News and social media monitoring remains critical to effective social media marketing.  Because if you don’t know what people are talking about, you don’t know what’s important to them or where to focus your efforts.

Since the announcement that one of the most popular social monitoring tools Google Reader will be discontinued on July 1, 2013, Feedly has emerged as one of the leading social media tools users should consider shifting to, signing up 3 million new users since in last month or so.

In this episode, Cyril Moutran, co-founder at Feedly, discusses the monitoring tools the web and mobile versions of their news readers offers including subscribing to raw RSS feeds, feed views, Facebook monitoring and Twitter monitoring.

Social Media Monitoring with Feedly

How far back Feedly goesSubscribing to Google News feeds via RSSSocial media monitoring latency issuesSocial media monitoring trendsSearch within RSS feeds and feed directoriesContent curation capabilities of FeedlyOptions for analyzing feed activityHow Feedly curates content based on social activityHow Feedly compares to FlipboardValue of discovery vs. chronology in feedsUsing Feedly social measurement featureHacking RSS feeds

With more than 3 million users, Feedly is an angel-funded start-up with 10 employees and a newsreader app for the desktop, iPhone, iPad and Android. 

The company has not figured out how to generate revenue yet, but they’re kicking around different premium service ideas that would be paid. But the free version is not going away.

“We’ll always have a free model,” says Cyril Moutran.

In a tight job market, attracting top talent through employment marketing at Sodexo – the 20th largest employer in the world and the most prominent company most people have never heard of – involves much more than just a LinkedIn presence and a blog.

Consumer marketing strategies can also be applied to employment marketing.

The shift in mindset revolves around creative content marketing strategies that promote career advancement opportunities, showcasing employee experiences, provide career tips, and offering valuable advice to candidates and employees. The best content marketing attracts top talent be focusing on what the company can offer with respect to career paths or career advancement.

Under the guidance of Arie Ball, VP of Talent Acquisition, Sodexo's employment marketing strategy encompasses the Sodexo Jobs mobile app, the Sodexo blog, nearly a dozen managed communities tailored to specific job tasks, and branded social media accounts on every major social network.

Employment Marketing Through Mobile, Social, and Local Channels

Sodexo is leveraging content marketing and SEO, distributed through a mobile app and promoted on social media to extend the reach of their employment marketing efforts to mobile, social, and local channels. This blog post is a summary of a podcast interview with Chloe Rada, the voice of Sodexo Careers, and senior marketing manager in the talent acquisition department.

Chloe Rada, a seasoned professional with a background in advertising and extensive experience in recruitment marketing, shares insights into her journey and her contributions to the HR and staffing industry. Although she doesn't consider herself an HR practitioner, Chloe's affiliation as a SHERM cardholder underscores her familiarity with HR practices. With a family business rooted in advertising and employment marketing, Chloe Rada's career path seamlessly merged employment marketing strategies with the in-house recruitment landscape, where she collaborated with employers of all sizes to attract top-tier candidates. 

She’s focused on using content marketing to distribute and promote Sodexo's online job center and open up lines of communication between candidates and recruiters. Her mission is to help the talent acquisition department communicate what working at Sodexo is like. Her team is 100% virtual and supports hiring management positions only. Others hire hourly employees.  

Rada, who also serves as the Sodexo careers spokesperson, manages the company's social media properties for recruitment and writes for their careers blog. She emphasizes the importance of conveying not only the services Sodexo offers, but also the employment experience they provide across various environments, such as marine bases, military, education, and corporate services.

Rada says her role supports Sodexo's recruitment goals, where they receive approximately 20,000 applications per month. She highlighted the department's virtual work environment, fostering innovation and collaboration, and mentioned their recent recognition as the number one recruitment department of the year. Arie stressed the significance of using social media to build relationships with candidates, providing insights into Sodexo's culture and work environment and how this approach has helped connect with potential hires early in their career exploration process.

