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Over here at Aquent we value the amazing Talent we represent and we also recognize that they in fact are the true experts in their fields (SME, if you must) and are far more connected than we can ever hope to be.

So during the past few months we've been developing a referral system that "pays it forward" and hopefully gets everyone more jobs and some extra money to boot!

A couple weeks ago we started offering cash to Aquent Talent based on a point system. We have two different avenues for folks, one is to refer other awesome Talent to us and the other is to refer potential job openings to us. (This last one pays big and fast!)
 
I was excited about this new referral program (we call it Aquent Rewards) and started shouting about it from the rooftops. But I started to notice a trend: People often responded to enthusiastic pitch with a,  "Yeah, that's nice and all, but I really just want a job of my own. I'm not really in the mood to send you names or job openings."

Fair enough. And I do get it. As a company, we want to find an exciting job for every one of our Talent as well!

All this got me thinking about how the referral program impacts people in a way other than the cash that they get. Then I started thinking about karma.

Wikipedia tells me that Karma means a "deed" or "act", or more broadly, names the universal principle of cause and effect, action and reaction that governs all life. If Karma can make things right and good for people like Earl J. Hickey, why can't it work for other folks?

Let me lay it out for you:
 
How exactly would this good job karma thing work?

Case study #1 (talent referral)
You have a friend/acquaintance that is an incredible Online Marketer
You login to your My Aquent  account and submit your friend/aquaintence to us
We call* your referral
 If we place that person, you start accruing good job karma points (and Aquent referral points = $)
 
Case study #2 (business referral)
You are sitting at work, working.
You overhear that the online marketing team (or interactive, marketing, graphic design,) needs someone and they are thinking of hiring.
You login to you're My Aquent  account and submit any information you know about the job and hiring manager's name.
We call* that hiring manager and help them fill that job.
If we fill that job you rack up FAT good job karma points (and Aquent business referral points =$$$)
 
Karma Bonus:
If you send us a business referral and the talent referral that can fill that job, you go straight to nirvana and collect a large sum of Aquent referral bonus points = $$$$$$$$$
 


So let's go back to the initial problem; "Yeah, but I just want a job of my own"

By you building your good job karma and others building up their good job karma, there's a good chance that you will get to work at that job of your dreams - the job someone else recommended.

And heck, the fact that you get points (and cash) for recommending people doesn't hurt, does it?

Last week I was very privileged to attend a one day workshop on social media. Here's my plug for Michael Seaton: the dude is awesome. I've heard lots of speakers and their take on what social media is and how to use it but no one simplifies it like Seaton. If you get a chance to get a brain dump from this guy, take it. Oh yay, Michael didn't pay me to say that. I really think he's awesome but as a side note, I did learn that bloggers should always announce when they get paid to plug someone, a product or a service.

So, what else did I learn?

The CMA social media course covers the following things:

• an overview of how our culture has shifted with the use of the internet, specifically with the use of social media tactics
• what social media really is with a look at existing trends
• some specific tools and real examples, and
• some real business applications including how social media can illustrate ROI

My parents are digital immigrants but even they are being influenced by social media. I've had to decline a few friend requests on Facebook from my Mom. And let it be known that awareness doesn't always mean credibility. Social media has really changed the power shift where consumers can spread either a positive or negative message about a brand faster than you can blink 10 times. (My Mom decided against one chinese take out joint over another because of something she read on a blog.) The big thing is that "everybody's doing it" but we shouldn't. Be wise about how you use social media but most importantly, make sure you have a good answer to why.

If you're looking for more on social media, you should call me or you can read Socialnomics by Erik Qualman. And oh yay, Erik didn't pay me to say that. I paid for the book and waited a week for it to ship to my house.

Hi All,

I often work with clients who are overwhelmed by their content, information and digital assets. For many individuals and companies, their content (pictures, text, video, etc) is a mess, a liability and a cost center. It takes focus and effort to turn the content from a liability into an economic asset, but the path is straightforward and very achievable. Your organization will benefit internally and externally, creating a smother-running operation on the inside and promoting your message to the outside. You may even create additional revenue streams once you wrangle all those assets.

This is continuous publishing in a global digital media environment. Control your content before someone else does. Today much of your content is digital. And it has escaped your grasp. Below I'll describe your 10 to-do items. You'll get control of your content, and you'll grow to understand the power and value that content will bring you.

1. Discover. Identify your existing content. What do you have? What format is it in? Perform a content inventory or content audit. Create a content matrix, a spreadsheet of all your pieces and their attributes.

