Yeah, ok. I live on Facebook and I twitter my life away and have been doing so for a few years now. For as long as I have been tinkering around with social media, a few people find it surprising that my employer’s official social media presence (which is a part of my day job) is fairly new. Our blog is just a few months (and a few posts) old, our Facebook presence is just recently taking off, and our Twitter account, until just recently, was a placeholder for a long time. We knew we wanted to be in this space, but just like anything that involves time and investment, we had to make sure it was right for us, that it was in line with our business goals, and that we could do it right.
It’s a perpetual learning experience. And as part of that learning, I spend a lot of time watching what my colleagues and competitors do in the social media space. I see lots of things that I like and when I spot them, I try to copy and improve as needed.
Unfortunately, though, I cringe a lot more than I say wow.
I think each company has to figure out their own Twitter strategy and how they can make it work for them, but I literally cringe when I see firms using Twitter as their “free billboard” with tweets to the tone of “We’re a leading staffing firm in So and So City! Call us now with your needs!”
Lemme guess. You hired yourself a “social media expert” and they said Twitter could drive traffic to your site, so you started tweeting away with links to — big surprise — your site. Awesome.
Have you measured exactly how much traffic you’ve gotten from those tweets? Did it work? My guess is, it didn’t. But hey, if it did, please let me know so I can start doing that, too. That’s much easier than having to actually think of something relevant to say.
I’d say, figure out how you want to use Twitter first. Do you want to post jobs? Plenty of people do that. Do you want to engage in industry conversations? Yes, let’s be real, we’re all looking to promote ourselves on Twitter. But it really isn’t as simple as tweeting “I’m the best staffing firm ever. http://beststaffingfirmuseme.com.”
While I really can’t control how staffing firms use Twitter, it does affect the industry as a whole, contributing to the negative image that we are pretty much the equivalent of used car salesmen and offer little to no value. This is not to crucify anyone on their Twitter usage. Heck, I’m guilty about posting about my gastronomical adventures on my *personal* Twitter account. Twitter may be free to use, but it takes time and effort to use it effectively. How you make it work for your firm is for you to think about. Just please don’t behave like a used car sales person. It makes the rest of us look bad.
Need some inspiration? I personally like how MBO Partners use Twitter to connect with free lancers, and Shiftwise (tweeting as @staffingrobot) to tweet about VMS in healthcare, and the issues that affect the industry.
A lot of us have also established our presence on Facebook. I think this is a great way to connect with the communities we serve, giving them another way to communicate with us. If your social media expert told you that being on Facebook is an awesome addition to your web strategy, I hope they also told you that when you open lines of communication, it means just that. Open. You are exposing yourself to free commentary. The good. The bad. And yes, even the malicious. Yes, people pay attention to what others say about you, but that doesn’t mean that you should delete commentary that fall short of singing praises to your organization.
A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing through a staffing firm’s Facebook page and saw that a few folks had made some negative commentary on their page:
I was curious to see how they would handle this situation, so I was closely watching this page. I logged in the next morning and saw this:
Ok, I found it a little bit funny at first…that a couple of employees (it’s not that difficult to check on LinkedIn) came to the rescue and started flooding that post with “likes,” but it did nothing to address someone’s legitimate concern. She was feeling like the staffing firm she was working with was fully utilizing her talent. Perhaps the concern was legitimate, or perhaps the staffing firm just didn’t have the job orders she was expecting. But since the comment was deleted and was not addressed, we’ll never know.
Again, it shouldn’t be any of my business, but it does affect other staffing firms. There is a significant cross-section of contractors out there who feel they are under-valued or that the staffing firms they represent don’t really care about them. I’m sure the staffing firm in this case really does care. I mean, how could you not care? Our livelihood depends on keeping them happily working for us. They don’t work, we don’t bill. The business of it all requires us to care. And yet here was an opportunity to address it, and it was deleted. In my opinion, a simple “I’m sorry to hear that, please give so and so a call..” would have added more value than replacing it with “you rock!”
I’m not saying that comments should never be moderated. I think that there is no room for profanity in anyone’s Facebook page and I personally would delete them. But if someone is attempting to engage in a conversation using their adult words, we should keep in mind that we opened ourselves up to this and should engage.
Express Employment Professionals did just that, and I thought it was handled quite well:
I’m not here to preach the good ol’ “in social media, you have to be genuine.” And we can all be honest…we’re all making the investment in social media because we are hoping it will positively affect our bottom lines. But we also have to recognize the new realities of the web. There are lots of opportunities out there if we listen and keep an eye out for them. Companies like Dell figured this out (Google “Dell hell”) and figured out how to turn their customers’ frustrations into a mine of new ideas. I think the staffing industry as a whole can benefit from this as well, if we can get over ourselves and start listening.