Engagement Through Employment Marketing

Regarding a survey conducted with recent hires regarding the usage of their mobile app, launched midway through the fiscal year, a significant majority of have been the Sodexo Careers mobile app for job searches and applications, establishing it as a crucial connection with candidates who spend less time on desktop or mobile computers.

The survey extended its inquiries beyond the mobile recruiting app, delving into the broader landscape of social media channels candidates use to find jobs. Surprisingly, 46% of all hires reported using one or more social spaces for this purpose, with the Sodexo USA careers blog emerging as a standout favorite, underscoring the effectiveness of content marketing as a recruitment tool.

Rada, who is the main contributor to the careers blog, highlights the importance of focusing on strategic content marketing and dissemination via various social channels to expand its reach, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and discipline-specific microsites, all of which have witnessed increased engagement. The survey shed light on the evolving landscape of candidate engagement and the pivotal role of that content marketing plays in the recruitment process.

Empowering Blue-Collar Dreams: Authentic Content Marketing for Trust and Engagement

It is essential when recruiting top-tier candidates to extend the reach of timely and authentic content marketing efforts through social media engagement. Responding to candidates' inquiries promptly and fosters trust through transparency. Diversifying content marketing strategies beyond job postings by including frequently asked questions, industry news, infographics, and relevant insights serves to enrich the candidate's experience and attract an engaged talent pool. The goal of aligning recruitment marketing strategies with consumer marketing practices is to connect with and serve potential candidates and existing employees effectively.

In this exclusive podcast interview hosted by Eric Schwartzman, HR recruiters Steve Levy and Tom Bolt share invaluable insights into social media recruiting.

As businesses increasingly turn to digital channels to source and screen candidates, the discussion delves into various aspects of social media recruitment strategies, legal considerations, and emerging trends.

Legal Risks and Ethical Screening in Social Media Recruiting Strategies

One of the pivotal topics explored during the podcast is the legal landscape surrounding candidate identification and screening through social media. As the practice becomes more widespread, it's crucial to navigate this terrain carefully. Levy and Bolt stress the importance of keeping candidate research within legal boundaries, respecting privacy rights, and avoiding discrimination.

Strategic Timing for Social Media Review in Social Media Recruiting Strategies

Determining when to review a candidate's social media profiles is another critical aspect covered. While it's acceptable to examine public profiles during the hiring process, the experts advise conducting such reviews after an initial interview to ensure fairness and avoid bias.

Legislative Trends in Social Media Governance in Social Media Recruiting Strategies

Levy and Bolt shed light on legislative trends in social media governance. They emphasize that staying informed about evolving laws and regulations is essential to maintaining ethical recruitment practices.

Sources of Hire Report in Social Media Recruiting Strategies

The podcast also touches upon the "Sources of Hire Report" by Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler, which provides valuable data and insights into where successful hires are coming from. Understanding these sources is crucial for tailoring effective recruiting strategies.

Effective Twitter Recruiting in Social Media Recruiting Strategies

Twitter, a platform known for its real-time engagement, is discussed in depth. The podcast outlines best practices for Twitter recruiting, including the use of job seeker tweet chats like Hire Friday Chat and Open Mic Career Chat.

The Power of SEO, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Blogs in Social Media Recruiting Strategies

Retaining the services of a skilled search engine optimization consultant for recruiting purposes, leveraging LinkedIn's extensive network, utilizing Facebook for recruiting, and harnessing the potential of blogs are all explored as part of effective social media recruitment strategies. The guests emphasize that if blogs are used for recruiting, they should be authored by employees throughout the company.

Turning Employees into Talent Scouts in Social Media Recruiting Strategies

A compelling example shared during the podcast is Arie Ball's approach at Sodexo, where every employee is encouraged to become a talent scout. This innovative idea underscores the idea that great talent can come from unexpected sources within an organization.

LinkedIn Profile Optimization and Resume Writing in Social Media Recruiting Strategies

The discussion also touches on the optimization of LinkedIn profiles for job seekers and best practices for resume writing. Crafting a standout LinkedIn profile and a compelling resume are crucial steps in the recruitment process.

