ROI questions?

If you are riddled with repeated conversations about the value and possibilities that exist through participation on the social web, or if you get the occasional ‘what’s the ROI?’ query, this article may help you to enhance your current response.  So much of the progress delivered through these efforts remains unseen, but Barak Obama and team entered the space and took advantage brilliantly.  An impressive effort IMO.

Living with integrity

I love this post from Wonderwebby, along with a great quote from Sacha Chua.  Read this!

Keeping in touch

Spoke to a group of Marist College students today.  PRSA members to be specific.  Working with Adam Christensen, we presented some of the ‘why we do it’ and ‘lessons learned’ type information around IBM and social computing prior to opening up the discussion to everyone attending. 

Adam had the great idea to have the group talk about how they find information online about companies, what resonates, what they like to find, what they do with it.  We got on the topic of recruiting and job hunting and the students came up with some interesting points that support quite a bit of what our team here at IBM does. 

Top response from the group in regard to key influencers was ‘word of mouth’ or looking for information from ‘people like me.’  We see this opinion quite a bit nowadays, and although some big business folks I speak with still don’t believe or understand this, the students rely on this form of information gathering quite heavily.  They prefer friends and family over online strangers, but admitted that the strangers did have impact if there was perceived common interest and beliefs/culture.

Second most important influencer…  Google search results.  Many of us may overlook this, but it is worth paying attention to.  Overlooking a major brand representation on Google, what comes back when folks ‘Google’ you? 

In regard to recruiting specifically, the students expressed desire in being able to find respective recruiters online and finding out a little bit about them prior to connecting on the phone or in person. I find this fascinating.  They look on Facebook for them, they Google them.  They do this as well for potential bosses and etc.  What do they want to do when they find you online?  They don’t want to get an email address or phone number or to start IMing…  they want to KNOW a little bit about you.  Pictures, interests, connections, to get a feel for you, even if it is a limited view.

All in all a very interesting session.  I’d like to thank the Marist PRSA for the invitation.  I think we all learned a few things today.