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Twitter Chats Reveal the Future of Online Communities

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Written by Omowale Casselle

Recently, I have been paying a lot of attention to different chats that happen on Twitter. Quite honestly, these community focused discussions are extremely interesting to me because of what I believe they reveal about the future characteristics of online communities. (If you’re a regular here at TalentCulture, you probably have participated in this community’s popular Wednesday evening #TChats. If not, I recommend you do!)

Collective vs. Individual Ownership

  • While there is usually someone who has come up with the initial idea for a hashtag, by and large it is owned by the community of participants. No one can trademark or copyright a hashtag. Also, the social nature of the platform makes it difficult to prevent anyone from using it.  This collective group ownership is a valuable element of future online communities. When people feel ownership, they become careful stewards of what has been created.  In many ways, they are so in love with their experience that they refuse for others to destroy what has been built. As a result, you will often find community members passionately maintaining community norms.

Participation varies and depends on interest/expertise/willingness to share

  • In online communities there has always been a distribution of participation. With hashtags, there are additional ways to foster participation. For example, even if you are too shy to speak; one can simply re-tweet something that they find especially valuable or interesting.  By lowering the barriers of participation, more people are drawn in which is the key to utilizing the collective knowledge of the community.

Many of the most popular are based on niche topics with the core value proposition being the opportunity to learn more

  • Many hashtags are first and foremost an opportunity for others to learn about an area of interest.  This shift away from self-gratification towards mutual gratification is one that I think is especially exciting about these communities.  Instead of people hoarding knowledge, hashtag chats give participants an opportunity to share their learnings with others. In the process, valuable social capital is earned which gives people with key insights increased hierarchy within the online community.

Heavily focused on crowdsourcing (Moderator asks questions and variety of people weigh in on the subject, the most popular or well received answers are typically re-tweeted)

  • Many hashtag chats are loosely organized around the topic of a few questions with the community being asked to respond based on what they think.  Within this dynamic, community participants can ask burning questions that are on their mind around the subject of interest.  This simultaneous loose and rigid structure is especially appealing to participants.  In addition, the real-time nature of the communication channel enables moderators and community members to key in on subjects that are of great interest.  This helps keep the interest of community members and keeps them coming back each week to learn more about a specific topic.

While these trends are just developing, it will be interesting to see how they evolve to become what I believe will be the foundation of successful online communities moving forward.  This represents a shift from the closed model that many web 1.0 communities were based upon.

Remember, the model that forced you to register for a site to figure out if the community was interesting.  Once you realized it wasn’t, they already had your email address to spam you with.  No longer! In this new dynamic, you have to show your worth in the open community before people will even give you a chance to move into a closed, intimate relationship.

This dynamic is especially crucial for employers who are seeking to engage with prospective candidates to master. By moderating online discussions around subjects related to their industry, company, or individual opportunities, employers can create a dynamic recruiting environment that will be irresistible to candidates.

Social Networking For Career Success

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Today’s post is by Miriam Salpeter — owner of Keppie Careers. She teaches job seekers and entrepreneurs how to leverage social media, writes resumes and helps clients succeed with their goals. Miriam writes for U.S. News & World Report’s “On Careers” column, CNN named her a “top 10 job tweeter you should be following” and Monster.com included her in “The Monster 11 for 2011: Career Experts Who Can Help Your Search.” She blogs at KeppieCareers.com and GetASocialResume.com.

Why do companies hire the people they hire? Is it always because the selected candidate is the absolute best qualified to do the job? It’s hard to quantify, but my guess is probably not. Hiring is a complicated art involving selecting a person to do a job, but, often more importantly, someone who is a good “fit” for the role.

Think about interviewing someone to join your family – someone you need to see and spend a lot of time with for the conceivable future. You may be interested in particular skills, depending on your family’s culture. (Cooking? Softball? Driving?) At the end of the day, you probably want to select the one who won’t annoy or embarrass you; someone willing to pitch in (even if it is not his or her job), the candidate who can communicate – and who people like to be around.

It’s not surprising to learn these emotional intelligence skills are gaining more focus and impacting job seekers. A quick definition is in order. Here is one that I like and is easy to understand from Mike Poskey, VP of Zerorisk HR, Inc:

Emotional Intelligence…is defined as a set of competencies demonstrating the ability one has to recognize his or her behaviors, moods and impulses, and to manage them best according to the situation.

Companies are incorporating emotional intelligence into their hiring processes, with good reason. The Sodexo(one of the largest food services and facilities management companies in the world) blog reminds readers that “businesses that will succeed in the 21st century will be the ones that allow employees to bring the whole of their intelligence into the work force – their emotional and intellectual self. Not only does this impact morale, but productivity increases, too.” A recent study from Virginia Commonwealth University shows that “high emotional intelligence does have a relationship to strong job performance — in short, emotionally intelligent people make better workers.”

To be successful in a job hunt, you not only need to demonstrate an association between what the employer wants and your skills and accomplishments, you need to be able to tell your story in a way that makes it obvious you have the emotional intelligence/emotional quotient (EI/EQ – or soft skills) to fit in. Companies want to hire a candidate who will work well in the team; they all seek someone who will contribute and get the job done with finesse. Most seek employees they will trust to represent the company graciously. No one wants to be embarrassed.

