How Often? When? And How Many?

There are all kinds of statistics around about when to post where and with what frequency in order to reach as many people as possible.  Over the course of the summer, I conducted a survey among my LinkedIn contacts, Twitter followers and Facebook friends to understand their social media behaviour.  Here are the results.

Twitter

Check Frequency: 45% check Twitter mulitple times per day.  Add another 17% that checks it daily.

Check Peak:  The prime moments for checking Twitter seems to be during and after work hours (over 70% for both categories).  The morning seems to show the lowest activity and so do breaks.

Post Frequency: There is a wide spread which is linked to the large number of lurkers on Twitter.  However, it seems that 43% tweet 1-3/week,.  27% do it between 1 and 3 times per day.  Less than 10% tweet more than 5 times per day.

LinkedIn

Check Frequency: The use of LinkedIn for more than HR purposes is driving up the frequency with which people check LinkedIn.  With over 35% checking multiple times/day and 29% daily we give LinkedIn a thumbs up. Amazingly enough 2% never visits their profile while the rest checks it once a month.

Check Peak: As can be expected with a “professional” networking platform, most people access it during the work day.  An amazing 80% do it during work hours.  Breaks, mornings and evenigs do not seem to be  so popular.  It si considered work.

Post Frequency: From experience I know people do not do many Status Updates on LinkedIn.  The survey confirmed this again with 27% never posting and 33% only once a month.  Less than 11% post daily on LinkedIn.

Facebook

Check Frequency: As expected over 65% check their Facebook multiple times per day.  Adding the 17% of daily checkers and we can conclude we are addicted to Facebook!

Check Peak: Here too, not many surprises except the fact that before breakfast does not do so well.  The highest peak lies in the evening after work.

Post Frequency: Since facebook has the highest degree of “lurkers” it is not surprising that weekly (42%) and daily (31%) post are the dominant numbers here.

Google what?

Yet again, Google+ demonstrates its ability to stay under the radar.  Even though there are so many accounts (gmail users, android users, picasa users, youtube user, etc.) few people are even aware they have a G+ account.  More that 60% never visit the account with another 10% that don’t even know they have such an account.

Conclusion

Though this research did not reveal anything dramatic, it confirms that LinkedIn is the professional tool of choice and tolerated in the workplace; Facebook the lurking tool into our realm of friends and brands; Twitter the platform no one really knows what to think of; and Google+ that special place in the desert!

How does your social media behaviour fit in with these results?

Here is the graphic representation of these survey results.

10 Reasons Jobseekers Don’t Click Through on Recruiter’s LinkedIn Profile

There is a lot of advice on how candidates should optimize their LinkedIn profile so they can be found by recruiters.  I recently came across this post 5 Reasons Recruiters Don’t Click Through Your LinkedIn Profile which inspired me for this post.

Over the summer months of 2013 I have done some research how recruiters in Belgium present themselves on LinkedIn (750 profiles of recruitment professionals reviewed) and here are my conclusions (and also the reasons why candidates do not click on recruiter’s profiles).

Reason #1: 50% have NO profile picture.  Recruiters want to see what candidates look like, but so do candidates want to know what recruiters look like.

Reason #2: They have no contact information.  And yes, only the 1^st degree contacts can see you email/phone number but still as a recruiter you want to have the “good”  candidates find you easily.  Only 1 in 8 has their email/phone number visible somewhere in their profile!  Only 50% mention their website!

BTW. Few job seekers are not using the Inmail functions.

Reason #3: Only 33% have a personalized Vanity URL.  This could suggest a newbie or someone who does not care about their image or profile.

Reason #4: Few contact (Less than 250).  I understand you are careful with who you let into your network but less than 500 contacts does not foster any confidence that the recruiter is “well connected”.  It is also unlikely they will connect with you, even if they do not share who they are connected to..

Reason #5: About 50% have completed their summary information (your elevator pitch).  When it comes to their work history it seems they are not willing to provide much detail about it other than their title.  Less than 10% have discovered the multi-media possibilities of LinkedIn.  It seems the motto is “less is better”.  Again not fostering confidence.

Reason #6: Recruiters do not seems to share much which groups they belong to.  Most are part of 8 to 12 groups mostly general or peer groups.  So again, it makes it difficult for candidates to get in touch with them.  (Tip: remember, you can send free emails to all group members). Additionally, recruiters do not seem to follow any companies.  Most follow their own only.