2. Develop your core. Create the essential ingredients of your content. This is often called Single Source, where a team develops base content that is used in multiple locations or formats. Crystallize your message down into the essential ingredients.

3. Prepare for community involvement. Your content will be captured, quoted and manipulated. Plan for it. Make your community plan. It's much like a business plan, but it outlines your philosophy, approach and rules for your audience/social network. This is user-centered content creation: know your audience. Give them a voice. Give them tools like widgets or online forums.

4. Architect your content. Use information architecture theories and approaches. Put your content into categories that make sense. This is often called bucketing. Try doing a card sort. Your community may begin to add categories and tags to your content if you let them. This "folksonomy" approach can be powerful.

5. Create your multi-destinational plan. We are in a cross-platform world. Your content will live on more than the three screens (TV, computer, mobile). Create a delivery method attribute matrix to predict where your content is most likely to land. Remember we are in the age of the globalization of content. Understand translation and localization.

6. Acquire or build your tools. You will most likely need content management tools. Make you build vs. buy decision. Visit the CMS Matrix to get comparison information.

7. Design your content. Separate your content from the way it is presented. Determine the base elements of your visual brand and stick to 'em.

8. Document it. For internal use and the retention of institutional knowledge, please document your content adventures. Develop style guides and knowledge management practices to ensure knowledge transfer to others on your team or others who may follow in the future.

9. Tell your story continuously. Assign, hire or rent full-time staff to constantly add new content. Generate continuous content. Become thought leaders. Quality content and real content win. Don't fill a page with keywords and call it content. Humans and machines can tell what good content is, and they seek it out.

10. Track it. Define your metrics for success and document your benchmarks. Analyze your numbers. Watch them change. Modify your behavior based on results, not assumptions.

(by guest blogger, Greg Carter from the Aquent's Orange County office)

I started blogging because one of my friends suggested that it would be a useful tool to keep my writing skills in shape. I hemmed and hawed, but finally gave in, and after re-reading many of my earlier posts, I believe (hope? pray?) that I'm a much better writer than way back when. But what started out as a way to hone my skills has given me the opportunity to chronicle bits and pieces of my life, to share my views on books and movies, to post a recipe or two, and to even post a few samples of fiction.

That works for me. I like talking about different things when the mood strikes me. And being able to read the blogs of others, to catch a glimpse into their lives (and even to meet a few face to face) not just in my neighborhood, but in New York, Denver, Portland, Atlanta, Montréal, and England, to name a few, has been quite a happy bonus. I've never expected my blog to be more than a journal of my life. But, as author Paul Gillin discusses in his book The New Influencers, many companies are slowly beginning to see the far-reaching impact that blogging has had on the way corporations communicate with the public.

With the growing shift to electronic media, marketers need to stay on top of new venues of communication, and blogs present the best opportunity. Take a look at almost any blog, and what you'll find is a mini-community, with blogrolls containing links to myriad other blogs who communicate back and forth constantly. Any kind of news -- good or bad -- gets passed on, linked to, talked about much faster than any magazine or newspaper could have imagined.

Take, for example, AOL. Back in 2006, Vincent Ferrari had heard the rumors about the high-pressure tactics used by AOL when someone tried to cancel an account, so he decided to record his own attempt then post the recorded file on his blog. He then emailed a consumer activist site, The Consumerist. The site, in turn, published a link to his post, which soon swarmed across the blogging world and eventually into mainstream media. That small post from a single blog generated so much negative publicity that it helped to influence a change in AOL's policies.1

And that's just from personal blogging. Quite a few other blogs deal with a specific topic and have reader bases focused solely on such things as graphic design, Microsoft, Netflix, plant care, and so on. A smart marketer will find a way to communicate with such groups because those bloggers are passionate about that particular topic, and their readers are more likely to listen to their recommendations.

Another blogging form discussed is the corporate blog, one written and managed by a company. In one of the many Influencer Profiles peppered between chapters, Gillin describes how Microsoft used the corporate blog as a means to allow the public a glimpse into life at the personal computer giant. They seemed to realize that if they weren't out there communicating about the company, then someone else was -- and not always in a positive light. By allowing Microsoft employees to discuss their jobs or whatever moved them in such an open and public forum and by using the blogs as a way to answer questions and criticisms, Microsoft was able to slowly reverse the negative view of the company.2

So thanks to the Internet, the world really has become a much smaller place. More companies and marketers need to change with the times, and The New Influencers is the perfect guide for that, explaining how blogging (and podcasting) works,  how they can be used to generate buzz about a product or to change/enhance a company's public image, and how to get along in this new age of communication.