This is why social media is such a great tool for job seekers. A job seeker with a pristine online portfolio and nothing questionable in her digital footprint makes a strong case for actually being someone who knows how to negotiate the digital world where we all function.

Using social networking tools to illustrate your expertise can provide entree into a network of professionals writing and talking about the topics important for you and your field. If, for example, you write a blog to showcase your knowledge of the restaurant industry, or use Twitter and Facebook to be sure people understand you know a lot about finance, you have a chance to connect with multitudes of potential contacts, any one of whom may connect you to the person you need to know to land an opportunity.

At the same time you demonstrate your expertise online and grow your network, you are also giving people a taste of the type of person you may be in person. Granted, some people have a distinct online-only persona. Many of us know people who seem mean and spiteful online and are amazing friends in person. Certainly, the opposite is possible.

However, for the most part, it’s safe to assume how people act and communicate online represents how they behave in person. When we get to know people via social media, by sharing tweets (including those all important personal tweets about what we’re eating, watching, and doing for the weekend), trading comments on blog posts, and keeping in touch via Facebook and LinkedIn, we are part of the longest job interview – with a very long “tail.”

No doubt, for some people, social media is dangerous for their job search. The people who aren’t attentive to details (and don’t untag themselves in inappropriate photos), the ones with short tempers and no filter who share every thought, and those who complain about people or things and appear excessively negative online. In an environment where employers are reviewing digital footprints, those people, who are not illustrating high levels of emotional intelligence, may have difficulty landing jobs.

The flip side? If you know your business, connect and share easily online, make new friends and contacts, and try to give at least as much as you hope to receive, social media may be just the “social proof” you need to help you stand out from the crowd.

My book, Social Networking for Career Success, shows you how to leverage the “big three” tools (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook), and describes how blogging and many other social media tools can help job seekers distinguish themselves. Learn more at www.socialnetworkingforcareersuccess.com. Download a free chapter HERE.

Miriam Salpeter, MA
Coach, Speaker, Author

Empowering Success
http://www.keppiecareers.com

Take a look at what people are saying about Social Networking for Career Success, just released by Learning Express, LLC. Copies are available from Amazon or your favorite bookseller.

IMAGE VIA www.socialnetworkingforcareersuccess.com/

HOW TO: Build & Maintain A Talent Community

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What is a talent community?

According to Wikipedia:

A talent community is a collection of social cliques (or talent networks) of people that are part of the job seeking process. These people may be seeking a job themselves, offering career advice to others, recruitment professionals, college campus recruiters, sourcers, and friends seeking jobs or advice. Talent communities inherently provide 2-way interaction between the individuals.

A talent community is not a list of candidates on a web page or in a spreadsheet; it is an environment consisting of people who can share ideas for the purpose of career networking or social recruiting of candidates.

Employers can interact and communicate with prospective employees as well as inform candidates about employment opportunities, receive referrals, and handpick qualified individuals from inside the group. A talent community can include prospective candidates, past applicants, current employees, and past employees. Talent Communities are managed by recruiters and/or hiring managers.

The benefits of building a talent community

  • Qualified candidates at your fingertips
  • Less dependence on expensive, ineffective job boards
  • Less money spent on job advertisements
  • Increased interaction with potential candidates in order to help them understand what your organization does
  • Better quality of applicants to job openings
  • Creates a talent pipeline for future job openings
  • Attracts passive candidates

How to build your talent community

Turn your “careers” page into a central hub for past (“alumni”) employees, interested candidates, recruiters, hiring managers and current employees. Incorporate tools for communication and interaction to drive conversations in your talent community. Provide an exclusive look into your organization, its employees and the culture behind the company. Use video, multimedia, photos, testimonials, etc.

Create smaller talent “networks” within your talent community to target specific audiences.

Social recruiting solutions (such as Cachinko) provide separate plugins or an overall solution for managing talent.

Maintaining your talent community

When you start engaging candidates through a talent community, it’s important to continue to provide value on a regular basis. There are a variety of ways to do so, such as sending updates or an e-newsletter, providing additional information on new job openings and internship programs, creating contests, writing blog posts, or connecting via social media.

ERE.net author Kevin Wheeler said in an article about talent communities, “Communities of candidates are powerful and reduce the need for special sourcing or the use of outside recruiters. They can increase the number of positions a single recruiter can handle and provide higher quality candidates in a shorter time. They always trump databases.”

What do you think? Ready to start building your talent community today?

Social Media Meets Lightning Workplace Learning: #TChat Recap

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Two camps.

One that digs social media as THE engine driving recruiting, learning and organizational development.

And the other that does not.

That was pretty clear during last night’s #TChat about social media in the workplace.  Some of you may have tired of the social conversation, but many of us have not.

Remember the resistance to e-mail and the Internet?  Good Gosh — what business value do those time-wasters and secret sharers have?

So much fantastic input last night — like workplace laser word tag.  Zap.  Zap.

Zap.

For me, “social” has always been about networking and learning outside and in the organization and taking the conversation offline to “live” to further discuss:

  • That job opportunity
  • That sweet hire opportunity
  • That business opportunity
  • That learning opportunity
  • That sharing knowledge opportunity
  • That mentoring opportunity
  • That business birth opportunity
  • That consulting opportunity
  • That collaborative R&D opportunity
  • That partnership opportunity
  • You know, these opportunities and more

Again, the key is taking these conversations offline to “live.” The anecdotal statistics are there for me and many others; I’ve generated many of those opportunities above as I’m sure many of you have as well.

