simple fix that allows you to only pin a photo to 3 boards or something like that.
10. Always be alert: People will always try to make a buck the easiest way possible.  Some will not only cheat, but steal too.  If you don’t want to be a victim stay alert when you are on the web.  The number of scammers on the web is amazing and they would like to dupe you into giving them all your money.  Beware!

Reference: http://is.gd/TpUb5d

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Evernote Acquires Popular Handwriting App Penultimate

Evernote has acquired best-selling handwriting iPad app Penultimate. It is the fifth in a series of acquisitions that Evernote CEO Phil LIbin says will lead up to an IPO within the next few years. 

The $0.99 app, which allows users to take handwritten notes with a stylus or finger, has been downloaded more than 2 million times — making it the fourth most-popular paid iPad app.

After the acquisition, Penultimate will remain an independent brand in the iTunes store and a paid app. The “one-man shop” behind the app, Ben Zotto, will join Evernote and help expand handwriting features in its products.

Evernote’s first acquisition, image app Skitch, has also remained an independent app, but went from being paid to free when it was acquired. Evernote turned two other recent app acquisitions into Evernote Food and Instapaper-like Evernote Clearly, and a third will soon become an Evernote calendar app.

“Penultimate is the biggest acquisition in terms of revenue and users,” Libin says. “It’s the most mature company we have ever bought.”

The acquisition comes just four days after Evernote announced a $70 million round of funding that valued the company at $1 billion.

While Evernote already has more than 1 million paying customers, Libin says the funding makes it easier for the company to take risks such as acquiring Penultimate before going public.

“When you’re a small startup, you can’t take many risks other than the main risk you’re taking on the product,” he says. “When you’re a public company, it’s hard to take big risks because you’re public and have to respond to public in real-time. So this is the sweet spot for us is right now.”

Reference: http://is.gd/XocJBF

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Sparked Makes Volunteering Fun, Easy and Effective

Name: Sparked

Big Idea: Sparked is an online-only volunteer hub for people to donate their talents to non-profits, as well as an engagement tool for businesses to engage and incentivize employees to contribute to volunteer causes.

Why It’s Working: Users can donate expertise and skills instead of money, and make time commitments according to availability and interest level.

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In late 2010, Ben Rigby and Jacob Colker co-founded Sparked, a mobile app with the noble purpose of empowering non-profits. “We wanted to make volunteering fun and social,” Rigby says. But they noticed an interesting thing — nearly all the usage of their new app was happening between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. — during work hours.

So they pivoted, and recast Sparked.com as an online volunteer portal designed primarily to help companies mobilize their workforces for volunteer efforts. The site still connects non-profits with potential volunteers but makes money by letting companies such as Kraft Foods, LinkedIn and the U.S. State Department use its platform to help organize employees.

Here’s how Sparked works: Instead of pledging time, corporate volunteers donate time and skills to selected non-profits or other bodies in need of help. An editor can do some pro bono copywriting, for example, or a social media coordinator can donate Twitter expertise. Volunteers are matched to and able to find tasks by indicating areas of benevolent interest, such as at-risk youth, public health or animals. Tasks can be simple — for example, a graphic designer will be asked to suggest five website improvements for a struggling non-profit.

Intra-company standings and gamification rewards make volunteering into a competition and accelerate engagement. Skeptical that it can work? According to Rigby, companies that have signed on have experienced astronomical engagement boosts.

“Typical volunteering engagement for a corporation is around 8%,” he says. “We’re seeing participation rates up in the 50-80% range, just because it’s so simple. You can take 15 minutes or two hours and do it when it’s convenient to you.”

Sparked is supported by a combination of venture and angel funding, with investors including True Ventures and Kapor Capital. Rigby declined to provide revenue numbers, but says the company’s success so far indicates that business and charity aren’t mutually exclusive.

“We’re not Pinterest by any means,” he says. “But it’s going well.”

Would you volunteer more if your company made it easy?

reference: http://is.gd/z4tITW

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Warren Buffett Has No Interest in Buying Apple or Google Stock

Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest men, isn’t bullish on Apple or Google stock. However, he isn’t betting against them either. 

