Big Crowd At LTU Gets Lowdown On Social Media
SOUTHFIELD -- When it comes to using online social media like LinkedIn for business, there are no hard and fast rules.
But a WWJ Newsradio 950 - Great Lakes Innovation and Technology Report panel Thursday at Lawrence Technological University told a packed crowd that some tactics certainly work better than others.
"Social marketing changes every day and it's what you make of it," said Buck Wise, social media marketing director for CBS Radio Detroit, co-owner of Severely Social LLC and afternoon on-air personality at 98.7 Amp Radio.
Wise urged attendees to think of LinkedIn as a telephone or email, just another form of person-to-person contact.
Kelly LaVaute, social media manager at Quicken Loans, said the mortgage lending giant uses LinkedIn heavily for recruitment, and in large numbers -- the company currently has 300 IT openings and is looking for 500 interns for summer 2012.
LaVaute, Wise and Brandon Chesnutt, social media director at Identity Marketing & Public Relations, illustrated the no-hard-and-fast-rules nature of social media when Chesnutt advised against linking Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, saying posted the same content on all three sites "can seem insincere." Wise disagreed under certain conditions and LaVaute disagreed under other conditions, including taking the time to tweak the content for the different nature of each site.
Chesnutt also said LinkedIn can be used to create customer focus groups or industry advisory groups easily.
And the best way to use social media, they said, is to not talk just about yourself or your business, but to bring your social media contacts aggregated, interesting content from elsewhere on the Web.
And for recruiting, LaVaute said Quicken uses video to create an overview of what a job is actually like, not just a stuffy job description.
To listen to the entire 55-minute program, click on the link below.