1. Gillin, Paul. The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media, 2nd printing. Sanger, California: Quill Driver Books, 2007. pps 1-3.
2. ibid., pps 105-112


(Yes, I did read the book myself.)


Image composite by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Do you tweet? Like MyFace, Spacebook and LinkedIn before it, Twitter is the new 'micro-blogging', social-networking phenomenon that has taken on a life of its own over the past few months.

Millions of people worldwide are literally falling over themselves to tell anyone who cares (people rather poignantly called 'followers') what they are having for dinner, why they prefer Coke over Pepsi and all about their overseas trips planned for 2022, all within 140 characters. What is perhaps more surprising is that there appears to be many people out there who are interested in the fact that you're having Crème Brulée for dessert.

Not me though.

But enough about me (you can read all about ME on my Twitter feed). The reality is that, from Oprah Winfrey and that other 'celebrity' Ashton Kutcher, to mainstream media outlets, Twitter is attracting a wide and diverse audience and is 'so hot right now'.

But will it last? An interesting study has just been released by Nielsen Online suggesting that, contrary to all the hype surrounding Twitter, the service's retention rates are not as high as one might think and that perhaps peoples' lives just aren't that interesting to warrant regular, on-the-hour, often trivial updates. The Nielsen Online study suggests that more than 60 per cent of US Twitter users fail to return month-on-month and that Twitter's retention rate is approximately 40 per cent, compared to retention rates of 50-60 per cent for Facebook and MySpace when they were in their early stages of growth.

I once had a Myspace page, and it was fun ... for a little while. Then I grew tired of people spamming me with invites to parties on the other side of the world and strangers extending their hand of 'friendship' only for me to be a mere number to whom they could send their junk. Before I knew it, months had passed since I had logged in. Now I can't even remember my password.

All social networking services need to evolve in order to hold their users' attention. The trouble is that Twitter can't, in its present form, really evolve much more without becoming something completely different and thus losing the appeal that attracted so many people to it in the first place. Remember the uproar when Facebook redesigned its user interface a few months ago? Feedback was so scathing that the powers that be were forced to release several statements, including this one:

'The new Facebook home page is one step in the continued evolution of the site, designed to give people more ways to share and filter all types of content, such as status updates, photos, videos, notes and more. We are grateful to have 175 million people worldwide using Facebook to connect with the people and things they care about most, and we take their feedback very seriously.'

Facebook didn't take its users' feedback so seriously, however, to backdown completely and revert to its original layout. The whole debacle did demonstrate that Facebook, in contrast to Twitter, has more nous to hold its users, regardless of what changes it makes to its Terms Of Service (which previously included questions over who actually owns your content once it is uploaded to Facebook, just one of many reasons why I don't have a Facebook profile). Then again, it might be a little unfair to compare a glorified online short message service (SMS) like Twitter to Facebook, which allows your friends, colleagues and peers to see just how many pints you downed at the local on the weekend, and the rather unfortunate events that followed.

Time will tell whether Twitter can hold its new bevy of devotees but any uncertainty doesn't appear to have dampened Apple's spirits, who have reportedly entered into talks to purchase Twitter for a rumoured US$700 million; not a bad price to learn what people like to have on their sandwiches.

What do you think? Are you a fan or foe of Twitter? And what might be the next big thing in social time-wasting? Leave a comment below; 140 characters only please!

Image courtesy of: dayglowill

In a recent post I introduced the concept of Viral Marketing ...

Just a quick recap: Viral marketing is an online tool which plants the seed of an idea, product or service which later on spreads virally through social networks.

I have intentionally chosen to use the word seed. In fact the terminology for beginning a viral marketing is also called seeding. If we want to create a viral effect of spreading the idea, we begin with a hot Idea. Most people have the questions as where do we go to post our content? Who will follow us on this idea and how do we create the viral effect?

A seed idea which is a corollary to a "meme" has to have the 6 "R" characteristics which I call it the 6Rs ...

• Replication ability: It has to have an inherent quality of being able to copy itself and fast. Something on the lines of the latest fashion trends in the physical world, a seed idea has to become a rage online.

• Reach: This will address your million dollar question how do I make people follow me? There has to be an analysis the social platforms you are currently using and your strategy. Does a You Tube upload create more excitement or do you create a blog which receives rave comments? The idea has to start spreading instantly.

• Regular audience: This is your own on-line popularity chart counter! How many of your friends, relatives and colleagues are a member of your social community online and how many of them like you enough to spread the message?

• Resilience: The idea has to have some type of resilience to be a continued discussion point. It cannot have a short life span. It has to tease, excite and provoke people to talk about it.

