Socializing at Work
By Rachel Osterhage
How Atlanta businesses are connecting online, and why you should be
It has been four years since Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson founded MySpace.com. In Internet years, this is more than a lifetime.
And yet social networks – unlike other online phenomenons which have come and gone – are booming. MySpace rival Facebook.com has grown more than 100 fold in the past year and continues to expand at a rate of 200,000 new users daily. LinkedIn also continues to flourish. (Microsoft further validated Facebook in October by paying $240 million for a stake in the site, in a deal that valued Facebook at $15 billion.) MySpace and Facebook are also attracting new users well outside the scope of the stereotypical “tween”ager and teenager. Facebook, for example, has 41 percent of its users over 35.
With the potential to influence and attract such a massive consumer base, these sites are the darlings of the Internet, but their very strength—consistent and exponential growth—also proves to be their challenge. With the rapid and unexpected expansion of these virtual media outlets, it can seem nearly impossible to harness their power and potential. But many businesses are trying, and succeeding, with various strategies, many centered on human capital.
In fact every business today, whether actively involved in any new media forms or not, operates in a culture influenced by virtual social networks. And to a greater or lesser degree, the social side of new media is shaping the rules of engagement in today’s professional culture from marketing to public relations to networking and recruiting. (One obvious example of this is the success of LinkedIn, which takes the social networking model and adapts it to the ambitious, connected professional.)
Says John Walker, senior vice president and group head of technology & telecommunications at the PR firm Edelman says, “Social networks and the online community are essential audiences in the battle for [consumers’] attention.” This almost goes without saying considering that over 200 million Americans are online and more than 25 percent of them are logging on to social networks. The question quickly becomes what to do with this new untamed technology and how to do it.
That today’s business people find social networks mystifying is no surprise. After all, CEO’s and company presidents are not the core users. At first glance, social networks seem to be, in their most essential forms, cordoned off along generational lines. But this assumption is a false and potentially fatal one. “Social networking is a buzz-phrase, albeit a good one, for taking what we already do with people every day and webifying it,” says Travis Granville, president and cofounder of the Atlanta-based web builder Atomic Fusion. “When the Internet came along, everyone thought other forms of entertainment were going by the wayside. But blogging doesn’t replace forums or newsgroups; it’s just another way to communicate.”
So tapping into social networks doesn’t involve revamping essential business principles; it simply requires expressing and executing them differently. Kleber & Associate’s President and Founder Steven Kleber says, “Everyone says the web is changing everything, but it really isn’t changing anything. It’s just taking the truth and recasting it: the truth that you sell what your customer wants to buy,” no matter if your customer is 15 or 35.
MySpace: Meeting the Customers Where They Are
What social networking customers want to buy is themselves. Marisa Puthoff, vice president at Edelman, calls it the “Someone Like Me”-revolution. Perhaps this self-focused culture is rooted in the careless confidence of the medium’s native offspring, the teenager. One thing is certain: social networkers no longer look to traditional forms of communication such as advertising and to tell them who and how they should be. Users of online communities want to be dealt with in a way that is genuine and relevant to whom they already are. They want you to study and understand them before you try to talk to them about your brand. This is tricky because these communities change consistently and quickly; it demands a keen sense of your customer and the ability to apply knowledge and understanding ahead of the curve. As Puthoff explains, “Our clients that have implemented social media programs have found that finding the right voice online isn’t rocket science . . . it’s brain surgery.”
Social networkers set the terms of engagement for all parties vying for a piece of their time. They want connection. They want “specialization and organic integration,” says Mimi Chan, Atlanta-based director of wireless youth marketing for AT&T.
Chan ought to know. AT&T sought to engage social networks on the cusp of their popularity. “When we first started looking at MySpace, they only had 3 million customers and now they have 145 million, and that was only two years ago,” says Chan. Getting in on the ground floor gave AT&T the opportunity to discover and reach their target market: “One of the best parts about social networks is that it’s a unique opportunity to reach the 24 and under age segment. It’s grown to be more widespread, but when we first started, we were looking for unique ways to reach the younger market, find what they were passionate about. And they are passionate about communicating with their friends. This was perfect for us.”
