IT'S LIKE SPAM, BUT THEN FROM ME!

The ‘1 day for free’ campaign is a thing I did when my time was ticking at Microsoft. Eventually it resulted in me starting my own company, which is WaveLab – where you are right now. This grassroots action is the very cornerstone of my company. That’s why I proudly republish this blog post to thank everyone who has helped me out and who gave me that extra push in the back I needed to take this leap in the unknown, which turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made.

Repost from my old MicroMiel blog, published on June 1st, 2009

I really feel like I should start with a decent thank you to all those people who have helped to spread my message. Really, I am grateful to the bone, each and everyone of you: I heart you! This illustrates exactly what people mean when they talk about the strength of social networks. It’s the best example of leveraging the potential of your social network. This is why you put time and energy in places like twitter, facebook, linked in and services alike – because it pays off.

Allow me to tell you the story, and thank each and everyone of you along the way. The first step was taken by @crossthebreeze, also known as Kris Hoet. My former colleague at Microsoft and currently also looking for a job. Lay-Off Tuesday, the big round of economic downsizing (part two) that hit Microsoft globally, had caught up with us. @geertdesager – Geert Desager – currently residing in Singapore (and also a former colleague from the Trade Marketing department) got bad news as well.

So here we were together with a bunch of other colleagues. We all had to look for different opportunities. Kris, who was up until then working on ‘influencer relations’ and ‘community marketing’ for Western Europe started the #hirefriday meme on Twitter. On an afternoon talk. Kris and I agreed that we’d both find a job using our social networks, just to prove a point.

#hirefriday is a social initiative. Every friday you can promote friends who are looking for a new job, in the hopes the name pops up on the right time at the right place. For instance: Bert Rijken is looking for a job. He’s in my network and he’s a web developer. So next Friday I can broadcast this text on twitter: #hirefriday @crossthebreeze @geertdesager @bertrijken – people who are looking for someone can click on the names, and through the bio text in the profile they can click through to a portfolio or linked-in link. It might seem like a detour, but through twitter you can already shape an image of this person by back-checking the tweets. Those little messages reveal a lot of information about the person who wrote them. About the train of thoughts you can expect.

But something was missing. We made a lot of noise, and many web personalities adopted the meme. But it needed more to stand out. And then there was ZooCamp. On the 23rd of May, there was a BarCamp in the Royal Antwerp Zoo. BarCamps are non-events. It means the organization is minimal, the money comes from sponsors and the sessions are presented by the people who attend the BarCamp. In general, those are the guidelines. Interpretations might vary. I lined up my session as: Jobhunting 2.0 – I wanted to tap brains to get an idea.

A handful of people gathered and exchanged ideas and at the end of my talk I took home some interesting opinions and insights from (amongst others) @pascalvanhecke, @applefan and @tijs (I know I’m forgetting a few others here, but please feel free to ping me so I can add you. Sorry.) The focus group worked well. Thank you guys, for this input! Thank you #ZooCamp! You gave me fuel to start the fire!

Now I knew what I wanted to do, I just had to think a bit about the shape. And the angle of approach. If you want to stand out, you have to be different. You have to have an idea that is crazy enough to work. But for a classic CV, a lot of things were done already. Great IMPRESSIVE things I could not beat. Self-promotion is tricky. A lot of creative people have been without job already so a lot of things I would do would be an imitation. Then I thought about internet marketing as a concept, and how it is abused.

Free e-books to get rich quick using the internet. They just scream their message at you to act now, to click, to buy. Irritating as hell, but apparently it pays off because thrash like that is everywhere on the net. It’s like spam. People keep buying Vi@ggrra and ‘manhood extensions’ and ’stallion power’ apparently, because the spam keeps coming.

So overlooking the concept of these sites, the key thing is:

• text in the right font: default.
• A lot of screamy headlines that provoke or attract attention in a ‘huh?’ way, confronting
• Ugly graphics, low quality senseless marketing blah blah.
• Take-aways and free teasers.
• A featured download and
• testimonials from people who successfully implemented the pyramid-structured scam affiliate system.

I looked up a nice graphic of some paradise beach, sliced it up in Adobe Photoshop and thought of a nice slogan to put on it. First I wanted to put a silhouette on the beach with an arrow pointing to it that said: ‘this could be you!’. But then it wouldn’t include me or the purpose of the website. The header is the first thing someone sees from a website. Eyeballs pin on it during the load and scan it multiple times before scrolling down. Check this heat map of a website, you’ll see what I mean. The header is very important.

I think in this case it was the right choice to make noise. Big fat borders around the letters and a big red cross. Less is more. The silhouette was too complicated. The text too difficult to make the loop to me looking for a job. The essence of putting someone somewhere is a cross. You mark a spot on the map with a simple cross. Everyone understands it, it’s a universal sign. The text needed to be short, straight to the point, readable in the glimpse of an eye.

