As suspected, the shoes were a hit! While not the online viral marketing sensation I had hoped, but some interesting facts did come out of this.

Metrics – we all want them to justify our investments especially in social media and recruiting.  Why? First management wants to know how we are spending our time and second to be able to determine if our efforts have a good ROI or just to see how much we are “liked”. But as this exercise reminded me, metrics aren’t the only thing that can show the success for a program.  

What were the measures of success: Having been in marketing for eons, I knew I would have two measures of success: online – how many tweets, comments, likes and views as well as offline success: the buzz, the additional people I would be able to meet, the conversations that were started and the “fun” factor.  Both of these factors contribute to the top line success factor of all: word of mouth.

I also picked a tough crowd-recruiters; worse than this, recruiters at a conference.  

This post was posted in three places: my company blog, the ERE community site and Recruiting Blogs. The link was also sent to at least 10 people whose shoes were featured and posted on my LinkedIn Status.  Only two people re-tweeted the blog post, no comments on any blogs but 101 views of the Flickr account.

However, throughout the day I had people come up to me, ask to have their shoes pictured, people I had never met before started conversations with me, and “offline” there was a buzz about the “shoes”. What does this tell us? Online metrics aren’t the absolute. Measurable, but not an absolute.   The buzz is also still going on even though the conference is over as I talk with people online and on the phone. I predict that at the next conference someone will ask me if I am doing another shoe blog or what else I am doing or at least remember this little fun project that I did.

From many of the companies that presented at the ERE conference, we heard about how the employees loved working there – especially the recruiters, that their environments were fun and that the employees felt connected with the company and their mission. This word of mouth buzz permeates their brand more importantly their “employment” brand.  This “word of mouth” buzz supports and complements any and all other marketing and recruiting. This also significantly impacts any employee referral program.

As we move into the uptick in hiring but still tough budget constraints on hiring programs, my main take away from the ERE conference is that we need to connect and engage with our candidates or “customers” . This connection is not just about the perfect position that we have for them, but how we are as people – what do we like, how do we live and how we want to be connected with others.

Shoes of Day Two at the ERE Expo