Reason #7: Few recruiters are active on other networks such as Twitter, Facebook or Google+.  So Twitter handles can barely be found on their LinkedIn profile.

Reason #8: You have “Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile” set to anonymous or semi-anonymous.  The candidate is not able to click back.

Reason #9: Recruiters barely use Status Update to inform their network they are looking for candidates or even better sharing valuable information about the recruitment business or processes.

Reason #10: Most recruiters have few endorsements (sign of unhappy candidates?).  And recommendations are even more hard to find.

When it comes down to company profile, recruitment companies do not stand out an example.  Here are some examples:

• 76% have their logo on the company profile
• 33% have a cover picture
• 41% have Products and Services filled in
• 22% have recommendations for these Products and Services
• 33% use Company Status updates to inform their followers about new opportunities or to share information with their contacts.
• 97% of all company updates NEVER get shared, liked or commented on
• Less than 50% mention on their website they can be found on Social Media!

.I would like to end with 2 conclusions:

1. Recruiters still social media (and LinkedIn in particular) as a one-way street where they control the drive direction.  However, social media is a two-way street with a lot of opportunities.  Most recruiters are aware they need to have a professional profile but they have a long way to go.
2. Recruiters seem to forget they need to find new clients and opportunities to fill too, but their profile does not appeal to future clients.

What reasons do you have not to visit recruiter’s profile?  Love to hear from you!

If you are interested in getting a copy of the results of my survey (200 companies and 750 profiles reviewed), please mail me at mic@vanguard-leadership.be .

Social Media Policies in Belgium (Part 1) – Only 1 in 5 company has one!

Social Media Policies have found their entrance into large corporation but the small and especially the medium sized companies have not created and implemented  such social media policies.

Earlier this year PayScale released some results about the adoption of Social Media Policies in the USA (http://mashable.com/2012/06/10/employer-social-media/).  The conclusion was that over 50% of the companies had a formal social media policy.  But how do Belgian businesses match up to these numbers?

A recent survey (October 2012) done via Vanguard Leadership has revealed that only 1 company in 5 has a social media policy in Belgium.  And since Belgium is a country of Small and Medium sized business, we can conclude that the 20% of companies that have a social media policy are mainly  the larger companies.

The same survey uncovered that  65% of the employees accessed Facebook, 52% LinkedIn and 53% Twitter daily during work hours.  You would think that social media policies would be more common since employers are worried about their employees wasting time or damaging the reputation of their company on social media.

A first conclusion is that companies are not always aware that their employees are very active on social media.  Though these companies are aware that such a policy is a must they do not create or implement a policy or guidelines until they have an “accident” which leads to reputation loss.  Over the course of the year we have witnessed several of these examples (e.g. Ikea in Belgium – http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=GVB3M9AGE) where a social media policy is created after the reputation damage was detected.

More information to come about the results of this survey in next blog posts.

Notes about the survey:  Over 200 companies were surveyed.  About 50% have less than 50 employees, 30% have less than 250 employees and  and 20% were larger than 500 employees.

Help, where did the conversation go?

One of the first things we learn when we join Linkedin is that we need to participate in groups.  Whether you are a job seeker, marketeer, or a professional, you are told by social media experts and trainers you need to join groups to listen to discussions and contribute content and discussions.  So we go in search of groups that we feel like joining.  I have heard a lot of people complain about the fact that there is a lack of discussion, value and content in many groups.  Thus they bail out and stop looking at these groups.

Here some of us meet our first disappointment. We only look for and join groups that contain peers rather than our target audience.  There seems little conversation going on in these groups since we are looking at what the others (like us) will share and post.  A lot of those posts seem to be self-promotional vs content and discussion driven.

After a while we begin to see that we need to join groups where our target audience is present.  But here too the disappointment is big because conversation is not really happening here either.

I do understand that there a large number of groups and that some are more conversational than others.  However, looking at about 50 groups ranging from a few members to 708.000 members, I find that weekly a few new discussions are started and a few comments are given.  In terms of the new discussions, we all know that only a portion of the information is original and most comes from other places and simply duplicated and shared (which is not wrong).

In order to evaluate a group, I have come up with Conversation Index which is the total amount of average weekly comments/posts divided by the number of members.  The higher the number the more conversational the group is.

Below is a view of some of the groups including the Conversation Index.