I have awesome excuses, this time.
1) I am fortunate to say that my dayjob is keeping me really busy.
2) It’s summer. And the kids are out of school.
3) I live in California, and the beaches call quite often.
4) The pool has been calling my name, too. I have a giant X on my back to illustrate the point.
5) I’ve discovered that there are .50-caliber rifles that are literally taller than me. So the shooting ranges of Nevada were literally calling my name.
6) The pavement is calling, too. Doing the Wharf-to-Wharf run in Santa Cruz this weekend.
Though I have a feeling the training I have been doing on the pool won’t translate well for the run.
7) San Diego is feeling left out, so the kids and I are going to pay Legoland and Sealife Aquarium a visit next week.
Apparently outside the borders of California is this country called the United States. So I’m going on a major roadtrip from Utah to Idaho, to Wyoming, then to Montana for Rockin The Rivers.
9) Twittering is more beach-friendly. You can follow me here, or ATR’s updates here.
10) Facebooking, too. While you’re at it, please become a fan of our page. 
Or be nice and add me.
If I survive the port-a-pottie situation at Rockin The Rivers and make it back to Silicon Valley in one piece, the plan is to get back to blogging. I’m just hoping that Google will hold off on giving my #1 spot to someone else, even though we all know he deserves it way more.
Update to this post: My mistake, the call was actually hosted by the American Staffing Association and not the NACCB.
Was on the American Staffing Association conference call regarding the Chimes (we all know that the parent company is Axium International, but I’m going to refer to this as Chimes since this is how we’re affected). The bankruptcy attorney on the call was New York-based Lee Stremba of Troutman Sanders.
Please keep in mind that I am NOT an attorney and you should not take the following as legal advice. The following are my PERSONAL notes from the call and not meant to be taken as commentary or as my employer’s position on the matter. Entienden? Cool.
The letters most staffing firms got are pretty routine, apparently. If you received payments within 90 days of Chimes filing for bankruptcy, you probably got a preference demand letter from Howard Ehrenberg (the trustee).
What I (please read my disclaimers again) take away from this is that just because you received a preference demand letter from the trustee does not automatically expose you to a lawsuit. You have no legal obligation to even respond to it. But it also won’t hurt to write back and say that you’re looking into it.
The trustee has two years to assert preferential claims and sue creditors. We’re six months away from that time limit. No one knows whether Howard Ehnberg intends to sue Chimes’ creditors, only that (according to Stremba) he is a pretty active litigator.
What are your defenses for preferential treatment?
(Stremba emphasizes that while these sound simple, how the courts interpret each one can vary).
Ordinary Course – You can say that the payments you received from Chimes (which the trustee is now attempting to collect back) was received in the “ordinary course of business,” within the agreed credit terms and in a manner and timing customary to normal business practices (eg Chimes had been paying you every month on the 15th like clockwork and the payment you got right before they filed for bankruptcy).
Contemporaneous Exchange - If there is no such history for “ordinary course,” you can say that the payment terms was “immediately upon billing.”
New Value - If the payment somehow was outside “ordinary course” of business you can say that the additional payments were for additional services.
Soooo…now…you got that scary letter, what is Stremba’s advice (again, what I take away…don’t use this as legal advice)? Gather your records. Look at your payment history with Chimes.
Someone at the call asked if they should get collective representation to save money. His advice? What you basically have to do is analyze your own situation. Amounts that are being demanded vary from one firm to another, and payment terms and history also vary. He emphasized that you have to look at your own situation. Bonding together with other firms who may not be in the same boat won’t help you do that.
What if you just do nothing and don’t act on the demand letter? According to Stremba, if you don’t communicate with the trustee, maybe nothing will happen, but you might also get a complaint, which really is the earliest stage of the legal process…and then you can negotiate a settlement.
(From my estimation, it seems it’s not a bad idea to write a letter and say you’re looking into it…).
Here’s Lee Stremba’s information:
Lee Stremba
Troutman Sanders LLP
lee.stremba@troutmansanders.com
212.704.6143
I got a call this morning from a woman who found my blog. She shared with me that she received a letter last week from Howard Ehrenberg, the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee for Axium International, parent company of Ensemble Chimes, asking her firm to pay back $86,000, for payments they received in 2008.
She’s looking for other firms in this situation and as a favor, I’m posting about it (thank god, the firm I work for had minimal exposure). If you are in this situation, please leave a comment or send me an e-mail at lisaamorao at gmail.com so that I can connect you.