But, the business metrics are still all over the place and underreported and overestimated.  Such is the life of a business metric, right?  I wrote a little about that yesterday in my post I say recruit how we do business, and do business how we recruit.

With the rise of the mobile/virtual workforce, I can’t imagine the world without organic and holistic social connectivity.

The “does not dig” camp is choking on the words organic and holistic right now.  We are here to share different views. Like a real workplace. Like a real social community.

Here were the questions we asked last night:

  • Q1: How has #SM specifically impacted the way you conduct a job search and manage your career?
  • Q2: Within your org, how have #SM platforms/tools been used to enhance HR/recruiting initiatives?
  • Q3: Within your org, how have #SM platforms/tools been used to enhance learning initiatives?
  • Q4: How have #SM platforms/tools been effective – or not – at any or all levels within your org?
  • Q5: What business metrics have you established to measure how effective your #SM efforts are?
  • Q6: What specific barriers do you see within your org that impede top to bottom acceptance of platforms/tools?
  • Q7: Be honest – how do you see yourself improving your efficacy in utilizing #SM platforms/tools within your org?

Thank you to all who participated.  It’s good folk like you who make every #TChat a lightning learning round of workplace laser word tag.

Zap.

Social is about us, not the technology.

Here were the top contributors from last night:

  1. @talentculture – 172
  2. @meghanmbiro – 129
  3. @KevinWGrossman – 105
  4. @IanMondrow – 89
  5. @JeffWaldmanHR – 79
  6. @gregoryfarley – 77
  7. @LevyRecruits – 77
  8. @CyndyTrivella – 64
  9. @dawnrasmussen – 53
  10. @Kimberly_Roden – 52

See you next week, January 25, 2011, 8-9 pm ET (5-6 pm PT).

Intentional Collaboration: The Mechanics of Learning to Learn Together

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Originally posted by Chris Jones, a TalentCulture contributing writer. He is an IT Strategy & Change Management consultant, with a passion for driving new levels of engagement and learning in the modern organization. His research areas include the dynamics of organization culture, and more recently, the importance and implications of critical thinking. Check out his blog, Driving Innovation in a Complex World, for more.

In our increasingly complex world, the compelling need for strong leadership and resilience to “clear the path” for change is evident.  It’s a core message from Chip and Dan Heath’s “Switch” that resonates with pretty much everyone in the corporate world.  Clarity of vision is paramount. Conviction to achieve it, just as critical for any dynamic workplace or social community.

These ideas are not new.

It’s just getting harder and harder to survive without a strong, hardened competitive edge, an edge sharpened by effective collaboration.

The ability of an organization to solve its hardest problems lies deep in its inner workings.  Can team members from multiple backgrounds and disciplines work together to develop new insights and solutions?  Do they have the tools and skills, or can they acquire them?

Surely there’s an application for this?

It sounds straightforward in principle, but culture often works against us, fueled by the western industrial model forged on hierarchy and silo-thinking.  In these environments, specialization and experts rule the roost, and collaboration will typically struggle.  I conducted deep dives on culture barriers in 2010 and I’m increasingly convinced cultures can, over time, be intentionally redirected.  But it takes focus and rigor, and a long-term investment of energy.  More recently I looked at some insights from Peter Senge that seem to resonate even more now than they did 20 years ago, when he first wrote about team-based learning.

I’m starting to talk more about intentional collaboration to refer to the strategic, rigorous approach to group interaction and problem solving.  This helps distinguish it from the more casual references and idle claims.  Everything today is “collaborative.”  So how do we drive meaning into the words, and more rigor into the desired behaviors?

Here are some ideas for a more serious approach to collaboration:

  • Give collaboration a broad, compelling mandate
  • Find ways to open communication channels to get people not just talking together, but thinking together
  • Empower contributors with direction, training, and feedback
  • People are more comfortable if they know who they’re talking to; make sure they’re introduced to each other or have a published profile, to help people connect and break the ice
  • Encourage interplay of ideas across all specialties and levels, to foster diversity of thinking
  • Invest in tools that make it easy to find, share, tag and reflect on people and their ideas, key steps toward becoming a social enterprise
  • Respect everyone’s thought space by not cluttering channels with noise or trivia
  • Visibly acknowledge and reward the hard work of critical thinking and cross functional solutions; openly celebrate wins
  • Embrace and leverage the latest drivers in organizational change management, including “Switch” (linked above) and Drive by Daniel Pink, which contains additional clarity on change motivators.
  • Refuse to turn back

Organizations, leaders, and teams need to learn by doing. Trial and error need time to happen.  Soon there will be some wins.  Emerging from that, fueled by small successes, I believe organizations will find themselves increasingly motivated to take on harder problems, building a repeatable capacity for learning.

What are the other challenges that lie ahead?

Organizational silos do not dissolve by decree.  Silos and silo thinking are fueled by the organization’s culture, and can only be dismantled by a concerted, coordinated effort – from both the top and the bottom – to redefine the way things work in the middle.

The hard work of introducing collaboration also requires people to interact in profoundly new ways. It requires new kinds of relationships, placing new kinds of demands on the organization, with focus on trust, respect, open dialog, empathy, and even basic listening.  All too often, the approaches themselves fall on deaf ears.

