Like every other aspect of business communications, the new trend we see is the incredible impact social media is making on human resources outreach. There are three main thrusts to this trend (image credit: seniorserviceamerica):

1) Searching candidates history has been a controversial topic. While Google (and other search engines) can reveal a lot about a person, some cultures and conservative legal teams are rejecting this kind of intelligence as transgressing boundaries.  But around the country background checks are considered legal.

SMB Finance magazine recommends online checks as a way to avoid fraud from potential employees. In addition to formal services, employers often use Google, Facebook and other applications to determine character.  Strange college incidents, cursing, personality attacks and other negative comments can really hurt someone’s ability to successfully integrate into a culture, especially if those searches become public knowledge in a company.

2) Blogs and social networks have turned into fantastic recruiting mechanisms, demonstrating some of the exciting activities a company can offer potential candidates.  One of my local partners and friends, Brian Williams at Viget Labs, always says one of the biggest benefits of Four Labs is its ability to attract great talent. In Great Britain there’s a new site called Vlog, which allows employers to video blog their site.

LinkedIn has become its own art for both companies recruiting and job seekers alike.  LinkedIn in has great potential to be a hyper-local recruiting tool. Facebook seems to have become a millennial version of LinkedIn, a necessary place to fine entry level talent.

Another aspect of this specific trend is the use of social media by end users to find and locate new jobs. Increasingly, savvy people use social networking to get themselves in front of potential employers. 

3) At the same time, social media reputation management becomes increasingly important for companies who must be ready to deal with disgruntled and former employees that use blogs and other social media outlets to attack and criticize the company.  Consider how rapper/media mogul Jay Z’s 40/40 club in Las Vegas has garnered a bad reputation for abusing its employees. Or Shell Oil’s treatment of its North Sea workers.

It’s essential for companies to build monitoring programs so they don’t get blind sided by such events.While legal action may be the obvious recourse, blogs can be great mechanisms to counter disgruntled employees and tell your side of the story. Further, a blogger can provide a voice of reason in other blog’s comment sections, while not attacking said employee, the company’s policy and position can be equally represented.

Take your phone directory and organizational charts to the next level. How many hidden jewels of talent exist in your organization?

Employee personalized Intranet home page

Think social networks. Encourage employees to post pictures for easier recognition. Their home page may include:

• highlights of resume
• job title and description
• supervisor
• work affiliations
• project group pages

Don’t know the POC for direct mail? Use your Intranet search engine to find the experience you need. This degree of exposure may be uncomfortable. It is important to have transparent governance to set minds at ease and embrace the benefits of improved internal communications and potential career growth.

Find the right people to be in the right job at the right time.

There are instances of people being placed in jobs not matching their skill sets. Human Resources should comb through the Intranet as a first resource to find talent. This exposure will also help you identify gaps in knowledge. Use this tool as a barometer for training and recruiting.

Succession planning is important to the success of your company. Encourage management to use the Intranet to seek out potential candidates to mentor.  There are diamonds, emeralds and rubies just waiting to be discovered.

Chapter Six of Now Is Gone features a strategic approach to social media called Think Liquid. Yesterday on Marketing Profs, I published a new, amended version of Think Liquid which features three examples of this strategy applied.

Those examples were:

• Goodwill
• Ford’s use of SMRs
• ACDSee

It’s great to see strategic approaches and movement in social media worlds. Hats off to Brendan Hurly, Maggie Fox (and team) and Connie Bensen for their work in these initiatives.

On Saturday, February 16 from 1-5 p.m., I will moderate four consecutive one hour sessions on Now Is Gone for the my ooVoo day project. If you can’t catch me on the road, this is the perfect opportunity to have a deep dive on social media and how it can benefit your organization.

Here’s how it works, visit the my ooVoo day project site and sign up. You’ll download the software (for Mac or PC - both are still in beta). We are limited to five people in each session so don’t wait too long!

ooVoo is thanking us by sponsoring the the Frozen Pea Fund, a fund established to support the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer campaign, in honor of blogger, Twitterer and cancer patient Susan Reynolds. Thanks to Scott Monty for inviting me to participate in this great project!

Click To Play

True, it’s a little early to proclaim the new year, which according to the Chinese calendar rings in on Thursday the 7th. But since you are here exploring the notion of whether Social Media is right for your business and goals, I thought it would be a good time to challenge your perspective. (In some ways, it’s hard to beat the Chinese on perspective. What’s a few millenia among friends?)