I’m known around the office for analogies that takes quite a bit of mental bandwidth to even understand. This is one of those.
So I’ve been sidelined at home the last couple of days to take care of my kids, ages 9 and 7.5. They had the sniffles and with the whole swine flu scare and precautions, the school advised me to keep them at home and I was happy to oblige.
I don’t like it when my kids are sick, but I enjoy taking care of them when they are. When they are well, they seem like ungrateful little creatures. They sit at the dinner table, demanding to be fed. They expect that I would wake them up in time for school every single morning, breakfast waiting on the table. They expect their lunches to be ready. They expect that they will be picked up on time after school and that they will get their time on the playground. They can rely on these things day in and day out, and as a mom, I’m just expected to do these things and expect no appreciation other than the privilege of maybe getting a hug at night. But when they are under the weather, things definitely change. They don’t run around as much. They eat the chicken porridge I make like it’s the best thing they’ve ever had. The same boys who are embarrassed to be seen with me around school now want nothing more than to just sit in the couch with me, cuddle up in a blanket and watch Spongebob…and they don’t want anyone else but me.
Not all of it is lovey-dovey. There are those nights when I don’t sleep because I’m watching their temperature, listening to each breath, inhaler at hand…hideous, tiring nights…but these are also the moments that separate me from everyone else in their lives. When everyone else won’t touch you with a 10-foot pole because you’ve got some hideous virus, your mom would still be there to take care of you.
I think we all agree that the economy is pretty much in the tank and a few of our clients are…well…feeling under the weather. I was just chatting with a client of mine a few days back and he mentioned that he’s getting a lot of phone calls from staffing firms and he was a bit depressed telling people that he had no reqs to tell people about. “They couldn’t get off the phone fast enough,” he said. “They are just too eager to call the next person on their list of calls to do that day. Maybe they have reqs.”
When the economy is hot, our clients have reqs and they rely on us to fill them. They can’t sit down and talk because they simply don’t have the time to have that relationship with us, and we, in turn, are busy working on their reqs. We’re staffing firms. It’s what we are paid to do. But right now, they are feeling under the weather. Budgets are shrinking, very few are actually hiring, and unfortunately, the staffing firms that were eager to listen and take down reqs just a few months ago aren’t so attentive now.
Now, just as no mother will admit to or feel good about not taking care of a sick child, no staffing firm will admit to abandoning their clients in a downturn. But take a look at the survey results conducted by the Staffing Industry Analysts: 30% of staffing companies feel that providing excellent customer service was a key to their success to 2008. In 2009, only 22% of staffing companies feel that providing excellent customer service is a key factor to their success. Seriously? Thirty percent was already an embarrassing number, 22% is simply horrible. The same survey also revealed that 56% of staffing companies feel that “increasing revenue” was their top priority.
Increase revenues by taking care of your customers less. Seriously? Even more astonishing, no, wait, embarrassing, is that at 56%, a majority of staffing firms subscribe to this baffling concept.
Going back to the mom analogy, that’s like saying I only want to deal with healthy children and when they get sick, well, maybe I can just stick them in a room, check on them the next day and maybe they’d be well again and everything will be just fine.
Just as I don’t really like it when my children are sick (who wishes illness on their child?), this downtime that we’re all having is a good opportunity to nurture relationships and pay closer attention to our customers, because they sure are recognizing who they can really rely on. Relationships. It’s what sets you apart as a business partner from everyone else, simply known as “vendors.”
I am easily amused.
Out of all the blog posts I’ve written in my lifetime, I am particularly fond of a paragraph that I wrote in a post for ATR’s blog, The Staffing Minute: The post was about a particular encounter during Web2.0 Expo.
It’s not a mortal sin to not be on Facebook or LinkedIn (I know plenty of people who don’t want any part of it), but this was Web2.0 Expo. In this particular situation, not being part of Facebook or LinkedIn is like going to a Weight Watchers meeting and proclaiming you don’t want to lose weight.
Read the whole post here: http://www.atrinternational.com/atrblog/2009/04/live-what-you-sell/
April 17th, 2009 in
blogging |
1 Comment
So I finally got my floors done about a week ago. I signed with the same person that has done two other jobs for me in the last 10 years. He was hurting for business. I was happy to give it to him and since I know a few people who were itching to spend their tax refund, I figured I’d refer them to him as well. Win, win, win, all the way.
Well…until I came home that Friday afternoon, when I was supposed to walk into my house and admire my brand new floor.
