The Intersection of Online and Offline

It’s not just political candidates who are being thoroughly researched these days.  At a conference a couple of weeks ago, I sat next to a senior executive at one of the few remaining, solvent investment houses and the conversation drifted to social media.

Somehow, we got on the topic of hiring.  She flat out stated: “When I get my list of final candidate when hiring, the FIRST thing I do is Google them. And then I look up their profiles on Facebook.”

And this is not at all unusual.

I have said for years that Google’s largest step was not their IPO, but when their company name went from a noun to a verb.  Like Xerox did a few years ago.  But Google has indeed become part of our lives, our work, and an important tool for HR people.

Think about the hiring process.  I was an executive in the employment industry (beginning in the pre-Internet days) before we could Google someone, but I can promise you that, especially in a down economy, the front-line person whose job it is to go through a bazillion resumes is to carry out a search for the negative. To get through the pile, you usually start by eliminating people you don’t want so you can get to the people you do want.

As an applicant, your exercise is to put your best foot forward and make yourself look like you walk on water.  It’s a bit of a dance, but the rise of search engines and social media tools have changed the employment dynamic.  As you are pressing your suit and combing your hair, that HR person is likely doing an extensive online search on you.  So it’s important to think about the following:

1. What have I written out there (blogs, comments on other people’s sites) that I would not want someone to see?
2. What, if anything has been written or posted (like um…photographs) that I would not want someone to see?  And speaking of pictures, is there a Flick account out there that needs some editing?
3. Is my Facebook profile public?
4. Is my Twitter account readily identifiable?
5. What have I bookmarked on del.icio.us?

I could go on an on with other social media tools, but you get the picture.  Most employers are, by nature, cautious.  It used to be that they would get a chance to find out about you by asking tough questions during the interview.  Now, if you do not have good answers to the above, they may well already have some of the answers.

I am by no means saying that people should not be active on social media sites.   Just remember that what you write, the pictures you pose in, and the seemingly flippant comments you might make on someone else’s site are already in your employment profile.

Mark

I was so happy to be contacted yesterday by my once competitor, once colleague, and always friend, Cheryl Contee.  Cheryl is one of the smartest people out there in the social media space, and had worked out of the San Francisco office of a former employer.

I was overjoyed to find out that Cheryl, along with her business partner, Rosalyn “Roz” Lemieux, have founded Fission Strategy, a San Francisco-based consulting business:

“..specializing in online advocacy, marketing, and communications. Fission partners, Roz Lemieux and Cheryl Contee, have launched dozens of online campaigns, websites, and blogs. We have been using social media to help nonprofit organizations (and for-profits focused on “social good”) communicate since 2003, so we share with you tested techniques that work.”

Good things do indeed happen to good people, but more often than not, if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.   What makes me so happy is that Cheryl now has a place to literally call her own, in which she can apply her smarts, business acumen and wonderful personality.

I have told Cheryl in the past that we are parallel universe people for a variety of reasons, but I don’t care if you are a Democrat, Republican, black, white or striped - Cheryl is one smart cookie and I am delighted that she has her own gig.

Cheryl and Roz - I would wish you luck, but something tells me that you won’t need it.

Mark

I am really going to make this post short, because most of it is contained in an article that I wrote today for Media Bullseye.

For those of you who have followed my trek through self-absorption (the Internet revolves around ME), to realization to a public apology, you may enjoy the article.

It also includes four tips (self-taught), focused on thinking carefully about the consequences of putting something in cyberspace before one hits the “publish” button.

Mark

I’m doing a lot of thinking these days about measurement of the effectiveness of public relations programs.  We’re covering this in my class and my day job is, well, getting kicked around a bit of late.

I have long been a proponent of the premise that, in order to do good measurement, you need a “mashup” of tools.  You need to look at, of course, print, blogs, Web sites, message boards (especially in the world if finance), but measurement often lags behind the subject matter that it measures.

I’m coming late to the party, but ReadWriteWeb reported on the Twittermeter, a way to measure mentions in Twitter.  They state:

Enter Twittermeter. Twittermeter uses the Twitter API to scrape the site’s public feed and creates a database of every word sent over Twitter. Though database overages have forced the site to display only results for the past week, they have data since November 6th, 2007 totaling over 14.5 million words from 2.1 million status messages.

Twittermeter creates buzz graphs comparing words. For example, the graph below for the word “earthquake,” clearly shows a spike during the UK quake that took place earlier this week.”

Cool.  The challenge, for communicators, is now to add that to one big tent.  I am an unabashed fan of Custom Scoop, a platform that, while collecting information for thousands of print sites and blogs, also offers one of the opportunity to accept .xml feeds from other sites.  The more that you can measure under one big tent, the better. Tweetscan (or Twitter Search, whichever you call it) can also do it.

And while I am at it, measurement should not be about the tone or favorability ot articles, but of mentions of the company or issue that you are tracking.  Thanks to Katie Payne, I am now a disciple of “Measuring Public Relationships.”

Mark

Like many other people who are my peeps, I start my day off with some online news, peruse a couple of blogs, check Twitter (my tweeps), and sometimes even jump over to Facebook.

But I think that I am going to opt out of social media for the next month or so.  For me, it’s pretty simple.

I am hatin’ the hatin’.

Believe me, I am a First Amendment guy.  Most of the free world does not enjoy the freedoms that we do (read: China) when it comes to expressing individual opinion, especially via a vehicle that is targeted for mass distribution, like blogs, Twitter or Facebook.  But for me, it’s depressing as hell to open up social media tools and see so much venom spewed regarding the upcoming elections.  Again, see above — I am a First Amendment guy — but I am so tired of reading what are supposed to be either pithy or downright mean-spirited comments from both sides of the political aisle.  It’s a depressing way to start the day.

For example?

• “If I was [sic] John McCain, I would have insisted that the debates not be shot in HD.”
• “All of the McCain-Palin signs have gone missing from my neighborhood. And I thought Obama transcended politics.”
• “My neighbor got a new McCain-Palin sign. In fact, now he has two. Take that Obama sign stealers.”
• “Example #4980 why Congress is broken: The bailout vote was technically on the “Paul Wellstone Mental Health & Addiction Equity Act of 2007.”
• “Is the economy fixed yet?”
• “Is there anything about McC that you find NOT hypocritical lately?”

All of these represent Tweets or status updates that I have seen in the last week - hence, my decision to try to Opt Out of Ugliness.  You see, I have lived and worked in the nation’s capital since 1987 and have never — ever– seen such venom on both sides of the political aisle.  I am pretty sure that it was always there, it is just that the social-media-Hyde-Park-Speaker’s-Corner-Soap-Boxes did not yet exist.

So for all of you out there who are exercising your constitutionally-given right to express your political views, have at it.

But I can’t believe that I would EVER quote him — but of all of people, Howard Stern often said “if you don’t like what you are hearing, turn the radio dial.”  So for a while, I am out of the ugliness.

Mark