A few interesting conclusions:

• Most of the groups have a conversation index below 1%
• Not many groups get in triple digits in terms of new conversations/comments
• Many must parts of groups just to “listen” but it is hard to get a grip on how many

The conclusion continues to confirm to me that LinkedIn is still a pure (very efficient) networking tool rather than a conversational tool or collaboration tool. (And yes, I know I will take some flack for this). On the other hand, I would like to call LinkedIn members to start one discussion and add one comment to a discussion every week to make the conversation come alive.

What other ideas do you have to get the conversation started and going on LinkedIn?  I would love to hear from you.

CEOs lack time to take part in Social Media

Close to a billion people are using social media platforms today.

Most, of them are doing it for personal use but more and companies are jumping on the bandwagon.  Though some CEOs are embracing social media most of them despise it and stay away as far as possible.  This brings up a lot of challenges for the social media champions and social media addicts to convert and convince these people.

Most CEOs do not (want to) see the benefits of social media because their mind is set on other things such as return on investment.  Social media can reap a lot of return but unfortunately, it takes time and most CEOs and executives do not have that time (to wait for results).

In a recent survey done by Vanguard Leadership, we found that a remarkable number of Belgian CEOs are present on one of the major platforms (89%). However, less than 25% are active.  So what are their reasons not to be active:

• Lack of time – CEOs do not spend, like most of us, time in front of their PC, ipad or even smart phone. Let’s be real they are not paid to do the legwork.
• Lack of peers and interaction – This is a continuation of the above point.  Since they are not taking time to read, comment or contribute to social media there is no interaction between them and others (peers or not).  No interaction means no incentive to contribute.
• Information overload and quality – Having a lot of information is good for decision making but we all know that social media provides too much information. And if you do not control it properly (and that takes time) it creates overload.  Too much (unqualified) information leads to confusion and bad decision making.  Not what a CEOs is waiting for…
• Lack of knowledge and understanding – Most CEOs are not digital natives.  So social media is not part of their DNA. Time and energy are needed to learn about a multitude of platforms.  And the speed of evolution of these platforms brings on another big problem for them when trying to keep up with these evolutions.  A challenge CEOs do not really need or want.  Additionally, they only hear the bad stories because good stories are less told so why should they invest their valuable time.

However, there are some good reasons why  you need to convince them to join.  More and more CEOs are doing it and seeing the benefits:

• By taking part in social media the CEO demonstrates his leadership in adopting new technologies and thus more members from the executive team will join.  A great starting point to get CEO buy-in is to implement social media internally first.  By using social media internally not only does communication improve (less distance between management and employees) but lessons are learned internally and no mistakes are made when social media is externalized.
• When CEOs use social media with customers, suppliers and  employees, it makes the person and company more human and you get the benefit of more opinions and easier accessibility
• It is clear that a CEO can boost the brand by using social media.  Many US examples have shown the way here.
• Finally, when the CEOs is on social media, the company is able to attract easier young people since the company is seen as a dynamic operation.

The conclusion is really that today’s CEO is far from joining actively social media because of the lack of time but once convinced he will be the motor that can shifts the company into a higher gear.

Are CIOS lost in the social media cloud?

Introduction

source: shutterstock

Cloud Computing is one of the hottest topics in IT.  As more non-IT business people are getting tech and internet savvy, they are bringing in cloud applications into the enterprise to solve their specific problems.  A lot of time this is even done without support from IT.  This is known as stealth cloud computing.   CIOs under the pressure of shrinking budgets are struggling to embrace the cloud computing concept and trying to figure out how to integrate this into their product offering to the business.  Some are succeeding, but most are struggling.   But the biggest cloud application to enter the enterprise today is social media and this is being ignored by a lot of IT managers. More and more social media applications are being used by different departments in the enterprise thus requiring IT managers to chain their point of view.

To understand social media the statement “practice makes perfect” stands out.  But how much practice are CIOs putting into to understanding social media.  Are they becoming a social media champion or hiding in the basement?

Research

In an independent market research exercise, over 100 CIOs of top companies in Belgium have been analyzed for their social media presence.  The research has focused on the business side of social media which includes LinkedIn, Twitter and Blog presence.

As could be expected nearly all CIOs have a profile on LinkedIn (97%). When it comes to Twitter 67% has no account.  21% has a clearly identifiable account.  The remaining 12% are accounts that could belong to a CIO but no picture or clear reference is made (only a likely similar name of the CIO was found).   Finally only 7% seem to have personal website of blog page.