The new floor in the living room was nice, but I was too distracted to notice it. My furniture was in the kitchen. The baseboards weren’t done, and the hallway carpet was ripped off but not replaced. Apparently there was a “problem” with “something” and they have to come back and finish another time.
It wasn’t a problem with my guy, but I guess in an effort to cut costs and compete on pricing, he is now working with cheaper installation people…and they were able to charge cheap because they book a whole bunch of installations at once, start several projects just to hook the customers — when your floors are already ripped off, would you be calling someone else?
Now, I’m a reasonable person, except he agreed that the job would be COMPLETED before the end of the day. Sure, issues can come up, we can’t help that, but none of it was communicated to me.
Furious, I demanded that the job be done that night, or I wasn’t going to pay. (My ex-husband did say that I was the customer from hell…it would be a shame not to live up to the expectation). I did not put down any deposit whatsoever and agreed to pay 10 days after the job was completed.
My guy eventually had to go find some other installer to finish the job and he didn’t find one until late. But the job was done that night. My guy and his installer was working in my house until 1 am.
Oh but there’s more to the story!
The following morning I went into my garage and found that everything was covered in sawdust. Because they were working late the previous night, the installers cut wood inside the garage instead of the driveway to avoid making excessive noise and having my neighbors call the cops. Sure, that’s fine, but for crying out loud, clean up. Vacuum or something.
So I called my guy again and he saw the thick layer of dust in my garage. He knew it was his responsibility to clean up, so he offered to take off $100 from the total price and labeled it as “cleanup.”
The moral of the story…
We’re all hurting due to the economy and we’re all tightening our belts. But what sorts of corners are we cutting? Does it adversely affect customer experience? Are you losing clients because of your cost-cutting measures? I could’ve brought “my guy” more business through referrals and even though I still like him, I’m not so sure about the service vendors he’s using.
My guy not only lost whatever future business I have to offer plus referrals, he had to knock off $100 from the total amount I owe him. I’m ok, my floors are ok, my garage got cleaned up…but I wonder if he is aware how much cutting corners ended up costing him.
I recently adopted a dog which made me question my choice of flooring at home and I’ve decided that I was going to replace my carpet with wood.
I called the same person that installed the carpet I currently have 10 years ago. The same person also installed the tile floors that I have in my kitchen and my bathrooms three years ago.
When he got here, we chit-chatted a little bit…how are you, I’m fine, thanks…how’s business? He said he was glad I called, things have been really slow for him. He mentioned that he had to let go of three of his project teams (he used to have five) because business has been bad.
I told him that I was thinking about replacing my carpet with wood. He then started shaking his head.
“What about your kids,” he asked. Ok, so what about them?
“Yeah, the carpet is dirty but why don’t you just get it cleaned?”
And? Are you selling carpet cleaning services now? I thought to myself.
“If your kids run around and they fall, they’d get hurt more on wood floor than on carpet.”
I was a bit confused, then amazed. Here was a man who was hurting for business, and he was discouraging me from buying from him because he was concerned about my kids getting hurt. Heck. I’m surprised he even remembered that I had kids!
I explained about the dog, then I reassured him that my kids don’t quite run around as much as he remembered the last time he did some work in my house.
I was going to shop around for a better deal, I even planned on asking him for his “best price.” But at that point, I trusted that he was going to give me a fair deal. Heck. He was ready to walk away from my place without a sale.
He said he’s sure that my selection was in stock and that he can get my new floor installed before the week is over.
I’m really excited to be doing business with him again. I know he would do a good job as he did twice previously, and I also trust that he has my best interest in mind.
In the staffing industry there are firms who feel they need to sell on offering the lowest mark-up. But it feels much better to sell based on trust and expertise. The buyer or end user is happy to do business with someone they trust will deliver the best service at a reasonable price as opposed to being forced to buy from the cheapest. The staffing firm is not constantly on edge about having to cut-corners just to remain competitive on pricing, which in turn, allows them to focus more on quality.
I was blog surfing today and found an awesome conversation about online job boards between Shiftwise’s Jason Lander and TempWorks’ Gregg Dourgarian.
Gregg says advertising jobs on Monster is a huge waste of money and ineffective because your competitors are out on Monster as well, and Jason says if Monster is the marketplace where candidates are, why would you stop advertising there just because your competitors are also there?
I think both gentlemen have valid points. Gregg is right, employers can eliminate “monster fees” by using search engine optimization techniques. The idea, however, isn’t exactly ground-breaking and does not take into the account the real reason why companies continue to post on job boards.
So I see Jason’s point of view. Monster is the market and if that’s where the customers are, that’s where you should sell, regardless of whether they also carry your competitors’ products as well.
