Twitter’s Ultra-Cheesy Recruiting Video
They wanted to make the “best/worst recruiting video of all time.” Mission accomplished?
[via TLNT]
Bullet Points: Keeping Morale High w/o Raises; Office Party Drinking, Chartified
- “Don’t show ‘em the money (even if you have it).” How to boost work morale, even if a raise isn’t in the cards. [Inc.]
- “How to Make the Case for Higher Pay” [NYT]
- Revolution made #Egypt one of the top Twitter hashtags of 2011, and Charlie Sheen did the same for #tigerblood, which seems to still be winning. [BBC]
- Sarcasm can be hard to convey in tweets, IMs, and emails. Enter the Sarcastic font, which leans left, the opposite of italic, like this:
[via The Next Web]
- Grub Street asks and answers the classic question: “How Drunk Can You Get at Your Office Christmas Party?” See also our advice on Making a Lasting Impression at Your Holiday Party.
Arcade Fire’s latest video, for its song “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” uses Flash to let you make the creepy masked dancers be your puppets. The most fun option requires you to crank up your computer’s webcam and make increasingly frantic and embarrassing gestures, though, so maybe save it for lunch, or a really dull point at that party. [via Slate]
Bullet Points: Twitter’s New Look, and the Backlash Against Bizspeak Blather
- In what’s being seen as a play to fend off Facebook and Google Plus, Twitter has given itself some new bells and whistles. An international rollout will include personal profile pages and timelines, and new ways to find tweets you might be interested in. More from the Wall Street Journal (on what it means for the company) and Lifehacker (on the changes themselves).
- The CEO of the French tech firm Atos hasn’t used email since he got the position three years ago. Now he’d like to make the company’s 74,000 other employees do the same, at least for internal emails. Instead, they might use an in-house wiki and IM, along with other tools.
- Dan Pallotta looks at the horrors of lousy, meaningless business expressions: “You will gain tremendous credibility, become much more productive, make those around you much more productive, and experience a great deal more joy in your working life if you look someone in the eye after hearing one of these verbal brain jammers and tell the person, “I don’t have any idea what you just said to me.” [HBR]
- The plans for Apple’s supercollider-shaped headquarters include lots and lots of fruit trees, as well as gardens, a fountain, and an open-air amphitheater. [Forbes]
- The Freelancers Union’s Sara Horowitz talks health insurance with the New York Times’ David Bornstein: “Many people believe that there are only two options for health care: the current, for-profit, dysfunctional, system where costs are spiraling out of control, and a single-payer system. . . I believe there is another strategy where civil society (such as nonprofits, social-purpose businesses and other institutions) create a new support system to get their basic needs met. The reality is that government is subsidizing less and less. . . it’s unrealistic to think that government will be able to fund and operate a single-payer health care system in the next three to five years.”
- From Hired Gun pal, John Vorwald: Budget Travel’s newest list of the World’s Weirdest Hotels.
Bullet Points: When Twitter’s More Trouble Than It’s Worth
- “[My] habit started to feel less like a rush and more like a burden. Instead of tweeting to reflect on my life, tweeting had become my life. I began to think seriously about giving it up.”
- Could a company force a departing employee to hand over the personal Twitter account he used on the job? Probably not, but it’s a grey area….
- A survey of 72,000 people, conducted by TNS Digital Life, found that consumers’ feelings about interacting with company brands on social networks varied widely by country. Those in developed markets, including North America and Europe, had the most “resistance to both buying and engaging with brands” on Twitter, Facebook, and the like. You can find out more tidbits from the survey in The Next Web and in the teaser video below.
Bullet Points: New York City’s Twitter-Addicted Masses
- It’s not your imagination: New Yorkers really do love their Twitter. The very chatty city has more users of the microblogging service than any other city. [The Next Web]
- Semi-related, perhaps: Twitter still has a ways to go to convince advertisers that it’s a good place for their message. [Business Insider]
- Some bad news on the compensation front . . . . “The incomes of U.S. workers, adjusted for inflation, fell even more rapidly since the rebound began in the summer of 2009 than during the recession itself, according to a new study.” [Reuters]
- And here’s a groundbreaking approach to the job interview — but be warned, results may vary:
Bullet Points: Nice Guys Finish Last; Social Recruiting Blossoms; Is Middle Management Going Out of Style?
