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Would Your Employees Wear Mardi Gras Costumes for You?

mardi-gras-masksI often write about how important employees are as the ultimate brand advocates and ambassadors next to consumers.  If your employees are treated well and truly believe in your company and your brand, then they’ll talk about it, and they’ll influence others.  In the end, your sales will rise.  But would your employees where Mardi Gras costumes, complete with beads, masks and more, for you?

That’s what Harrah’s asked 2,000 employees to do at the company’s Showboat casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey as part of its new, corporate-wide  “Everybody Plays a Part” program.  The goal of the initiative is to make the consumer experience at Harrah’s casinos more social, and each Harrah’s property can implement the program as they choose — such as Showboat’s Mardi Gras festivities.

My question is this — would your employees willingly participate in similar activities?  Or are they annoyed when they have to leave their desks for the obligatory company events?  Would they wear Mardi Gras costumes for you? [Read more…] about Would Your Employees Wear Mardi Gras Costumes for You?

Twitterers Share Their Micro-Blogging Tips

All you need is 140-characters, and you can see a difference. Perhaps a short daily blurb about business developments and changes is all it takes to make an impact.

Has your company embraced the Twitter craze yet?

No doubt that the Twitter craze has taken the internet by storm, but have you or has your company yet embraced what it has to offer? Or, are you still going to “wait it out” and see what the outcome is going to be? Don’t worry. Many others are waiting too.

A Loyal Following

A social networking force to be reckoned with, it certainly has positioned itself to be an extremely powerful tool for bloggers and corporations, harnessing the power it needs to propel itself to the next level of online marketing. With only 140 characters or less, the Twitter followers have made an impact on the web.

Today while I was perusing my followers and those whom I followed, I was able to glean a wealth of information and great links of information that helps me as a blogger and writer. There are a lot of knowledgeable people on Twitter, many of whom have internet-based jobs and use online tools like Twitter as their point of contact and as a business social tool also. How do you use Twitter? Is it working pretty good for you?

Work=Results

In the world of online trades and transactions, any marketer needs to be able to leverage the power of tools and resources and make it work for them. If not, then we are really all wasting our time, right? I mean, if we don’t take full advantage of every available, applicable resource, then what are we really doing but biding time? Twitter is like any other resource (but I am partial, of course) in that you only get out of it what you put into it. And, if you don’t put much into it, it can’t and it won’t work for you.

Many online marketers will beat their heads against walls, wondering why traditional methods aren’t working for them. They may change business goals even, just to get something to work. Why do that? Why angst? Just (effectively) use your available resources to work stronger and more powerful than just sit idle and do nothing. if you do, things will change and your business will grow. What can you do to make it work for you?

Here is a Youtube video where 100 Twitter share their all-important tips on how they make the micro-blogging platform work for them:

Anheuser-Busch Loses Trademark Battle and Budweiser Brand Name in EU

budweiser_budvarIn a what must be a painful decision, U.S. brewery Anheuser-Busch lost the right to use the brand name Budweiser in the European Union after a long legal battle with Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar finally came to an end.

Believe it or not, this article from Wikipedia does a great job of distilling the story of the highly sought after Budweiser name into a few paragraphs, and this story from Out-Law.com does a great job of describing the most recent legal actions surrounding the battle as well as the final decision.  Unbeknownst to me, this battle has been going on in some form or another since the 1870s.  This is a branding story I am not well versed on, but now that it’s on my radar, I’m finding it to be particularly interesting.

I’d love to hear some more opinions on this trademark dispute.  What do you think?  Take the poll below and share your opinion.  Also, leave a comment and give us some details about why you feel the way you do.  Know of more great resources to learn more about the history of the Budweiser brand name?  Share them in the comments section below. I’d love to read more about it myself.

Image: Flickr

Recruiting 2.0: The New Importance of Community

pg-cinncinati

This post is really about two different types of “community,” but they are closely connected in the evolving environment of Recruiting 2.0. One is the creation of an online community that attracts and nurtures candidates. The other is the use of location and lifestyle information to attract candidates and nurture new-hires.

I started this train of thought when an interesting tidbit about Proctor & Gamble’s new website focused on Cincinnati—about which more in a moment—came along at the same time I was reading some updates from the recent South by Southwest Interactive Festival. Better known as SXSWi, this gathering attracts both a lot of people and a lot of attention (get the flavor with a CNET roundup), and one of the hot topics this year was virtual/online communities, and the management thereof.

If anyone is thinking “What even is an online community?”, there’s a useful explanation/analysis at trusty old Wikipedia. And if anyone is asking “What does this have to do with recruiting?”, there’s an interesting discussion at EXCELER8ion, which explains that many candidates today have expectations of the recruitment experience based not on what has traditionally been provided by companies, but on the type of experience they have become accustomed to on the web.

Those expectations include a variety of factors (such as snappy design, quick performance, media enrichment, etc.) that have already been very influential in the development of Careers sites.  But an additional–and increasingly important–set of expectations has evolved from the connectivity created by social networks, blogs and articles that allow comments, and discussion forums. In short:  Many candidates are accustomed to virtual communities and want to find something similar when evaluating a prospective employer.