AT&T saw this new style of communication as an opportunity to spread a desirable product and service quickly and effectively, but at first they didn’t quite know how to get on the radar screen. In these early months, they learned through trial and error. “We started out by really looking at MySpace,” says Chan, “Do we create a page? Do we put up an ad? How do we leverage this? We did all of that and found that we had really great click-through rates, but were we really engaging them? Being on the site is a great start, but you’re not leveraging the power.”
This power is an inherent quality of the high-speed word-of-mouth in social networks. MySpace grew several hundred fold in a matter months because of the enthusiasm and perceived credibility of social network evangelism. “We were intrigued that it was catching on so virally. Just how quickly they moved,” says Chan.
In order to become a viral phenomenon within MySpace, AT&T determined they had had to be an “organic part of that site experience,” says Chan. Instead of drawing potential customers outside of the virtual social space to AT&T’s own online property, the communications firm sought to integrate itself into the fabric of the social network. “It’s not just being there [on MySpace]. It’s being there in a way that’s a natural extension of the site. It feels like you belong; it feels like you’re another part of the site and an extension of what they can do there,” explains Chan.
And this model of integration and extension is what AT&T’s latest Internet initiative, Digital World, attempts to actualize. In a separate online space that acts as a secondary social network of sorts, Digital World maps and incorporates the way their target customer base represents themselves throughout their “digital world.” Chan calls it a “DNA strand of who you are online” that indicates when, where and how you connect with others. Chan explains, “It’s about creating community.”
Facebook: Attracting the Best and
the Brightest
While AT&T seeks to draw new customers from MySpace, Ernst & Young aims to attract new professional talent from Facebook. Earlier this year, a poll commissioned by BusinessWeek found Ernst & Young as one of the best places to launch a career, so it would seem that their strategy to recruit and retain Gen Y talent is paying off. A key part of this strategy includes high visibility and accessibility through their Facebook site.
Charged with the goal of hiring over 5000 interns and graduates each year from college campuses around the country, E&Y saw the potential of social networks to bring the right people on board, says Susan Bell, managing partner of E&Y’s Atlanta office. “The success of our firm and business depends on the recruitment and retention of the best and brightest people, and we have to educate our candidates by using the tools they use,” says Bell, “Building relationships based on doing the right thing is one of our core values. Our presence on Facebook and the transparency and social networking that comes with it fits nicely with our values.”
E&Y chose Facebook because of its unique group system, which categorizes users by college, geographic area or place of employment. Instead of relying solely on campus visits that are the traditional MO of campus recruiters, the firm offers their Facebook site as a 24/7 virtual recruiting station available to all colleges across the country. This way, the company simultaneously generalizes and specializes their college recruitment process. “We are able to target students by market, by the school they attend, and by that targeted approach, we are able to send a message to a particular targeted audience,” says Bell. At the same time, even students outside of a targeted market from any college, anywhere can join the Facebook group, ask questions and learn more about the firm.
With 12,000 members from colleges and universities around the world, the “Ernst & Young Careers” site has become a gathering place teeming with college-age Facebookers coveting a spot with the financial consulting firm. Tackling what Bell calls the biggest challenge—“educating people on what we were doing”—the Facebook page is a one-stop shop for a potential candidate considering an opportunity.
Blurbs explaining E&Y’s corporate culture and ethos and short bios of current employees and interns fill the top half of the site. Members can click a handful of links offering answers to questions frequently asked by recruits or participate in polls occasionally posted on the site. And they can watch videos of intern conferences or recruiters giving interview tips.
The most successful portion of the site, however, is “the wall,” or message board where students and recruiters interact in real time. Site members post questions almost daily and company representative Dan Black personally responds to many of the questions, no matter how specific they might be. With member’s questions and Blacks’ answer, the catalog of over 1000 wall postings serves as a seemingly exhaustive knowledge database for anyone passing through.
And Black’s dependable presence on Facebook connects students to the firm through a name and a face. University of Michigan graduate student Brad Silfan found the site to be an invaluable resource as he pursued an internship opportunity. “The first thing I did when I joined E&Y’s Facebook group was read nearly every wall post on the site,” says Silfan, “I found this feature particularly helpful, as whenever I had a question for E&Y I could go right to the wall and usually receive answers within an hour.”
Silfan visits the company’s Facebook page about four times a week and finds that the “quick and real-time interaction” has dramatically enhanced his experience as a recruit. “I feel more connected to the firm from the site and valued, as the firm offered so much of their time and resources toward answering questions and developing the page. I also am left with the feeling that E&Y is a step above the rest . . . by offering such a cutting edge tool in the recruiting process.”