Digging a little deeper in Twitter (all 33%), it reveals that 32% have never sent a tweet, The next 26% less than 5 tweets from which we can conclude that twitter is not really used.  There is one CIO in the list of 100+ analyzed that stands out with over 3000 tweets.  The same picture comes up to when looking at the number of people CIOs follow, 16% have no followers or follow someone and 70+% have less than 50 with the majority under 10.

Recommendation

Sticking your head in the sand and ignoring social media, as some large enterprises have opted to do, probably isn’t the solution. Whether it is internal use of social media or external branding and sales, CIOs have a critical role. CIOs should help HR, marketing, sales, product to leverage social media for company’s advantage. CIOs are expected to provide the technical strategy and tools to execute social media strategy and provide results on its effectiveness while avoiding security breaches or a social media meltdown.

Now that CIOs have conquered social networking using LinkedIn , the next step is to demonstrate they understand social media by starting a blog (add value by sharing) and a Twitter account (info sharing and traffic generation).

Not getting recruited via social networking? Do not worry, you are not alone.

The results from a recent survey (September-October 2010) from Executives Online Ltd (www.executivesonline.com) puts a bit of shade on the so much hyped social networking as a means to efficient recruitment. This is the second year the survey was conducted.

Over 1200 senior executives were surveyed and asked about their opinion and effectiveness of social networking in their personal and professional life.  In concurrence with many surveys in this area, including the study done by Mic Adam from Vanguard Leadership of July 2010, LinkedIn was deemed by most professionals as the most interesting social networking site with Facebook coming in as a good second and Twitter as a third.   All these platforms grew in importance over the last 12 months.

As can be expected, LinkedIn is viewed as the most useful platform for recruitment (90%) while the other platforms are struggling to get to 50%.  This is understandable since the audience surveyed is executive level.  Facebook is still viewed as purely private networking while Twitter is a big unknown to many.

With the hype around social media in general, more and more people are resorting to these platforms to find a new job but few have actually succeeded at securing such a position.  I think this really reflects the practice in the recruitment market. The numbers do show a 50% increase over last year’s results which holds a good promise for the future.  Let’s be honest, social networking still has to find its ‘balanced’ place in the mix of tools used by managers and recruiters both professionals and corporate.

When it comes to hiring via social networking sites, the numbers are even lower.  Fewer than 5% of the respondents have actually tried to hire through social networks and even fewer have hired people recruited through social networks.  So the conclusion is that the supply of job seekers far exceeds the demand (job offerings).  However, here too the numbers are on the rise.

Even though there is certainly an uptake of social networking for recruitment, there are some serious showstoppers which hold true for all trades when it comes to social media.  They can be summarized as follows: lack of authenticity, the myth that social networking is for younger and less senior people, and most importantly, the time factor since keeping a social media presence takes time to maintain and follow up.  This is where a lot of falls apart.  Managers and recruiters, just like marketeers, are finding that using social media & networking is a time consuming activity but keep in mind that going to network meetings is too!

Even though these numbers do not seem to live up to the hype, I feel they really reflect the reality of today.  There are,  of course, today recruitment agencies as well as private companies that are getting more than 15% of their new hires through social networking, it is realistic to say that social networking recruitments will be responsible for 10% of the new hires in the future.  The traditional method will continue to exist and possibly regain their strength.

The full survey can be found at:

http://www.executivesonline.co.uk/about_us/reports/social_networking

Do you have a success story and want to share your secret on how to get recruited via social networking,  I would love to hear about it.

Are companies listening to their social media accounts?

Social media is growing at phenomenal rate.  The popularity of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, Video and Photo platforms together with the ease of use of technology is now making social media a great tool for companies and their marketers to get closer to their customers.  So many companies are taking steps towards social media.

However, social media implies two-way communication (interaction with/engagement of the customers) and presents therefore a number of new challenges for companies: visibility, monitoring and engagement.  When these 3 elements are ignored, a lot of opportunities are lost.  It also demonstrates that social media is not integrated into the company strategy.  The market study looks at all 3 areas.

Limited visibility.

Many companies (71%) do have some kind of presence in social media meaning a business profile, but less 1 in 4 (25%) make that visible on their website.  LinkedIn seems to be most popular social media platform where companies have such a profile.  Facebook and Twitter are still not much used by companies.

Are you really listening?

When it comes to listening, there are 3 types that should be covered: (1) What is said in the “cloud of social media platforms” about the company, its brands and its people; (2) What is posted on the social media platforms/profiles of the companies (opportunities to engage) (3) What are your own employees posting on social media platforms .  The research revealed that companies are not listening… Twitter is the best monitored social media platform, while Facebook is really used as additional advertising channel.