The test was: if I pass by my pc screen from 3 meters away, would I catch it immediately and get it? Like when a colleague at work has it on his screen and someone would pass behind him, I want my message to reach that coincidental person as well. Everyone wants to be on a tropical island. How they get there is … by hiring me. You can be here – when I work for you. Simple.

The metaphor for the graphic is: I know that when I work for someone, I’m loyal and I do my work as good as I just-below-super-naturally can. I know that gives peace of mind (calm blue ocean). So yes. The one I work for can easily go on a holiday while I keep doing what needs to be done.

Then I made the rest of the page and wrote the text. I know the tone of voice is quite arrogant, but it fits perfectly in this concept, in this marketing style. By playing with the font sizes every here and there, the text gets a certain dimension. It jumps forward. If you only read the bold words, things make sense too. The structure was simple:

• ugly screamy catchy header
• a take-away and some intro
• first audience selection criteria
• promote product
• reward audience for reading (limited download)
• bonus campaign: super promo
• the fine print
• what’s in the package?
• thank you

It’s very basic. The most important thing I did was read the text over and over again and delete as much as I could to uplive the first promise; that I would keep it short. The approach I took was a simple ‘revert’. Under normal conditions, jobseekers contact companies. I needed companies to notice me. The normal position of the applicant is a modest one, often almost pityful. I think that’s a shame. I know what I can do. What knowledge I possess. You know that too, for yourself. Everyone can do specific things very good. Some more than others. So the big change here is that I use the power of recommendations by others (facilitated in linked-in, very handy!) to show what I can do, instead of listing bulletpoints in a word document.

What I did was in two forms of perception. One is the classic testimonial approach that fits in this typical marketing site concept, where other people promote the products and the benefits they gained from it to convince the reader of the genuine goodness that they’ll enjoy after purchasing the product. In this case I am the product, and I let other people talk about me.

The second thing is that this is the purest form of marketing there is. Recommendations are the strongest marketing tool there is. Brand advocacy strategies are built on this principle. Having someone else to promote you (your product) on your behalf is 10 times more effective compared to broadcasting it yourself multiple times. If you have recommendations, be proud of them. I also urge you to write them for the people in your network you have good experiences with. It helps. I just proved it.

Don’t be afraid to ask for recommendations either. But be selective and think about where you want to take your career to. Make it so that the recommendations are relevant for you.

Lastly I rounded up the ugly website and wrote the rest of the text, keeping in mind I was selling the best product of the world. Myself. It doesn’t mean I think of myself that I’m the best. It means I pretend I am, just for this once, because I need to sell myself as if it was the only thing I had. / I’m just good. Not the best.

I ended up with this basic result around 9 PM on the 27th and I called Kris for some advice. Testing what you do before you throw it out there is important. Once it goes on the internet, you have to let it go and live its life. You’ll only shoot in your own feet if you have to undo something like this. Kris approved. I threw it live around 10 PM I think with a tweet and a note I posted on my Facebook profile.

Another thing I needed to do was stand out of the #hirefriday meme as well. That’s why I prepped my page to be done before #hirefriday, and that’s why I announced it early. Was this critical in the process? Timing is always critical. Let’s say the pre-#hirefriday buzz worked well, also because of the shape of the concept and content. The message would probably have caused a similar effect if I had waited until Friday, but would it have had the same impact? I don’t know.

That’s when I let it go. As of this point, it’s up to the world if it turns out good or bad. The first friendly fire I got on my facebook profile and the number of retweets (when someone forwards my message to his/her network) made me very happy and I felt confident things would turn out positive. The night passed and the buzz grew on Thursday, as many timezone friends missed the evening-tweet and caught up with it when they started their day. Would the timing have been a factor too?

I launched it at night, so there was still time to fix something when things would turn nasty. But the story started its round as soon as it was online, so fixing soon became out of the question. I was hoping to catch the early train of many people who productively start their day by twittering. Thursday passed. I was thrilled with all the support through the comments on my note on Facebook, and the small pats on the shoulders people would include in their tweets. It was amazing to see how other people reposted the Facebook link on their own profile to help me broadcast my message. Impressive to follow from this close-by.

The first results came in on Thursday, with an invite to come and talk at Wanabe, a fusion marketing agency in the Brussels region, a talk and a ‘free day of work’ booking at the DoggyBites offices, and an offer from Reputation Marketeer Stef Verbeeck. @casualjim, who’s about to start a remarkable initiative I can’t talk too much about yet also booked me for a day to define the chalk lines of a marketing campaign for his idea. So. End of day one and quite some things to do already.