One question businesses may have about an intense virtual investment such as E&Y’s stake in Facebook is how users of that social space will welcome their presence. But Silfan thinks corporations logging on to social networks is a good thing. “It excites me that the corporate world is becoming more visible in my social network because it is becoming easier to get in contact with recruiters and receive more pertinent information in the recruitment process,” says Silfan “It really puts a face and human element to a company and definitely helps them to directly reach my generation.”
Younger users may be skeptical of potential employers integrated into their online community because their representation may be used against them. For instance, some businesses take advantage of the volume of personal information available to make more informed hiring decisions, but the firm says they have chosen not to collect information on potential candidates. Bell says, “We are not using Facebook to screen candidates. We are not interested in seeing their profiles; we respect the students’ privacy and the fact that they use the social network to socialize.”
Still, Silfan accepts that businesses can and will check out his online profile. “Although I do not think businesses should collect information on current or future employees via their profiles, I am aware that they most likely do. Therefore, I am careful about what I post or what my friends post on my profile, and I use various privacy features” to control who can see what, he says.
Public Access: Collecting Data, Minimizing Risk through Social Networks
Although E&Y may not scope out potential hires with profiles on Facebook and MySpace, many businesses do find the access to in-dept information about applicants facilitated by social networking to be a useful and legitimate tool. Hiring managers consider bringing a new professional, particularly a recent college graduate at the beginning of her career, to be a serious commitment of resources, and the smart ones search for creative ways to minimize the potentially high-risk decision.
Determining who will be a good long-term employee and a sound personnel investment can be a challenge when armed only with a resume, an interview and candidate-selected references. “Anyone can look good on paper, but when you’re looking at investing time and resources, you want to make sure you have the best fit,” says Carol Good, president of Atlanta-based Heaton Erecting. This is why Good looks at the MySpace or Facebook page and blog of every single qualified job applicant before even beginning the interview process. These pages give insight into the candidate’s personality and character, she explains.
In a recent hiring experience, Good searched various sites for information on her top picks for an interview, and almost every single one returned a hit. One of the resumes on her desk belied an applicant competitive for the position, but the candidate’s MySpace page allowed Good to see his lifestyle of carousing and poor personal choices. What Good found helped her to move this resume from the “yes” pile to the “no” pile, saving her from the time of an interview and the potential mistake of hiring the wrong person.
“We’re a very conservative company, and we want to have someone who shares our core values so that we can continue to succeed,” says Good, “Being a small employer, if I have someone that doesn’t fit in [with our corporate culture], particularly as a manager, it’s going to cause some problems. With larger companies, they can get lost in the mix, but with me, it can affect my whole staff.”
Not only did virtual communities help Good to weed out the worst options, it helped her to find the perfect fit. One candidate applied cold, without any connection to Heaton Erecting, but she had a good resume with a strong background and inspired Good to look her up online. “She had a MySpace page and a personal blog. It was fascinating. She was very intelligent. She wrote very well and was well read. The more I learned about her, the more I knew she would fit into our corporate culture,” says Good.
“Because I had the ability to read her own words—not just read about her—I was able to know her on a personal level that is not possible in an interview,” she says.
The trend of pre-screening candidates with data found online and on social networking sites in particular is hot among businesses. And although it may leave some applicants uneasy, Good says it’s a mutually beneficial practice. Candidates should be cautious about how they represent themselves in these high-exposure mediums. But they shouldn’t misrepresent themselves either. Odds are that if a company is turned off by an applicant’s MySpace page, that person wouldn’t be happy there anyway. “It’s almost like a marriage,” says Good. “You want an arrangement that will be successful in the long-term, and both sides ought to know as much about each other as possible before moving forward.” And evaluating profiles on Facebook and MySpace is one way of making this happen.
The Chain Gang: the Networking through Networks
While Good and Bell may find the social networking big-hitters to be useful in the recruiting process, Ernst & Young competitor Deloitte & Touche sees these online communities as tools for building their businesses on a client-by-client basis after the hiring is done. Deloitte currently holds BusinessWeek’s top place in that same poll as the best place to launch a career, which is why it’s surprising to learn that recruiting online through social networks is not at the top of their agenda.
