Social Buzz Video1

Great Introduction to #mysocialbuzz.

Thank you to Nicole Allen for her great work on this video Production, a real team player. Also a Great Professional lady.

Corporate Events Guide NZ

Fantastic Collection of a Grand Event In New Zealand.
Thanks for sharing guys its great to see New Zealand using
these great Eventslisted tools.

Lisa Lomas why to get involved with Social Traffic

Social Media is here to stay, to work smarter in Business Just makes sense.
Are you going to save yourself years of heartache and move with the times?

Help your clients make better candidate choices

Help
your clients make better candidate choices

“This
Is A Great Article That Should Give enough Incentive and reasons to
Make employers use MyProfile”

Internal interview
processes vary widely between employers and can result in worse
hiring decisions than if a candidate was selected randomly, according
to a new report from Harvard Business Review.

The
guide focuses on hiring top-level managers - C-level executives,
their direct reports, and the layer below that - but its assessment
tips apply equally to other levels of employees. The Definitive
Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad, by Egon Zehnder
International executive search specialist Claudio Fernández-Aráoz,
and Harvard Business School's Boris Groysberg and Nitin Nohria,
claims to be the "first time that an end-to-end set of best
practices has been put forward in one place".

The
authors say that improving the quality of assessments during
recruitment is "three times more profitable than increasing the
size of the candidate pool".

And it's more important to
choose the right assessors than to focus on the assessment technique.
The authors recommend a maximum of three interviewers, comprising the
candidate's prospective boss, the boss's boss, and the top HR
manager.

The best interviewers, they say, are "deeply
familiar with the range of experience and skills the position
requires" and "sufficiently self-confident to look for the
best possible candidates, even those they may deem more talented than
themselves". (They note that some people make bad interviewers
because they prefer not to surround themselves with strong,
high-potential colleagues.) Good interviewers possess a high level of
emotional intelligence, the ability to decode non-verbal behaviour,
and they're great listeners.

If it's difficult to find
individuals who fit this bill within the organisation, employers can
"empower the knowledgeable" - those who already demonstrate
some of these skills and have been educated and trained in assessment
(possibly because they work in HR), but a better alternative is to
"educate the powerful", by making sure senior managers and
executives are properly trained in making great people decisions.

Behavioural interviews

The authors say
structured behavioural interviewing is the most reliable assessment
method, and they note that with training and practice, "even an
intelligent novice can master the basics".

The questions
they suggest, which should be tailored to relate to specific
situations the candidate might face when working in the organisation,
include: "Describe a time when

you needed to work
under an intense deadline"; or "Tell me about a situation
in which you managed conflicting interests among your colleagues";
or "Explain how you saw a

new product through to
completion".

"The assessor should probe for details
of the candidate's exact actions and reasoning at the time," the
authors say. "The candidate should not be allowed to discuss
hypothetical scenarios or make vague statements about what 'we' did.
The objective is to find out whether the individual's past reveals
the specific competencies you're looking for."

After the
interview, the panel should have a "rigorous, disciplined
conversation about the evidence. This conversation should not be
allowed to veer off into vague discussions of overall impressions or
of how well everyone hit it off with the candidate."

The
authors recommend that each interviewer score candidates on a matrix
of specific attributes. "They then tabulate the data and gather
to review their combined ratings, explore differences in their
judgments, and arrive at a consensus on which candidates should be
finalists. This process naturally results in a bias against including
any candidate about whom a strong consensus cannot be reached."


Ultimately, following formal reference checks, the direct
boss is the one who should make the decision, the paper says.

The
authors' research also found:

• 
  half of companies rely primarily on the hiring manager's "gut
  feel", selecting a candidate they believe to have "what it
  takes" to be successful. Further, hiring decisions are based
  mainly on interview performance, with little attention paid to
  reference checks;

  
  

• 
  in a quarter of cases, the executive selected was the only candidate
  considered. The authors, however, advocate the simple rule of
  "meeting a dozen";

  
  

• 
  many firms take no steps at all to ensure new employees are
  integrated into the company's culture, expecting them to "plug
  and play";

  
  

• 
  "best practice" companies audit and review their
  recruiting practices in the same way they would their financial
  systems.

  
  

My Google Profile

Google is a Engine I have come to respect. Its simply giving me so much for so little.
I have come to expect the high standards they maintain and will not take any less.

With google, I am impressed. Its not an understatement. I am a Social media enthusist,
I have delved through many systems to work out how they work, it just is interesting and
gives me great satisfaction. The benefit it now I can teach it and understand it, prod a new
concept and really get to the nuts and bolts of any aspect in front of me.

As you see on this blog, there are a few features. For instance I am using the blogger platform
which is of course linked to my gmail, yes easy peasy logging in. Then I have the benefits of google friend connect which gives my readers a simple way to log into this site and leave a comment. No huge dramas
anymore having a conversation.........I have done the same on other blogs.

I own Houseplus Blog also the experiences and services I run on Will
To me its created a great system.

