You've spent lots of time and effort cultivating a fanbase of thousands--on Twitter, Facebook, even on your own applications.  Yet, when you need new employees, how much of your efforts are directed towards people across the web that don't know you or who aren't nearly as passionate as your existing employees are.  You might even need to pay a recruiter to help make your salespitch.

Meanwhile, among your biggest fans and most passionate users are developers, marketers, accountants, public relations professionals--people from every industry imaginable who would probably jump at the chance to come work for you.  The only thing is, you don't know who these people are, short of their tiny little Twitter profiles which you can't search at scale anyway. 

You could try tweeting all youropenings, but not all of them are going to be relevent to your whole audience, which will degrad the quality of your livestream.

Christa Foley from Zappos agrees, “It wouldn’t fit within our culture to be salesy/pushy... we’re not blasting on Twitter every job opening... To me, that feels like spamming, which I think goes against what Twitter was meant to be used for.”

Just publishing your openings in social networks is a very 1.0 broadcast way of approaching a very 2.0 environment.  The problem is that all of the recruiting tools and social spaces are silos.  You can't search the resumes of your Twitter followers, and you can't search LinkedIn and filter by who follows who on Twitter. 

Having people put links to their resume in their Twitter account might be a start, but that wouldn't be easily searchable by structured search--plus it might look a little odd to their bosses. 

Coming at it from the other way, from Reid Hoffman's keynote at the Social Recruiting Summit, it seems pretty certain that LinkedIn is more worried about keeping the "noise" from other networks out than the free flow of data.  He didn't seem too pleased about Plaxo's attempts at syncing and he's always referred to behavior on Facebook with some disdain--associating it with zombie bites and electronic hamburgers.  This misses the opportunity to capture a lot of useful data on candidates, like their interests, affinities, and what companies they follow.

Path 101 is working on this problem now, and in about a month or so, will give you the tap for the keg of human capital that use your social media fanbase.

If you're interested in recruiting your followers, comment below or reach me at charlie@path101.com.

I got a note this morning (complete with its own press release attached) from Stephanie Agresta telling me that she had moved to a fulltime gig at Porter Novelli.

She writes, "My move to Porter Novelli is symbolic of the fact that the agency gets it: PR has changed forever."

It reminds me of Tara Hunt's announcement that she was moving to Intuit.  She was super excited about getting "a little schoolin’ on corporate America".

PR has changed?  Corporate America exciting?  What kind of social media bizarro world did we enter?

I think if you read between the lines, you'll realize that when two such prominent personalities in the social media world jump to the corporate side, it's a market signal: 

There just isn't enough money in social media to be a fulltime consultant. 

This is also what I heard recently from a very prominent social media expert who told me that actual dollars paid to her for her expertise were tough to come by.  Sure, there are going to be a few exceptions, but when some of the top folks are moving to big firms, if you don't believe this is a market top, then I've got a bridge to sell you.

And hey, I don't blame them.  They landed great jobs!  It's a tough economy and seeking shelter in the stability of a big firm is a smart move--just don't expect me to believe how psyched you are to leave independence for the joys and challenges of the Cube World.  

More people should get out while they can, because, in this economy, if you're not showing companies how all this stuff can directly contribute to the bottom line in real dollars, you're seriously screwed. 

Advertising and PR is becoming much more integrated.  Messaging is going cross medium.  You can't really survive at the strategy level if you don't understand all of the aspects of both traditional and interactive advertising--direct marketing, SEO/SEM, sponsorships, event marketing, etc.  That raises the bar for what it takes to be an advertising expert of any kind--let alone just in social media.  And thank God for that... seriously.  There are too many people going around with social media on their business cards where you say, "I don't get what that person does for a living--what do they actually do again?" 

So if you're smart and you see people like Tara and Steph--successful consultants who had real clients and a track record of success--going corporate, maybe it's time to hangup your "Social Media Expert" hat.

I've clearly been blogging less these days...but when I do, the overall quality (or at least effonrt) is up at a pretty high level.  I'm a writer--I still love writing essay length posts and always will. 