Instead, Deloitte currently opts for what Director of Next Generation Initiatives Stan Smith calls the “tried-and-true approach of reaching folks through email, IM’ing and text messaging.” For now, they’ve opted out of having a presence on Facebook because “this group of 20-somethings is not heavily investing in social networking sites.” A survey sponsored by Deloitte last year backs up Smith’s comments. They found that 40 percent of young adults are active in social networks prior to their first job while only 21 percent were active after beginning their first job. According to Smith, this means that people “outgrow social networks once they get into the work world.”
But the leading services firm sees the high potential for these numbers to change as those in high school and college hit the job market. “Social networks will be important with the up and coming age group. Within three to five years, there will certainly be a lot of people who will be more familiar with the technology,” says Smith.
And Deloitte is priming itself to optimize this coming wave of techno-savvy workers. Joining what is a growing trend among forward-thinking organizations, they are developing a proprietary social network that will connect current and former employees in both personal and professional ways. According to CIO Insight, the current Deloitte “web portal” has already attracted almost 100,000 users, and they are now revamping it to allow users to build their own networks and communities—all on company time.
So why is Deloitte encouraging their employees to socialize online?
“We want to teach them how to build their [professional] network with whatever technology is already out there,” says Smith, “Hopefully, we will have the most impact when they mature as professionals. They can use [their private social networks] as a professional social network that will build their and our business.” In other words, young new hires bring with them a substantial cache of social assets that can easily be converted into professional opportunities. They can maintain connections with friends who are also up-and-coming professionals and help organizations such as Deloitte form the most solid and beneficial sort of business allegiances—those based on relationship.
For Trevor Maurer, founder and CEO of Atlanta-based SmarterRecruiting, these web-enhanced relationships are the solid foundation of his organization’s success. SmarterRecruiting, an executive and sales and marketing recruiting company with a strong video and web component, prides itself in finding the perfect candidate for the client at least 21 days more quickly than a traditional head-hunting service. One way Maurer and his team deliver on this promise is through relationships fostered on the major social network built primarily for professionals—LinkedIn.
“It’s extremely difficult to find good candidates. LinkedIn is a phenomenal tool, and you can find people so quickly,” says Maurer. He offers his own LinkedIn network as an example of its connective power: with approximately 500 first-degree connections on the site, Maurer finds himself a mere three-degrees of separation from over 3,000,000 LinkedIn users, over 20 percent of the site’s total membership.
When trying to fill a high-level executive position without a tool like LinkedIn, a recruiter might have to rely mainly on job board postings and cold calls, both of which offer unimpressive results to Maurer. He compares the two methods to being introduced to someone at a party by a friend and attempting to connect with that person without an introduction; it’s all about context and relationship. “If I see where you work and call you, you might call me back, but if I call the person who connects us on LinkedIn, you might says ‘Hey, I should call this Trevor guy,” says Maurer. And that can make all the difference in a getting the ideal candidate on board and keeping the client satisfied. “Social networking tools [like LinkedIn] don’t make you a good recruiter. It’s how you use those tools that gets the candidates,” says Maurer. And he uses those tools to build relationships. “The key to having a strong network is to have a network that will reciprocate your relationship to others. If there are not real relationships, then it’s nothing more than a cold call,” explains Maurer.
Maurer has not written off the more social of online social networks. His team plans to create their own group on Facebook in an effort to stay better connected with each other and with others in the industry. Like Deloitte, which sees contact among colleagues as essential to their strength and success, Maurer understands that connecting with colleagues and industry professionals as well as potential candidates through social networks can help his business maintain its edge and ultimately, its success.
Blogging and Microsites: the Other Online Communities
The websites most commonly understood as social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn have captivated the imaginations and strategies of the businesses above, but there is another way to tap into social and professional communities online. For Steven Kleber, more specialized new media options such as blogs, RSS feeds and podcasts present him and his clients an abundance of opportunity to “enhance brand awareness” and increase exposure. Although Kleber does not reject more “traditional” social networks as viable options for public relations—he lists both MySpace and Facebook as virtual properties of interest for his team, they take a back seat to the alternative ways people are communicating and congregating on the Internet.
So why has Kleber opted out of the social networking trend? Since Kleber & Associates, Kleber’s marketing and communications firm, focuses on the home improvement and building materials industry, the younger, transient core user on MySpace or Facebook falls outside of his clients’ target audience. Even so, as users who are older sign-up, Kleber still does not find the one-size fits all site attractive. “Social networks such as MySpace and Facebook attract users of all magnitudes, so it’s challenging to create a program that will resonate with target users,” says Kleber.
And it’s hard to even know who and where the target users are. “As opposed to, let’s say, a Web site, which can usually identify the majority of users’ income level and demographics, it’s harder with social networking sites because of the sheer volume of users and the complexity of the target groups,” says Kleber, “We fear that a one-size fits all approach is always going to be dangerous. In the web, there can be, and are, specific sites where your advocacy can be addressed. I am either going to create or align with those communities that fit my interest group.”
So Kleber minimizes the social networking megasites in his public relations efforts in favor of smaller virtual properties. “Currently, our most resounding success has been from the industry blogs, publications’ electronic communications and wires services,” says Kleber. Instead, these smaller groups of Internet users gathered around particular topic of interest offer Kleber a slew of opportunities from personalized communication on industry message boards to channeling customers to “micro-sites,” with information tailored to their interests.
For Kleber, a key benefit to focusing in the smaller, specialized Internet communities is the ability to pull his firm and his clients free from the clutter of the competition. “You can lose people’s attention when they have so many brands competing for their attention,” says Kleber. “We customize the information to different audiences based on the information they need and are interested in.” As an example, Kleber explains that he might frequent and comment on industry journalists’ blogs or participate in chats on homeowner community boards.
What he will not do is focus on just one group to the exclusion of the others. “We have to create confidence in the consumer and reward the influencer and the journalist at the same time. All three have to be resonating with the same harmony. The consumer needs to be confident, and then the allied professional needs to be equipped with a completely different set of information that will encourage them to use the product,” explains Kleber.
Enter the micro-site. These are audience-specific sites (i.e. one site for contractors, one site for homeowners, etc.) created for the client that Kleber and his team can use “to attract and inform editors and customers.” Kleber thinks of building these micro-sites as creating “our own ‘social media’ destinations, rather than the reliance of piggy-backing amid other (potentially more fickle) ‘communities’ which exist and migrate online.”
With increased visibility to targeted and informed consumer groups comes the increased potential and necessity for credibility.
In order to maintain this credibility through a medium that facilitates access and exposure, Kleber warns that you better keep your opinions and information relevant and accurate. “It’s critical that, if you are going to use this social media, you better know what you are talking about because there is nowhere to hide. When you are in social media, you have to be as honest as you can be,” explains Kleber. Edelman account executive, Michael McCullough agrees, “The opportunity to reach an audience presents tremendous potential for success. But . . . there is also an opportunity for failure if a product doesn’t live up to its promise.”
If businesses do have something to hide, not only will one customer find them out, but he’ll spread his discovery with web-enabled speed and fervor. “Social networks are a way to communicate what’s important and what’s not important. It’s almost like anything else; it’s word of mouth. So business should be more transparent in what they do. There’s just no place to hide because of availability and access,” says Granville.
Social Networks and Businesses: What’s the Future?
Social networks can expose and attract new consumers to brands that fit their culture of virtual connectivity. People are increasingly drifting to the Internet to meet their needs and wants from grocery shopping to television shows. They are consolidating their world to fit inside a web browser, and unless businesses find a way to fit online where their customers spend most of their time, competitors will prosper. The future is simple. By organically grafting a brand into the fabric of a social network, a potential customer can see how it fits into her life and will welcome its presence both online and in real life.
Social networks offer organizations the opportunity to build their businesses from the inside-out. It’s clear how businesses can streamline their efforts to remain connected with colleagues and customers by specializing within the social networking model. The culture of online communities offers businesses the opportunity to move beyond online megasites to, what could be called, “boutique networks” of individuals with specialized interest and concerns.
For some, this may mean a smaller group created using the technology of a larger site like Facebook. For others, it may mean developing something else entirely that can bring an industry together on the web. But whether in a big site or little one, businesses have the opportunity to show that they understand and care about their customers by catering specifically to their needs and interests, changing not only the way we live but also we do business.
As Edelman’s McCullough says, “[Online] communities are the new centers of gravity in the universe. [Businesses] must understand that online is where people create, consume, connect and share; it’s not where sales are made.” ABM
