I have spent since the beginning of the year working with my teammates here at Hudson on putting our first true B2B Lead Generation campaign into the market. The first is a bit of a misnomer, because we’ve done plenty of webinars, email blasts, tradeshows and breakfasts in the past. What we haven’t done is hook these activities into a CRM for tracking of leads with the sales team and a marketing automation system to really turbocharge the messaging, calls-to-action, follow up and lead nurturing.

We all know the feeling when we’ve been “nurtured”. We sign up for a webinar. 1 minute later you get a contact from a sales person. After the webinar you get follow up emails on additional offers and additional whitepapers on the subject you were interested in. What you don’t realize is all of the pre-thought, strategy, and setup that goes into that orchestrated series of events. Let me tell you, it’s not for the faint at heart. After countless hours with a full-time consultant building our strategy and integrating automation systems it all comes down to a diagram. To be able to visualize all of the steps and how they will work together you need a campaign diagram, so says our vendor Silverpop. I’ve built plenty of information architecture diagrams in my career, but never anything like this. Apparently these are notoriously complex exercises, since Silverpop themselves had a contest last year to find the most convoluted marketing campaign diagram.

My Piece of Convolutedness

Here’s my rookie effort at a campaign diagram (page 1 only). This was at its very worst. I have since revised the diagram many times to simplify and better communicate how we will be setting up all of the assets in our different systems. Nonetheless, you have to go this far if you want to pre-plan an automated campaign. This has been an awesome learning experience. I’m very much looking forward to the campaign launch and finding out how effective each little block in the diagram will or will not be. Stay tuned.

I was listening to a B2B Blogging Lessons Learned podcast today with Kip Bodnar over at Social Media B2B. Toward the end of the podcast there was a discussion of the use of Social Media CRM for sales people, and what the rise of information on the web about your customers means. One of their points was that all of the personal information about you online can deepen the relationships salespeople have with their prospects and clients. I have an excellent personal experience where this has happened to me.

OptiJob’s Doug Kerken Sold Me then Followed Me on Twitter

I went through an extensive vendor evaluation at the end of 2008 to choose an SEO/career site portal provider. I received quotes from a variety of providers at my request, and by the recommendation of our recruitment ad agency. One provider was Optijob, and the salesperson was Doug Kerken. Long story short, Doug won the business based on an excellent product, a fair price, and an extremely flexible attitude to customize the product to meet Hudson’s career site needs.

Somewhere during the sales cycle Doug (@DKerken) connected with me on Twitter. Not LinkedIn (til later), not Facebook…Twitter. By doing so, Doug opened up a whole different line of communication. First off, Doug and I have never met in person. Yet, by following his personal Twitter account where he mixes business and pleasure tweets, I get to know him much better. Yes, Doug is a sales guy through and through. He is cool to chat with on phone calls, and he makes a lot of promises about the product, that some other poor schlep has to implement because Doug promised it. BUT, Doug is also keeping me very positive about his company. He’s keeping the relationship warm, and he doesn’t need to take me out to lunch bother me with “just catching up” calls to do it. He simply reacts to a tweet of mine every once in a while and that’s enough to keep him top of mind.

Positive Customer Service and Accountability

If we have a service issue with OptiJob I can reach out to him on Twitter, both of us knowing that a public slam would be bad for the company’s reputation. This keeps him accountable to service our account. Better yet though, I know that Doug is monitoring my Twitter stream and anticipating our needs. That’s good consultative selling, and he didn’t have to do a thing.

What’s the Moral of This Story?

The lesson for all salespeople is not to think of social media in terms of will it get me a lead this afternoon. Think of it as another way to interact with and listen to customers and prospects on a personal and professional level. For every salesperson I hear from who says they don’t have time to understand social media, I only need to point them to people like Doug who build successful, positive business relationships through the channel. Next time you decide to spend another 2 hour lunch with one prospect, think of how much more scalable you are by keeping 20 prospects interested through Twitter. I’m just sayin…

I spent my Wednesday at a Social Media conference in Rochester called SM2Day. The event was the brainchild of Ana Roca Castro of Premier Social Media. She brought in a very exciting slate of guest presenters including nationally recognized Social Media advocate, Chris Brogan and local CMO Rockstar Jeffrey Hayzlett. Here is Ana’s nice little story using tweets and an app called whrrl to tell how she got the conference together.

My head is spinning at everything I learned before, during and after the conference. Here’s my top 5.

1. Chris Brogan is the real deal. He has obviously honed his craft in a couple short years. He is an entertaining and humble speaker who spoke passionately of the need for brands (and more impoortantly the people behind them) to engage in conversation not target marketing. Does anybody want to feel targeted? I’m now subscribed to his blog and probably anything else he creates.
   Blurry iPhone shot with me, Chris and my signed copy of Trust Agents.
2. Jeffrey Hayzlett really believes in Social Media marketing for Kodak. From his complete support of Jenny Cisney’s efforts as Kodak Chief Blogger/Social Media Manager, to his team’s published thought leadership within the Kodak Social Media Guidelines, to crowdsourcing product names via twitter, Jeff is passionate about Social Media to drive marketing at Kodak. We also found out a few other things Jeff is passionate about too like hunting, and Diet Mountain Dew.
3. Eric Majchrzak at Freed Maxick & Battaglia CPAs is making it happen with Social Media and SEO. He actually has a Twitter account for a CPA firm, and a forthcoming billboard that will post the tweet stream.
   
