In my last post I touched on recruitment, arguing that companies hoping to recruit the brightest and best needed to move with the times and embrace the world of social media.

I was a bit pressed for time and didn’t add in much in the way of references so I thought I’d try and make amends by pointing you in the direction of this post from Silicon  Valley PR professional, Brian Solis.

The premise of his argument?

‘We’re witnessing the shift from B2B and B2C to P2P (peer to peer) marketing - or better described as conversations between people, and not companies doing their best impression of adults in the Peanuts cartoons as they talk to audiences in a monotone, robotic, insincere voice. . .’

Have a read of his post, Conversational Marketing Versus Market Conversations.

Recruitment . . . it’s needless to say that this is a vitally important issue for many companies.

But I guess I just said it anyway, so what does that tell us? Maybe that it’s so important that one has to resort to repetition to ram home the point. Who knows? Perhaps.

Moving swiftly on . . . recently I’ve been holding seminars with customers to discuss the potential business value of social media.

Denmark - and for that matter Europe in general - is really lagging behind the States in this area.

There, many companies are busy experimenting and finding real value with some or all of the many social media tools - blogging, video, micro-blogging, wikis, forums, networking sites etc.

As with many trends that originate across the Atlantic, the trickle-down effect is slow. But this one is rapidly gaining momentum.

Have you noticed the creep of articles about blogging in your newspapers? Berlingske recently launched an impressive network of 10 blogs, while more and more companies are dipping their toes into the blogging waters.

What has all this got to do with recruitment, I hear you bellow.

Well, my point is simple. The generation graduating from university live in a networked world. They are smart enough to see through glossy corporate spin. In fact they are bored of it. And it is from within this generation that you must recruit your future workforce.

These people pull the messages they want and reject anything too forcefully pushed at them.  

Marketing guru Seth Godin explains the impact of this particularly well:

“The new reality of the marketplace is that consumers have a choice. They can ignore you. They can ignore your ads, your letters, you web banners, and your salespeople. As a result, you and every other marketer face a choice: You can make something worth talking about or you can become invisible.”

For marketing and communications professionals, this means it is no longer possible to control your brand in the way you are used to.

If a new flavour of Coke is particularly terrible, that message will spread through the blogosphere, across YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, via SMSs, and instant messaging quicker than you can imagine.

This is how this generation communicate. It’s where they go for ‘buzz’ about the latest tech products, TV shows, music and pretty much everything else you can imagine.

And this generation - switched-on, in demand, web-savvy - will be researching your company, way before you can research them.

So what will they think when they look at your homepage and they see a company that is not blogging, that is not engaging with its customers in any kind of two-way conversation, that is not using video to showcase its offices and employees?

They will think that that company has not moved with the times and they will take their hard-won expertise and their first-hand knowledge of the new marketplace to a rival.

Pure and simple.

I had an interesting email last week from someone pointing me in the direction of a report showing that few ‘IT decision-makers’ placed much value in blogging as a company marketing tool.

The report notes that, without a sound business case, many Web 2.0 tools - podcasting, RSS, wikis, blogging etc - are being passed over by CIOs who don’t see the ROI materialising any time soon.

But, to me, perhaps the most revealing observation in the report comes from the firm which carried out the research, Forrester.

Their analyst G. Oliver Young notes: “Many business users still associate blogs with personal diaries, and some firms use blogs simply as a way to surface existing content, muting the effect.”

I think this indicates a telling disconnect between marketers, who are increasingly aware of the need to utilise these powerful new tools, and CIOs whose first thought is bottom line, bottom line, bottom line.

The CIOs are firefighters in this respect, the marketers are trying to build fire-proof buildings.

Moving forward, I’ll be blogging more on this, as, together with my colleagues, we hone some new media product offerings that we’ll be rolling out over time.

For now, this Wikipedia entry on corporate blogs details some of the potential benefits to companies in a really concise way.

And for those who doubt the potential of the humble blog to reinvigorate a flagging brand, here’s an interesting quote from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who was asked what blogging had done for the so-called ‘Evil Empire’:

“I think it’s been a great way for us to communicate to our customers – and, more importantly, for our customers to communicate with us. We trust our people to represent our company. That’s what they are paid to do. If they didn’t want to be here, they wouldn’t be here. So in a sense you don’t run any more risk letting someone express themselves on a blog than you do letting them go out and see a customer on their own. It just touches more people. Hey, if people need to be trained, we can do that, but I find that blogging is just a great way to have customer communications.”

As I mentioned in a previous post, I took part in a seminar recently where, together with our design partners at Spoiled Milk, we spelt out why we think companies should embrace blogging.

