Haley’s Facebook Makeover Contest Ends Today!

That’s right–you have a few hours left to kick it into high gear and enter our Facebook Makeover Contest. Tomorrow, we’ll pick one lucky staffing firm to receive a FREE company Facebook page.

There are already over 50 great entries and more coming in every minute. Check out a few below…

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I was in a store recently that is owned by a friend of mine, and the employee who was taking care of me mentioned that she was a bit bewildered that so many people were talking about their store on consumer review websites.  Apparently, none of her teammates at the store even knew that there were conversations about them taking place until very recently.  It turns out that even though the majority of the discussions and posts were positive, there were a few negative posts that went unanswered for some time.  She even went on to say that she wondered how many people were talking about them in other places that they are unaware of.

What can I do if this happens to my staffing firm?

Nowadays, feedback is left for all kinds of businesses, and staffing firms are no exception.  You may receive comments from recently placed candidates, current or former clients – even job seekers that you didn’t place.  And as you might expect, it’s extremely improbable that every comment will be positive.  Some important steps to follow:

1. Pay attention to the conversations about your business. Know what people are saying about you and your firm shortly after it’s said; not days, weeks or months after the fact.  You can tailor these alerts to include not only your company name, but the names of your recruiters, salespeople – even your competition.  Our Director of SEO & Social Media, Brad Smith, wrote a great article about this a few months ago: Tracking Social Media Conversations About Your Staffing Firm.  Additionally, make it a point to visit different social feedback sites like Yelp, Insider Pages and Merchant Circle and see what’s being said.  You may find there are old posts about your business that you never knew about.
2. Address feedback offline. If you’re receiving positive comments, meet with your staff and share them.  Focus on what’s working and find new and creative ways to expand upon them.  Reach out to the writer of the positive feedback (if you have the means to) and thank them personally; they’re almost certain to continue to sing your praises.  Likewise, make sure that any negative feedback gets addressed properly and promptly.  This will often result in turning a frown upside-down and ceasing any further negative comments, and ideally, you will maintain a healthy business relationship with that person.
3. Address feedback online. Take a moment to respond to comments publicly.  This shows gratitude and involvement, and is especially important in responding to negative feedback after it has been addressed offline on a one-to-one basis with the once disgruntled client or job seeker.  Use this as your opportunity to show that you care about everyone’s feedback, and that you not only acknowledge negative issues, but that you do your best to correct them quickly.
4. Be proactive. Utilize blogging to show your current and potential clients how your firm really is different, and how that translates to them and their businesses.  Write blog posts that give your candidates valuable job search tips.  Get involved in discussions on LinkedIn groups.  Build your Facebook and Twitter followers.  Automatically feed your blog to post into all of them.  Position yourself as an expert in your field, and as a trusted source of educational information.

By taking an active role in all aspects of your social feedback and media, you take the lead in crafting exactly how your company is seen.  If you don’t, your company image will still be shaped, but you may not have as much control over what it is shaped into.  If you have questions about how to be more active in social media, or any other aspect of your marketing initiatives, please call me at (888) 696-2900 or email me at dmcmullen@haleymarketing.com.

We recently integrated our job board software with Indeed, Simply Hired, Facebook and Twitter. And the results have been incredible!

Check out the screen shot below showing the results of a job posted by Future Force Personnel. In less than one day, their job opening occupied the top 5 spots in Google search results!  And ALL of these Google results are because of Haley Marketing’s job board!  (The original job post is highlighted in blue.  The other results are from our job board feed to Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com.)

Want get these kind of results with your jobs?
Post all your jobs to your website, Indeed, Simply Hired and social media–all for less than the cost of one job post on a major job board!  Call today for more information, 1.888.696.2900.

Think businesses can ignore Social Networks?  Think again!

A recent study conducted by Harris Interactive found that company or product reviews on social networks now hold as much influence as more traditional print media (newspapers/magazines).

According to the report:

“…what people say online about companies, brands and products matters. In fact, nearly half of Americans who use social media say reviews about a particular company, brand or product from friends or people they follow on social networking websites influence them either a great deal or a fair amount (45%) – the same number as Americans who say reviews in newspaper or magazine articles influence them (46%).”

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Let me preface this post by saying there is no magic solution that will guarantee you get to the top of Google rankings.  And if anyone tells you there is–they’re lying!

But, there are some best practices you can follow that will help.  Today, I wanted to share an example of how we helped Priority Personnel go from nowhere on Google’s radar to page one.   Here’s what happened:

9:04 am - Our client mentioned they had a few welding jobs available but they were nowhere to be found on Google when someone searched for welding jobs in their town.

9:15 am – We published their original job description on their blog and used some specific SEO elements within that post.  We then ensured that the Priority Personnel website was on Google’s list to index (see Google Site Submissions).

9:25 am – Google indexed this blog page and Priority Personnel’s job listing was #2 in Google listings for “welding jobs in San Marcos”.  They outranked almost every major job board, CraigsList.org and several other very popular websites.

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With all the recent outcry against Facebook and its ever-changing privacy policies, I have to question how many people really even know what their own privacy settings are or what the consequences may be.  I sure didn’t.  Like most people when I play around on my privacy settings I navigate through the dozens of fields available and hope for the best.

The problem is the descriptions and fields are sometimes vague and too often hidden other applications.  But here is a great tool that you can use to see exactly what kind of information you are broadcasting, reclaimprivacy.org.

This is a nice (and free) tool that will tell you in a glance what kind of personal information can get passed around.  Dont be alarmed if not everything is secure – there is  good information to passed about.  But it will keep you informed on what is protected and what can be intentionally or accidentally shared.

Great link via Drew McLellan

A new report just released from Nielsen outlines some very impressive growth for both Facebook and Twitter.

In March 2010, Facebook reported over 117 million unique US users–a 69% year-over-year growth from March 2009.

Twitter reported 20.1 million unique US users in March 2010–representing 45% year-over-year growth from March 2009.

For the full report visit the NielsenWire.

Found a really cool tool on YouTube. Check us out!

Need help getting your staffing firm to the top of search results? Our SEO services can help get you there. Give us a call today!

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jeff Reeder from Staffing Industry Analysts for the cover story of the April 2010 issue of SI Review magazine.  The feature titled “Developing a Social Media Plan” focused on how staffing and recruiting companies should go about planning a social media strategy as well as setting expectations and evaluating ROI.

Here are a few of the key takeaways from this great article…

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Choosing a domain address for a new website can be a difficult task.  In many cases, company names are chosen based on the availability of corresponding .com website domains.  But with squatters buying hundreds of domains and sitting on them in hopes of holding you ransom some day, finding a good company name and matching domain can be difficult.

To help, check out this great tool: Wordoid.com

Wordoid allows you to create natural sounding names/words from the English language that are based on another word.  And best of all, it tells you if the domain name is available or not.  For example, entering the word “Recruit” brings up these suggestions (all of which were available as .com domains):

• arecruitment
• recruitfulness
• recruition
• recruity
• recruitfully
• carecruitments
• recruitcastle
• recruitine
• recruitbosses
• recruitfullness
• recruitives

While these may not be names that really jump out to you, they might help in the brainstorming process.  And if you’re really ambitious, you could purchase some fun URL’s, create Recruiting and Hiring Resource Centers, and direct people back to your corporate website.   And the links back to your corporate website can help with your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts!