I have been out talking to people.......

a lot

I felt That I had not spoken at any events or attended any industry functions or conducted a training programme in a while and so spurred on by Kork (who tends to look at OME Biz Dev with me)- I put myself up for some stuff.

I thought 1 or 2 things might be nice but agreed to do everything (as you do) and so I am about as over exposed in the world of digital recruitment as Claire Balding on our TVs. The off the cuff little jokes and asides are stale and tired are beginning to lose their charm.

But, but, but getting out to talk to recruiters, clients, partners has been incredibly stimulating and motivational and has also caused me to rethink my views on many services and products (I long since gave up on my predictive powers in this messy, brilliant, exciting digital media landscape.)

So here's a few of the things I found interesting and seem to be broadly agreed upon(for disclosure - clearly some of these points I evangelise about but some come from the floor not me)

1. Twitter and Facebook are great. But they are engagement tools not about attraction so use accordingly. This is a sweeping generalisation and ignores Facebook PPC but largely holds true.

2. Facebook and Twitter cost - but largely in terms of allocation of (usually scarce) resource not ££. There is only so much you should be outsourcing to businesses like us. If its real, human, credible etc - there is a limit to what you should let a supplier/partner do for you.
I reserve the right to wholly disagree on this point if you pay us enough to do it for you.

3. There is a new consensus about innovation. We all want to do progressive innovative recruitment marketing BUT it needs to work. So people love Pinterest, we can drop Snapchat and Vine into conversations to look cool but none of us have a big enough budget to have some left over for fun stuff like this in 2013. maybe next year......

4. Quality of content and copy is still dreadful. Forget everything else and take more care over what you put out there and better results will follow. And this is not just banging the drum for SEO - it is about relevant, concise, compelling messages.

5. I don't like QR codes but some people love them - for purpose of clarity - they are wrong and I am right.

6. Whisper it quietly - but the backlash against LinkedIn is definitely building. LinkedIn are our biggest supplier now and I love the ROI that using it well can deliver for clients but there is not the sense of goodwill that existed when they were the new category busting platform. They have become the new Establishment that people sometimes want to throw rocks at.

7. Optimism is rife (ish). Its cautious and underplayed but we have enough evidence now that the private sector is on the move (a bit)



There are a few other things - but maybe for another day. Probably after the last presentation/seminar/training session in July!