Steve Levy and Tom Blot share valuable guidance to HR professionals and business leaders looking to enhance their social media recruiting strategies.

From legal considerations to leveraging different platforms effectively, these insights can help you attract and retain top talent in today's competitive job market.

Natanya Anderson, Director Social Media and Digital Marketing at Whole Foods Market, which includes a branded Twitter account with over 3 million followers and more than 600 local social media accounts representing the grocery stores that are part of the chain.

Natanya Anderson

Natanya has a food blog and is a past Austin Food Lover’s Alliance president.

Whole Foods Market (acquired by Amazon) is the world's largest organic and natural foods supermarket chain.

In this exclusive interview, she discusses:

How Whole Foods coordinates and localizes their social media efforts.

How Whole Foods trains and qualifies personnel to engage on behalf of the stores.

Managing the sprawl of social media among 1200 representatives

How the brand provides tools, reports, content and engagement guidance to the stores

How they use online social media training to bring people up to speed

What happens if someone makes a mistake?

Costco vs. Food Workers Union compliant filed with the NLRB.

And much more!

Special thanks to Babette Pepaj at BakeSpace.

In this episode, Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini shares why a social media monitoring tool without integrated social media analytics is a hammer without a nail.

Most of the Google Reader alternatives are focused on giving users social filters to discover the best content.  But Netvibes has been there and done that.

They’re more interested in helping users find meaning through context.  

Netvibes will give you their news reader for free. But if you want their analytics, you’ll have to pay.

They are a business, after all, with a revenue model.  But their free version is ad-free, and has been around for nearly eight years, and since it's the centerpoint of their freemium sales model, the company says they have no plans to lay it to rest.   

Netvibes is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes.  

Why am I so interested in Google Reader alternatives?  Well, my media monitoring report has plenty.

So I’m intently studying the major Google Reader alternatives to determine which ones to include in my course revision.

Social Media Monitoring Topics Discussed  

Feedly vs. Netvibes, feature by feature

Netvibes free vs. premium versions

Netvibes biggest advantage over Feedly

Twitter API, which impose limits on all free monitoring tools

New users acquired since Google killed Reader

Why it’s too soon to compare Netvibes to Feedly

Why Netvibes covets analysis over engagement

Evolution of Netvibes, from information overload to crowdsourcing to semantics

Using monitoring analytics to trigger dark PPC campaigns

On Malik and finding the soul of big data

On April 2, 2013 social media was officially deemed an acceptable venue for publicly traded companies to disclose material information to investors by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  

The new SEC ruling on social media stipulates that before companies use social media for material disclosures, they must alert investors where they’ll be doing so in advance.  

In this interview, Glen Gilmore, author of Social Media Law for Business and principal at Gilmore Business Network talks about the impact and ramifications of the ruling for employers and employees.  

The SEC Ruling on Social Media is particularly important to investor relations professionals, who are charged with distributing information that could impact their company's stock price. 

The SEC released Regulation Fair Disclosure back in 2000 to prevent institutional investors from gaining an unfair trading advantage over individual investors by requiring publicly listed companies to nonselectively release material information. 

Since then, companies have been complying with Reg FD by using paid newswire services like PR Newswire and BusinessWire to satisfy their nonselective disclosure requirements. 

As would be expected, the SEC Ruling on Social Media prompted a defensive posture from the paid PR newswire services.  

But if the SEC's 2008 Guidance on the Use of Company Websites for Corporate Disclosures is any indication, the new SEC Ruling on Social Media is unlikely to provoke a sea change in how listed companies disclose their news. 

In this interview, Glen discusses these and other issues that the new ruling on social media have brought into the limelight for investor relations professionals.  

