Connected Employees and The Triple Crown of Social Networking...

Lots of talk last week about a proposed Best Buy job description for a social media positoin that included the following requirement - the successful candidate was "required" to have at least 250 followers on Twitter.  The post drove a lot of traffic, and the "twitterrati" (those who consider themselves social media mavens) came out and laughed about it - after all, 250 followers on twitter isn't a lot, especially with the level of spam connections flying around twitter these days.

But buried in the comments to one of the posts was a nugget for consideration - is there a "triple crown" of  social networking that gives someone street cred in social media?  The triple crown would be the number of connections across LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.  In other words, how many connections/followers/friends does someone need across these three platforms to be "legit" regarding social media?

The question is interesting to me because as I continue to dig into the concept of passive recruiting and leveraging employee networks for recruiting efforts, the following questions come to mind:

-How do I know a connected employee when I see him/her?

-Should I be pushing employees to expand their own footprints across these tools to help themselves (professional development) and the company (recruiting)?

-Should my company provide incentives for employees who build out their networks?  If so, what do those incentives look like?

And the big question:

-Assuming encouraging employees to build out their networks is a good thing, how do we measure it?  What's the triple crown of social networking related to LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers and Facebook friends? 

I'd put the initial goal for employees not doing much currently at 250 LinkedIn connections and 250 Twitter followers, then double or triple the goal for employees already naturally into networking activity.  I have no clue on Facebook.

Your thoughts?  What's the triple crown of social networking (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook) for an employee not currently engaged, and for the natural networker who's already using the tools?

Comments

[Steve Boese]

Kris - I think the numbers themselves are pretty meaningless without any context. Who are the connections? Are the relevant to the company and employee tole? Is the employee/candidate engaging with them in ways that actually promote learning and development or enhance the company brand. A better question to ask than 'How many followers do you have?' is 'What are some examples of how you leveraged your network to solve a customer problems, fill a customer need, improve an internal process, or enhance your own skill set in an important competency?'. Someone may be able to effectively demonstrate those situations with 25 or 50 'friends' or followers. And if that is not sufficient for the company requirement, tell the employee to start tweeting about bacon and personal branding to quickly pick up the needed required number of followers.

[Michelle]

For the average employee, how much social networking do we really want them doing while at work? I see the value of creating and maintaining connections, but at what point does this start to hurt productivity? How connected is too connected? This is something that I struggle this. After all, there is only so much time in a day and I want to make sure the organization (and honestly myself) uses that time efficiently.

[Lisa Rosendahl]

Darn it! Steve took my answer and said it better than I was going to ask, "Is it about the numbers in the networks or how a person uses the networks, builds the connections, and maintains the relationships?"

So, yes, what Steve said :)

[Ella]

I adhere to Steve's opinion too and I would like to add another question: Is social networking relevant for that specific position?

It's relevant for me to know that people in charge with recruitment, new business, client relationship, PR and so on are well connected. But this information won't be relevant for an ... accountant for example.

[Joshua Kahn]

Bacon. I concur, bacon is the secret to recruiting web developers. It could be argued that bacon is code in its raw form.

Kris - I'm late to the party here. Don't know if you've seen the update to this story. I'd refer you to a few additional posts on the topic

My blog about it http://find-attract.com/best-buy-twitter-crowdsourcing-and-the-associated-press/

Barry Judge's(Best Buy's CMO)blog about it http://barryjudge.com/help-us-write-the-job-description-sr-manager-emerging-media-marketing

Forrester Analyst, Jeremiah Owyang's post about it http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/07/08/when-communities-define-your-job-requirements/

Our follow up to the "250 twitter follower" controversy was to crowd-source the job description. This got even more buzz, and eventually picked up by the AP. The end result is that I'm working through an extremely qualified, targeted group of applicants for the role. More to come on this via a case study I'll be publishing on it.

Steve - well said on the bacon, and other comments. We absolutely are doing all those things behind the scenes. The challenge is getting a relatively subjective thing into the structure of a job qualification. After all job qualifications should be something objective and measurable, something one could readily "see" and say ok, this person has it or doesn't. As you know, the subjective stuff happens behind the scene.

I've been amazed at how many people have assumed that we don't get that or weren't doing the necessary subjective quality measures once in the interview process. People are talking as if the 250 twitter followers was the only qualification we had listed. It was one among many.

250 twitter followers doesn't indicate future success, nor is it a guarantee in and of itself that a person is a qualified social media marketer. It's simply among the factors of entry to be even considered for the gig.