No doubt, there’s much work ahead, but it is work worth pursuing.

Can you see a path to collaboration in your own organization? Share what you’ve seen working.  I would love to bring focus to some bright spots in this important space.

Image Credit: Pixabay

2010, We Hardly Knew Ye. My Culture of Talent Musings

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It’s tempting, in an end-of-year post, to mourn and dwell what didn’t happen in the year past, to give cheery career tips for the new year, or to speculate on emerging innovation trends. I thought about it briefly and then simply decided not to. It’s likely already been done.

I’d like to take a different tack to talk about how 2010 taught us that workplace culture brands need to ‘personalize’, and how truly exciting is has been to watch corporate brands become more authentic and dynamic. It’s a complex work world now and this makes me very happy. There are still many mountains to climb when it comes to workplace, leadership and talent innovation. Thank goodness – right? The real work is still really just beginning.

Down markets are not always times of smart leadership, innovation and inspiration, but 2010 saw these themes emerge powerfully, driven by social media – connecting employees and brands – as well as a return to the realization that emotional intelligence is a critical component in today’s geographically dispersed yet deeply interconnected workplace.

At the TalentCulture social community, I examined the notion of intent and what it means for companies. People seek community. As I said then, “…people come to communities with a purpose, an intent. They are looking for a place to be, a place to learn, a place to grow and interact in a meaningful way. The trick then, for companies, is to behave as social communities. It’s a powerful and new metaphor for the workplace.”

In a company that operates as a social community, there is more room to create a workplace that celebrates and accommodates differences – in backgrounds, personal brands, skill sets and personality temperaments. A healthy workplace “…focuses on ensuring personality/culture fit between employees and the organization, people of diverse skill sets and temperaments can collaborate and succeed – because they have the intent to succeed, and the social context – the community – in which to realize their intent.” Smart and true collaboration holds so many valuable keys for all of us. Bring diversity and enthusiasm into the mix and you really have something special.

Companies that recognize ‘intent to belong’ in their employees know how to build culture by fostering different modes of interaction among the company and its employees. They go beyond transactional interactions with employees to transformational interactions, and then to tacit interactions, where trust is built to create a shared and sustainable competitive advantage. They will be the winners as they recruit and retain the very best talent.

Strong workplace brands that reflect a healthy corporate culture bring an advantage in hiring and creating memorable products, services and missions. We’ll see even more hiring growth in 2011, so companies and people (personal brands) must think about maintaining their brands. As I wrote earlier this year, “Link corporate culture and brand with your people and the magic really starts…Remember that your brand and culture are your biggest attractions…. Your best defense, as an employer, is to have culture and brand in place. Be irresistible to your employees. Be desirable to candidates. Be your brand, revel in your culture, and never abandon either.”

As social media permeates the workplace more deeply in 2011, be prepared to support it, plan for it, even celebrate your social media ‘rock stars’, who are your front-and-center culture brand ambassadors. How cool and fabulous are they? Very.

I, for one, am not mourning the end of 2010. It has been a challenging year for so many people and organizations, to ignore this fact would be completely ludicrous. It’s also been a time of profound changes and advances in workplace leadership and on the community building front. A reason to celebrate = growth and connectivity. Don’t let up – in 2011 the pace will be faster, people will be smarter and more connected, and workplace brand will be critical to retain valued employees. Workplace brands will be a collection of employees with strong personal brands, which will make the workplace a stronger place. So 2010, so long, farewell.

We’re on to 2011 already. Bring it. We are global and we are one. Thank you for listening and sharing. My very best to you and yours from all of us here at the Culture of Talent.

How to Blog Without a Blog

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While many students and professionals have jumped into the blogosphere to share their POV with the world on different topics, industries and areas of interest, some out there are more hesitant to make the investment and commitment to full-time blogging.

This may be due in part to them a) not knowing how to build and maintain a blog, b) not knowing exactly what to write about and/or c) not knowing whether they will have the time and energy necessary to keep it updated on a regular basis.

However, what most people don’t know is that you don’t have to start and maintain your own individual blog to share your POV and your personal brand online.  There are several ways you can start contributing immediately to bloggerdom and working your way up to potentially owning and managing your own blog down the road.

  • Commenting: Commenting on others’ blog posts can help you start networking and engaging your name and opinion with other bloggers.  Pick a couple blogs to follow on a weekly basis and contribute your comment.  Make sure you always add value to each post.  You can also use Google Alerts to flag new posts containing specific keywords.
  • HARO: HelpaReporter.com (HARO) is FREE tool that connects professionals and students with bloggers, journalists, writers and authors seeking sources for their articles and publications.  This is a great way to get interviewed and quoted across various blogs and other media outlets.  It also becomes a nice credential to feature in interviews and career networking.
  • Twitter: Micro-blogging using services and platforms like Twitter gives you the opportunity to share your thoughts and opinions, link your followers to valuable resources, articles and other information online and work your way up to more substantial blog contributions.
  • Guest Blogging: For those of you who want to try your hand at full-length articles, consider contributing a periodic guest post to one or more blogs in your industry.  It’s best to reach out to the blog owners and ask permission first.  This will start a relationship with them, but will also allow you to customize your content to their needs.
  • Team Blogging: If you’re ready for more regular contributions, reach out to a team blog and ask to join as a weekly or more regular contributor.  You can also start your own team blog if you can recruit some fellow bloggers to join you.  This will help you all share the load and commitment while giving all of your personal brands exposure to new audiences.

