How to make your CV full of win

It’s hiring time at Yomego, and we’ve been busy sifting through applications for the positions we’re advertising just now.

I am fortunate enough to work with an awesome team which has creativity, talent and a place for everyone to contribute. The CVs have been stacking up over the last few weeks, and it’s clear that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for new graduates to cut through the noise and get noticed. With that in mind, I thought it might be useful to provide my personal breakdown of some of the things that make our ears prick up when we’re on the lookout for new hires.

Be a social superstar

If you want to work in social media, it’s probably because you love interacting online. Not everyone is great at this, so we want to see what you can do.

If you’d rather keep your tweets personal, that’s fine, but think about the skills your employer will be looking for and find another way to demonstrate your talent for communication: maybe you rock on Tumblr, or manage a Facebook page for your band. If you’re active on a gaming forum or have a kick-ass Etsy store, let us know where to find you.

Pro tip: don’t link to your Twitter account if it’s locked down.

Ditch the bot and get human

Universities have a lot to answer for in the style of writing they encourage in students. You might have a great vocabulary and perfectly-finessed academic English, but I’d always prefer an aptitude for unfussy, conversational language that gets the message across and shows off your great personality.

Practise good verbal hygiene

An apostrophe in the wrong place here and there might only drop you a mark off your essay, but the people who care about this really care about it, and one of those people may well be reading your CV. If you’re in any doubt about the cleanliness of your grammar and punctuation, get a friend to look over your writing, or check out some onlineresources.

Format matters

Whatever recruitment agencies say, we’d rather have a PDF than a Word doc, and if you use your full name as the file name, it’ll make it easier for us to find you. Naming your file something like CVforagencyjobs.doc tells me you’ve sent the same document to a ton of agencies and don’t care much about this particular job.

If you don’t have an eye for design, get someone to help you, or keep it simple. Fugly borders, messy spacing and gimmicky fonts will only distract attention from your winning content.

Make it personal

If you’re applying to work at an agency, chances are, the staff will be visible online. That’s good news, because it won’t take much research to find out who’s recruiting for the position so you can address your email to a real, live person.

At the very least, make sure your CV reflects the qualities and experience the recruiter will be looking for, and your cover letter expresses an interest in what the agency does. In particular, if your background is not directly in line with what the job is about, being clear about why this job is relevant to you and where you see it going will save us all some head-scratching.

...but not too personal

If you have a degree, your B in GCSE Woodwork and award for perfect attendance in Brownies can and should be retired from your resume.

If you’re happy to have your personal profiles wide open, take care with what’s on display. We all know by now (do we?) that pictures of lairy nights out might not win favour with recruiters.  Maybe people who know you don’t think less of you for swapping sexist jokes or joining sectarian groups, but these kinds of associations would make me question whether I could trust you to be the voice of our clients.

Have you ever received a standout application? Or do you have any more tips for graduates taking on their first job? Tell us in the comments.

We’re hiring! Take a look at our jobs page for the latest vacancies or follow @yomegosocial on Twitter.

By community manager Annie @anniefiddle

Serious consequences?

Me and my dad. I’m the one without the moustache.

The night before I got married last year, family and friends that had travelled to the wedding got together for a meal and a few beers.

One of the highlights of the evening was when both sets of parents produced stacks of photos of our formative years. Friends cooed over what an angelic baby I was (golden curls, blue eyes) and laughed hysterically at what a hilarious child I became (NHS specs, ginger hair, fondness for sitting in boxes) – and did the same for my other half. It was lovely. And by the time the photos were wheeled out to all and sundry, it was in a supportive environment and I was no longer scarred (much) by the NHS specs. I was a grown up, and the photos were funny little reminders of a small person that looked a little like me.

Facebook and pics of kids. It’s like the two were invented for each other. Keeping up with pics of grandchildren and nieces and nephews is the reason that my parents joined Facebook. 

If you’re past your early 20s, you’re practically guaranteed to have a Facebook feed liberally peppered with snaps of your friends’ offspring. Stats here (a little old, but I only imagine things have got worse since)  back this up.

