Music & Marketing: URBANIZED!

The goal of recruiting is to find the right person at the right time. Logically, that means one source is never enough. You’ll want to tap into diverse mediums to find the best candidates. Social media is no exception. Each platform has its own unique demographic. You’ll want to consider that audience when making the decision about which applications to use for your recruiting efforts.

Regardless of the application, there are some common elements to using social media for recruiting. Here are six things to consider when using any social media application for recruiting.
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1. Create an Online Presence That Reflects Who You Are
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Having a nice avatar, succinct bio and current contact information will make people want to connect with you. Be sure to organize your social media profiles to provide potential contacts with a better idea of who you are so they have a reason to communicate with you and form a relationship.

“It’s about being human”, explains Bill Boorman, author of the Recruiting Unblog. “People connect with people, not brands. Connect with everyone because you never know who will make that referral or connection for you.”

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2. Make the Most of Your Time
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A large part of any success with social media is involvement. This is especially true if you want to use social media for recruiting. While mobile applications can help with this, Boorman agrees, “It takes a big investment of time to build a talent community.” To target your efforts, he suggests asking people directly which channels they use and looking at what your competitors are doing. “Consider directing your messages to a single point, like a relevant blog or company website.”

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3. Individualize Your Approach
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At some point, you have to connect with people you don’t know and become a part of their conversations. “I actually find it easy,” says Chris Havrilla national recruiting manager for Hitachi Consulting, a global leader in delivering business and IT strategies. “I have found if you communicate with people in a meaningful and thoughtful manner, you can never go wrong.”

Havrilla’s approach is to connect with people who have a genuine interest in his business and industry. “I follow or connect with people related to that space, ‘listen’ to and learn from the conversations, and participate when appropriate. If you are connecting with someone directly, be ‘individualized’ in your approach — take the time to understand who you are reaching out to and be respectful of their time and attention.”

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4. Be Authentic
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Recruiters always want to see the ‘real candidate’ and in order to do that, they have to be real as well. Amanda Hite, founder and CEO of Talent Revolution Inc., says when it comes to social media: “Remember it’s NOT about the tools it’s ALL about the relationships.”

So don’t be afraid to be yourself. Hite adds, “Being the authentic, unapologetic you is totally on trend. But more importantly when you embrace your own authenticity and stay committed to ‘being you’ no matter what, you’ll attract the kind of clients and employees that do the same and are the best match for you.”

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5. Share Interesting Stuff
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All work and no play is boring. So sharing news, tidbits, etc. of general interest can create what might be the equivalent of “social media small talk,” which leads to bigger conversations. Sylvia Dahlby works for SmartSearch, a leading talent acquisition system and recruiting business software solution firm. She works from home and lives in Hawaii. “Before social network sites like Twitter() and LinkedIn(), I belonged to dozens of old-style online newsgroups. Now, I leverage the new social networks much in the same way,” Sylvia explains it’s still important to interact with others.

One of the things Sylvia mentioned was her Twitter account because she mixes her recruiting knowledge with Hawaii tidbits. “My Twitter() account is for personal branding and making connections. I mostly tweet about my work, my product and the recruiting industry during business hours, chat with friends and business associates throughout the day, and throw in a mix of my hobbies and certain interests (such as Hawaiiana). I treat Twitter as my office ‘water cooler’ or after-hours ‘cocktail party’ where I can catch the news and buzz from people in various online communities around the world.”

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6. Focus on Substance
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If someone directs a question at you via social media, find a way to respond, even if it’s to take the conversation offline. “The key is substance,” says Steve Browne, executive director of human resources for LaRosa’s Inc., a Cincinnati based regional pizzeria with 63 locations. “I’d recommend people using social media for recruiting [focused] on substance and not just resume information. Look at how the candidate is connected in the social media arena, and are they contributing to their profession, or just lurking. If they’re engaged online, chances are they would be engaged working for your company.”

Many recruiters realize that when it comes to recruiting, social media tools are just that – tools. The real value is in how the tools are used. Havrilla explains, “Social media can give you a great and efficient way to engage with your community – candidates, clients, customers, partners, prospects, etc. – on a very level playing field with the companies you are competing with for talent (or business). The key is to make sure you have the time to invest in to it. At a very basic level this is all about networking. The use of social media tools has greatly enhanced my ability to build, grow, and nurture my network. These tools are not a magic bullet though — to get value from your network, you have to add value to it.”

Okay, so our headline isn’t entirely truth-based. But, it’s no pipe dream, either. The reality is that new online music business models are changing the way artists sell their music and interact with fans. Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and individual blogs are facilitating this in a big way.

Consumer buying patterns are changing, from those who have moved away from CDs and albums to picking up singles on iTunes, to those who circumvent the entire system altogether and buy directly from the artists.

Cutting out the Middleman

It started back in March of 2008, when industrial giant and former MTV-favorite Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails decided to offer the complete first volume of their latest album completely free for consumers to share (the album in its entirety was made available on the band’s website for a whopping $5 download). Not to be outdone, Radiohead then stepped up with their digital release of In Rainbows, allowing fans to pay whatever they felt like and download the record from their website.