China has been increasingly highlighted for its role in an interconnected global economy, but until recently the most profound impact on Western business thinking has been the various interpretations of the Sun-Tzu treatise “The Art of War.” Sun-Tzu was a general, and most versions of the book have his philosophy of conflict interspersed with commentary from students and devotees who span several centuries. It’s not so much a “how to wage war” manual as a “how to think about waging war” guide.

For that reason, many of the precepts can be converted into the business case. And they have. Ad nauseum. Lookup ‘business’ with ‘The Art of War’ on Google Checkout, and you get 180 hits at the time of this writing. Since the early 1980s, it has been an influence.

Online Fortune

If you want to understand Social Media, I won’t ask you to trash your copy of “The Art of War,” but rather supplement it with some wisdom from “The Analects” of Kung Fu-Tze (or Confucius as you might know him.) The word Analects means “fragments.” Imagine learning about a great professor not from his own writings, but from the margin notes of his students. Now you’re digging into the Analects.

While a study of the book makes for a fascinating case study in distributed intelligence (and for being the first literary wiki), I instead want to point you to one of Confucius’ central themes: Words and Deeds must be in harmony. A man is judged by backing up what he promises. But most importantly, there is no hidden motive - it is all on the surface.

If you decide that it is time for your organization to start venturing into the Social Web, then proceed with the idea of being transparent. Hidden agendas and identities don’t exactly engender trust — and while some members of communities will never trust your declared motive (or even any for-profit company), any breach of words and deeds will get you booted out. Your duty to your company comes first, yes… but you can’t help your company if you’ve insulted the community. It’s certainly a change from the win-or-lose mindset presented in most of the Art of War knockoffs, and one worth exploring.

(Ike Pigott regularly writes at Occam’s RazR)

Social networks are not always an easy thing to approach for B2B organizations.  Engaging a more conservative professional set — particularly outside of IT buyers — online takes intelligent use of social networks. 

First of all, you absolutely have to know where your community gathers online.  Otherwise it’s going to be a failure.  For example, Facebook may not be a good gathering point for copier buyers in large enterprises.

Unlike Jeremiah, I don’t think every company should go out and create their own social network. In fact, very few should.  There’s already quite a few established social networks. Unless your social network adds to the mix with something completely new for the marketplace, then you wil just be adding to the noise. This is particularly true for B2B organizations with their relatively smaller customer bases.

A recent conversation with GM’s Christopher Barger revealed that the nation’s #1 automaker understands this.  They are actively engaging communities within established social networks.

Some Specific Uses

A good place for B2B companies to look is within their own profession. Many professions are starting to develop their own micro-social networks particular to their niche.  IT Toolbox is the big hit for IT professionals. While I personally don’t use MyRagan, a lot of communicators have found this to be a comfortable place to engage in social media. How about LawLink for lawyers?

If there is no profession or vertical-specific social network, then there might be an opportunity to create one.  For example, there’s no social network for federal IT buyers. Yet. Consider if this significant investment is worthwhile (image from Google’s Social Graph).

LinkedIn provides interesting asymmetrical relationships, and is more trust oriented.  As a result, it has become a preferred business social networking tool over other networks like Facebook.  Some top LinkedIn uses include:

• Recruitment
• Networking
• Sales prospecting

Facebook can also be quite a recruiting tool for Gen Yers and Millenials as well as some professions (like PR).

Second Life has been a great meeting place for some companies trying to reach buyers externally as well as internal constituents.  Examples of Second Life usage include crayon and IBM.

Facebook can be a great place to start a community surrounding a subject matter.  Communities on these groups have to have fantastic value, so be sure to think about the real issues the market faces, then create your group. If it’s all about you, publish a PDF brochure online instead. You’ll save some money.

A few more reviews have emerged over the past week, and these have held the course, all recommending the book.  In addition to new Amazon reviews, it’s great to see people are enjoying the book. I am aware of at least one study group that have evolved, and have been asked to develop a curriculum based on the book by several organizations.

Our first review comes from WOMMA stalwart and Community Guy blogger Jake McKee:

This book is a fast, easy read; something most business books don’t tend to be. I’m generally a slower reader than most, so the idea of reading a business book cover to cover typically makes my brain hurt. When I started reading this book, however, I was surprised how fast I was making it through. For a book meant to help people understand the basics, this is an admirable trait…. If you’re looking to put a book in front of a client/colleague/executive that helps them understand what this social media space is all about and why they need to pay attention to it, this is a fantastic place to start.