Once you get a good feel for contributing, if you decide you’re ready to launch your own blog, I definitely recommend you use the WordPress blogging platform.

There are two versions of WordPress: WordPress-hosted and self-hosted.

You can host your blog for free with the WordPress-hosted version via WordPress OR for a monthly fee with the self-hosted version via third-party web host. You may think this is a no-brainer and that you should go with the free WordPress-hosted version. Do what you please, but the WordPress-hosted version leaves you with less control over your blog and will end up costing you more in the end due to the fees WordPress charges for any customizations you may desire (including adding your own custom domain name and your own themes and designs).

I recommend you go with the self-hosted version and check out Page.ly which is an easy-to-use hosting service that will help you get your new WordPress blog up and running in a matter of minutes.

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing generator, a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer, Launchpad, Blogaristo and more.

Twitter Chats: A Method to the Madness

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I’ve recently gotten into the practice of managing, organizing and consulting for Twitter chats including #LBSchat, #TChat and others. Bear with me in this very straightforward methodology for creating a chat on Twitter.

A Definition: What’s a Twitter chat?

A Twitter chat is a scheduled group orchestrated around a hashtag. Chats usually last about an hour and can capture any size audience. Typically, Twitter users are drawn to chats because chats offer a forum to air out ideas and opinions about a specific topic.

Goals

A Twitter chat should exist to accomplish a set of goals. The goals can be specific and measurable or qualitative in nature. Some examples of Twitter chat goals are as follows:

  • To grow thought leadership for the chat founders
  • To create an open forum for discussion around a previously under-explored topic
  • To fuel content for a blog, book, ebook or wiki

TalentCulture - Twitter Chat - How-to Image - "The View" Roundtable as a Twitter ChatDetermining a Need

There are already a ton of Twitter chats today. So determining whether or not enough demand exists is crucial to the success of a chat. Chat founders need to aim to create an experience participants can’t get elsewhere. Before jumping in head first, ask yourself a few questions:

  • Are the existing conversations about my topic burgeoning, but disjointed? In other words, is there a need for organization around the conversations about this topic?
  • Are there enough sub topics to fuel this chat for more than a few sessions?
  • What influencers would be interested in this chat? Can I convince them to participate?
  • How many people would be ideal for a conversation about my topic?

Organization/Moderation

Structure

Establishing an official Twitter persona for your chat has several benefits:

  • The profile bio can be used to give a description of the chat.
  • The profile URL can link to a chat blog, group, category RSS feed, etc.
  • The account can be used to ask questions during the chat.
  • The account can build thought leadership in a niche vertical.

Some chats do not have an official Twitter persona behind them. They are run by the individuals who founded them. This format can work too, especially if the individual organizing the chat wants individual credibility.

Density

One of the most difficult issues to work out during a chat is how closely you want to control it. The number of questions in your chat can steer a conversation into very niche discussions or an open-mic style chat puts the chat direction entirely in the hands of the participants.

For many chats, 5-10 questions work well. Some chats will change format from time to time by hosting an occasional open forum or bringing in a special guest to do a Q&A.

Frequency

Most Twitter chats are weekly. Others are monthly. Still others are scheduled sporadically. Finding the right frequency for your audience will be largely based on how engaged they are and by how consistently compelling the content is.

It may take a few months to figure out an appropriate frequency. You will get a sense of how often a chat needs to take place based on the volume of participation.

Touchpoints

It’s helpful to think of your Twitter chat like a community. Figure out where and how your chat community will reach its members. Some examples of touchpoint models are:

  • Email newsletters
  • Twitter reminders (public @replies or Direct Messages)
  • LinkedIn group messages
  • Facebook Group notifications

Growing an Audience

Momentum is crucial to a successful chat. In an ideal world, your chat would gather more participants each week. Unfortunately, your Twitter chat is just a Twitter chat. It will not be a high priority item for your community members. So some of your chats will be smaller than others. However, there are best practices for growing a community between chats:

  • Encourage community members to spread the word about the chat.
  • Create recap blog posts for anyone who cannot participate in the live chat.
  • Thank and highlight chat participants regularly.
  • Establish a paper.li for your chat hashtag and tweet it during each update.
  • Keep engagement on the hashtag going even when the chat is not live.

Capitalizing on a Chat

Sponsored Twitter chats are becoming increasingly common. Some options you have for monetizing a chat are:

  • Charging per tweet
  • Charging per chat
  • Selling a sponsorship package for a set number of chats
  • Charging per click on a sponsored link

Resources

Some chats you may want to look at:

Some technology you may want to test into:

Cultivating Diversity: A New Way to Network

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Jon Lovitz did a routine on Saturday Night Live about how to be more successful. The answer to success was always the catch phrase, “Get to know me!”

Looking back on my first year of leaving the corporate world for entrepreneurship in the world of strategy and innovation, the success we’ve had has been linked in every instance to getting to know OTHER people over the past few years. This effort was coupled with trying to deliver a valuable experience to others through a presentation they attended, assisting them with networking, or somehow trying to help them whenever we interacted.