Speaking at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting over the weekend, the legendary investor said he had no interest in purchasing stock from either technology company, according to All Things Digital. However, Buffett said, “I sure as hell wouldn’t short them either.”

According to the report:

He thinks Apple and Google are too risky of an investment, and he doesn’t know enough about either company to see them as “inevitable” winners. “We couldn’t predict what would happen to Apple 10 years ago and we can’t predict what will happen to it 10 years from now,” Buffett said.

Last month, it was suggested that Apple and Google could soon join the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index. Both stocks are trading near or around $600 per share.

Do you agree with Buffett?

Reference: http://is.gd/ZBU8Ia

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8 Professional Tumblr Themes for Your Small Business

Unfortunately, when it comes to your small business website, image is everything. How you present your company on the digital sphere is important, and as we’ve learned recently, people are searching for the word “Tumblr” more than “blog.”

More and more brands have migrated to Tumblr. The micro-blogging site has become a more serious platform for brands — whether it’s to show brand character, offer a peek behind the scenes, just to keep customers up-to-date on the latest from their storefront.

Some may feel slightly overwhelmed at the thought of juggling so many social media sites — why add a Tumblr to the mix?

First, you should know that it can be done. Tumblr recently made sharing to Facebook easier by integrating with Timeline. That’s a helpful step in your social media management’s direction. Tumblr has carved a niche for itself in embracing a more graphic and design-oriented aesthetic, which is a plus for your company if you’re looking to distinguish yourself in a more meaningful way than you can through a generic Facebook Page.

You should also keep in mind that there are more than 50 million blogs on Tumblr. That is a lot of people who could be looking at your site.

The best place to start is simply setting up a Tumblr — or maybe you already have one. After that, selecting a theme will help your site stand apart and look more professional. The great thing is you don’t necessarily need to spend a ton on a graphic designer or purchase a premium theme, although both of these options most certainly have their perks.

Don’t have the budget or the patience for a custom theme? Here are plenty of great free themes to choose from in Tumblr’s theme garden. Try to go with one that works with your brand and the utility goals of the blog. For example, if you’re looking to inform customers about what’s happening within the company, you’d be better off with a classic blog format. However, if you’re looking for something more visual, a pin-board style theme might be a better option.

Still feeling a little in over your head? We’ve round up eight classic, professional themes for your small business on Tumblr so you can become cutting edge with a simple or bold design.

What theme do you use for your professional blog? Let us know in the comments below.

1. Simple Things

This theme is a basic option for a business owner who wants a simple site, but also desires a more modern look.

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2. Natural Elegance

By going with a darker background, text and images stand out, and your site looks sleek and contemporary. This site is used best when you're taking a graphical approach to your Tumblr.

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3. Simplify

The name of this theme says it all -- simple. This is a great option for a business owner who is just looking for the very basics.

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4. The Atlantic

This theme, stylized after popular news magazine The Atlantic, gives your site a newsy feel that's professional and customizable. It's a good option for businesses with more text-based posts, such as keeping customers up-to-date on the latest from your company.

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5. Art She Said

This theme has a nice italic font that makes text stand out, and its clean, classic look will make your business' site look pretty sharp.

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6. c/c/c/ theme

We really like how elegant this theme looks. It's classic, with a simple pretty font.

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7. Content Focus 1.1

What's great about this theme is the fact that it has more than 60 interchangeable options for its appearance. You can switch fonts, colors and layout to match your company's branding.

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8. Brickway

This theme lets you customize colors and the social buttons at the top give it a highly professional accent.

Reference:  http://is.gd/bTfauK

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Interactive Billboard Lets You ‘Drag Away’ Abusive Man [VIDEO]

An interactive billboard in London is making it easy for passersby to get involved in stopping domestic violence.

The ad, at the city’s Euston Station, shows a man yelling angrily at a woman. A prompt on the billboard tells viewers to go to /ncdv.org.uk/stop to drag the man away. As the video above shows, when you go to the site, you can actually do so, albeit for a short time.