But I did not install and just assume it was great, I watched, tweaked watched the interest
and those coming by and the meaningful relationships in business derived. Well honestly
never had so many. Admittedly I have learnt so much and I am the sort of person that will always
continue learning. I learn it then teach it, I am a leader from example, not of idle speech.

So I will watch google, I must admit I am using most of their tools, documents is easy to use. I found
it great as I have a works system and found it difficult to change formats for other computers, now I just
publish make a webpage then anyone can view, how easy is that.

Well Google, shall watch and wait for more Action.

Thankyou for realising Social Media Greatness.

Do you Choose Relationships or Clicks?

There are many types of Marketing available to many as Entrepreneurs/Small businesses.

Just look at all the so called "Gurus" offering you this and that everyday
my product gives you traffic, you can buy traffic etc......................

My philosophy with Traffic has always been simple, give me quality, give
me targeted results and don't let me waste my time.

This goes for you too! You need RESULTS!

Isn't it far more productive working an hour a day and receiving conversations
and new people to meet.

The other option is using all that time clicking on a list builder or a Traffic Exchange
hate to say it but you will end up doing more.

Now if I was going to spend my hard earned money, I look at it like this!
If I am paying, I want to pay for Results not a maybe.

A maybe is someone saying my "........................." is the best and it will do this
and that..........................blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

I do not want false promises or misguided information, jeppers most online
have a job or work offline, who has that sort of time.

If I have only 2-5 Hours a day, you need productivity in all your accounts, you
need traffic, who does not?

So here is a new rule for you, if spending show me results.
If free must have targeting results. So test it!

This is why I use Social Media, its finding the voice of the people. Next it is giving
you real time answers, real time people. Also its people that are attracted to you,
yeah well no lesson in attraction marketing today, just traffic.

I am reminded while I write this by something Simon said to many of us just the other
day, 100 receptive people can dominate online media. This is an active studious
group.

Clicks will serve you one main purpose, yes it does have a purpose. It is showing the search
engines your site is being visited. Great! Yeah it is. But I want great with a purpose, thats
why I choose Realtionships.

Do you Want Real People answering instead of Bots?
Can you really afford not to?

Social Traffic- Simon Ford

My favourite version of Conversation Marketing from the Master in this field.

You want me to tell you a story?

Well most of what we are as humans, is about our ability to tell each other stories. Its happened ever since time immemorial. Cavemen sat around fires telling each other stories when even languages weren’t refined (like they are today). They told each other stories by the help of drawings on walls. They told each other stories by inventing and creating ways of communicating with each other. Fast forward a few hundred years and we saw people telling the world stories of how they conquered countries across Asia and Europe. Or how their cultures evolved into castes of Sumarias and peasants. Or how some people survived in times when their Queen couldn’t even tell the difference between cakes and bread. Stories of how some brilliant scientists invented technologies beyond our expectations. Stories of how a man who was partly-deaf became the world’s biggest composer with some of the best symphonies to date. Fast forward a few more hundred years and there were stories of survival after massive global conflict. Stories of how civilizations forgave and forgot and moved on.

These are examples of the bigger stories that we’ve all heard and will keep hearing for generations to come. But every single person who has lived on this earth has had a story to tell – a story which can only be told through his eyes and voice. Smaller stories. Interesting stories. Think about the silk trade routes across Asia. Traders walked for months at a stretch through those routes, hoping to sell their items. What they sold weren’t the items. The product wasn’t the ‘lamp’ but the ’story behind the lamp’. The story about how that person worked hard day and night to make enough living to be able to marry the person he loved. Or the story about how he inherited the lamp from his father who had found it during some adventurous excavation in a desert. The buyers bought the stories and told them on, not the item.

Much like our forefathers, I’m also quite a story-teller. And I have just the story to tell you today. I’m going to tell you about a story that took place a few hundred years after that. A more recent story. A story when the digital age was at its peak, web 2.0 was evolving into something much bigger, the social cloud was ever so intertwined, when the world cheered the first black President of the States. I’m going to tell you a short story about how the new face of marketing, as we know it, began. During those days, computer screens were the equivalent of campfires. We sat around our screens in our darkened offices, telling and listening to each other’s stories. It began with a tribe of people within walking distance but has grown into a tribe that transcends time, distance and space across our planet…

It began with the first new age social marketing campaign. In a world which was dominated by corporate giants and multi-million dollar marketing investments, a bunch of 15 or so people who had never met each other in real life, came together to form an online think tank. They were all good at different aspects of marketing. They were all settled and busy with their own personal/work lives. But they all knew that the way things were happening around them wasn’t quite right. Most importantly, they believed in the power of the collective whole. You see, back then, despite the complexity of the platforms; spamming was still a regular thing, one-way messaging was still at large, slick-self-interest-based promotions were still done shamelessly. Those 15 people stood up and decided to take things into their own hands one step at a time. They decided to prove it to the world around them, that the way to go into the future is by bridging the gap between marketing and trust based relations.