Another important element of my “getting to know people “strategy is embracing a concept vital to successful innovation: cultivating diversity.

Too often, I see people networking very narrowly, trying to meet people similar to them. Yet when all your networking effort goes toward people in the same company, industry, or geographic location, you wind up tremendously limiting your options.

As you look toward the coming year, here are 6 strategies to enhance the diversity of your networking efforts and ensure you get the greatest benefit from investing time to meet new people:

  1. Expertise Diversity: Network by topic, not by group – Rather than sticking to the same association networking events you always attend, review the list of educational events in your area and target your networking participation by topic, not group. For me, going to new marketing-related meetings and even to a lunch sponsored by a largely female-oriented organization led to re-establishing contacts with people I hadn’t seen for years and who now had very different careers and networks.
  2. Time Diversity: Allow yourself to network at multiple times of the day – It’s easy for your schedule to dictate networking only at certain times of the day, i.e. typical work requirements make lunches difficult so you attend happy hours. Figure out how to vary that pattern and go to events at a new time of the day. You’ll run into different types of people, creating new opportunities.
  3. Age Diversity: Attend events with someone of a different generation – If you’re going to the right types of diverse events, people from three or four generations should be present. To help in meeting people across the greatest age range, ask friends in generations preceding and following yours to join you at events. They can help attract and make introductions with a broader mix of attendees than you might ever pursue on your own.
  4. Profile Diversity: Be inefficient in meeting new people – Sometimes when you meet a new person, you feel like you’re being put through a standard set of qualifying questions to see if you warrant more time and follow-up. Efficient, yes. But I rarely want to invest time with those people. Put away the efficient qualifying-speak and ask questions which make sense for the person you’re talking with right now. Invest more time in hearing what they have to say instead of only listening for keywords important to you.
  5. Channel Diversity: Live tweet an event you’re attending and blog about it afterward – Sharing a speaker’s content through tweeting at an event is a great way to meet and interact with new people both at the venue and those following it remotely. Turning your tweets into a subsequent blog post (either for your own blog or perhaps the association’s blog) provides yet another way to meet others interested in the speaker, the topic, or the sponsoring group.
  6. Audience Diversity: Speak at an event, especially if you never have before – If you’ve not been a public speaker previously, make this the year to prepare content, rehearse, and break into the ranks of people sharing their knowledge at public events. You’ll meet multiple people and be in the wonderful position of having offered something of value to them before even getting to know them.
  7. Atmosphere Diversity: Throw a party and invite too many people – Hosting a party is a great way to get to know people you already know in new ways. Since only a certain percent of people you invite will actually attend, play the percentages and invite a bunch of new people – more than you can accommodate – and discover new attendees who will become your great party guests of the future.

With these diversity-building efforts incorporated into your efforts, you’ll get to know a whole new group of people and have a much stronger network to show for it.

Critical Thinking: Asking the "Right" Questions

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Originally posted by Chris Jones, a TalentCulture contributing writer. He is an IT Strategy & Change Management consultant, with a passion for driving new levels of engagement and learning in the modern organization. His research areas include the dynamics of organization culture, and more recently, the importance and implications of critical thinking. Check out his blog, Driving Innovation in a Complex World, for more

We’ve all been assured there’s no such thing as a stupid question.  If you’ve taken the time to ask, the story goes, you must have wanted to learn something.  That’s certainly a step in the right direction.

In the hyper accelerated world of social media, of course, you better keep those questions coming.  Contacts are made and broken in a matter of minutes.  Exchanges in chats or online work groups can be fleeting.  Sometimes the conversation seems to end just after its started, though hours may have ticked off the clock.  The prize, it seems, goes to those with the fastest keystrokes and the greatest brevity, the true masters of online multi-tasking.

I agree with the conventional wisdom. Those skills are helpful.  And I’d like to add to those dynamics a completely different one.

Quite simply, it comes down to critical thinking.

I’m not mandating academic degrees or journalistic analysis here, though we’ll borrow a page or two from those spaces.

What we’re talking about is putting careful thought into the deeper questions behind the points that are being broadcast so rapidly in front of you.  Challenging the ‘why?’, or the ‘how?’, and importantly, ‘under what cirumstances?’.

All of these thought processes have introduced the notion of ‘critical thinking’, an increasingly important aspect of our virtual society.  Its the very fuel of the ideas that are generated when we have a conversation.  Sadly, in our modern world, critical thinking gives way to the mechanical communication of our personal and professional lives. “Have you taken out the trash?”  “What’s the weather tomorrow?”  “Did you get the report out on time?”  We become almost robotic in our actions and in our relationships, with devastating results.  Without focus or reinforcement of an active mind, the knack and appetite for creativity can literally drain from our lives.  And our most important relationships – those with family, close friends, and immediate coworkers – are jeopardized, all due to lack of focused energy and interest.

We talked a few posts back about engagement and how to connect with those around us.  Those themes and steps remain critical.

We’ve also talked about culture, where a bias for learning and connecting in our world helps shape our attitudes.  Bringing this discussion forward, Carol Dweck, PhD, in her book, Mindset (2006), talks about “growth mindset” as a way to approach the world that brings critical thinking front and center.  I suggest you track down this book, and read it.  If you’re behind in your reading, I plan to summarize it’s main points in a future post.