I’m going to take Jason’s point of view and take it one step further. The Internet is The Market, and job boards such as Monster, Dice, etc, are retailers. If you’re a farmer (using Jason’s analogy), you can sell directly to your consumers by having them come directly to your farm, or you can take your products to your consumers via the various distribution channels.
But yeah, wouldn’t it be nice if we just eliminated the X dollars spent on job boards?
True, you can use SEO techniques, but that would be an overly simplified solution.
The thing is, most employers do not have the kind of candidate traffic that job boards get, and even with SEO techniques, it would still be quite difficult to beat job boards when it comes to search results. The explanation itself also comes down to SEO. These boards simply rank higher, they have more content, they have more inlinks, they advertise aggressively to attract the kind of traffic that they do. I do believe that vertical job search engines will change the way this all plays out, but I don’t think job boards are going away anytime soon, either.
Again, it comes down to candidate traffic. This is where they are, and while employers are definitely employing SEO tactics to attract candidates to their own job listings on their own websites rather than Monster’s, from an employment branding perspective, it’s still not a bad idea to have a presence in those job boards.
Photo from Dan Lyon’s Blog
I receive a lot of comments from my friends, family, and co-workers about my Facebook usage. The comments are usually in the vicinity of “wow…you sure are on Facebook a lot!” I also get “do you even work?”
Oh…where does a single mom find the time to maintain and develop websites, develop new online services, monitor traffic, blog, watch Woz on Dancing With The Stars, AND be on Facebook all day?
Here’s my coming out post. I have Oompa Lumpas who impersonate me on Facebook. They comment, click “like” on people’s pictures and links every so often, send out links and update my status every five minutes.
Kidding.
Alright. Here goes:
How To Look Like You’re On Facebook All Day When You’re Really Working.
First, you’re going to need some basic equipment. I have a Windows desktop computer at work, a Macbook Pro for my mobile office (aka the kitchen table, the playground, Chuck E Cheese), and my iPhone.
I have quite a few social networking accounts that I have feeding into Facebook, but I do have a few people in mind writing this post, so I will keep it down to my most commonly used accounts: Twitter, and this blog.
Basically, every time I post on Twitter, it shows up as my Facebook status. You can link up these two accounts by installing the Twitter application on Facebook.
Now, I use several Twitter clients so that I am not on Twitter all day. I send tweets and monitor the people I’m following from my Windows desktop using Twhirl, from my Macbook Pro using Twitteriffic, which also has an iPhone version that I use. If I’m driving, I use an application called Vlingo, a voice-powered app that allows me to update my Twitter status by speaking, instead of typing. On 3G dead zones, I send text messages to 40404 to update Twitter.
I’ll stop there. My Twitter usage is a post in itself.
To stay visible in my contacts’ Facebook feeds, I have to make sure that content goes in there. An easy source of content is my blog, which is a self-hosted Wordpress blog. To automatically publish my blog posts on Facebook, I use the Wordbook plugin. You can also do this on a Wordpress.com blog by using the Wordpress application on Facebook.
Knowing that my 675 friends on Facebook want to see pictures of my dog or stuff that I did over the weekend, I post a lot of it. The amount of pictures I post on Facebook has some people thinking that I sit around uploading pictures all day. I do this a couple of ways. When I’m outdoors, I usually take a picture, go on the Facebook app on my iPhone, then post it from there. That takes about two seconds, which is not bad if you’re posting one or two pictures. If I have a batch of pictures that I am uploading, I plug in my iPhone or my camera to my Macbook Pro, which automatically opens up iPhoto. I “select all” the pictures from the “last import” and export them using the Facebook exporter for iPhoto. The application takes you to Facebook for approval and that’s it.
Links are also a great way to add content to your Facebook profile. I read the New York Times online and I browse the web using Chrome on Windows and Safari/Firefox on my Mac. All my browsers are equipped with the “Share on Facebook” tab, which allows me to post links and comment on them while I’m browsing. Easy. For all you Mozilla people out there, there’s also an excellent add-on for Facebook.
Of course, the real value of Facebook for me is in consuming content that my network shares with me through their feeds. I usually reserve the content consumption for the morning (when I read my news and RSS feeds), at night, and when I’m stuck in traffic. I live and work in Silicon Valley, which means a good portion of my day is spent literally sitting in a non-moving car on this high-performance parking lot we call Highway 101. Commenting, writing on people’s walls, is usually done on my iPhone.
As you can see, you can definitely incorporate your social networking activities into your everyday tasks. With the proper equipment, applications and setup, you too can look like you do nothing but “Facebook all day” while you’re really working.