Bullet Points: The Downside of Low Turnover; Making Your Company Resilient; the Point of Social Media Experts
- Does your company have a low employee turnover? Maybe it’s because no one else wants them. [ERE.net]
- Writing for HBR, George S. Everly, Jr., has some thoughts on what makes a person or an organization “resilient,” and what you can do to encourage this quality.
- Why do startups need social media experts? [The Next Web]
- Unlimited vacation days. Cleaners sent to employees’ houses. “Whiskey Fridays.” How does your company stack up against CNBC’s list of crazy job perks?
- The Onion’s testing a metered paywall along the lines of the New York Times’. Right now it’s only those outside the U.S. who have to pay up after reading a certain number of articles a month. [Nieman]
- An excerpt in the Guardian from The Social Entrepreneur’s Handbook on how to recruit the best people for the job.
- A sign of things to come: The House has ended its page program, citing annual costs of over $5 million for the program. So far, the Senate is keeping its pages. [NYT]
- After looking at the data, Dan Zarrella of Hubspot thinks he knows the best time to tweet, and it’s right around 4 p.m. And if you want more followers, tweet a bunch. [Nieman Labs, from March]
- 5 Things Great Bosses Never Do [Bnet]
Bullet Points: Monster’s LinkedIn Killer; Google Enemies; Job Interview Pitfalls
- Monster starts its own job network, the Facebook app BeKnown. Now you can “manage your professional identity and your social identity in one place,” rather than through multiple sites and social networks. Yay? [Mashable]
- CNET has a list of the companies that probably make up Google’s enemy list. And with company like this, it’s probably just an honor to be nominated.
- Gen Y is spoiled and easily distracted. Gen X won’t stay for more than a few months (and they mope). Baby boomers, of course, are out of touch with current technology. Investing Answers has some good tips to avoid getting tarred with age-based stereotypes like these during job interviews.
- Twitter launches #TfN, Twitter for Newsrooms, a website and guide to help media get even more acclimated to the microblogging site. Basic but useful. Berkeley’s J-school recently launched its own Twitter tutorial for journalists, too.
- The New York Times ponders Klout and its potential weaknesses.
- Would you fire the ranty Southwest pilot who complained about having to work with flight attendants who were a “continuous stream of gays and grannies and grandes”? The odd part is when he’s told that he’s transmitting his bitchy chitchat but keeps on talking …. [The HR Capitalist]
Social Media Remorse–It’s Preventable!
Today we welcome to The Hired Gun blog family Daryl Lang, who blogs about copywriting at Breaking Copy and whose day job is as senior copywriter at Shutterstock. His monthly column, Think First Then Type, will cover tips and techniques to help you use language more effectively at work–after all, even the best and brightest ideas won’t catch on if you can’t get them understood.
Social media can be a real love-fest. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have opened new channels to reach people we care about, both personally and professionally. But you can kill the good vibes when you spark an ugly online fight or post a status update that accidentally offends someone. Call it social media remorse. Symptoms include pangs of regret, profuse sweating, and a knot in the pit of your stomach.
Luckily, it’s within your power to avoid social network-induced stress (Twulcers?). Just slow down and think about what you write. Here are a few more tips to prevent social media remorse.
1. Be your best self. Let people hear your voice when they read your posts. Share what you love and what you know best. Use short words and breezy sentences. When your personality and expertise shine through, people connect with you in a positive way.
Storytelling in the Age of Data
Today, as always, a big part of successful marketing is about telling stories that resonate with customers and business prospects. What’s changed is that the method for telling those stories is increasingly becoming based on data. In fact, Google recently started publishing a book (with companion website) on that very subject.
Ask yourself: where has the Internet created real value? It’s mainly been in data analysis. The technology platforms for social media, music downloads, movie streaming, ad serving, and site analytics all generate huge amounts of data. Buried inside this data are valuable business insights, if you can tease them out and package them in a way that people understand. In fact, it’s this move towards data insight and analysis that may end up saving some old-school industries. The New York Times in particular does a nice job showing how the 2011 federal budget is allocated and spent. It’s a lot easier to be shown how much money is tied up in non-discretionary spending than to be told about it, and it foretells the role our most important newspapers may play in the future.