Cultures of learning and a knack for engagement are a critical combination.  These initial conditions create the opportunity – if we choose to take it – to ask the right questions.  And there are dividends to those who take the time and make the effort.

So what are the right questions?  At the risk of generalizing, I’d hazard a definition that they are:

Open-ended queries that challenge the listener’s knowledge base, exposing root causes or unseen problems, and providing alternative contexts that create a spark for the inception of a new (or enhanced) idea.

The ability to change frame of reference is important.  Some of the magic in challenging our preconceived notions comes from changes in point of view.  Here are some examples.

  1. You’ve just met a person online that seems to share your perspectives, but your domain expertise is different from theirs; what introductory tweet is most likely to gain their interest and prompt a response?
  2. A well known figure is tweeting in a chat session.  Many will simply RT or respond with “love your book.”  How else might you engage them in genuine way, as a means to expand the conversation?
  3. You’re embroiled in a dispute with a coworker that is impacting your team and your relationship with this person. Do you vent to anyone who will listen, escalate to the boss, or get quality time with the person to get to the core of the problem?  If the latter, how would you approach it?

Are these the right questions?  Well these 3 certainly won’t change the world.  But they may help you get that gray matter into gear again.  In the end, perhaps there is no such thing as a stupid question or a “right” question.  But the excellent, thought-provoking questions are out there, and they take a little work.  Challenge yourself to come up with a few, and try them out on the folks who seem to care about the topics that you care about.

If you do this often, especially via twitter or blog comments (as both seem to bring higher than average appetites for engagement), I think you’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll be in conversations on topics that matter, often with people who can help make a difference.

Learning. Personal development. Progress. Who knew? Aren’t those some of the main reasons we engage with others in the first place?

Emotional Intelligence: Inaugural #TChat Recap

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Bravo! It’s safe to say that our first #TChat attracted talented, insightful participants eager to engage (one of our favorite verbs). You can read up on our preparation post to see our introduction of the chat idea to the community. This is a wonderful work in progress.

At the intersection of Talent + Culture, you’re all welcomed for your like-mindedness and celebrated for your unique thinking.

At the intersection of Talent + Culture, you’re all right here.

Our community.  Your community.  The TalentCulture Community.

The first one was last night, November 16, from 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. ET.  We discussed Emotional Intelligence and the importance of assessing it and developing it, which for us, is everything that makes a best place to work – the best talent (people) and the best workplace culture.

There are many varying definitions of emotional intelligence, but the one we used last night was:

Emotional intelligence is a person’s ability to understand and manage their emotions and those of others.

You can check out the participation stats here, and the transcript, but we had a smart bunch of diverse folk during the hour and beyond.  Lots who believe that the two decades of science and research behind emotional intelligence is sound and valid, and yet many contrarians who thought EI is a whole bunch of hoo-hah.

During the hour alone, there were over 240 contributors and over 1,400 tweets.  Not sure how that compares with other Tweet Chats, but we certainly weren’t expecting that kind of response.  Thrilled, but didn’t expect it.

The questions we asked included:

  • Question #1: What role do emotions play in the workplace? And should they play a role?
  • Question #2: How do you deal with conflict in the workplace?
  • Question #3: How can emotional intelligence help (or hurt) employees engage with stakeholders both inside/outside a company?
  • Question #4: Are virtual/mobile workforces changing the way we emotionally engage (or don’t) and communicate with one another?
  • Question #5: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if he/she was highly emotionally intelligent?

Okay, so #5 was a joke.  You got us there.

For those of you who asked if companies are really investing in assessing and developing emotional intelligence to improve the bottom line (like @BethHarte — thank you!), here are some examples (EI and EQ are interchangeable):

  • According to Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, for leadership positions, emotional intelligence is more important than cognitive intelligence.
  • At PepsiCo, executives identified as emotionally intelligent generated 10% more productivity and added nearly $4 million in economic value.
  • At Sheraton, an emotional intelligence initiative helped increase the company’s market share by 24%.
  • L’ Oreal realized a $91,370 increase per head for salespeople selected for EQ skills. The group also had 63% less turnover than sales staff not part of the EQ program.
  • Coca-Cola saw division leaders who developed EQ competencies outperform their targets by more than 15%. Division leaders who didn’t develop their EQ missed targets by the same margin.
  • The US Air Force reduced recruiter turnover from 35% annually to 5% annually by selecting candidates high in emotional intelligence. Total cost savings of $3 million per year on a $10,000 investment.
  • Hallmark Communities sales staff who developed emotional intelligence were 25% more productive than their low EQ counterparts and EQ was more important to executive job performance than character, strategic thinking, and focus on results.
I’ve included some tweet screen shots below from last night for your viewing pleasure.  A special thanks to our very own @MeghanMBiro and @TalentCulture for their ongoing dedication to innovation within the community and beyond.  Also, very special thank you’s go out to our community supporters @HRMargo @Brainzooming @Monster_WORKS @BillBoorman @sourcepov @TanveerNaseer @AvidCareerist @ValueIntoWords @KeppieCareers and countless others for their fabulous participatory support. We heart you all!

Join us for #TChat every Tuesday from 8-9 p.m. EST, 5-6 p.m. PT and 7-8 p.m. CT.

Next week’s topic to be announced soon! You can join in from all over the globe!