The National Centre for Domestic Violence, the organization behind this latest effort, isn’t the first to try to do something different with London billboards. Last year, Lynx, the Unilever antiperspirant brand, used an ad in Victoria station to let users see — via augmented reality — angels from the brand’s ads falling from the sky.

Reference: http://is.gd/tvjDOV

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Lenovo to Spend $800M to Develop Mobile Products

Lenovo, best known for its PCs, plans to get into mobile in a big way with an $800 million base in Wuhan, China, dedicated to developing mobile Internet products. 

The facility, set to open in October 2013 and house thousands of employees, is charged with developing and delivering “new mobile internet products and bring(ing) them to its customers even faster,” according to a company statement. Such products include smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices.

The move comes as Lenovo continues to build market share in PCs, a tough segment. Last year, Lenovo surpassed Dell in sales to become the world’s number two player in the category next to Hewlett-Packard.

Lenovo currently offered some mobile devices, including its LePhone smartphones and its ThinkPad tablets (pictured). In the last fiscal quarter, the company shipped 6.5 million handsets and 400,000 tablets globally. Lenovo blamed its relatively slow growth in PC sales in 2011 to the growth of tablets, led by Apple’s iPad. Lenovo was the number two seller of tablets in China last year next to Apple.

Could Lenovo shake up the mobile market? Let me know in the comments.

Reference:  http://is.gd/nNe4di

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Tablet Newspaper ‘The Daily’ Launches on iPhone

The Daily, a News Corp.-owned daily news publication that launched exclusively on the iPad 15 months ago, is continuing to expand to new platforms with the launch of an iPhone edition Thursday. 

The app [iTunes link] is relatively basic, lacking the creative design that makes its tablet counterparts so eye-catching and immersive. After bypassing a static screenshot of the cover, users can pull up a menu to navigate and explore stories by vertical. Stories are displayed with an image or video, followed by a headline, text and sometimes a slideshow at the end. Banner ads hover at the bottom of every screen.

Given its lack of a ‘wow’ factor, I doubt the iPhone app will do much to boost The Daily subscriber numbers, but it will allow existing subscribers to access content when they don’t have their tablets on hand.

The Daily launched an Android tablet edition in January and announced in February that it had passed the 100,000 paid subscriber mark. Publisher Greg Clayman told in February that he expects The Dailywill be profitable within “the next couple of years.”

A subscription to The Daily‘s tablet editions costs $0.99 per week (iOS subscribers only), $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year following a one-week free trial. iPhone-only access costs half that — $1.99 a month or $19.99 per year — and is available for free to tablet subscribers.

Reference: http://is.gd/ptmeYC

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Google Pledges $200 Million to Market Premium YouTube Channels

Google, which has already pledged $100 million to create a slew of premium video channels on YouTube, announced on Wednesday it will sink another $200 million into marketing them across its various ad networks.

The company will use YouTube, the Google Display Network, and other formats to promote the channels, according to a YouTube rep. Google also threw a big bash in New York Wednesday night featuring Jay-Z, Julie Stiles, Jennifer Beals, Virginia Madsen and Flo Rida to make some noise about the channels during the TV network upfronts, the annual event in which network execs and media buyers converge in the Big Apple to sell ad commitments based on the upcoming fall season. In addition to the new marketing heft, YouTube is planning a programmable channel guide to make finding such premium content easier.

YouTube announced the premium channel program — which includes channels from Ashton Kutcher, Amy Poehler, Shaquile O’Neal and The Wall Street Journal, among others — last October. The move was seen as a way for Google to better monetize YouTube since such premium content is more advertiser-friendly. In addition, tools like Apple TV level the playing field for YouTube by bringing it to TV as another alternative to network and cable programming.

“We will fish where the fish are in a mighty big pond,” Google VP-content Robert Kyncl told attendees at YouTube’s upfront event Wednesday night, according to Advertising Age. “If you want to lead, join us now for the next seven years. We can build audiences together. We can build brands together.”

What do you think of YouTube’s new premium channels? Have you checked them out? Let me know in the comments.

Reference: http://is.gd/U5bkih

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