Feeling flattered, surprised, and some cool facter - hey, I'm not gonna' lie.  For the most part this is what happens when our names make a list - well, depending on the list, I suppose.  I remember this one time in the 5th grade where my name was put on a list for... okay - I digress.

Regardless...  Making the FOT/HRCapitalist Talent Management Blog Power Rankings Top 10 again is certainly something that invoked the aforementioned feelings.  But what I really take away from the total listing is more than just the obvious cool part of being listed.  What I really walk away with is a list of blogs I should be checking out - if they're not already on my radar.  The true take away from this for everyone should be a listing of other people in the recruiting or [HR] marketing industry that seem to know their stuff - or are damned good at delivering it.

So here it is... and congrats to every single person involved - they each deserve a spot in your feed reader regardless of your industry.

Today I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with a pretty smart bunch here in Dallas.  The New Media Training Institute asked me to speak at a local event and discuss how companies are using Social Media and engaging customers through the seemingly limitless channels.  One of the items that I was asked to really dig into was how teams can make the most of their time and avoid the Social Media Time Suck we're all afraid of.

My approach? I created ~15 high to mid-level slides and took an un-conference approach to presenting with a focus on Twitter and Facebook.  My instict was that this audience would be savvy enough to appreciate an avoidance of basic "how-to" items and the freedom to chime in and share both successes and failures along the way - as opposed to my dictating opinion and reciting a presentation.  Was I right?  Yeah - I was dead on.

The dialogue was good and the information was great.  What follows is simply the ppt deck that I used to spark the conversation with this sharp group of activists. (normally I don't post presentations that I've done on behalf of my employer but this deck will be available publicly on the event website soon anyhow.)

Update 2/7/10: Clicking each image will reveal the answer within the frame.
It's Wednesday so let's have a little something to push us through the middle of the week that might be fun.

I enjoy puzzles and riddles and games - so I thought it might be fun to use a slick little tool called Wordle that runs on a Google App Engine.  To put it plainly, users can simply paste a number of words into the field provided and the application will generate and artistic rendition of those words.  Alternately, a website address can also be used where the RSS feed of that address will be pulled in to do the dirty work.  Either way, the result is a rather cool looking image where people can copy or print the content for their own websites, tee-shirts, coffee mugs or whatever. One of the cooler things the app offers up are additional options that let you select how many words are used various colors or layouts and fonts, etc.  You could literally play on the Wordle site for hours and accomplish absolutely nothing.  It's fantastic!

What I decided to do was push through 9 blogs and websites that I use and set Wordle to only use 10 words.  Outside of setting the 10 word limitation the results you see below were completely random.  Can you guess which of the images belong to which popular blogs in the Recruiting/Staffing industry?

"Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery." - Joyce Brothers

This quote (I love quotes) came to mind when I started writing this article.  And while not I'm not a big Joyce Brothers fan per se, I think there's more truth here than not.  After all, none of us really likes being copied - but we love when someone shuts the heck up and lets us talk, right?

So why wouldn't our approach to social media (even for recruitment!) be the same - at least at its base?  Why wouldn't we start by ensuring that every single soul we pull in to talk about social engagement or ambassadorships understand the importance of listening to our industry or "customers" and how it should be a priority over broadcasting to them?  I think this is important - and sometimes gets missed in the rush (or pressure) to get on board and ride the social media wave.  Besides - we'll have a much better feel for who is talking about us and their perception of our [employment] brand if we'll listen and monitor what's being said already.