   He is also showing impressive ROI from his efforts by being able to attribute revenue to his website and increasing it steadily year over year.
4. Niki Black knows the ins and outs of the legal implications of Social Media on companies. Social media guidelines are a must. She provided some good resources on how to craft a good policy. When her presentation becomes available I’ll post here.
5. When you go to conferences and sit next to smart people like Matt Ray, you pick up extremely useful information. For instance, my iPhone battery was running low from all the in-conference tweeting I was doing on #SM2day. He suggested I turn off 3G to conserve battery. I didn’t know you could do that. I also hadn’t yet heard the news that I could tweet to LinkedIn. These are minor things, but it shows what hanging out with like-minded people will teach you.

I’m looking forward to the presentations from the conference being available online because there was some really useful content from ALL of the presenters.

Twitter WAS an excellent tool for getting a job the old fashioned way - through word of mouth, networking, and building relationships online. For a few fleeting months, you could go onto Twitter and connect with some really smart people. You could connect with a senior manager, or a drone working the desk at any number of your potential employers of choice. You could build a relationship with a human, and help each other to mutual benefit. It WAS fresh and different. It will now turn into something automated, and dissatisfying.

TwitterJobSearch.com launched very recently. It provides job seekers an easy way to find job opportunities that have been posted to Twitter. That’s not really what it does though. Instead, TwitterJobSearch.com makes it blatantly obvious that there are hundreds of people out there building a mini job-spam empire on Twitter. Clearly, many recruiting firms and job board vendors alike have registered twitter names to game the search engines into believing they are the authority on ChicagoTechjobs, or topjobsinlondon whatever. They load up their twitter accounts with automated feeds from the job board they already have online.

So, riddle me this. How exactly does this make things any better for the job seeker? If TwitterJobSearch.com was aggregating a ton of job related tweets from actual humans working at actual companies and recruitment firms, with actual photo avatars of themselves, THAT would be a great service. Seekers can find plenty of cold, impersonal “job postings” all over the interweb. What they thirst for is the hiring manager at a company who tweets, “We need a marketing mgr to launch a new product for us, RT please”, or the recruiter that says “My client is interviewing for 3 java devs TODAY to build a GPS product by end of Jan, DM me if interested.”

Instead of optimizing FOR all of these automated accounts with “jobs” or “hire” in the Twitter handle, TwitterJobSearch should exclude them on purpose. What do you think?

In the spirit of stashing useful web strategy video in a spot that I can remember it, here’s an excellent video interview by WebProNews with Bruce Clay on the future of SEO and how it will move away from ranking and placement.

Here’s the things I learned.

1. Biased results based on web history: No two people will be able to look at Google results and get exactly the same rankings.
2. Intent based search: The engines will decipher your search words and give you results based on whether you intended to shop or do research. How you design a page for one intent or another would affect its ranking in results
3. Universal Search: Search will dive into video and images better than today. Sites with video, for instance will fare better. Doing SEO will be more than just keyword research and writing techniques. Text-based gateway pages would not be as effective, nor will linkbuilding have as great an effect.

Good stuff.

Hat tip to Cheezhead.

Monster moved their marketing program on to seemingly greener pastures by replacing Joan Blackwood with Ted Gilvar as Chief Global Marketing Officer. I met with Joan recently at the Monster Customer Advisory board, 6 months after I was critical of Monster’s new branding campaign. She and I discussed the circumstances of the campaign and both agreed that the timing was pretty poor. Monster hadn’t upgraded their product in months, so the promises of the campaign were not well delivered by the product. I can only imagine the pressure she was under to launch something new. The quick hook (14 months tenure) further bolsters the volatility of the CMO position, and ought to scare the crap out of anyone looking to move up in the marketing profession.

I know that Monster has some pretty extensive product changes coming down the pipe, so perhaps Mr. Gilvar’s original campaign vision will come to life. I can’t wait until our first meeting.

photo by dospaz

Last week Hudson launched IT Hire Wire, a blog targeted at professional-level IT candidates. For me, it is the culmination of nearly 10 months of work to test a more transparent way of doing business online for Hudson, and an intense bit of learning in my marketing career (check my tweets along the way). Before I get to outlining the project and some of the lessons learned to date, let me first encourage you to visit the blog, read some entries, and leave any comments that you’d like regarding the project. I appreciate any feedback received.

Making the Case for a Recruiting Blog
IT Hire Wire originated through the same strategic process that brought about our Web Video efforts. As I mentioned here,

…our global marketing team convened to discuss new media and the social web phenomena. At the time, recruitment on Second Life and MySpace was grabbing headlines, while YouTube and blogging were creeping into corporate communication strategy. The common themes were transparency, authenticity and audience control of the message.

