ResearchGoddess

Earlier today, I spent about 30 minutes in the Arbita Sourcing Lab at SourceCon showing the participants how to search Twitter profiles and clean/manage their followers. We had fun and learned how to make good use of the information that people provide in their bios to aid in our candidate searches. Below are some of the resources I shared with the lab participants. Enjoy!

Tweepsearch – allows people on Twitter to search their followers bio and location information. Twitter doesn’t currently have a bio search and as your Twitter network grows, it’s nice to be able to look through your tweeps. Limited advanced Boolean search (i.e. no near: location search). This is a good service be cause it is:

• Sortable by username, # of followers, or # followed
• Able to download search results to .csv file

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Tweepz – does the same thing as Tweepsearch, but allows you to create an RSS feed from your search results. You can:

• Use advanced Boolean operators (location, specific name, etc.)
• Create an RSS feed of search results

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Followerwonk – lets you search bios as well as do Twitter account comparisons. Can be either a very simple keyword search or a more complex, detailed SQL full-text search (using the documentation available on the site). For account comparisons, you can run up to three accounts side-by-side and get Venn diagram information on:

• Shared connections – followers & following
• Days on Twitter
• # of new followers per day
• # of tweets

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LocaFollow – a Google-powered Twitter profile search engine. It allows you to search bio, location, name, AND tweets. By logging in to your Twitter account from LocaFollow you will be able to:

• Bulk follow the resulting Twitter accounts, or follow them individually
• Create a Twitter list directly from the search results
• Create a TweepML list as the service is integrated with LocaFollow (see my post about why I love TweepML)
• Tweet a particular Twitter user’s search results rank

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Twiangulate – lets you search for who your friends, enemies and peers are following (see my Cool Tool Alert post about Twiangulate). Allows for three comparison searches of up to three Twitter accounts, as well as a keyword search. Only simple Boolean can be used in the keyword search (AND, OR [using | ], NOT [using !], and phrase [using “ ”]). This is an awesome service because:

• You can keywords search for profiles of individuals whom a specific Twitter user is following – for example, let’s say I wanted to find out what Account Directors a recruiting colleague is following… I would type “account director” into the keywords search, and the Twitter username I wanted to parse into the next field. I would get the results listed below
• You can instantly tweet out your search results directly from Twiangulate
• You can search for biggest or most common followers, or most common or most obscure friends

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Do you know of any other Twitter profile search tools? Please leave a comment with the link!

Tags: followerwonk, locafollow, recruiting, Research, SourceCon, tweepsearch, tweepz, twiangulate, Twitter

I am so pleased to have another article published on Mashable!

12 iPhone Apps for Surviving Conference Season

Next week, I’ll be in San Diego to attend both SourceCon and ERE Spring Expo, and I wanted to share some of the apps that I’ll be using while attending both. Please take a look at the article, and if you have any suggestions for other good conference apps, leave them in a comment either on the Mashable article or right below!

Tags: ERE, EREExpo, mashable, SourceCon

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

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Spotlight: Venessa Miemis
Title: MA Candidate in Media Studies, The New School
Who paid it forward: Brian Solis

What Brian had to say about Venessa: “Venessa is a philosopher and a futurist, exploring the advanced art and science of human connections and conversations and bringing observations and revelations from the edge to the center. ”

Venessa earned a BA in Psychology from Miami University of Ohio, and currently she is pursuing an MA in Media Studies through the New School, a progressive university located in NYC. Back in 2006, a friend asked if she wanted to be involved in a social media start-up company he was planning to launch. At the time Venessa had never even heard the phrase “social media” before, but was eager to explore a new direction. She spent the next year just learning the basics of how technological developments were affecting the way we communicate and understand the world. Since then, she hasn’t been able to stop. Each new evolution of the social web is allowing unexpected behaviors to emerge that are challenging the norms of how our society operates. Venessa believes it’s only going to get more disruptive as time goes by.

