How Innovative Do You Actually Need To Be?

How Innovative Do You Actually Need To Be?

An interesting thought and one I wanted to elaborate on in more detail - Something we are often thought of as a job site, is innovative.  People I meet and network with online are always saying, wow, this is a really cool idea, how innovative.  But is innovation really what is needed? Or is it something that came out of a hard hitting recession in 2009 where everyone was trying anything to do something differently?

Its a very interesting topic of discussion.

On the one side, I had never planned to start a job board.  Prior to March 2009, I was consulting businesses and helping them gain traction in social media and the entire digital space through ppc, seo and targeted social media campaigns.  I really wanted to do more to help people, and raise my own profile as a result driven social media consultant.  This was at a time early last year, when there was the first big buzz around twitter (when stephen fry had 100,000 followers!).

Having put together the idea of TwitJobs and then started talking to a few 'media' recruitment agencies in and around London - they weren't exactly inspiring in their knowledge of the digital landscape.  I think many have just been doing what they do, and kind of see everything else as a side distraction to their business.  This is a shame.  Especially when they brand themselves as media experts to their clients.  The cynical side of me thinks they sit in a boardroom and reel off the buzz words of the week hoping that some of it sticks in the minds and makes their client feel comfortable in the knowledge they are dealing with 'similar' people.

2009 saw more job boards close than open.  Literally 1000s of job sites and recruiting businesses shut down and stopped trading.  Perhaps the wrong time to start a new job site?  Well, I never really thought of it that way.  I had an idea and really thought by using social media platforms we could communicate more effectively with a targeted audience.  It's a no-brainer, right?

The innovation is clearly with the platforms we are using - all we have done is create the springboard to work from - and my, has it sprung!

It is a shame how recruitment agencies and hiring managers have dabbled in this arena, with a twitter account, or a facebook fan page, that they have invited their existing network to and not thought to do anything else with it.  If you are going to communicate with the same people on Facebook as you do already on Twitter, isn't that just an opportunity for those people to stop following you/lose interest in your messages?

Get back to basics.  Think of social media as it is in its very raw and plain form.  A communication tool.  This is nothing new - social media could be skype, chatrooms, email (to some degree) - basically a digital online communication method.  If you are using email, you should be using Twitter, not for the same purposes exactly, but to compliment each other.

How did we get so many followers/friends? We just talked to people.  No fancy 6 month strategy.  No money spent on advertising or marketing, just talking to people.

Even when our site first launched and we had no jobs - we just talked to people.  Told them what we were hoping to create, asking them to RT if they could and that we were 'coming soon'.  Weeks later we have 100's of jobs on our site and 1000's of people following us.  Months later and we approach 100,000 followers and 1000's of jobs on our site, its a good time to look back and be pleased with what a difference we have made.

In December 2009, over 140,000 people worldwide applied for a job using TwitJobs.  This is 9 months from having no jobs at all, and hardly any followers.  Our advice to people thinking about being innovative - go out and do it - the industry you are thinking about being innovative in, probably will find it hard to adjust - but if you can make your offering so attractive, that they cannot ignore it, they will come to you.

That's what we find more and more - the businesses that were not sure if social media was for them in the early days, have had to start using it.  Not just because of the fact their competitors are using it, but because they need to reach the best possible, forward thinking people that are tuning into Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Linkedin, or their preferred social network of choice.  Why would you not want your service to reach those people?

Be innovative - Be different, and don't be scared - the changes you make to the industry you work in could be the ones that change the sector for ever.

That's exactly what we have done!

Jason Barrett

http://TwitJobs.net




Share