A snapshot of people I know on Facebook reveals the full range of attitudes to pics of their kids, right from never allowing any photos to documenting every last sneeze with an accompanying pic. Some people request that their friends don’t post any photos of their children without their consent. Some friends have set up profiles for their newborns which only family and close friends can follow – thus keeping some of the child’s privacy intact. Whereas others post every detail, every drooly tooth – all preserved for prosperity.

There are four big issues here that bother me. The first is of course, the privacy issue. Your kids did not consent to these photographs being posted – and neither can they. I’ve written before about the fact that people complain endlessly that kids have no concept of privacy in what they post online – but when your parents haven’t got a clue either (ref: the old schoolmate that posted naked photos of her seven year old in a paddling pool) then who is really at fault here?

The second most obvious issue is that photographs of your child’s bowel movements, or them smeared in food or snot is actually quite unpleasant. I don’t want to see it. I know their parents find it gross/grossly hilarious and that’s why they are sharing. But I browse Facebook over lunch. I really don’t want to see this.

But this is well-trodden ground. There are entire blogs, such as STFU Parents, that reassure me that I’m not alone in this. The third and fourth issues are the ones that are bigger for me.

The third is closely linked to the first: dignity. Privacy is one thing, but dignity is something else altogether. Yes, kiddy photos are inherently undignified. As parents, you take photos of your kids being funny and cute and often, these photos could be deemed to be embarrassing.

But they were once shared privately and then, possibly, wheeled out the night before a wedding. My childhood photos weren’t present all through my life. God knows, it was enough fun at school having NHS specs and ginger hair – kids don’t need any more ammunition with which to torture each other. I can’t imagine it doing wonders for a wee tike’s sense of self-worth when the school bullies find pictures of their first poo in the potty and them playing naked in the garden.

And the fourth point is about being able to live in the present. Instagram seems symptomatic of this to me – it’s a way of adding instant heritage to an old snap, letting you look at a sunset from yesterday and feel a bit wistful. Baby photos on Facebook are no different – there’s the timeline, there’s every snap you’ve ever taken. You spend so long documenting and externalising – it’s an attitude that with all of their history available to them, it would be hard for a child not to inheret. What does it do to a child to have a record of their every move from birth available to them in an instant? Is that healthy?

By PR and marketing manager Claire Foss @claire_foss

Brands: Not listening

Customer service is in the middle of its fastest phase of evolution since the call centre revolution of the ‘70s and ‘80s. The popularity and widespread adoption of social channels means companies can be more responsive, strengthen relationships and cross-sell products and services (we produced a white paper on this back in February).  This evolution is blindingly apparent from taking a look at contemporary consumer behaviour;

• Nowadays, the first thing 57% of consumers do when they have a problem with a product is search for a solution online.
• 62% of consumers have used social media for customer service issues.
• 65% of consumers feel that social media is a better way to deal with companies than call centres.
• Of this, 88% would be less likely to buy from a brand if their questions via social media went unanswered.

(stats courtesy of Parature and Econsultancy)

So, unless a brand wants to concentrate all of its efforts on targeting the remaining 12% of the market, then it should be actively engaging with consumers online and doing, in essence, what social media is all about: two-way communication.

Then why aren’t they?!

Research by Socialbakers has revealed that 70% of questions from fans on Facebook go unanswered.  Not only that, but what is even more worrying is that 25% of global companies go as far as closing the Facebook wall; thus completely eliminating the opportunity for consumers to start a dialogue with the brand.  How frustrating!

To put it simply, if you don’t want a two-way dialogue with your consumers, then don’t include social media in your marketing strategy.  

It’s not a numbers game.  A small, engaged community is worth much more to your brand than a poorly designed Facebook page with 15m followers who have little or no dialogue with your brand.

Anyone can buy likes and followers, and doing so does absolutely nothing for your brand. The prevalence of ads similar to that below (I’m getting better at Photoshop!) highlights just how worthless a dormant ‘community’ really is.