How to Create & Sustain a Mentorship Program

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Employers: I highly recommend working on a strategy now to retain the employees you have and hire top talent from the classes in the future. My suggestion? Start a mentorship program. It may seem like a daunting task to start up a new program, but ultimately, a mentorship program is a cost-effective way to make your employees more comfortable, productive and engaged.

Here’s how to get started:

Begin with the end in mind. What is your intent? You should have measurable goals in mind before starting your program. You also need organizational commitment from the top.

Decide who the participants will be. Who will be the mentors? The mentees? Will mid-level employees be mentoring interns? Senior level mentoring entry-level?

What will the nature of the interaction be?

  • Single leader mentoring circle: one leader and many mentees
  • Mixed level mentoring circle: a mixed group of mentors and mentees
  • Peer mentoring: each member of the group is on the same professional level
  • E-mentoring: use phone and e-mail to interact with participants
  • Reverse mentoring: junior employees mentor senior staff

How will you review the program? What will deem your mentorship program “successful”? What measures do you have in place? Have you committed yourself to a process of continual improvement?

The first 90-120 days is important to determining both short- and long-term success for new employees, and with a mentorship program in place they can start to better understand the culture, their fit within the organization, their associates and the commitment of the organization as a whole to their success. And, over time, a level of trust and candor develops where the mentor can tell the mentee “things they don’t want to hear” (otherwise known as tough love).

By developing a mentorship program, you will have a better grasp on attracting and retaining new employees. With an increased organizational commitment, employees will likely see that and feel that they can grow with your organization.Other benefits of a mentorship program include:

  • Employees gain better understanding of organization through mentoring relationships
  • Employees create trusting relationships resulting in a more comfortable environment
  • Mentees learn from mentors
  • Mentors learn from mentees
  • Helps on-board new entry-level employees to new organizations and the quality of the new hire experience
  • Organization benefits from increased retention, engagement levels and overall effectiveness of their employees
  • Creates a foundation for success

I have several mentors, and I’m always on the hunt for more! I have mentors in my industry, as well as outside of it. Without them, I doubt I would be where I am today, as their guidance has truly been priceless.

Does your organization offer a mentorship program or something similar? How beneficial do you feel such a program would have been when you were first starting out?

Crowdsourcing For Your Business Or Community

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Crowdsourcing. It’s more than just a popular buzzword.

It’s a really useful community knowledge-sharing technique. Think of it as an open call for tasks, information or data collection – mostly through new media technology.

Often, a passionate, informed crowd can much more powerful in generating ideas or offering solutions  than an isolated individual, business or closed community.

Here’s How Crowdsourcing Works:

1) You identify and define a problem or a need.
2) You broadcast that need online and call for solutions.
3) An online crowd discovers that call and collectively contributes solutions.
4) You use the crowd’s suggestions to choose a way to fix your problem and reward the individuals who developed that suggestion.
5) In the end, you’ve fixed your problem and the passionate crowd gets that feel-good reward of helping someone out. Everybody wins.

 

Examples from the video:

NotchUp
 Cambrian House

Another example of crowdsourcing at work:
Waze is a turn-by-turn navigation system that has been mapped and tagged entirely by its users. It’s a mobile application that aims to make driving a smoother and more social experience by giving users the power to inform other drives of speed traps, traffic delays, accidents and more all while their phones send geo-data to the waze network. Check it out at waze.com.

Image Credit: Pixabay

Social Community: Metaphor for the Workplace. Find Your Intent

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Recently I wrote about models of interaction within cultures and social communities that foster progress. I’d like to push the theme a bit further and look at social communities – which are really communities of intent – and how they can serve as a useful metaphor for the workplace.

Intent is one of those words that have taken on new meaning with the advent of search and search marketing. The trick that Google mastered so well is serving up information to consumers at the moment of intent (thanks to John Battelle, Andrei Broder and others; see some older material on intent here) – intent to act, to purchase, to decide. “Intent” is not only an action the searcher takes; it is a commitment the provider of information (the vendor or service), and the search service (Google, Yahoo, Bing), make to the individual searching for information.

In social communities, intent is more than interest, more than commitment, more than an informed notion. It’s the true power behind the community, because people come to communities with a purpose, an intent. They are looking for a place to be, a place to learn, a place to grow and interact in a meaningful way.

The trick then, for companies, is to behave as social communities. It’s a powerful and new metaphor for the workplace.

In a typical workplace there are people with many different personalities, personal brands, goals, aspirations, skill sets and attributes. In a healthy workplace, meaning one that focuses on ensuring personality/culture fit between employees and the organization, people of diverse skill sets and temperaments can collaborate and succeed – because they have the intent to succeed, and the social context – the community – in which to realize their intent.

TalentCulture, for example, is a collaborative social community, a community of intent, a metaphor for the workplace. Our contributors come from many backgrounds: executive leadership,  human resources, recruiting, marketing, new media, research, public relations, law, branding, innovation, venture capital, career coaching, entrepreneurship and software technology. The shared intent is to create and share the very latest perspectives and trends on growing your business and reaching your individual career goals – using them to grow and foster innovation.

So here’s a challenge: find your intent. Share it with others. Be passionate. Be creative. Make every action resonate with the intent to do something positive, something to improve your workplace or advance the idea of what a collaborative workplace or social community should be.
And keep us in the loop.

Image Credit: Pixabay