Duckbeaver

For the past year or so, we’ve slowly begun to realize that we’re moving into the downward flow of the economic cycle; the housing bubble has burst and we haven’t yet started building the next. Hiring freezes are being put into place and layoffs are occurring in many different industries. So now is as good as time any to ask yourself, are you maximizing all possible revenue streams?

Just read Brad DeLong’s break down of the financial crisis. It is one of the first layman long views I’ve read since the start in August that offers a look at what’s going on and how the US is grappling with the downturn.

When I was studying political science as an undergrad, I used to have a friend/nemesis that I would name-drop with. We liked to email officials and scholars, soliciting comments or feedback concerning our 3rd year paper topics and then we’d compare responses. She won when the president of the ruling party of South Africa responded to one of her missives.

I think about this lately because I need to get back to emailing people who I think could give me some helpful information about topics I’m interested. Only now its my career path I want to discuss in greater detail. Employment services are good because I help people market themselves with their documents, a resume that succinctly outlines their qualifications or a cover letter that speaks of passion and authenticity. For more committed clients, I can talk about efforts that can make with social media to further their career. And while I like the underlying communication and professional development aspects, I’m getting ready to make my next move. I’m just not quite sure what that will be, so I’m thinking I need to ask people who seem passionate about what they’re doing.

One of the things I’ve got to focus more on is transferable skills I’m developing and see what other industries I can apply them to, looking were I can help out a company and continue to grow. Recently, I listened to a podcast by Llyod Grofton of Liberate Media where he commented about one the biggest crises facing the PR industry, a lack of skills. He offers some suggestions about perhaps reaching outside PR and journalistic areas and look for talented candidates that have client-focus, technology or design backgrounds. I’ve been following Liberate Media for a couple of months, as I’ve enjoyed their blog articles.

In a bizarre coincidence, or, assuming there is a skill shortage in PR, not so much, Nicky Fried from Strategic Communications wrote about skills needed from internal communications and engagement employees:

A recent article from Ragan talks for the value of hiring journalism graduates in corporate communications. Maybe – if you are hiring for writing ability and someone who understands a variety of different social media. But you better make sure that person is able to develop other skills.

Internal communications is about a great deal more. Key to effective internal communications is the understanding that this is a strategic endeavor focused on facilitating discussions throughout the organization with the goal of performance improvement.

Whether it’s external or internal communications that’s next up for me, continuing to develop new skills is clearly a necessary component.

I attended the BC Association of Integrated Marketers (BC AIM) luncheon, a couple weeks back at the Four Seasons in Vancouver. The lunch wasn’t that spectacular but I really enjoyed the speakers Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo, of Capulet Communications. The presentation was meant as an introduction about social media to traditional marketers, so it was all pretty basic but I think I picked up some good tips on how to speak about social media to those not in the echo chamber. I’m attending Third Tuesday Vancouver tomorrow and Darren’s speaking again. It’ll be interesting to compare and contrast the presentations geared towards different audiences and hopefully I can pick up some more tips.

One of the challenges I’m currently facing is how to get more buy in from other team members about using social media to improve productivity and knowledge sharing. Our internal blog hasn’t been getting quite the impact me and senior management were hoping for. I think having an info session to really introduce it properly and getting a chance to show just how easy it is to interact with will improve engagement. The other key piece is that through our initial internal testing we’ve been able to more closely define who the target audience will be.

When we first started looking at having a blog, some of the questions I asked was who the intended audience was – clients, industry peers, internal or funders. I think the newness of the project – for both management and me – made it harder to determine, and the fact that the blog is in addition to my other duties instead of being it or primarily it. Now that we’ve been posting for a month internally, directions are becoming more defined and we’ve realized while clients will gain some benefit, they’ll probably be our smallest audience.

Instead, our audience will probably be industry peers. I haven’t had the opportunity to do a lot of vigorous community monitoring but it does appear that we’ll be one of the early adopters within the local employment services field. The benefits of course will allow the organization to become a leader (hopefully) in the use of social media and this should also allow for individuals to establish reputations for being leaders in their niches. By outlining the value of the blog to team members in terms of what’s in it for them, buy in will likely increase and improve the ROI for the organization.