To coincide with the publication of these results, SocialBakers also announced a new feature, aptly named ‘Socially Devoted’, which highlights which of the world’s brands are the most socially active based on response time and response rate.  As well as this they also compiled data to see what the most socially devoted industries are.

Unsurprisingly, Telecom and Airlines are the top two industries.  With the likes of BT and KLM leading the way in social customer service, it’s nice to see that others in their respective industries are following suit.

We all love a bonus, so please find my top 5 do’s and don’ts for effectively providing excellent customer service on social media.

1. Listen Effectively. If you know what your customer are saying about you, you can react appropriately. This must be the very first step in getting customer service right, and social media is no different.
2. Be Responsive Don’t create a ‘Talk to us! We’d love to hear your experiences!’ page and then leave comments there to rot. Many a social media fail could have been avoided or minimised if a company hadn’t taken so long to get its story straight.
3. Respond Appropriately. There’s nothing like posting identical corporate responses to everyone who comments on your wall to get the community into a spin. Have some standardised issues and answers pre-prepared but tailor the actual responses to the individual.
4. Apologise if you get something wrong.  Don’t be afraid of using the ‘s’ word and don’t forget to keep people in touch with progress when you’re trying to right a wrong.
5. Make that strong social media guidelines are in place. Ensure that all staff are trained in social engagement. This will ensure consistency when responding to customer queries. It would also be useful to have a crisis management plan ready to be implemented should things go wrong 

From insight executive John Paul (@johnpaulfox) #YomegoSocial

NBA Finals: LeBron to Bosh, who’s got the Twitter Heat?

It might have taken him nine years and a controversial trade, but last week’s NBA playoff final saw LeBron James claim the first NBA Championship of his career with Miami Heat. The glistening championship ring that had so long eluded him could finally be placed on his finger, much to the joy of millions of fans expressing their joy on social. Ron, Nike’s ‘ring maker’, in its latest viral video, can also finally rest easy knowing that his work is done and the ring with its rightful owner.

As a part-time NBA fan but long time follower of Nike’s foray into the sport, I’ve spent several years watching LeBron miss out and Nike’s Kobe Bryant puppet famously mock LeBron’s lack of rings. Nike’s rights with two of the sport’s most famous players ensured they were constantly associated with the top players, and this year was no different. In fact, the actions of the NBA itself also makes a great case study for how brilliantly sports bodies can work with social.

In the build up, and during Game five of the Finals, where Miami Heat beat Oklahoma City Thunder to win the Championship, fans mentioned LeBron James an average of 210,000 times per hour on Facebook and Twitter. Throughout the Finals alone, LeBron has been mentioned almost 2.5m times. Such is the scale of his success and appeal that LeBron has been mentioned more than teamates Mike Miller, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade combined. Despite being mentioned 478k times throughout the finals, Dwyane Wade attracted just shy of 14,000 mentions per hour in the build-up and during game five. Oklahoma City Thunder players didn’t feature quite so prominently, although Kevin Durant has racked up 1.1m mentions to date.

These stats are nothing short of incredible with a level of mentions leading brands would be proud of. But of course you have to remember that the NBA itself is in essence a top franchise. With 5.4m users following @NBA on Twitter, it is in fact the most popular sporting league on social, and was the first to pass the 5m followers mark.

This level of popularity is promoted and heralded by the NBA, which began selling Twitter handle t-shirts back in March. It then followed this up with the launch of Tumblr and Pinterest accounts to tie-in with the 2012 playoffs. The Tumblr account showcases images from recent basketball history, currently populated with Miami Heat images. Its Pinterest account has two approaches, the first as an ecommerce platform but also to showcase moments that make basketball such a great sport to follow.

Finally, the icing on the cake, underlining the importance of social media for the NBA, was the first-ever NBA Social Media Awards. Of course this is an event we had our eyes on, and it will be interesting to see if other sports brands follow suit.

