commbasics

I received a few emails from a content services vendor this week (Here’s a suggestion…did you get my email… have you read my email…) and after getting over the initial annoyance of a rookie PR gaffe I decided to look into the suggestion while I made coffee. My response is this blog post. The vendor was Venngage which has a nifty online tool for creating infographics for distribution on digital media, and competes with dozens of similar online tools. The offer was a very long white paper on engagement that, to their credit, had no blatant push to buy their service, but it wasn’t completely subtle. The premise of the white paper is “content that people share is a good thing.” In fact, if anyone from Venngage sends you the link to the paper, I just saved you a who lot of time because you don’t have to read it now. That is all it says, but with lots of statistics before they get to the point. It’s true that a metric of content engagement is, in fact, how many people in your audience share...

In all cases we have learned that these companies, if they don’t have trainable employees, must invest in employees or consultants with the knowledge and experience. More importantly, those resources need to be dedicated to the task. With all the talk of automation replacing workers there is a dirty little secret that most people are ignoring: The need for workers to implement and maintain automation tools and to effectively analyze and interpret data from them. Companies like to buy automation technology with the belief that they eliminate the need for people and expertise but when they fail to invest in the manpower to use that technology it severely hampers the ability of the tools to deliver value. At the same time, while ROI is significantly reduced by the lack of appropriate staff, the cost of eliminating the unproductive tools increases. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of marketing automation and online communications. Over these past two years, Footwasher Media ha...

In fact if a job seeker were to place on roulette bet or buy one lottery ticket for every job they apply for on a job listing service, they would be more likely to win a living wage from gambling than job searches. Finding a job is not easy and there are no shortcuts no matter what is said by the human resources industry, including Job finding services, independent recruiters, and in-company human resources (HR) staff.  Even with an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent there are 100 million skilled, experienced people who are looking for or have given up looking for work in the United States. In fact, the conclusion of a year long New Tech Press investigation of the employment industry is it is doing a disservice to job seekers, employers and the investment community by making the claim that they can help people find work or employees. While some of these services can point to a few areas of success and some are better than others (our research shows Linkedin is the most re...