Social Media Stats Ireland – June 2011
Did you know that LinkedIn membership in Ireland is up 11% in the last two months alone?
Did you know that the only job related website to appear in the top 100 websites in Ireland is jobs.ie? Want to know where in the list it is?
Check out these latest social media and recruitment stats in Ireland brought to you by the team in Social Talent.
And here’s the Bloopers Reel!
You can check out the YouTube version here.
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Tagging Facebook Brand Pages in Personal Photos
A few weeks ago, Facebook announced a new function for Brand pages on its site that enabled fans to Tag the brand page in their personal photos. So, for example a fan of a well known cola brand, drinking a can of said cola, could tag both themselves and the cola brand in their photo. This photo would then appear on the Brand page in their Photos section, and promote the brand amongst their target market.
In the two weeks since its roll-out, this function has received mixed reviews from ordinary Facebook users and the Brands themselves. Companies who use Facebook were quite upset when Facebook narrowed its EdgeRank (the algorithm that determines what posts appear in one’s News Feed) making corporate posts invisible to most of their long-term fans. This Tagging function was supposed to make up for it, as a way of instilling interaction and engagement amongst their fans. However, many brands of non-consumer goods products or services are finding this piece of branding pretty useless.
For ordinary Facebook users, some hardcore fans of particular brands are tagging the brands all over their photos and engaging with the brand in a way that they never did before. On the other hand, many find this function “a bit creepy”, and this form of real-life product placement is beyond their tolerance of marketing messages.
Tag! You're IT!
So, we’re going to try an experiment: Today, we’re hosting a track at #TruDublin recruiter unconference at 1.30pm, and all around the conference you should be able to spot several of our team wearing pristine new Social Talent T’s. Get yourself in a photo of these T’shirt(s), tag both yourself and the Social Talent page on Facebook, and we’ll pick a winner who’ll get an amazing prize*!
*Disclaimer: Prize may or may not be amazing.
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How to boost your company’s profile on LinkedIn using Video
LinkedIn have enabled members to insert videos and presentations in to their profiles since late last year, but barely anyone uses this application, or even knows that this function is available.
We’ve seen in the last few weeks how innovative use of video, social media and technology can greatly enhance your CV and prospects of finding an amazing new job by impressing the company you wish to work for. See this link for some great examples of Social Media in action in a candidate’s CV.
So what about LinkedIn’s video application? Where is it? How do you use it? What good will it do?
Where is it?
Menu bar, LinkedIn
You’ll only be able to load a YouTube video to the application, so first thing’s first, load your video to your YouTube account.
Log in to LinkedIn, and then click on “More” in the top tool bar. Click on “Get More Applications” at the bottom of the drop-down menu (in this screen shot, I have already installed the Google Presentation app on my profile, so it appears in my tab).
Then scroll through the list of Apps, choosing “Google Presentation”, which is nearly at the bottom. Click on “Install this Application”, and then “Go to Application”.
How do you use it?
From here, you can upload a powerpoint presentation, or you can embed a video by clicking “Create a presentation”. This will bring you to a new blank document on Google Docs, (which is a free tool and everyone should use this for file sharing and storage). Create a GoogleDocs presentation, click “Insert” along the top and then “video” in the drop-down menu.
GoogleDocs Menu Tab
Choose your video file from YouTube and then upload your video in to your presentation slide. Using your mouse, stretch the frame of the video so it fills the slide, and then “Save” your presentation. Add a title by clicking on “Untitled Presentation” seen in this screen shot (right). Now within LinkedIn, your newly created presentation should be ready to upload to your profile, just click the presentation file you wish to load and then “Post to Profile”. It will now appear after your experience and groups on your profile. Simple as!
For those of you who have been diligently practicing Boolean searching, search for my LinkedIn profile and watch my quick 52-second video (I’ll make it easy: find the full spelling of my name at the top of this post) – forgive the stage-fright! This little video was recorded using the built-in camera on my Macbook, but similar videos can be recorded using phones or camcorders.
What good will it do?
It’s an excellent way of adding personality to your company’s LinkedIn profile, and give valuable insight in to who works in your organization and the kind of candidates you’re looking for.
Alternatively, it can be put to excellent use by job-seekers who wish to stand out from the crowd, using a quick video to demonstrate their CV and allow companies to virtually meet you and get a feel for who you are and why you’re perfect for the job.
Tips on Video Content:
- Try keep it short and sweet – people get bored easily.
- For job-seekers: promote your skills, talk through your CV and experience, where you’ve come from and why you’re best for a particular role.
- For company pages: it should reflect the company’s ethos and expectations, whether you’re a casual-friday kind of company or strictly formal. Allow your employees to shine and represent you for what you actually are, it’ll give potential hires a great feel for the business and encourage those that will fit in to apply. Talk about when they arrived at the firm, what they love about their job, and maybe their favourite part about their office etc.
We’ll be running a track at #TruDublin this week, Wednesday and Thursday in the Harcourt Hotel in Dublin, hope to see you there!
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More Boolean Sourcing Tips for Recruiters
Last week we ran a free Webinar entitled “There’s more to X-Ray search than LinkedIn” where we showed recruiters how to x-ray search sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, Quora, WordPress, Blogger, Xing, Viadeo, Naymz, Plaxo and Google Profiles (click on the previous links to see search string examples which you can use as templates for your own searches) to find millions of candidate profiles. If you missed it, here’s a chance to watch it again for free: just click on this link and use the password: g3n81vff8h
There are endless websites where you can find biographical data on potential candidates or hires, the limits are only that of your imagination (or inquisitive nature, depending on your point of view!). Whilst checking out Irina Shamaeva’s Boolean Strings network this evening I came across a great post by Gary Cozin on how to x-ray search Amazon for potential profiles.
I have modified this for the Irish market, making sure to remove most of the “Dublin” location references that are actually in the US. The location field is free-text so you have to play around with it for good results.
Here’s the string:
What is powerful about this is that searching for a term like “Marketing” will show you who is reading, reviewing or discussing books on marketing which shows you where someone’s skill or interest lies. A simple cross-ref on LinkedIn should show you the person’s complete bio and gives you, the recruiter, a great excuse to open a discussion. Picture your email: “I just finished XXXX marketing book and see that you also read it recently. My client is looking to hire someone with just your appetite for knowledge; let’s meet to chat.” I know that you can add apps to LinkedIn and Facebook that share what you are reading but what better place than Amazon itself to gather intelligence on who is reading what, in the sector that you recruit in.
What sites do you find useful in your sourcing? Feel free to suggest sites and we’ll try to come up with some search strings for you.
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