Back in the aughts, when Google wanted to recruit developers, it famously put up a billboard with a complex math problem that led to a website with an even more complex math problem. Last year, when Flickr, owned by Yahoo, wanted to recruit developers, it less famously hid a link to its jobs site in the page's source code—which unlike some superhuman math problem, any old muppet from the non-coder underclass can access using the menu bar or keyboard hotkeys.
Last week, the buried ad—"You're reading. We're hiring"—drew new attention, because Flickr decided to turn its about page upside down in celebration of Australia Day. Because everybody knows everything is upside in Australia. The gimmick even earned a tongue-in-cheek 1990s-Sandra-Bullock-computer-themed critique over at Hacker News, which we guess is worth some kind of geeky street cred.
Flickr also tells Techcrunch that it changed the head shots of its team members on the site to better reflect Australia—like pictures of kangaroos. That's nice, but it would have been way more impressive if Flickr had actually taught kangaroos to code.
Lots of companies advertise their job openings to the ends of the earth, which we can't really fault in this economy. But rather than let HR weed out applicants arbitrarily, Flickr decided to hide a link to its job postings for coders somewhere only worthy coding applicants would ever find it—inside the source code of its website. Of course, the effect is kind of ruined by other websites posting about it with screenshots of the message, but such is the price of good ideas. Just ask the guys who did practically the same thing three years ago with ads for EA's Dante's Inferno. Via The Denver Egotist.
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Revver, WordPress, Reddit, Digg, Ning, Xing, Squidoo, Tumblr and Flickr (overwhelmed yet? I can go on) are all social media. What is the hype? It’s the talk of the town and everybody is doing it. However, is it of any use as a tool for marketing? It is! And you aren’t using it yet?
It’s FREE – Connecting with customers/clients through Facebook and LinkedIn, posting your deals on Twitter, and demonstrating your expertise through a blog or video can all be done at the cost of $0. What it will cost, however, is time and some DIY prowess because each social media platform requires its own variation of communication for optimal effectiveness. Some initial research is suggested to decide which platform may best suit your business. However, if you’re a strong believer of “time is money” and are too busy to teach yourself social media, there are companies that can help you and your business get started for as little as $299.
Location, Location, Location – You want your product/service seen by as many people as possible, and, without any statistics to back me up here, there are a lot of people on the internet using social media sites. A lot. We’re talking hundreds of millions. For you naysayers: as of July, Facebook alone had 250 million users. Can you afford to ignore these people? A better question: can you afford to have these people ignore you?
Sharable – Not only will your product/service be seen, you can also have it shared. If a person on Twitter sees your tweet promoting your business and knows people in his or her network that can use it, he or she may pass the promotion on with a retweet. If you write a great blog post on the benefits of your service and submit it to social bookmarking sites, people can discover and rate it moving it up the site’s ranks, which allows more people to discover it. If you made an entertaining video about your product, it could be passed around to hundreds, thousands, and possibly millions of people. Imagine that, a :60-second video about your product seen by millions. It’s FREE advertising.
Long Lasting – Once your business/product/service information makes it onto these social media sites, it can live on forever. That’s a long time (don’t worry, it’s a good thing). There it is, your info being seen and promoted long after you posted it and readily available when you want to put some extra muscle behind it.
Engagement – People who use your product/service will have an opinion about it, and more often than not, they will voice their opinions through social media, and you should know exactly what they are saying, good or bad. If someone sings your praises by writing an elaborate blog post, you can share that with your network or use it as a testimonial on your website. If someone tweets a complaint about your product/service, you can address it and ideally change their mind. No one likes to feel ignored, so if you can show your customers/clients you care and listen, that will definitely strengthen relationships.
There are easily more than five reasons to use social media for your business, so be sure to come back for updates. As usual, feel free to ask a question or drop a comment.
P.S. Once again, to redeem my cool points, here’s a video from my Creative Director poking fun at so called “social media experts,” because you can’t be an expert in something that is constantly changing with new platforms, bells & whistles.
Tommy Liu, the man, the legend (to be) wields his pen of creativity against the injustice of mediocrity plaguing the world as the Senior Account Executive at Supercool Creative & SpotZero where he also manages the blog. Click here to view some of his battles (he doesn’t always win).
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
