Ardent Partners is pleased to welcome back Harold “Hal” Good, a lifelong procurement practitioner, procurement “luminary,” and CPO Rising Hall of Famer to CPO Rising 2018. He will host an Expert Roundtable session on using social media in the procurement industry to facilitate dialogue on innovation, share best practices, and network with peers. Frequent readers may recall that we profiled Hal a couple of times in years’ past (you can read one of these profiles here). Hal is an accomplished professional with over 30 years of Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) level experience in procurement and contracting. He is a past national president of the Airport Purchasing Group and the National Procurement Institute, and was a founding member and past president of the California Chapter of the National Institute of Government Purchasing (NIGP).
Hal is now semi-retired, and he and his wife live in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he writes about procurement and continues to evangelize for the future of the profession. He is a well-regarded procurement expert, a frequent presenter at industry events, and has a formidable social media presence spread across six Twitter personas, which he uses to share thought-provoking content on procurement and supply risk management.
I had the pleasure of reconnecting with Hal last week and bending his ear on using social media, particularly Twitter, to drive conversations around procurement innovation and next-generation technologies, and how he has been able to build such a following in the nearly ten years that he’s had a Twitter account.
Joining the (Digital) Conversation
If you work in the procurement space, whether as a practitioner, solution provider, or industry analyst, and you’re on Twitter, you’ll probably (eventually) run across one or several of Hal Good’s Twitter handles – either because he’s retweeted something interesting or because he’s retweeted you (kudos!). Maybe it was something on Blockchain, supply risk, or artificial intelligence (AI) – something that is thought provoking and relevant to current industry trends. Maybe it’s even a little controversial or debatable. That’s okay – Twitter is home to great content and lively debate, and Hal’s a big driver of that in the procurement space. And he’s been doing it for nearly ten years, amassing tens of thousands of followers over his eight Twitter handles and in his LinkedIn group, Procurement Pros – Smart & Collaborative Procurement. Hal also curates the Twitter account for the California Association of Public Procurement (@CAPPO_inc) and the NIGP Pennsylvania chapter (@PAPPAofNIGP).
One unique practice that Hal adopted was to use several different Twitter handles, depending on the topic area. He has a main Twitter handle for general things and other handles for more specific topic areas, like supply risk or public sector procurement. He’s semi-retired and so he has the time to do this, which not everyone does. But it’s fairly easy to segment Twitter communities based on the topic area (in fact, we at Ardent Partners do that with no less than seven twitter handles based on personas and topic areas).
For Hal, developing followers has been an evolution of best practices found through trial and error. He started tweeting and retweeting content and seeing what got more traction. And then he kept at it. Also, since he’s semi-retired, he has more time than most to share content from his Twitter feeds, as well as attend conferences and stay fluent on current and emerging trends. And without an employer, sponsors, or competitors, Hal can uninhibitedly share what he considers to be good content, regardless of the source or how controversial it may be.
“I’m not held back [or] beholden to somebody, because I don’t have sponsors and I don’t work for somebody else. So, therefore, I can say that if it’s good content, I’ll simply share it,” he said. Not everyone has this kind of freedom.
When asked if there are more procurement practitioners on social media than it would appear, Hal believes they’re there, in the shadows. “It’s not that they’re not interested,” he said, “it’s just that they feel a little threatened at how much to participate.”
Case in point: “I was just at a conference down in Nashville. I can’t tell you how many people came up to me and said, ‘we read your stuff, but we don’t tweet because of who we work for,’ or ‘we’re just not allowed to share an opinion.’ And I think a lot of people [in the procurement space] are in that situation. But they’re there, I think.”
Keeping the Conversation Flowing
Speaking of practitioners that tweet (or don’t), industry buzzwords are sure-fire ways to keep the conversation flowing on Twitter. Topics like digital transformation, connected devices, Blockchain, AI, and many others generate lots of discussion, as many people from practitioners to technology marketers to industry analysts (like this one) offer their unique perspectives on a daily basis.
“I think it’s one of the highest levels of interest with practitioners, and with technology marketers,
said Hal. “If they’re not staying involved with what’s going on with those issues, they’re going to get lost. Because whether their organization adopts it or not, they’d better be conversant with the pros and cons; and if not, why not? And if so, why so?”
For close followers of the procurement industry on Twitter, conversations can sometimes become a little animated, with strong opinions shared and the relentless parsing of words occurring in real time in 280 characters or less. Hal stays above the fray, and there are two Twitter personalities, in addition to the analyst team here at Ardent Partners, that stay above the fray, too. One is procurement consultant and “friend of the site,” Bill Michels (you can read about him here).
“Bill Michels is very thought provoking in what he writes,” Hal said. “He speaks his mind and does it very, very well. Another Twitter follower that Hal likes to retweet is Bertrand Maltaverne. “He puts out [interesting] stuff and delves into things. Like today, [he argued that] maybe Blockchain is overhyped…. That’s a very valid [argument] because maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. He’ll go into subjects like that and take them on, but he’s not going to beat you on the head on Twitter. If you’re interested, he provides the link that you can go and look at it in more detail.” According to Hal, people like Bill and Bertrand can keep the conversation flowing and make room for people to join in a welcoming and respectful manner.
Real Time with Hal Good
At CPO Rising 2018 in Boston this November 7 & 8, Hal will lead a roundtable discussion on using social media in the procurement space to share best practices, current and emerging technologies, and general industry news. He’ll also share his own best practices in using social media to connect, network, get as many eyeballs on your content as you can. He’ll discuss things like using hashtags, keywords, and segmenting Twitter streams to share the most relevant content with the right audience, and educate rather than inundate your community.
Still haven’t registered for CPO Rising 2018? The clock is ticking, my friend. Head on over to our event site for the agenda, speaker bios, and more interesting event-related content. Hurry! It’s almost here!
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