They got together by forming a group of like minded people who all felt the same way. They had huge potentials and the collective synergy that they brought to their weekly online webinars was contagious. They dedicated their time, sweat and tears into building their first campaign. The campaign was a topic close to their hearts and it spoke for itself. It was an occasion that already existed, they just re-branded it and formulated it into the world’s biggest collaboration of one massive event that was interconnected by the brand, although new media not able to accommodate this level of thinking in times past. The event passed through hundreds of cities throughout the world as one massive global birthday party. The guest of honor was the earth, that the world shares as one. Imagine what it would have been like to attend an event of this magnitude in those days. I was there. It was like one big wave of energy across the oceans, from Australia all the way to the United States passing through Far East, Asia, Europe and Africa. This was the first time the world had seen anything of this magnitude before, let alone being fortunate enough to celebrate it.

It got a lot of hype in the online community. People backed them up. People spread the world. People joined their cause. People attended their events. Just like the cavemen I told you about. These people were the cavemen of this new media age, of sorts. They got around their fire of passion/challenge/adventure and told their vision as a story to the world until it became history. All of them were great story tellers, all believed in passion above all else as a means for success and they were respected in their communities for this thought leadership - they sat around their fires and they built this story. Not everyone accepted it could come true until one person after another, chose to believe in it. With belief as their building blocks their story grew until the story-tellers became the story, and the story became legend. They all told the story in their own voices and they validated it through their actions. It was not long before all those who failed to act when they had their chance, wanted more than anything, to be part of the legend that had already got away.

Throughout the story people came and went – but the story kept growing and the legends who bled for it became carved in stone.

If a story is told well enough, with enough passion and that passion is channeled into action it will morph into a reality. A great story inclines people to act on it, its the acting that turns ideas into history. Everyone has ideas. Turning them into tales that will be told to your grandchildren after you pass is what legends are made of. Take yourself forward 20 years and read this again. I am telling this story as my childrens friends will tell it then.

From then on, one year to the next, their story grew. One person sold a far-out vision to a tribe of social media experts who chose to collaborate together and become legends within the story.

Since then, marketing has changed. And these pioneers lead the way to a new tomorrow which we all enjoy today. After their first successful launch of the world’s biggest birthday bash across the globe, they got people’s attention. Clients started pouring in. The individual constituents of the group became renowned for their roles, their abilities and their expertise. The time they invested became the best investment of their lives. It was like a demonstration of what they were all capable of. See, back then, people actually had resumes. Companies asked for them. It wasn’t like it is today, with the online personal-profile in one place with your life-streaming, blogs, updates, accomplishments in one dynamic feed for whoever to see them. So, anyway, they started doing 3 big charities a year. The charities become a brand and trend of their own with cult followings and an army of evangelists all over the world. There was the Jingle Bells Christmas Cheer Charity where they fed hundreds of thousands of homeless and poor people making Christmas not only a brighter place for them but for all who watched it happen. The innaugural Earthday Birthday bash for our earth became the biggest influence of changing for the way the masses looked after her. Then there was an annual event for raising awareness and help for special people. National Disabled day.

By the world seeing all of the value these people were able to add to so many people throughout the world from an initial zero monetary investment, companies, huge companies from all over the world started coming to them for help in applying social media to the same effect for their brands. Others started copying them, but that was ok – because words like pioneers are reserved for few.

I like telling this story over and over again. I still have a lot to tell you, this story has only just begun. We’ve had enough for today, you should go back to bed. I’ll continue the rest of it next time I put you to bed. Meanwhile, remember, story-telling is an art that can be learned. There is no better way to learn the art of story telling than living a great story. As time goes on and visions become stories, lead roles in those stories become hard to lock down, the lead roles are always reserved for those who sweat the most, bleed the most and above all risk the most to make the story. It’s a game of catch 22 – if you believe in this story, know it will happen. Become a legend in it.

————

Friends, we have 50 people in our cast now - both active leaders and evangelists. If you want to become a part of a story that will be told to generations who follow us, this is your chance. Chances like this don’t come along too many times in a lifetime. Secure your role in the story early as a lead contributor whilst its still young enough. As the story grows more and more people will want to become a part of it, good roles will become harder to come by.

A word of advice… don’t be half hearted when you do opt in. Others who started but left have sealed their roles - their roles to date can not be rewritten. We have a handful of key shareholder leadership roles vacant, this leadership team will ride on the back of the core enthusiasts and energy-drivers - the evangelists. Your energies, participation and thoughts will make the above story a reality. More and more positions will become available as this story grows.

Please send anyone you want to bless with an opporunity like this to this page and ask them to signup - use your social networks and circles of influence. To sign up all they need to do is go to my Facebook profile page and enter your name and email address in the fields just below my friends box in my profile pages left menu.

The email sequence will fill them in on everything they need to know including putting them in touch with the right people.

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

Visit my “event line blogs”