Jake did bring up the typo issue, a result of our decision to race the book to market rather than go through the full editing process.

Next up TechnoBuzz’s Susan Tatum:

Social media is here to stay and every business technology marketer, executive and entrepreneur needs to get a grip on what that means. Now is Gone, Geoff Livingston’s primer on new media is a great place to start. This book provides a good high-level overview of the so-called New Media and how it affects the way we communicate with traditional PR audiences — such as journalists and analysts – as well as prospects, customers and our extended “communities”.

And finally, Rodger Johnson wrapped up his two part review on a much higher note:

Speaking broadly, without giving away all of Livingston’s book, he addresses how to use your company’s current marketing activity to affect social media communities. To be honest, chapter 4, on it’s own, will set the novice a step ahead of the newbie in just a few short minutes.  

Thanks to Jake, Susan and Rodger for taking the time to write these reviews.

It’s time for the completely shameless monthly exercise in subjective measures of greatness…the Most Influential Blogger post. Winners get complimentary Blogs of Fire T-Shirts.

This list changes quite a bit from month-to-month, and ranking by cumulative score allows for a better picture of my most influential bloggers.Year-to-date rankings for the blogger of the year are accumulated from month to month. As this is the first ranking of the year, we are beginning with a clean slate.

1) Shel Israel - Consciousness in a time when every marketer on earth is trying to figure out social media to make money. Shel offers a voice of reason and experience when we most need it. He has been my favorite read for some time.

2) Wkinomics (team) - Continuous and intelligent coverage about the ongoing social media revolution. This is the best blog about social media from an executive management trend perspective. If Read/Write Web is too geeky for you, check out Wikinomics.

3) B.L. Ochman - At a time when PR bloggers seem redundant, B.L. offers a breath of fresh air. I wouldn’t call her a PR blogger though, especially after her recent run-ins with PR Week. Anyway, lots of great insights into social media with B.L.

4) Ignite Social Media (Tobin and McNeil) - A great team blog with outstanding insights into marketing, backed with stats and figures. I always look forward to a new piece from this North Carolina-based blog team.

5) Chris Brogan - Ahh, grasshopper. Always on, always thinking about his community. It’s hard not to get something from Chris Brogan’s blog. Chris is a regular on the monthly most influential list.

And the 2008 rankings begin!

• Shel Israel - 5 points
• Wikinomics - 4 points
• B.L. Ochman - 3 points
• Ignite Social Media - 2 points
• Chris Brogan - 1 point

Another conversation from a marketer who thinks they can control the message. Sigh. I wonder what his company’s customers would say if they heard him saying, “I have more control then my customers do.”

Many marketers and businesses think they have control, and they don’t. It’s a marketer’s classic error to think they have control. I find it funny that this is an illusion that many large companies have and all of the smaller companies follow suit. Small to medium enterprises are the organizations that can least afford this pompous attitude.

Whenever I hear this opinion, I can tell someone hasn’t spent significant time in sales. And that’s a problem because marketing supports sales. It’s also a very good reason why in a downturn, marketing is the first to go. They don’t understand relationships.

Just because your company is talking doesn’t mean anyone is listening. Buyers rarely pay attention or voice anything when things are going right. They only care when their needs aren’t met. Yes, their exceptions to the general rule (Apple and Harley Davidson comes to mind, though my Harley Road king was not a great bike. Yet don’t these companies serve and fulfill needs, not message vacuums?).

We must always remember that buyers have the wallets… Money is the ultimate control. Companies have to serve consumers in order to get them to purchases. In essence, companies are trusted to resolve a need. I’ve sold more than $35 million of marketing services to companies, and I can tell you it wasn’t because of message control. It was because people trusted my companies could do the job. In that sense, I totally agree with Doc Searls: There is no market for messages.

When companies don’t serve customers and start shoving product (and messages) in controlled atmospheres, they ultimately fail. They forget that no company starts or continues without a sale. What was assumed to be control was granted by a buyer in trust. It can be taken away when trust is violated. And customer bases erode.

What social media has done is accelerated the process, but buyers were voting with their feet (and wallets) a long time before blogs started. Think Sears, Detroit auto, IBM consumer products, AT&T phones, on and on.

Interested in more? How about a podcast with Brian Solis and I on message control?