But since I started using Twitter and more recently since I started using Tumblr for real, not only has my publishing splintered across mediums, but I realize engagement with my community of readers is up.   Before Twitter, I would write the occasional micropost, but I'd feel like it went into a void.  It would be a quick passing thought and it would take too long for my daily RSS reading blog audience to receive it for the kind of quick response it might garner.

At the same time, I'd occasionally post ridiculous things--things few people found as funny as I did.  It seemed a little out of place to blog a College Humor video after a serious piece about entrepreneurship.  I didn't really want to use Tumblr, though.  Mainly, I was actually being  somewhat hypocritical because I was focused on having my blog as the central place to find and consume the published me on the web but I constantly criticize Friendfeed for killing the context and nouance that comes with each individual platform.  Additionally, I firmly believed that different people wanted different slices of me--and to force them to all consume the same sausagelike feed was borderline abusive.   That's why I don't usually friend my professional contacts.  I may find your professional presence in my life worthwhile, but please don't make me look at your kids photos.

I started using Tumblr for real a few weeks ago.  I say for real because I used to just publish a feed from my blog to it.  It got very few clickthroughs and hardly any followers--no reblogs.  Certainly no one was going to pass along around my content if it wasn't tailored towards the audience.  Like a dying marriage, it's as if that audience knew I wasn't putting in the effort so why should they? 

Now, I pass the music I listen to through Tumblr as well as the occasional drunk Kung Fu Panda.  I clip the quotes from my blog I think will appeal to that audience.  Now, I not only get more followers, but I get more engagement as well. 

Media outlets need to realize that.  If you're CNN, you can't just blast a link to the CNN homepage everywhere.  You need to maintain a unique, curated presence everywhere your audience is and engage them in a unique way. 

When I worked in private equity, I learned about the buyout of Gaylan's sports.  The concept there was to build a big box retail space for sports, but to make sure that each individual section of the store was as good or better than the speciality store equivilent.  Therefore, the golf section of Gaylan's had to be as good as your local golf shop.    This was very different from places like Modell's, which are decent options if you want to buy a generic set of golf balls, but you're not going to find any premium items or anyone who knows anyone at golf.

If you're a big media outlet and you're going to be publishing into social spaces, then your Twitter account needs to be as engaging as the alternative individual that I would subscribe to.  There's no sense being @ComedyCentral if you're not going to be as funny as @dickc.  If you're going to have a CNN Tumblr, then you need to be as good at curating content as Soup.  Esquire, if you're going to be on Tumblr, you need to be as smart, sexy, and funny as Meaghano. 

Don't throw this "social media stuff" off to your youngest social media intern.  Go to these communities.  Go meet with Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, MySpace, all of 'em and ask, "Who gets it?  Bring us to them so we can learn."

How many people did the following search for Obama's speech this morning?

Ariana got all the traffic and the rest of the big boys had nothing to show me.

Amanda hits this one right on the head:

"THE NOT-SO-GOOD - Where are the Developers?

There are few events that involve actually learning how to code and/or build stuff (exceptions here and here). From what I can tell, the best way to lock down job security if you work in print media/traditional advertising is to beef up your knowledge of the digital side. If you’re a content ninja, wouldn’t having a working knowledge of rails, php, python or even wordpress provide a huge advantage?"

It seems like the powers that be are making a bet... that the future of innovation around the web in NYC will be powered by advertising supported content--an economy run on digital pennies.  So much for NYC building the next Google.

There are exactly three entrepreneurs on the 45 person Internet Week Executive Council with companies whose current or future business models are not depending on ad supported content: Caterina Fake from Hunch (I imagine that's going to be a data biz of some kind, Scott from Meetup (subscription), and myself (Path 101 is working on candidate search and self promotion tools.)  In fact, the whole thing is co-sponsored by the Mayor's Office of "Film, Theatre and Broadcasting".  

Is this really where innovation is going to happen--by moving all the broadcast content to the web?   I agree with Amanda--we need more people building, and less people broadcasting.