The event awarded players for their use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram and saw Jeremy Lin pick up the league’s ‘Social Breakout Award’ as his stand-out performances in February attracted critical acclaim. One of the most ironic awards went to Kobe Bryant, a player who gained the most mentions on Facebook and Twitter, although the player is one of the few big names not to have an account on Twitter. The full list of award winners can be seen here, meanwhile, take a look at the ‘FTW Award’ winner as Kevin Durant wins the game with a buzzer-beater in December 2011.

So while the NBA is a sport using social across every major platform, and awarding players for doing likewise, will it only be a matter of time before we see similar movements in major sports around the world? We’ve seen some great examples already, but the NBA's efforts show how well The FA et al could do. But perhaps the upcoming Olympics will present us with some excellent uses from top athletes…Watch this space.

From insight executive Mark (@MisterMumble) #YomegoSocial 

Search and social - What does the future hold?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a discipline – in fact, a science – that fascinates me

There are many articles and blog posts out there about optimising social media presences for SEO, but discussing this with someone yesterday really got me thinking about how things will change in the future.

I’m no expert in SEO, but in my opinion, when it comes to a strong search strategy, the more data that can be collected, the better. Because of this, I’m going to assume that most search marketers already use social data to inform their strategies. By this, I mean, making use of social listening tools (e.g. Brandwatch) to take keyword analysis a step beyond the common search terms unveiled by the likes of the Google Adwords Keyword tool. So what comes next?

As marketers, we are well aware of the impact that peer to peer recommendations have on the decision making process. Refreshingly, the big players in the search engine market also realise this. 

Microsoft emphasised its awareness in a recent campaign for Bing, in which it referred to the service as ‘the decision engine’. Google’s increasing integration of Google+ content into search results expresses a similar understanding.

So, with search being about finding what you want, and social being about researching what you want, it was inevitable that we were going to see the gap between the two get smaller. 

Together, search and social can go to infinity, and BEYOND

Features prevalent in search engines already highlight that this gap is closing.  For example, Bing in the US has a really cool ‘people you may know’ feature. (Visit Bing and switch to the US mode to see this in action wherever you are). This feature links with Facebook and suggests friends who are familiar with the brand and 'brand experts' as potential helpers with your search, bringing a more personal and social touch to results and reinforces the influence of brand advocates.

Click on 'United Kingdom' and change to'United States - English'

Although Google doesn’t have access to the Facebook and Twitter data that Bing does, Google uses its proprietary Google+ to marry search and social. The announcement this week that it is now easier to link your G+ page to your website shows that this trend for increased linkage isn’t going away.

Although many people complain about search engines ‘unethically’ storing their data and providing personalised recommendations, these same people willingly give mountains of data about their daily schedule (e.g. what they do, who they are with, what time they do things) to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.  So, whether they like it not, search is going to continue to go social – because that’s where the important data is.

So, what does this mean for the future?

Discussion about social networks creating their own search engines continues – but that’s a debate for another day. I can see the data that we are happy to provide to social networks being increasingly used to improve our search experience right down to a granular level.

What do I mean I hear you ask?

Well, I’ll use this lovely example from Ben Elowitz in a recent Tech Crunch article to effectively highlight my point. Ben gives here his ideal version of a future where search and social work together to simply provide the right answers:

‘Arrive at the Sao Paulo airport and search on my mobile for the city’s public transit map.  My device knows that I’ve never been there (even though I bought a phrase book on Amazon last week), and it also knows (from scanning TripAdvisor comments about Sao Paulo buses) that the public transit is impossible to navigate for newcomers.  While the map is loading, a message appears gently encouraging me to consider a rental car instead – there happens to be a great deal on an Audi (my favorite(!) as noted on Facebook) at the rental counter 10 feet away.  Talk about targeting!’

Some might find this an Orwellian nightmare – but I think it’s technological bliss.  

By insight executive John Paul (@johnpaulfox)

Google loves design

Google recently revamped the UI of many of its products. The unstyled form elements of old have been replaced with subtle white/grey panels and flat red buttons (no Web 2.0 gradients here please!).

The redesign of Google+ and Gmail at least have been covered in a variety of blogs (e.g. Engadget and WebDesign Tuts+) and attention to design detail doesn't end with their apps. Job posts on websites such as Dribbble.com indicate that Google is keen to attract top design talent and is using its resources to outsource fantastic illustrations and icon sets for their many new web projects.

