Social Media ROI & LinkedIn’s Social RecruitIn event
As a business owner – it’s often difficult to step outside of what we do day to day working ‘in’ the business) – to take time out to work ‘on’ the business. However, whilst it’s difficult – I recognise it’s also absolutely necessary.
For me, when I get the opportunity to talk at an event – it’s the perfect opportunity to do some working ‘on’.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of being part of LinkedIn’s Social RecruitIn event, at the Business Design Centre, focused on helping agencies to build, engage and recruit.
The conference theme was around the Art and Science of Recruitment – covering talks from both the creative art side and the data drive science side.
My talk focused on Measuring the Value of Social Media – giving a quick update on where we are with social media, from a technology and stats perspective – and then providing a practical framework for how to measure social.
Key to measuring anything is, of course, determining the metrics – and then critical to identifying the return – is attaching a monetary value to those metrics.
I couldn’t resist kicking off my including the colourful and creative Gary Vaynerchuk’s (@garyvee) analogy ‘What’s the ROI of your Mother?’ – and that certainly become a continuous theme to the start of many of the conversations I had during the day (so thanks Gary).
Of course, whilst I agree with Gary that it’s often tricky to measure some of the more intangible aspects of social – I disagree that it’s impossible. There are certainly concrete elements that can be measured – the all important aspect is determining what it is you are setting out to achieve and then what you are going to measure to determine whether you’re getting there and achieving results.
I’ll put together a webinar on this very soon – so if you’d like to join that – email me and I’ll be sure to loop you in.
My session was followed by morning tea – and then @JamesCaan took to the stage – sharing his insights into how social media can be used directly within the recruitment industry – and showcasing how he is applying social media activity to leverage opportunities.
My favourite session on the morning saw Dave Hazlehurst (@googledave) take to the stage to lead a discussion on Amplifying your brand through social.
Dave’s punchy character, passion for his topic and delivery style certainly grabbed attention – and in just 20 minutes he shared so many nuggets and takeaways around content marketing; the power of stories, content ideas around education and pain points and brand amplification. Always great to meet and connect with people that really talk the same language and I’ll certainly be tuning in to his musings and reading his book, Getting Goosebumps.
Over lunch I was fortunate to get to listen to the headline keynote, Lou Adler (@LouA), CEO of The Adler Group – who was holding a Q&A. I really enjoyed his stance on performance based hiring. Aspects of which that could be applied not only to recruitment but many other sectors and areas of business.
After lunch I was keen to see Ollie Sharp, Senior Sales Manager at LinkedIn – talking and leading a panel on How Senior Leads and Consultants Give a Brand a Personality. The session focused on the growing area of ‘the SocialCEO’ – and how socially connected a CEO is can drive brand and intention throughout an organisation. Showcasing CEO’s doing it well – eg: Richard Branson – and then getting two CEO’s on stage to provide a grass roots overview as to how they are driving social within their businesses. I was delighted to see that in both cases, they showed tangible positive results to profitability, directly related to their social activity.
Proving the point that if social is done well, driven by strategic and business objectives, has buy in at the top level and is cascaded throughout the entire business – it is mighty powerful.
It was great to finally meet Ollie – as he and I had been tweeting for some time. Ollie had purchased several copies of The Business of Business Social some time ago advising that he made it mandatory for his sales team to read. It transpires that having read it – it gave Ollie the inspiration to completely reposition their sales proposition to their audiences.
It was wonderful to receive praise and thanks, not only from Ollie, but also from Dan Dackombe, Sales Director EMEA and Greg Stephenson, Global Head of Solutions Product Marketing – as to what they had taken from the book to help them rethink how they sold their solutions. Praise indeed.
In fact, at interview level, The Business of Being Social – is the book sales team candidates have to read and then present on. It’s always great to hear stories about how people have been inspired and impacted by the work you do – and so this is really wonderful news – and something that both David and I are immensely proud of.
My favourite keynote of the day was certainly Susie Wolff – Racing Driver, Williams F1 Team member – shared her story about finding her passion for racing at the tender age of 8 and the importance of staying in the moment, being prepared, finding your purpose and dreaming big.
As always – any questions tweet me @michellecarvill or email michelle@carvillcreative.co.uk.
Michelle Carvill, best selling business author, speaker, founder and Director at Carvill - the social media marketing agency. For information about how the team at Carvill can help you - simply get in touch or visit our website for more information.