But not every artist has the luxury of brand-like name recognition that Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead and their ilk enjoy. That’s why digital music shops like iTunes and CD Baby remain the go-to source for most music lovers. Yet it’s tough for indie artists to get the kind of promotion and attention their mainstream counterparts enjoy.

Digital Sales by the Numbers

The best selling digital song of all-time, so far, is the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”. The track earned this title in April of this year after knocking out the previous record holder, Flo Rida, with 5,561,000 million downloads. The Peas are, of course, a household name now, and enjoyed huge success before breaking the download record.

But what about indie artists, like Gagnez, a Los Angeles-based poet, speaker, hip hop artist and producer? His popular “La Da Da Da” track has accumulated over 50,000 YouTube views – but not entirely on its own. Thanks in part to a social media-made connection with YouTube-famous Israeli video maker Lilach Chen (whose videos of her talented fingers have racked up over 12,000,000 views), the track is featured in a quirky and fun video called “Fingers Breakdance 5”. The song also features Gina Rene, another artist with a strong social media presence.

It’s this kind of exposure and creative teaming up that’s going to give traditional music sales models and marketing a run for their money as artists take matters into their own hands. New ground is being forged when it comes to sharing and promoting creative material, and soon it won’t be any surprise to read a headline like “Gagnez Surpasses 20 Million Download Mark”, and find that he did it all with the support of social media self-promotion, fans, and creative collaboration. And isn’t that what it should all be about?

full article: http://bit.ly/9YQ2Gi

When comparing social media traffic to other forms of traffic, such as search engine, the numbers typically are going to look rather bleak. While you’ll hopefully see a spike in number of visitors and pageviews, that will often be accompanied by higher bounce rates, lower pageviews per visitor, and a lower average time on the site. With stats like this many bloggers wonder if social media traffic is even worth the time and effort.

Despite the tendency of many social media visitors to quickly exit your site and move on to the next one, there are still some very convincing reasons why you should care about social media and why it is worth your time.

1. It’s Free
Unless you’re paying for a consultant or a link bait specialist (both can be good options), marketing your website with social media is free. It will cost you some time, but that pales in comparison to the value of the traffic that you can get in return. There are countless ways to market a website or blog. Just about all of them involve spending money (which isn’t a bad thing), and of the ones that don’t involve money, the vast majority of them are a complete waste of time. I’ve never tried any other type of free marketing that brought even 1% of the results I’ve gotten with social media at my primary blog. Most bloggers are on a tight, or non-existent, budget when it comes to marketing. If this is the case, social media is for you.

2. The Future of the Internet is Social
Social media and social networking aren’t going away any time soon. The major players and the types of social sites may change of the course of time, but this is a trend that online marketers need to adjust to. Without finding ways to build a website or blog through social media you could be left behind by your competitors.

3. Quick Results
Building a successful website takes a considerable amount of time and effort. Search engine rankings, for instance, can take years to build in a competitive niche. On the other hand, with social media you can develop content and be seen by thousands of visitors within the same day. For this reason, social media is a great option for getting a new website or blog noticed right away .

4. It Gets Easier with Time
If you’re new to blogging and social media and you feel like everyone else is getting traffic but you, understand that it takes some time and effort, but it will get easier. Once you have established a bit of a reader base and you’ve hopefully attracted some social media users to your blog, it will be much easier for you to get votes and ultimately get more exposure. The more you use social media the more you will understand about how it works and how users will respond.

5. It Doesn’t Require as Much Time as You Might Think
Personally, I use social media every day, but on a very limited basis. If you think that you have to spend all day on Digg or Stumbling pages to get some results of your own, you may be surprised. With the right approach you can get fantastic results with just a few hours per week on social media sites. To be a top Digg user you’ll need more time than that, but being a top Digg user isn’t necessary to draw social media traffic.

6. Links Can Help Your Search Engine Rankings Rise Quickly
Although visitors from social media sites may be less responsive than other types of visitors, success with social media will likely increase the number of inbound links you receive. Links will boost your search engine rankings and they’ll also drive click-through traffic your way. Both are generally high quality traffic sources. Well, in addition to sending loads of traffic directly, the links that result from social media success can get your new posts ranking very well with search engines almost immediately. It’s not uncommon for me to see a very respectable number of visitors from Google searches to a brand new post that just drew a lot of links through social media. While it will take a while to build search engine rankings as a whole, it is possible to create specific posts to rank well right away.

7. Some Visitors Will Be Targeted
The biggest knock on social media traffic is that it’s not targeted, and that is typically true. However, visitors from niche social media sites can be very highly targeted, and on top of that, a portion of visitors from general news sites will be targeted as well. For example, if you get 25,000 visitors from a post on the Digg front page, maybe only 5,000 of them will have much of an interest in your site. Still, that’s a quick 5,000 visitors that you wouldn’t have had without social media. Just because a smaller percentage of the visitors will stick doesn’t mean that they are irrelevant.

8. It Will Lead to Other Valuable Sources of Traffic
Although visitors from social media sites may be less responsive than other types of visitors, success with social media will likely increase the number of inbound links you receive. Links will boost your search engine rankings and they’ll also drive click-through traffic your way. Both are generally high quality traffic sources.