Yomego are big fans of Google’s latest creative output, particularly Google Ventures and Google Green.

Google Ventures

This website was designed by the Google Ventures design studio and strikes a great balance between design and photography. For a very text-heavy site this in no way feels corporate. Unusually, the home page features a transition which obscures the site’s fixed position navigation on scroll. The design and dev team are keen to give you a peek under the hood of their creation, even going as far as linking to their humans.txt file in the site footer.

Google Green

Ever wondered what happens to your Gmail messages once you hit that big red Send button?  Google have created this animated CSS3/Javascript animation to show exactly that. Data centre stats have never been so entertaining. This slick site raises the bar for online presentations and could signal the end of infographics, which up until now have been so popular. We look forward to seeing what comes next from their team of designers.

From the Yomego design team 
@yomegosocial

@Sweden, The Voice of a Nation

One of my favourite things about social media is that it presents marketers with an excellent opportunity to really humanise their brand.

Through some good quality content and a dialogue with consumers, the most dull and lacklustre of brands can quickly turn perceptions around and become something really cool and appealing. Who would have thought watching a Blendtec employee put a variety of things into an expensive blender could be so much fun and result in an increase in sales of over 700%?!

Will the iPhone 4s blend?!?!

So you might guess that I get really excited when brands do some out-of-the-box thinking and get really creative on social. One recent example is the ‘Curators of Sweden’ campaign launched by The Swedish Institute and Visit Sweden back in December.  To highlight how wonderfully democratic the country is and to showcase it from the perspective of the diverse range of people who live there, the official @sweden Twitter account is handed over to a different citizen each week.

Sounds excellent. I mean, would you actively follow and get excited about the Twitter account of tourist boards across the globe that bombard you with marketing and PR messages all day? I certainly wouldn’t.

The account was doing well, with up until last week, around 35,000 followers.  But a number of questionable tweets and curators (one curator called himself ‘the masturbating Swede’ and another started a #breastfeedingriot) got the campaign coverage in the New York Times, resulting in an increase of over 12,000 followers.

So, with the account now in the global spotlight, will the current curator tone it down a bit?

No chance!

Sonja Abrahamsson, a 27 year old mother of two from a “tiny town where everyone is related and owns a tractor”, caused widespread controversy yesterday when she began tweeting about anti-Semitism (in a not so politically correct way….).

In my opinion, I think it’s pretty apparent that Sonja was not trying to cause offence, but rather try to discover the mystery behind why anti-Semitism actually exists.  After a series of negative comments condemning her Tweets, which also included an image of Freddie Mercury looking at a table of food with the caption "This pic I call 'hungry gay with aids'”, Sonja apologised. Despite this, the comments are said to have shocked the Jewish community in Stockholm, and even warranted a cameo on the Colbert show in the US.

This story kicked off a debate here at Yomego Towers.

Was this a PR disaster that has resulted in the country being portrayed in a terrible way to the rest of the world? Should the curators have a strict set of guidelines and their posts face an approval process?

Initially, I was of the opinion that posts should perhaps be moderated (to an extent).  However, after a lengthy debate and taking a second to think out of the box (that thing I said I loved others to do), I think Sweden have done the right thing.

Despite a barrage of questions from the media about the consequences, the creators are holding their ground, with Visit Sweden’s marketing director Marie Ziv releasing a statement;

"She is a controversial and provocative person for sure. We haven't called her or told her to stop or back down. We want her to continue being herself. It's our choice not to censor anyone because we want to keep it real."

When we at Yomego launch a campaign, our focus is 100% on meeting its objectives.  Sergio Guimaraes, media relations manager for the Swedish Institute, released a statement which outlined the key objective of this campaign;

“In Sweden freedom of speech, democracy, tolerance and openness are at the core of society and should be at the core of how this communication reflects society.”

In our opinion, they have achieved just that.

Good job Sweden!

By insight executive John Paul (@johnpaulfox)