What interests Venessa about social media: How we can better access and use information, and how we might leverage the power of social networks. Unfortunately, the internet is rife with marketing and spam, and the noise is growing exponentially. Venessa believes we need systems that will help us quickly cut through the crap to get to the credible, quality content. Then we need to know what to do with the information. She has been experimenting a lot on Twitter and is finding that by building a network of knowledgeable people in her interest area, she is being exposed to information and ideas that she wouldn’t have been able to find from a quick Google search. As a result, there’s a really interesting informal learning process that’s being recognized there. Venessa has noticed a lot of people taking advantage of it in order to stay on top of what’s going on in their industries and to exchange ideas with peers around the world. She believes it’s going to become clear that businesses that aren’t integrating social media into the culture of their organization are going to be at a disadvantage against the competition. And not just because it isolates them from the opportunity to interact with their customers, but also because they’re going to have a less educated workforce.

With that in mind, she also thinks there’s a tremendous opportunity now for people to do things on a scale that has just never been possible before, from facilitating innovation in businesses to sparking movements that will lead to true social change. She had the opportunity to share some thoughts on this recently on Nokia’s IdeasProject website.

Where Venessa sees social media going in the future: Venessa says, “It’s easy to get caught up in the tools themselves and forget about what it is that the tools enable. Social media is just a means of communication. People are interested in sharing knowledge and information, in making life easier, and in having fun and being happy.” She thinks we will see some of the following stem from these interests:

• The mobile phone will play an increasingly important role as the medium for connecting online because of its portability and reduced cost in comparison to purchasing a desktop computer.  We’ll also see more tools emerge that will enhance the mobile experience, from augmented reality apps like Layar to portable credit card payment systems like Square to location-based services.
• We begin to embrace a new oral culture. Venessa thinks social media has established a new type of communication, and businesses and individuals are still figuring out how to use it effectively. But people have always enjoyed a narrative, so we’ll begin to see approaches to business that move more along the lines of storytelling and visualization. It’s not enough to sell a product or service anymore. People want to see messages that are visually appealing and understandable, like infographics, and they want ideas packaged into stories, whose foundations are built on values instead of material things.
• Tools will be built that make tasks feel more like fun and games. There’s a site called thefuntheory.com that has some really neat videos embracing this concept. Same with Foursquare – why would you want to constantly be updating your location for anyone to see? Because you can earn badges and become Mayor of the local cafe, of course! Whether for educational purposes or on the job, Venessa believes that there are going to be interesting social media tools developed that give us incentives to complete tasks because they feel more like games than work.
• Better tools for search. As mentioned earlier, information streams are already polluted with noise, and there isn’t enough time or attention to be given to filtering it. Tools will be developed that do a better job of catching spam and enabling us to find the kind of content we want.

Connect with Venessa on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

Tags: brian solis, career, nokia, pay it forward, venessa miemis

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

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Spotlight: Kipp Bodnar
Title: Inbound Marketer
Employer: HubSpot
Who paid it forward: Jason Falls

What Jason had to say about Kipp: “Kipp is super smart and has a real grasp of social media. He’s got a year or two of experience under his belt working with real brands and real clients, too, unlike a lot of folks in that younger age group who set up a Twitter account for their dad’s car lot and call themselves ‘experts.’ He has an interest and a passion for B2B social media which automatically sets him a part from a lot of people. Kipp brings a pure enthusiasm coupled with a traditional PR agency/firm training to the table. He’ll be working with major brands for a long time and will cultivate quite a following as a result.”

Kipp earned a B.S. in Journalism with an emphasis in Public Relations from Marshall University. He recently (like last week!) took a marketing position with HubSpot in the Boston area to assist in making the HubSpot Blog the best Internet marketing blog on the web. Prior to that, he was Social Media Marketing Manager at Howard Merrell & Partners, a full service marketing and advertising firm in Raleigh, NC. During his career Kipp has successfully developed and implemented social media campaigns and plans for clients in business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries. In addition to his work at the agency, he is the publisher of SocialMediaB2B.com, a multi-author blog dedicated to providing examples and thought leadership for B2B companies planning to incorporate social media into their marketing strategy. Kipp also blogs on technology and social media at his personal blog DigitalCapitalism.com. As if he doesn’t already have enough on his plate with these things, until recently Kipp helped organize local Raleigh-area events including Triangle Social Media Club, tweetups, barcamps, Ignite Raleigh, and other events that focus on technology and social media.