Apparently I sparked a conversation that caught the eye of the offline media as well, because on Friday morning I got a phone call from Glynis Procureur to inquire about the story behind the website. That same day I met with the photographer she sent out for a snapshot. Because I was at the Microsoft offices (where I still enjoy working until June 30th, my last day), we met up outside on the parking lot. Bright sunny day, blue sky and a nice building to pose in front of and we were done.

That resulted in an article on two of the most-read newspapers of Flanders. (Nieuwsblad – DeStandaard) – In the Job@ section of the newspaper. The best place I could hope for in this economical climate. The article was in the printed version of the newspapers too, the weekend edition (which is even more read than a weekday edition). This is the kind of exposure you can only dream of. I thought I was at the top of the roller-coaster ride. The word was out. That’s the least I could say.

On Saturday morning I got a phone call from the VTM news team (VTM is one of the leading commercial television stations in Flanders) to ask me if I wanted to meet up for a report on the topic. Saturday afternoon we met in Antwerp at @casualjim’s home/office and the super friendly crew wrapped up the scenes. That resulted in a nicely compiled clip that got airtime on Sunday during the 1 PM news and the 7 PM news and the latenight edition. You can watch it on the station’s website too. Pretty wow. Really. (thanks to @lvb, I got this little piece of code to embed the player.)

And here we are. The day after. Today is a national holiday (Monday) I think things will have a small peak again on Tuesday, the first real day of the work week. Then the minutes of fame are over :-) I better enjoy it while it lasts. I’m going to pick up all the leads that came out of this, schedule appointments and see what the near future brings.

I’m happy. I’m lucky. I would never have been able to pull this off without the help of my friends and their friends. Below is the list of tweeters I compiled who have picked up the message including the #hirefriday tag.

In order of appearance based on a merged twitter search for ‘micromiel‘ ‘@coolz0r‘ and ‘Miel Van Opstal‘ and the relevant results from the #hirefriday tag, I would like to thank the following people for actively contributing to the success of this campaign:

09.42 PM , May 27 – 0561 Followers – @Boskabout

09.47 PM , May 27 – 0325 Followers – @sart68

09.52 PM , May 27 – 2101 Followers – @noelbellen

09.58 PM , May 27 – 0106 Followers – @WesleyBackelant

10.06 PM , May 27 – 0117 Followers – @DeFre

10.14 PM , May 27 – 0203 Followers – @aralves

10.18 PM , May 27 – 0038 Followers – @StefVerbeeck,

10.36 PM , May 27 – 0140 Followers – @Karmeen

10.41 PM , May 27 – 0420 Followers – @imerged

10.46 PM , May 27 – 2096 Followers – @netlash,

10.50 PM , May 27 – 0180 Followers – @FreDegre,

10.50 PM , May 27 – 0770 Followers – @Bart,

10.52 PM , May 27 – 0081 Followers – @ArtyMoony

10.54 PM , May 27 – 0514 Followers – @minorissues,

11.05 PM , May 27 – 0673 Followers – @mschenk,

11.13 PM , May 27 – 0738 Followers – @lamazone

11.14 PM , May 27 – 0095 Followers – @tafelzoetstof

11.18 PM , May 27 – 0496 Followers – @BVLG

11.21 PM , May 27 – 4373 Followers – @robinwauters

11.24 PM , May 27 – 0541 Followers – @hldrake

11.24 PM , May 27 – 4202 Followers – @jangles

11.29 PM , May 27 – 0554 Followers – @gabvirtualworld

11.33 PM , May 27 – 0155 Followers – @nanske

11.37 PM , May 27 – 0466 Followers – @Jer00n

11.38 PM , May 27 – 0255 Followers – @ActiveLife

11.41 PM , May 27 – 0268 Followers – @everjean

12.13 AM , May 28 – 0436 Followers – @astorrs

06.09 AM , May 28 – 0113 Followers – @mkogeler

07.19 AM , May 28 – 0061 Followers – @blissbohemian

07.24 AM , May 28 – 0130 Followers – @KoenPhlips

07.24 AM , May 28 – 0600 Followers – @GlueWebdesign

07.39 AM , May 28 – 0571 Followers – @pvw2108

07.46 AM , May 28 – 0226 Followers – @kidpaddle

08.17 AM , May 28 – 0877 Followers – @Steffest

08.19 AM , May 28 – 0485 Followers – @skolgen

08.30 AM , May 28 – 0141 Followers – @sparehead

08.57 AM , May 28 – 0071 Followers – @sergecornelus

09.07 AM , May 28 – 0556 Followers – @toon

09.33 AM , May 28 – 0332 Followers – @casualjim

09.39 AM , May 28 – 0144 Followers – @hansver

09.45 AM , May 28 – 0176 Followers – @markvoer

09.51 AM , May 28 – 0090 Followers – @alaingeenrits

09.56 AM , May 28 – 4812 Followers – @TomRaftery

09.56 AM , May 28 – 0212 Followers – @unexxx

09.58 AM , May 28 – 0017 Followers – @johannblais

10.03 AM , May 28 – 0365 Followers – @benhamilton

10.06 AM , May 28 – 4201 Followers – @jacobshare

10.16 AM , May 28 – 0985 Followers – @Cyber_Lounge

10.20 AM , May 28 – 0549 Followers – @RuiDelgado

10.39 AM , May 28 – 0116 Followers – @dtassinari

12.31 AM , May 28 – 0391 Followers – @penyaskito

12.38 AM , May 28 – 0008 Followers – @andreaspetzel

04.12 PM , May 28 – 0102 Followers – @domat33f

04.42 PM , May 28 – 0160 Followers – @jourik

04.35 PM , May 28 – 2558 Followers – @bnox

05.10 PM . May 28 – 0023 Followers – @myself09

05.33 PM , May 28 – 0143 Followers – @bvanherreweghe

05.41 PM , May 28 – 0260 Followers – @devijvers

05.43 PM , May 28 – 0017 Followers – @deliciouscubus

12.09 PM , May 29 – 1337 Followers – @crossthebreeze

12.10 PM , May 29 – 0525 Followers – @mindblob

12.27 PM , May 29 – 0789 Followers – @Clopin

12.28 PM , May 29 – 0522 Followers – @ntone

12.31 PM , May 29 – 0012 Followers – @martinpauer

01.05 PM , May 29 – 0154 Followers – @samzzi

04.20 PM , May 29 – 0254 Followers – @positivecurfew

Recap:

This about rounds up the first front of the communication wave :-) 43.989 followers, by 66 channels.

Cutting this back to 20% (1/5th): 8797.2 followers have had the chance to see this message.

What’s in this calculation? Many followers follow a lot of other tweeters at the same time, so there are certainly a lot of duplicates in the follower list. These are NOT unique views, and there is no way to pick out the duplicates. I’m putting on my relativation glasses and I’m screwing the number down to 20%. It’s not because you have 500 followers that ALL of them actually catch your message. So a certain percentage of users will have missed it because they were offline, not monitoring, busy working,… No way to track that either. It’s not like sending a direct mailing with click tracers in to measure the opening rate vs click-through rate and so on.

So ok, x percent have missed it, x percent is double follower (or triple or more). I’m no physicist, nor math wonder. So I just cut off 80%. That might be too much. But I can live with it. :-)

Estimate: in the first 36 hours: 8778 hits on the page through twitter.

Facebook is a different cup of tea. I posted a note on my wall (should’ve posted a link instead to really channel the attention, must remember that) and have received a lot of feedback and positive comments. (insert BIG personal thank you to all facebook friends who commented on the posts). So the only certain thing I can state is that probably a few hundred of the 700+ friends I have saw the message, and about 2 to 3% of them commented (which follows the general line of thought in the process of content creation and interaction: 1% creates, about 5% actively participates and the rest absorbs the creation)

You can’t measure Facebook, apart from click-throughs you see on your own counter, which all come from the main .com domain. There’s no way to see who reposted the note on their profile, though I’ve seen it come by a few times in the updates feed. So in theory, all their friends have seen it too. Every time somebody clicked the ‘likes this’ thumbs up link, that appeared on their profile. Every time someone wrote a comment, that appeared on their profile as well. No idea how much reach that is. Too many variables to even start thinking about it, too much work to dig that out in a decent way.

Facebook is also in phases. The note I posted, then the article in one newspaper, then the other newspaper, then the tv interview. It’s a constant information flow of progress. That again makes more noise than a simple note on its own. How many Facebook hits? No idea.

But it worked. The social buzz reached mainstream media and it took off like a rocket. Just before finishing this post (around 7 PM) I did a radio interview on the Ann & Dave Show, a radio show right in prime time. You can listen to it here. (in flemish) (big thank you @imkedielen for tracking that down for me!)

Why am I writing this? First of all because I wanted to share it with everyone (online) who’s looking for a job. I hope my train of thoughts for this specific case inspires you to look for alternative ways to make yourself be noticed. That’s just how it works.

I’ve also written this because I wanted to document the story for myself and the close friends around me who follow my path in life.

The offical reach of the newspapers (both online and offline reach) can be consulted on MetriWeb, same goes for the 3 TV news broadcasts and the radio interview. The numbers should be available. I don’t post them here because the point has been made clear already.

Once again, I’d love to thank each and everyone who made this thing go beyond the expected. WAY beyond.

TAKE-AWAYS:

• Use Twitter to post job offers or refer friends.
• Recommend your relations on Linked-in
• Ask for recommendations if you know you deserve them
• Build your social network and contribute actively to it
• Create your own channel and make it interesting for others to follow you
• Read books like The Purple Cow, The Big Moo and many others that help you learn about how to be different and become remarkable