Month: February 2011

Liking LinkedIn

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

It’s a great resource for job seekers. It’s also an invaluable tool for job recruiters. Since its inception, LinkedIn has been the go-to hub for everything career related. And why not? Not only can this sensation site allow prospective candidates to share recruitment leads and help build their own career-boosting community, employers can view credentials of potential employees with only a few clicks of the mouse. But how can employers promote themselves the most effectively? Read on for some quick fixes and important tips.

Fill out EVERYTHING. Every piece of information you transcribe into LinkedIn—no matter how small—is fodder for helping your SEO rankings and providing critical data for employees-to-be. It may seem tedious, but list every piece of information you can as an employer as LinkedIn requests. Even if that includes size and location of your organization and hours of operation.

Lend a helping hand. Get proactive about your presence. Offer recommendations to former employees and send messages to like-minded companies. The more you grow your circle of contacts, the more attention you’ll gather.

Plug it in. Connect your LinkedIn site to your existing assets—think blog, Facebook, Twitter, and webpage. Not only will you provide a resource to those candidates casually learning more about you, you’ll also provide at-a-glance information that helps you disseminate critical information—information that helps a candidate base make better, more informed decisions.

Until next time,

Buyer Advertising

www.buyerads.com

What Heat Mapping Has to Teach Us

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

It’s the 21st century, and with these modern times comes an array of technology and tools that make us more effective advertisers. Chief among these is heat mapping—the process of tracking a customer’s eye movements when seeing a webpage for the first time. The eyes don’t lie: there’s a lot to be learned in regards to how a casual consumer relates to your landing page or site itself. Here are some important lessons.

People don’t read. On the ‘net, our time is valuable. People are very finicky consumers when it comes to the written word. Heat Mapping has shown that the average users spends almost no time reading the content of a piece—instead, they elect to scan the first few copy points or initial sentence. Having viable copy establishes professionalism; however, don’t count on it to bring in the majority of customers by itself.
Headlines Sell. Everyone loves a good headline. When analyzed, nearly every heat map has shown that people almost always read the headline first and thoroughly. What this represents: an opportunity. If you can make your pitch brief, cohesive, and compelling, you’re on your way towards a conversion.

We Love Faces. More than any other element, people are drawn to faces. Put a fellow’s (or ladies’) face up on the screen, and sure enough, a heat map will glow bright red around that image. Humanity is drawn to itself. Faces are interesting: attractive, ugly, unique-looking, every face tells a story. Count on images of people to draw attention and help tell your story.

Until next time,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

An Agency Advantage: Perspective

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

If you have a favorite book, you know that every time you re-read it, it loses a little bit of punch. A week of your favorite food may send you to Fresh City, hungering for a little variety. Even your favorite song, on loop, will make you feel as if you’re hanging out in an elevator. The truth is, the more familiar material is, the more we become blind to its effects. The same holds true for companies who write and produce their own hiring marketing material.

Whether your hiring campaign is being considered by management, product experts, or internal team members, it’s likely for them to simply assume key benefits and essential elements that just don’t register for someone browsing online or flipping through a magazine. For a business deciding on a hiring strategy, the results could be disastrous.
One great advantage of any agency can deliver is a little perspective. As outsiders, agency professionals immediately engage by considering a message from the viewpoint of an audience. This is such a critical process of attracting new talent—and frankly, communicating any marketing message.

If you’re testing your current employee messaging, ask yourself these questions: Is what I’m saying immediately apparent to my audience? Why should they care about what I’m saying? Is my content too detailed? Not detailed enough? Thinking like a consumer is something agencies are trained to do, and through audience-first perspectives, help you arrive at an optimized brand and hiring strategy that could work wonders for your organization.

Signing off for now,
Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Trend Watch: A Facebook “Terms” Page

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

If you thought the untamed realm of social media is (or should be) free of legalese, think again. A growing trend for companies—especially large businesses—is to create a set of their own “terms and conditions” for Internet pedestrians to scan before becoming a follower of their Facebook page.

The extra steps companies are adding to the process of joining your online crew are (supposedly) for good reason. Take the fansite of Progressive’s new mascot, “The Messanger.” Before a patron becomes a fan, they are prompted to read specialized terms and conditions before clicking that “like” button. One excerpt reads, “You agree that you will not submit Content or otherwise use the Page in any manner that would interfere with or damage the Page, including, without limitation, through the use of viruses, cancel bots, Trojan horses, harmful code, flood pings, denial of service attacks, packet or IP spoofing, forged routing or electronic mail address information or similar methods or technology.”
In other words, don’t spam up the boards or try to scam our fans out of personal information and/or life savings.

So, should your company take the time to create and display a “terms and conditions” section for your Facebook page? In the short term, it’s difficult to see how a simple page of text would stop scammers and fraudsters, many of whom live far outside the boundaries of English-speaking countries in the first place, from posting fake login mirrors and advertisements for prescription medicine. However, as the legal issues and rights ascribed to social media firm up, having a terms page could be an important tool in policing your company’s digital rights. Worth a consideration, anyhow.

See you next time,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com