SEC Ruling Topics Covered:  

Caveats to the SEC Ruling on Social MediaIR industries response to the SEC Ruling on Social MediaPractical methods for giving investors advance notice to impending material disclosure via social mediaWill the new SEC guidance on social media spur more embedding of social activity on company websites?Implementation challenges of the new SEC social media rulingDoes the inclusion of tweets on Bloomberg terminals make Twitter a more or less risky venue?Navigating material disclosures between personal and branded social media accounts?Updates HR managers should consider making to their employee handbook as a result of this new social media ruling from the SEC.

Disclaimer:  This interview is for general informational purposes only and should NOT be considered legal advice.  Please refer any legal questions you may have to an attorney from your jurisdiction.

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

How do businesses use social media differently than individuals, what’s the secret to leveraging social media to steer B2B purchasing decisions and how do you sell social media to disengaged bosses, coworkers and clients?

These are other B2B Social Media Topics are discussed on this expert panel produced by Social Media Club L.A. that I moderated.

Panelists:

Rachel Luxemburg, Principal Strategist at AdobeStephen Gundee, Enterprise Relationship Manager at LinkedInErick Brownstein, EVP for Marketing at YTMLauren Buchman, marketing consultant specializing in channel marketing

Topics:

What are the differences between B2C and B2B social media marketing?How should B2B determine their paid, earned and owned social media mix?How are B2Bs inspiring the Ultimate Moment of Truth that Brian Solis suggests in his new bookWhat are the essential ingredients of a vibrant B2B customer community?How do you build a B2B ambassador program that gets coworkers and SMEs using social media as well?Is there a relationship between trust and ease-of-use and do you trust the new Linkedin Skills & Expertise Endorsements?

Special thanks to Steven Swimmer of Swimmer Media.

Dan Goldman (@danielg280), Mayo Clinic and Advisory Board member to the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, discusses the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and social media.

https://www.instagram.com/p/p4K_grt-nq/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

The Mayo Clinic has been at the forefront of the use of social media for marketing communication since the dawn of social networking.

Most other healthcare providers were reticent to leverage social media, for fear of violating patient privacy information.

In most cases, nurses who violate HIPAA with social media are not aware of how their social media use impacts patient privacy. As a result, HIPAA violations involving social media have increased significantly.

But the Mayo Clinic figured out how to use social media effectively and responsibly without violating patient privacy from the very beginning.

HIPAA sets national standards for the security of electronic protected health information.

And it also applies to the confidentiality provisions of the Patient Safety Rule, which protect identifiable information being used to analyze patient safety events and improve patient safety.  

Dan specializes in Internet law, HIPAA and Privacy law, telemedicine, trademark law, copyright law, and social media legal issues.  

HIPAA and Social Media

Identifiable health informationThe HIPAA Security RuleConfidentiality provisions of the Patient Safety RulePatient rights over medical informationThe HIPAA Patient Privacy RuleHow advances in electronic technology can erode the privacy of health informationImpact of recently NLRB rulings on patient privacyHIPAA compliant social media policyImportance of social media compliance training

If you're looking a checklist for avoiding HIPAA violations on social media, check out my free Social Media and HIPAA online training course.

If you are in the marketing department of a pharmaceutical company you may also be interested in my Social Media Policy Analysis of the FDA Revised Social Media Policy.

Guest host Andrea Vascellari and Eric Schwartzman discuss Le Web 2012 which ran from Dec. 4-6 in Paris.

This is Episode 30 of the Social Pros Podcast featuring Eric Schwartzman, best-selling author, speaker, blogger, trainer and advisor. 

Eric Schwartzman on the Social Pros Podcast

Jay: Hey, everybody, and we’re back with another episode of Social Pros, shining the light on real people doing real work in social media. I am Jay Baer, joined, as always, by social media marketing software company genius, Founder, President and man among boys, live from the woods of North Carolina, Mr. Eric Boggs.

Eric B.: These introductions keep getting better and better, Jay.

Jay: And longer. The next time I’m going to do a 20-minute introduction and a seven-minute show.

Eric B.: That sounds fantastic.

Jay: How are you my friend?

Eric B.: Doing just great. What’s new?

Jay: Oh, man, it’s been a crazy week in the interwebs. We’re going to talk about that in just a second. Let’s take a real quick minute to acknowledge our sponsors in addition to Eric’s company Argyle Social, who we use for all of our social media content missives.

Also our friends at Infusionsoft, fantastic e-mail CRM company, who we use for all of our emailings; our buddy Jim Kukral at digitalbooklaunch.com, who is our erstwhile guest host; and the good folks at Janrain, who do all kinds of amazing social sign-in and matching up your database to real people in social media. Solving common problems, those folks at Janrain.  

We, today, have ourselves quite a show, quite a show, Eric Boggs. We have a professional on the show today.

We actually have somebody who actually knows something about podcasting and other stuff, but podcasting in particular.

I first met Eric Schwartzman when he was writing his fantastic book Social Marketing to the Business Customer, with Paul Gillin.

We’re going to talk to Eric specifically today about a really interesting series of web-based training programs he has now about social media, social media boot camp, if you will.

Eric B.: Yep.

Jay: So, we’ll do that in a second.

Eric B.: It’s bonus, extra Eric also in this podcast. Jay’s Thought of the Week

Jay: Two Erics, one Jay, it is a Jay sandwich. So crazy week in social media and a lot of things potentially to talk about, but the one I wanted to talk about, especially because you’re on the show is what is the deal with Twitter? This crazy API pronouncement and, “You must make everything look the way we make it look,” and, “If you don’t want to do it the way we want to do it, we’re going to revoke your access.” For somebody in your line of work, it feels to me like a shot across the bow. How did that go over in the halls of Argyle Social?

Eric B.: You actually reminded me that I was supposed to write a blog post about this earlier today. It’s on my to-do list and obviously…

Jay: Now you can just link to the podcast transcript.

Eric B.: Exactly, yeah. Now, I haven’t done it and thank you for reminding me. We actually saw it as a good thing, oddly enough. If you read through that whole massive post from the Twitter API guys, they had a quadrant at the bottom of the post that basically, I think they divided the world in engagement and analytics, and then business and consumer and they basically called out their four quadrants.

One of them is sort of consumer engagement apps. Another is sort of consumer-influenced analytics, obviously Klout being the only thing in that quadrant. Then there’s business engagement and management in business analytics and they basically said, “Look, if you’re in the consumer engagement quadrant, you might want to think about starting another company.”

That type of clarity from Twitter is welcome to us. One, because Argyle is not in that quadrant, we’re firmly nestled in the business analytics and business engagement side of the world along with quite a few competitors. Getting sort of clarity and a sense of roadmap from Twitter is actually good.

In terms of all the display guidelines, that’s peanuts. That’s piece of cake stuff. That is all kind of driven by Twitter’s ad model and trying to protect page views and consumer experience.

So, overall, I thought it was welcome, actually. There are obviously big chunks of the market whose businesses will need to change in a really big way and some of whom whose businesses will probably really suffer.

But Twitter’s got to do what Twitter’s got to do and I felt the announcement was necessary and I thought they handled it pretty well. Jay: Very interesting. That’s not precisely what I thought you would say. I guess because you’re not Echofon or somebody who they almost and did call out by name and say, “Guess what? We’re going to shut you down.”

Eric B.: Yeah.

Jay: I certainly understand the perspective of, “Hey, you know what? It’s our data and we’re going to do what we need to do to protect our intrasite.” I understand that. But it does seem that it is quite an evolution of their general stance toward open development because it is no longer open. Maybe that’s an inexorable result of stake getting higher.

Eric B.: Yeah, well it’s definitely – I think that Twitter is still a fan of open development, just not open development that impinges upon their core revenue model, which is consumer experience enhanced with advertisements and social ads.

