Join the Twitter Conversation about HR Best Practices

Join the Twitter Conversation about HR Best Practices Join the Twitter Conversation about HR Best Practices Join the Twitter Conversation about HR Best Practices Charney, Social Media Engagement Manager Twitter, the popular micro blogging site that limits users to messages of 140 characters or less, has catapulted from the margins to the mainstream. Major brands, spanning the gamut from entertainment to consumer packaged goods to professional services, have built both a presence and a following within Twitter, creating a diverse, cross-functional pipeline where instant engagement is as easy as pressing Enter. While many feel Twitters ubiquity might be as brief as its character limits, consider: While it still only commands less than 2% of social media market share, Twitter usage soared 1170% year-to-year, according to recent data from Hitwise. Language trending firm The Global Language Monitor recently named Twitter the most popular word in the English language in 2009, displacing Obama. The majority of Twitter users are not teens or college students, but rather working adults. Almost 42% of the sites audiences are age 35-49, according to Nielsen, with 62% of users accessing the site exclusively from their office. Social media-savvy HR and recruiters bloggers arealready using Twitter and while job seekers increasingly turn to Twitter to create connections, network and find opportunities, employers are following suit. The result: a multi-faceted, real-time conversation about the business of hiring. How Twitter is Evolving Hiring and HR Twitter has quickly evolved into an invaluable tool for hiring experts and decision makers to engage both candidates and each other.Human resource professionals and hiring managers are turning to Twitter, primarily as a means to monitor and engage their employee populations, keep followers informed about their respective employment brands, as well as perform due diligence on potential new hires. Twitters status bar prompts users a simple question: What are you doing?For Human resource and employment professionals not currently engaging this valuable resource, the more pressing question becomes, What are you thinking? Learn to Manage Your Twitter Account Due to its limited in-site search functionality and scant biographical information, finding relevant professionals to follow can prove as challenging as finding a top passive candidate for a hard-to-fill requisition.In fact, many report the inability to target relevant results as a main barrier of entry to Twitter adoption. Realizing the breakneck pace at which Human resource and hiring professionals work, the blessing of Twitters inherent real-time status and engagement can seem like a curse. Here are some suggestions to get the most out of your Twitter usage: Twitters homepage can be cumbersome and relatively difficult to track conversations. The best and most valuable people to follow often update dozens of times a day, which can get overwhelming if accessing updates via text messages. Dedicated software helps rectify many of these issues, and can run in your computers background without an open internet window; some even have the capabilities of integrating with other social networks so that only a single log on is required.Check out TweetDeck or HootSuite; youll be glad you did. Rather than updating in real time, which can prove difficult at work, set aside some time each week to schedule your Tweets in advance.Two of the most commonly used programs for this are CoTweet and Social Oomph. Since youll probably be sharing links to interesting content and messaging related to job openings and your company (and because HR professionals love metrics), its a good idea to track traffic for your links.The easiest (free) site to do this is bit.ly, which automatically shrinks URLs to save characters. Now, ready to get started? Then check out our list of Ten Top Employment Bloggers to Follow.