• Reliance: Since the whole concept of viral marketing is on the basis of social networks, we need to rely on the source and the seed idea. The originator has to have a reliability factor which encourages the people to move this idea forward.

• Response: Nothing makes an idea more popular than feedback. The more conversations and the more the arguments the better. At least there is enough interest created around the seed to grow it.

Happy seeding!

Image courtesy of: robpatrick

Imagine this ... you've just been to the movies and seen ... either the best spine tingling, edge-of-your-seat, popcorn spilling cinematic block bluster, or the worst and most painful sleep inducing insult to the silver screen ever!

As an avid tweeter the first thing you do is reach for your mobile phone and update your status on Twitter. Good or bad you want to let the world know!

For any bird brains in the dark, Twitter is, according to the ever trusty Wikipedia a free "social networking and micro blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them".

Comments range from the mundane to the downright topical and even controversial and everyone from the chap next door to Richard Branson is tweeting.

Directly or indirectly Twitter is increasingly being seen as an invaluable resource for Market Research, Marketing and PR professionals. With millions of consumers every day talking about what makes them happy and what makes them sad you can bet your bottom dollar someone somewhere is talking about the brand/product/service of interest. By listening in on these tweets, marketers are able to get real time market intelligence on what consumers are thinking and feeling.

Twitter has a search function that allows you to search by key words and phrases and there are an ever-increasing number of applications (Tweetdeck, Tweetbeep, and NearbyTweets) that are designed to help you managing the morning chorus of bird song coming from the Twitter community.

But Twitter isn't the only source of Consumer Generated Media (media consumers create and share amongst themselves) that those within Market Research, Marketing and PR are listening too. There are a whole host of other online venues including message boards, forums, ratings and review sites, group, social networking sites like face book and of course blogs. And with companies like Nielsen Online producing products like BuzzMetrics, which are designed to give their clients a competitive advantage by uncovering and integrating data driven insights culled from millions of these places you can be guaranteed that big industry is listening.

So if you want to get your consumer voice heard - go on, get out there and start tweeting!

Image courtesy of: obLiterated

I didn't need the Fake Steve Jobs to tell me that blogging won't make you rich (though I'm comfortable). And while I do believe that blogging can help you find work, I understand from this ex-CNN head writer/senior producer that it can just as easily foreclose numerous career options.

Do you have a blog? Has it helped or hurt your job prospects? Even if it hasn't made you rich, is it worth reading by people who don't know you (yet)? Talk to me and I'll tell the world via this incredibly powerful communication platform!

People talk a lot about "brand promise," so that got me thinking about "blog promise." What exactly does this blog promise, and am I delivering?

Right up front, of course, this blog promises "career advice and insights for marketing professionals." I think I deliver on this. What do you think?

Beyond that, though, this blog participates in Aquent's brand promise. At the risk of getting in trouble with my colleagues in the marketing department, I'll venture to say that that promise goes something like this: "At Aquent, you will find honest, friendly, and knowledgeable human beings who are sincerely interested in and passionately committed to finding diverse organizations great marketing and design talent while also finding great talent great work."

I know that's too lengthy and a tad over-stuffed with superlative-laden puffery. How's this for boiled-down simplicity? "Aquent = Friendly and Experienced Professionals." That leaves out our specialization in marketing and design, of course, but highlights three attributes that should define your experience with us and, by extension, this blog.

Friendly

I chose this word because it implies a lot like: engaging, human, connected, community-oriented, outgoing, good-natured, approachable, etc. I think this blog comes across as friendly and "human" - at least, I feel human-ish most of the time and have striven to maintain an air of engaged, honest openness in these pages. I have also tried to inject humor and even emotion here. Is it working?

Experienced

At first I wanted to go with "knowledgeable," but then thought that "experienced" was more comprehensive. Yes, we are knowledgeable, but we've also been around. We have practical knowledge, so we know what works and we get the importance of "fit." I'm also hoping that "experienced" comes through on this blog, not just thanks to my own professional adventures, but through the experiences of others that I've shared.

Professionals

I use this word advisedly, and not just because I think that this blog might come up a little short in the "professionalism" department. As far as Aquent goes, we are are pros and we work with pros. Our clients include some of the best-known brands on Earth and our talent have produced work viewed and used by millions. That's what I'm talking about.

As far as I go, although I do get paid to do this (among other things, natch), I still feel like the Eternal Noob or, at best, an amateur professional. The question is this: does a certain level of noobicity actually make this blog more human, friendly, and "sincere" (I thought it would be funny to put scare-quotes around that)?