Well, this morning I was delighted to see an email in my inbox from one of the attendees, Andreas Zecher from Swedish software development company Fantasy Interactive, pointing me in the direction of his company’s blog.

Andreas had written a great summary of mine and Russell’s key points and included some great pics as well.

This is a great example of the blogosphere in action… information and experiences are shared in instant, interactive ways. It’s such a powerful tool and it’s only going to get bigger.

You can read Andreas’ post here.

Eye for Image took part in a great seminar on why companies should embrace blogging this morning.

Held at the studio of our design partners Spoiled Milk, the seminar addressed two key issues - why companies should blog, and how to do it.

I had the pleasure of speaking about the former while Spoiled Milk founder Russell Quinn addressed the technical issues.

Both our presentations will soon be available as PDFs. If you would like to receive them, either leave a comment below, or email our marketing manager at nathalie.erb@eye-for-image.com

A friend of mine who is a web and graphic designer occasionally sends me amazing links.

The latest, and one I thought I would share with you, is the site of UK design consultancy Checkland Kindleysides.

It’s Flash-heavy but is still beautifully functional. The loading between sections is playful and rather soothing, and the overall design is a triumph of simplicity.

As a copywriter, I really admire their economic use of text. Everything is kept short and sweet. In this way the text serves simply to underscore the visual brilliance of the site.

I know, I know. . . we expect this kind of thing from creative agencies, but that shouldn’t stop the rest of us picking up a few lessons!

As the social media revolution gathers pace, how are you keeping track of the upheavals in communication?

What steps are you taking to ensure that your marketing department is moving with the times, and not relying on the same old techniques to generate new leads and connect with potential customers?

Many people now talk of the fragmented marketplace - the long tail. But in many ways the opposite is true. As a new generation of networked and net-savvy consumers arrive in the marketplace, it is tempting for companies to worry that it is nigh on impossible to reach mass audiences in the same way as before.

While that may be true to an extent, reaching your audience is simply a matter of understanding them - their reading habits, the nature of their media consumption. Did you know TV viewing figures are dropping drastically? The same is true of newspaper readership. Advertising revenue is moving online because that is where the consumers are - particularly those in the 18-34 age bracket.

These are uncertain times. We are at a generational intersection - every day the young shape the future of business and media a little bit more; and every day the preceding generation cede a little bit more territory.

But this isn’t the end of the world as we know it. For companies everywhere, it’s simply a matter of adjusting, and approaching this brave new world with an open mind.

Books like The New Influencers will help. As will Robert Scoble’s Naked Conversations.

I know I can sound a little evangelical at times, but big things are happening right now. Are you in the loop?

I was just trawling through some of my feeds (I use Google Reader to keep track of the dozens of interesting sites that make up the bulk of my online reading) and found an interesting piece about whether Google might be planning to buy Salesforce - the popular CRM software company.

We use Salesforce here at Eye for Image, and the point the author makes about Salesforce not having a complete email solution is valid. Imagine the time you could save if it had a fully integrated email client?!

Google helps me streamline my IT to the extent that, outside of work, I’m hardly using any paid-for software these days. I use GMail for email, Picasa for picture storage, and I’m now even beginning to use GoogleDocs instead of Word - and all in one browser!

The thought of transferring the usability and simplicity of these applications to my work IT environment is certainly an enticing one!

I’ve just come across this article about Spannerworks over at The Guardian’s Organ Grinder blog (a great source of information on all things relating to social media). I’d never heard of Spannerworks before but I’ve just spent the last half an hour engrossed in their site.

Here at Eye for Image, we think their tagline – Mapping the web for brands: Learn more about your brand’s presence in online social networks – is a masterpiece of simplicity (note to other companies, sometimes the most powerful statements are the most straightforward). 

The web, and how to utilize its vast communications power, is such a hot topic for companies at the moment. But it’s also a bewildering one. The Internet is a confusing place and there is a real scamble going on out there to make sense of it.

There’s a raft of tech companies developing mapping tools to help businesses plot a path to real value.  But Spannerworks look like they’re a few steps ahead of the competition with an array of tools to help companies find out who is talking about them and what they are saying. Armed with this information, “Spannerworks’ advanced social network analytics are then applied to help marketers build models of relationships and influence within their identified networks”. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?! 

Using crisp, clear language, Spannerworks outline who they are and what they do, touching on the issues that are so relevant to companies right now (search engine optimization, online brand-building) and generally doing a great job of subtly implanting the notion that you really need their services!

Their site is great as well, eschewing fancy Flash graphics in favor of functionality and form. Overall a big thumbs-up from us!