On a limited budget we agreed to test one or two new media channels to begin to participate in this movement. While not ideal to choose a channel before defining goals, we knew that a certain amount of experimentation would be required to remain competitive.

To shepherd the project, I started by getting more knowledgeable about blogging than I ever had been before. I familiarized myself with the latest tools like WordPress and various social websites like MyBlogLog, Del.icio.us, RSS feeds, Twitter, and Facebook. This resulted in my new personal blog and a blogroll filled with competitive sites that I admire.

With this as a backdrop, I lobbied hard for the blog project when budget season came around. I wanted the help of an agency to make sure we set the cultural groundwork properly within Hudson, and to have enough resources to complete the project on top of an already heavy load.

Enter Cowboy Advertising
In November of 2007, we contracted with Cowboy Advertising to assist with our blog effort. From that time until our launch, the Cowboy team was instrumental in getting our internal group of bloggers aligned with the project mission. Together we chose our IT practice to pilot the program because we felt the target audience was most comfortable with blogs. At the same time our IT recruiters were likely to be the most blog-savvy of our employee population.

Creative Direction
Cowboy helped to facilitate conference calls as we concurrently decided upon a creative and technical direction as well as got our bloggers up to speed on how to write content. We wanted to differentiate the site’s look from the many tech news or gadget blogs out there and, at the same time not take ourselves too seriously. We ended up with a theme that evokes the balance of work, life, and the technical knowledge it takes for a successful IT career.

The Cost of Blog Development
None of the agency-provided services came without cost. While the theory is that you can do a blog for practically free on any public blogging platform in an evening, the reality is that involving an agency cost us significant dollars. I do believe that it bought us excellent creative, and a thought out editorial process that will be crucial to our long-term success.

I’ll provide updates on further development as the project progresses. For now enjoy the blog, and let me know what you think!

Check out more of the Poetic Prophet, m0serious on YouTube. He raps about the nuances of Search Engine Optimization, paid search, and link building and campaign conversion. I actually get more information out of listening to his raps than most “real” webinars. I think it’s because very few words must be chosen to get across big ideas. This is not a skill most public speakers have mastered.

Hat tip to Ann Handley of MarketingProfs.

At least that’s what I take away from Lauren’s latest post in Wired and Hired. When comparing her female candidate interactions with male counterparts, Lauren had this to say.

Unexpectedly, I find men are more difficult to deal with when it comes to the prospect of leaving their “homeland”…I have a male candidate telling me he can’t move because he needs to be around people who understand him and that he can’t go anywhere where he doesn’t have friends.

I’m not actually surprised that this is what she finds as a recruiter. I’ve seen plenty of guys who cling to friends as their source of identity and comfort. Similarly, with wanting to be near your family, hometown, favorite sports team - whatever, men often struggle with leaving the comfort zone to get ahead.

Lauren’s got some harsh words for us more sensitive types. Get a load of this riff:

…I don’t even want to send you to my agencies at this point because I get the feeling you are going to try and make them have cry circles after work where you discuss your feelings. Weird. You should have known when you got into this business that it would require moving at some point. However, don’t call me telling me you really want a job, anywhere, and then when the client is interested start pouting and giving me your stream of consciousness over the phone about all of your insecurities. I do not specialize in breathing exercises and co-dependency management. What I do specialize in is getting you a job that translates to a promotion and more money…

Wow Lauren! When it comes to being a recruiter, if you have to read a guy’s ‘feelings journal’ and get them to leave it on the night stand before an interview, you should do it. Good luck finding candidates that need no counsel when making a job change.

To the male job seeking masses, the tough love should be a point well taken. We are competing against strong candidates who will do whatever it takes to get ahead. So, take off your diapers and stop your whimpering when it comes to moving. If you’ve made the decision to change your life to get a new job, what’s the big deal about changing your location?

Have a look at a nice example of a job ad that reflects very well on the staffing industry. Jim Durbin posted this ad on his blog and tweeted it out to his network.

VP Marketing Role In St Louis

The job ad has the following things that all staffing firm recruiters could do:

1. Admit right up front the relationship between the recruiter and the client. For seekers really naive about recruiters, it might even be good to link to a definition of contingent search.
2. Make a short statement about the company in your own words instead of some marketing boilerplate about ’startup with IPO potential’. Jim really builds trust that he has a relationship with the client and has internalized it enough to boil it down to a meaningful synopsis for his candidate audience
3. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Jim doesn’t bother with what’s in it for the candidate. He goes right in to ‘What I’m Looking For’. It actually better reflects the fact that recruiters are acting as candidate agents with a responsibility to present the best/right fit for the job. You get the feeling that what he’s looking for isn’t from some internal job description that lists one hundred requirements and ‘desired skills’. He has crafted three profiles from his candidate research that he can effectively sell into the client.

Perhaps if Jim were working for a large staffing firm, or if this weren’t a VP level job, his approach may have been different. Maybe he wouldn’t have had as much knowledge of the client. Had this not been for a marketing job would he have taken the same approach? I’m not sure. It does strike me as a much stronger case for working with a recruiter than the majority of the schlock out there.