Echofon and these third-party consumer applications will infringe upon Twitter’s ability to service ads, and it pretty much comes down to that. Ultimately, I think it’ll make for a better Twitter experience for the end user, for Twitter to own all these bits and pieces and it sucks, man.

It really does for Echofon and all these other third-party products that are basically going to get wiped off the face of the Earth. Look at how Pinterest has gone about this. Pinterest has purposefully not published an API precisely because they don’t want to have Twitter’s problems.

Jay: Right. Yep.

Eric B.: I don’t know if that’s been confirmed. But that’s pretty much the confirmed rumor is that that is one of the reasons Pinterest has not taken this open developer strategy that Twitter did, is that they see all the problems that it’s caused.

It sucks and I’m being really probably overly positive because it gives me clarity and peace of mind. Because there was always this threat of, “Oh my God, what’s Twitter going to do?” We know folks there. We’re pretty cozy with a number of folks on the biz dev team and the API team.

But to get clarity in terms of what we’re building and how it fits into Twitter’s long-term strategy, it’s a good thing.

Jay: It’s interesting to hear that you were, at some level, apprehensive about that. I guess it kind of reinforces something that I say to clients all the time, which is, “You always have to be a little bit aware that you are building your house on rented land.”

Eric B.: Yeah.

Jay: Whether that’s in your case more of a behind-the-scenes API or whether you’re saying, “Look, we’re going to put all of our social media eggs in a Facebook basket.” You don’t own Facebook. Far from it, and they could change the rules tomorrow.

That theory was very much codified for me today when I got a letter from my attorney with an update on my lawsuit that I have for a condo I bought in Mexico that was never built. So, you know what’s a super, super fun thing to do? A lawsuit over real estate in Mexico.

Eric B.: Is that like a land war in Asia?

Jay: It is really, really, really something.

Eric B.: Oh, gosh. I’m sorry to hear that. That sounds like not much fun.

Jay: It’ll be one of other chapters someday when I write my memoirs. It will the one chapter written in Spanish.

Eric B.: “The Mexican Condo Incident”.

Jay: Exactly. So, Mr. Boggs, speaking of Twitter, do you have for us a ground-breaking, earth-shattering, notable, Tweetable, social media stat of the week? Eric’s Social Media Stat of the Week: Twitter Getting More Media Coverage Than Facebook

Eric B.: Oh, unfortunately no. But I do have an interesting stat that we can talk about. This stat comes from – I’m reading through the email again now – it’s from HighBeam Research, which provides a monthly social media index. They did some research around media attention and visibility for social media platforms.

So, obviously the key players, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and MySpace made it onto the list of networks that they researched. But the big takeaway is the July 2012 media attention for these key social media platforms – Twitter, 56%; Facebook, 40%; which is fascinating because

Facebook is much, much bigger than Twitter, yet Twitter continues to get more of the mainstream media type of attention.

Jay: So according to our friend, Tom Webster, from Edison Research and my partner in The Social Habit, Twitter is used by 10% of Americans, but it comprises 56% of the media attention? Is that what you’re telling me? via Highbeam Research

Eric B.: Yes.

Jay: I blame Chad Ochocinco for that, among other people. That is a Kardashian of social media and Facebook was what, 40%?

Eric B.: Yeah, less than 40%. J

ay: 54% of Americans are on Facebook, but it’s 40% of the media attention, and that’s with an IPO, right?

Eric B.: Yeah. This was July so, obviously after the IPO when Facebook is all pretty much anybody wants to talk about in finance news. Yeah, I’ve noticed it more and more. Twitter hashtags are everywhere.

Jay: Every TV show, it’s crazy. I was watching Discovery Channel over the weekend and checking out the MythBusters special Shark Week episode.

About every 15 seconds, they would overlay a tweet on the broadcast and it was the most inane, like, “I sure am glad I’m not a shark because that would suck, signed @idiotboy whatever.” I’m like, “Seriously?” This is the talk radioization of television, right? We’re just going to pull random tweets and put it on the show. So, it’s just insipid and ridiculous.