Creating a virtual community begins with putting the online part in place, but continues with the care and feeding of participants. The second part is called “community management,” and a new area of expertise has developed to meet emerging needs.  If you want to get under the hood of what a community manager is/does, check out a couple of community manager blogs: community spark and Kommein.

In terms of recruiting, the EXCELER8ion post suggests that a community manager can have several critical functions:

  • As a candidate community advocate, focused on listening, understanding candidate needs, and facilitating social media conversations
  • As an employer brand ambassador, spreading positive views of the company and highlighting opportunities through social media channels
  • As an analyst/evangelist, who can identify needs and issues, and communicate with both technical providers and business stakeholders to facilitate improvements

Now—what about Cincinnati? As reported in the Business Courier recently, mega-company Proctor & Gamble is building a website that will leverage in-depth information about living in Cincinnati to create interest among job candidates and support for onboarding recruits. It also provides an opportunity to showcase the eight P&G facilities in the area.

In addition to what’s on the current version of the site, P&G reportedly will add about 40% more content before a July launch, including features on company hires who have moved to Cincinnati.

Obviously, Proctor & Gamble is making a big investment in connecting candidates and employees with offline community (aka, the real world). So of course I was curious about their Careers site—and not surprisingly, it is feature rich. But not plugged into the 2.0 world! Apparently P&G is starting to develop a social media agenda, though. Read about their kick-off, and we’ll keep an eye on developments.

Corporate Values on the Corporate Website

the-philosophers-stoneWouldn’t it be great in these days of gloom to find something bright, a ray of sunshine like a philosopher’s stone to bring businesses together in everlasting win-win situations?

Well, according to Business In The Community (BiTC) there is such a thing: a company’s statement of corporate values.

“A Purpose Beyond Profit”

At the beginning of the month BiTC released a briefing paper entitled “The whys and hows of corporate values”.

At its heart is a list of the benefits a company can reap from having a good, strong set of corporate values.

The actions required boil down to stakeholder engagement.  Employees, customers, suppliers and clients are all much more likely to be loyal to a company which has a clear ethos and understands its position in the wider world.

The paper also has one of the best definitions of corporate values I’ve come across:

It is not a mission statement that describes what task the company aims to fulfil. Neither is it a set of commercial objectives. …. Corporate values are about what the company stands for and how its employees behave. They are about framing a role for the business that gives it a purpose beyond profit. (my emphasis) [Read more…] about Corporate Values on the Corporate Website

Test Question

Actually, it’s one strategic question with ten tactical sub-questions, and it was asked recently by recruiting guru Lou Adler: “Is Your Career Site Turning Off Top Candidates?” Adler breaks out his query into a scoring system for site assessment and discusses each item in some detail, so the article is well worth a read. Meantime, I’ll recap Adler’s questions here, and then add two more Qs for good measure.

I’ve put a brief explanation of each topic in parenthesis:

1.  Can candidates just look, or are they forced to “buy”? (Visitors should get plenty of information without having to apply.)

2. Are jobs easy to find? (Visitors should be able to locate relevant job listings efficiently.)

3.  Can your career site be found easily? (Visitors to the corporate site should be able to locate the Careers area quickly.)

4.  Are your job descriptions boring or compelling? (Descriptions should “wow” a top candidate.)

5. Is the application process simple or an endurance contest? (Application should take less than five minutes.)

6.  Is there a way to stay connected without applying? (Visitors should have options to submit a resume or sign up for something even if they do not apply for a job.)

7. Is there a CRM nurturing process? (Follow-up contact campaigns should be in place for “candidate relationship management.”)

8. Can your ads be found by those who are Googling for jobs or those not looking? (Jobs should appear on the first or second page of a reasonably targeted online search—and extra points if jobs appear on social media.)

9. Do you use SEO’d talent hubs for groups of similar jobs? (Adler uses the term “talent hub” in a specific way—best to read his explanation.)

10. Can your candidates find employees they know within your company? (This point is about the importance of an active employee referral program—not clear how it relates to the corporate website.)

Questions 1-6 make up a handy checklist for doing your own site review, and questions 7-10 provide food for thought about recruiting strategy in general and web presence in particular. But there are a couple of additional queries I think would make an excellent addition . . .

Adler begins the article with an assertion that “most career sites are designed to repel the best and attract the worst.” There’s definitely truth in that statement, though in most cases the effect is probably not due to design, but to lack of design. And lack of attention. So a very good question would be:  Is there a dedicated resource for coordinating and maintaining the design and functionality of the Careers site? And if so—does that person have the requisite skills to do the job, and enough time to do it?

The other question I’d suggest (and I would make it the very first one) is:  Can you state the mission of your Careers site? Different companies have different recruiting needs and strategies. Sometimes these are well-defined, sometimes they are not. And even if there is a definition, sometimes it is intentionally and skillfully utilized to create a “just-right” Careers site, more often it is not.

And that sets up another post. In the meantime–let me know if you think there are other questions begging to be asked!