Meet Mingle and Tweet

Ok all of you social media types headed to the Illinois State SHRM Conference, I am going to lay out there a goal for our upcoming conference. 100 that is the goal!

One of my goals for this conference is to create 100 #newusers on twitter.

This shouldn’t be too hard, I don’t think as our friend Jessica Merrill-Miller (no @blogging4jobs is not her name) will be instructing a social media boot camp on Sunday leading up to the Mondays keynote session.  While Jessica’s efforts will no doubt give my goal a giant boost, the omni-presence of social media luminaries should help the cause as well.

But we have to be careful… we want to reach out and welcome all of the folks who are new to twitter and other social media outlets that are in attendance. Ya know sometime we hang together… like a gang or something, which intimidates some folks. Or if we are not hanging out, like a pack of social media wolves, we are all standing around looking at our smart phones and not interacting with other folks.  If you really old then you have to hold the phone close to your face and look over the top of you bifocals. So let’s make sure we don’t do this.

Don’t get too caught up in tweeting or blogging while you are in a session. I still have people glare at me like, “how rude.”  If only they new I was complimenting the presenter.

We should have some great content coming out of the conference let’s just make we step outside the echo-chamber and engage the rest of the world; to see what they are thinking and doing at the conference. 

The mantra for the conference is meet, mingle and tweet!

-Dave Ryan Director of Social Media ISC-SHRM

Social Media Bootcamp

Do you know how to use social media effectively both in your career and in your job? You should because your colleagues are in it and you can bet your employees are using it. Understanding social media is important when crafting your personal and your company’s brand awareness as well as developing your company’s social media policy and recruiting strategy as well as doing any investigations into policy or security violations.

In order to help HR professionals understand social media and how to use it, the Illinois State Council of SHRM is sponsoring a Social Media Boot Camp, being held on Sunday, August 21 (the day before our Annual Conference) at the Drury Lane Theater in Oakbrook Terrace, the same location as the Conference. This how-to program was a highly requested item that came from our first presentations on social media at last year’s conference.

Participants will learn about social media from common terms, tools, tips and applications from an HR professional who literally has written the book. This 3.5 hour session (accredited for strategic HRCI credit) will help you move from novice to being on your way to becoming a Social Media Ninja.

Participants will refine their own social media accounts and learn about brand awareness, improper uses of social media, best practices in social media and how to use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and blogging to improve your networking ability and improve your ability on the job.

Participants are encouraged to bring laptops as wifi will be available. All we ask is that you have set up your accounts in whatever platform(s) you are planning to use prior to the event. Let us know if you need help with that. The cost for the workshop is $125 if you are registered for the conference and $150 if you are not. Remember, it is for STRATEGIC credit for certified HR pros.

PRESENTER: Jessica Miller-Merrell SPHR is a well known social media presence, CEO of Exceptional HR, the brains behind the Blogging 4 Jobs web site and new media assassin. In addition, she is the author of Tweet This! Twitter for Business. 

- John Jorgensen SPHR Immediate Past State Director ISC SHRM

When did Human Resources Embrace Social Media

As we continue to prepare for the Illinois State Council’s 11th Annual Conference, we are pulling out all of the stops to get as much attention on the event as possible. In doing so, our public relations director contacted me and told me of an opportunity to get some coverage in my hometown newspaper for the event. The news outlet was curious how and why we were going to use social media to help promote the event. In fact, the reporter or his editor asked this question – What changed; when did you folks in Human Resources start embracing Facebook, Twitter and the like?

While it is a fair question, I don’t recall there being a watershed moment for me or anyone I know. To date, has the HR community shunned social media, or have we just been slow to embrace it? I am not sure really of the answer.

I hold the belief that there are less HR people who are afraid of using the Internet for business purposes, than have taken the time to try to learn, use and apply the tools that are out there. As in any new venture, there will be many opportunities for failure; some of them may fail spectacularly! Fear not though, just like any other business venture, if your idea doesn’t work out like you planned you re-tool and try again.

So if you have been sitting on the sidelines and need a little coaching on how to do this, we have a couple of sessions at #ILSHRM10 (our twitter hashtag) on Monday that may help you out. Lisa Callaway is leading a Monday morning session titled Embracing Social Media While Protecting Your Organization. Later in the day, there is a second session titled What HR Should Know About Social Media which is lead by Maureen Dorgan-Clemans. Hopefully, one or both of these sessions might provide a little clarity on the matters.

If you can’t attend, follow us on twitter, check out our guest bloggers Sarah White, Trish McFarlane and Mike VanDervort and their take on the event. And… we will be getting a first look at some new material from SHRM’s Social Media guy Curtiss Midkiff, as he eluded to on DriveThruHR earlier in the week.

Hope to see you there!