What Kipp loves about social media: He went to college to learn PR and took a job out of school working in public relations. Three to four years ago, he began noticing the beginnings of the social web influence on public relations. This opened his eyes to the bigger opportunity, and he started to spend a lot of time learning how it would tie into everything. Overall, Kipp believes this is the best time ever to be a communicator. He says there is so much opportunity and possibility, and there is no excuse to not be well-informed. It’s our responsibility and obligation to create systems for ourselves to keep informed. More people will continue to do this into 2010.

Where Kipp sees social media going in the future: As a guy who has spent a significant part of his career working with B2B clients, Kipp feels that B2B is going to continue to be a hot topic in the future of social media; he thinks there will be a big rise in B2B adoption. 2009 was when everyone talked about ROI, and 2010 will be the year will people will figure it out. Kipp also thinks that mobile is going to get bigger and that there will be many more opportunities for location-based social media technologies. Real-time & implications on search are really going to play out in 2010, and Kipp believes there will be hardcore battling amongst search engines for the most up-to-date information.

Connect with Kipp on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

Tags: brand, career, jason falls, kipp bodnar, pay it forward, PR

A large chunk of my time right now with AT&T is spent doing proactive research for our Campus Recruiting efforts. I look for student profiles in a number of places, and some of the most important things I look for are good GPA, good experience working with groups of people, and some form of leadership, whether it be in athletics, clubs, or an after-school job. These are traits we look for in our future leaders. We put our Development Program participants through training in many areas, including ones that may not be directly related to their ultimate job function, as well as all levels of work within their career track. Why? Because to be an effective manager, you’ve got to pay your dues.

So often, I read student profiles who list amongst their objectives when coming out of college, “To find a management position…” While I applaud your moxie, there are certain steps one must take first in order to reach management, and this includes earning some experience. I’m sorry to say this, but you can’t come straight out of college and land a management position for your first job – not unless:

1. You’re going to work for the same company you’ve been working for throughout school, or
2. You gained corporate experience prior to earning your degree (in most cases, this applies to graduate degrees)

I’ve written about this in the past. You can’t just start off at the top unless you’re going to start your own company, and that’s a whole different ball of wax. Career paths have fairly well-defined start points and those typically aren’t halfway down the trail. I’m certainly not trying to kill your dream here. I’m simply asking you to be realistic about your expectations of yourself (and your future employer!) upon graduating. And if you think about it, starting off with an entry-level position, which is what typically happens, will help you to be a better manager in the long run.

Learning the various levels within a company firsthand helps you to understand how things work. When you start from the bottom and work your way up, you gain understanding along the way of how various departments and levels of the organization operate. This firsthand learning is valuable and earns you wisdom about the inner workings of a company that cannot be gained in other ways.

Managers need to be good leaders, but you don’t have to be a manager in order to be a leader! Leadership experience can be earned at all levels in your career, including entry-level. Leadership is shown through taking the initiative to learn about new products/processes, asking to participate in projects outside of your normal job duties, helping and encouraging your co-workers, and taking an overall proactive approach to your career. These things can all be done as soon as you enter the workforce and will help you to be a better manager when the time comes. Managing well should include leading, guiding, encouraging, and mentoring. If you’ve no experience in these areas, then you’re not ready to be a manager.

Don’t rush the natural progression – this is your opportunity to enjoy the journey! When we were little kids, we whined and complained to our parents about how we wanted to hurry up and be a grown-up, and our parents almost always told us to be patient and enjoy being a kid because they knew we were building solid foundations for our adulthood during these years. Same goes with your career – don’t speed through the foundational times because they will provide a more solid ground for you to stand on for your future. Pay your dues, earn your experience, and you’ll have a more fulfilling and successful career in the long run.

Tags: career, career path, graduation