No, Lack of engagement!

Social media platforms are mainly used as a marketing tool and messages left on company pages are a lot of the time left unanswered.  Only 45% of all Twitter messages were responded to while less than 5% of the messages on Facebook were answered!

Individuals responsible for corporate social media accounts – if companies have appointed them – treat the company social media profiles with far less respect and professionalism than their own personal accounts.

This research is the result of a market study done by Vanguard Leadership in August 2010.  In this market study we have used social media and the internet to build the dataset.  We have analyzed 540 websites of companies (from Bel-20 over Trends Gazellen to general companies across all sectors).  Monitoring was done by posting messages on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin to check the monitoring behavior and response of companies.  The complete report and the presentation can be found on slideshare (report: http://slidesha.re/cN7RF9 or http://scr.bi/9LrqbO – presentation: http://slidesha.re/8XeWhg or http://scr.bi/cxifMV).

Contact:

Mic Adam

Social Media Policy Creator/General Manager

Adammic@vanguard-leadership.be

Phone: +32 478 50 41 35

Social Media in Belgian Recruitment Companies

Recruitment and social media seem to go hand in hand.  Candidates who are looking for a new job are often told to update, complete and professionalize their profiles on all of these social media platforms in order to be found easily.  However, how professional and visible are recruitment companies and professionals?  It is clear that these companies and its professionals are making progress using social media but there is certainly a lack of strategy and direction.

Limited visibility.

Though recruitment companies are present in social media, few promote their presence (14%) on their website of jobsite.  8% of all companies analyzed did not have a website nor a social media presence.  LinkedIn is the social media platform that recruitment companies seem to embrace (57%).

Room for improvement on the professional image.

Job searchers are often told to professionalize their social media profile on LinkedIn by completing them as much as possible.  However, this can not be said about the recruitment professional!  They seem to leave all the good advice behind them with as most notable examples the fact 51% does not have a profile picture and 52% do not mention their own company website.

Lack of engagement.

The limited visibility of recruitment companies and the poor level of professionalism by the recruitment professionals lead to a lack of conversation and/or engagement with candidates.  The mostly mentioned reasons for this behavior is the “lack of time” and “lack of results” (aka ROI).  The conclusion is that today social media is being used reactively as to mainly verify that the paper resume corresponds the online resume.

Recruitment companies let a lot of opportunities slip because of this lack of engagement with possible candidates including those not actively looking.  Engagement will lead the way to finding good candidates with the right profiles more easily as a few companies in the research have demonstrated.  Creating the right image will build the brand even in the recruitment business.

This research is the result of a market study done by Vanguard Leadership in July 2010.  In this market study we have used social media and the internet to build the dataset.  We have analyzed 180 websites of recruitment companies and 850 profiles (in LinkedIn) of recruitment professionals in the Belgian market). The complete report and the presentation can be found on slideshare (report: http://slidesha.re/9rJlt8 or http://scr.bi/atOa17 – presentation: http://slidesha.re/9q47JN or http://scr.bi/aM94PS).

Contact:

Mic Adam

Social Media Policy Creator/General Manager

Adammic@vanguard-leadership.be

Phone: +32 478 50 41 35

Vanguard Leadership (www.vanguard-leadership.be) is a company that helps protect companies and individuals protect their reputation in social media by providing awareness presentations, social media inventories, creating social media policies, training and social media monitoring.

Are you visible?

Companies are deciding to embrace social media and are creating different social media profiles such as Twitter handle, Facebook Fan page, LinkedIn company profile, Youtube channel, etc.  But companies seem to forget is that you need to make these visible otherwise you miss the point.

From intermediate research results of a study done by Vanguard Leadership, I can see that 2 out the 3 companies (sample is 450 belgian companies of all sizes) do NOT have any links to social media on their website.

Recently I have read that most marketers are monitoring what is being said in the social media space.  So I have looked into this with my study find interesting facts which I will detail later this month. The biggest challenge is to find company Twitter handles and this for a number of reasons.

However, looking beyond the initial numbers, I investigated whether companies are actually listening to what shows up on these social media platform.  Using Twitter I am finding that under 50% are even responding to a message.

The conclusions and recommendations are then:

• Choose your social media that fit your business
• Create the profiles you can manage
• Make sure they easily be found – use obvious names
• Put a link to your social media on your website
• Be open to and welcome interaction and dialogue

Have comments? Feel like reacting?  Why hesitate?