Marketing using Social Media

RedRichard · Mar 21, 2011

Hi all,

Im looking at social media sites where i can promote own job vacancies within our own business profile. The main three being Linked-in, Facebook and twitter.

I would welcome suggestions of other social media sites that could also provide a similar exposure / marketing avenue. i.e where comment about a job or company could interest connected users.

So far this is the list i have come up with, but some of these sites users are less likely to want to read about job information?. Users of say Friends Reunited are exchanging about past teachers etc rather than more global issues. The list i have:-

Face Book
Twitter
Linked-In
Friends Reunited
Bebo
Google Buzz
Ecademy
Myspace
Windows Live Profile
Digg
Buzznet
Ning
Tumblr
Friend Feed
GTalk Status
WordPress
Blogger
Yahoo Profiles
Plurk
Jaiku
Delicious
Tagged
Plaxo
Aim status
Yammer
StatusNet
Posterious
TypePad
Stumble upon

If anyone thinks im missing any, or that any of the above are a complete waste of time for what im looking at, i would value your opinion.

If i look at the top 10 UK social media sites once you go past Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in and Bebo the rest obviously don't have as much market traction or are very specific to areas that are of little interest to my audience.

Opinions appreciated

Rich

Blossom · Mar 21, 2011

This is a tricky one because normally my view would be that it's best to focus on a few social media sites/profiles and do them well rather than not doing very much across a ton of sites. However, you might find a few surprises in that list that work better than you think, so experimentation is probably worthwhile.

It also depends a lot of the type of people you're trying to target. For example, I would avoid Friends Reunited unless you're targeting the 40+ age group.

I would also cut all the blogs from your list; no one will be viewing the profiles unless they're interested in the blog - and presumably you won't actually be blogging on those sites. If you're using the accounts to comment on others' profiles, then the first thing they will do is look at your blog, so it doesn't seem worth it.

I would stick with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as your main ones. Facebook and LinkedIn have a lot of opportunities in the Q&As and discussions as there are so many good groups/pages to join. Possibly another Q&A based site would be good as well, though I'm hesitant to recommend Yahoo Answers.

RedRichard · Mar 21, 2011

Jenni

Thanks for that, you clearly follow social media and i value your imput.

We would also be making the reccommendation to other recruiters to post job information to these sites, so you make a fair point about blogging sites being less relevent.

The strongest contenders for this i agree are:-
Facebook
Linked-in
Twitter

Thats a good point on the 40+ for FriendsReunited. Also, I think you are right, we should add Yahoo Answers.

If you had to pick 7 others from that list to post a job to, may i ask which would be your choice?.

Thanks in advance

Richard

Blossom · Mar 21, 2011

No problem

It's half my job, so I spend a lot of time on it!

It's difficult to pick 7 others without knowing more about who you're targeting. Rough age, education, anything else you don't mind mentioning?

RedRichard · Mar 21, 2011

Hi Jenni,

We work with various recruitment agencies and company HR departments

These clients want to connect with social media and what we are doing is providing a service that will send the job data to those social media outlets for them.

So the audience would be candidates of working age that may follow a social media link to a specifc job and then apply for it.

What we need to cover is all the avenues that they could use to do that. I understand some of these avenues are worthless unless they build on followers or build own their network up but our job is to get the information to the networks.

Im looking to avoid sites that are a total waste of time and only want to work with a strong nucleous of social media avenues that could deliver the client results.

Hope this helps.

Richard
P.S - Just out of interest, are you freelance, or working for a media interest?

Blossom · Mar 21, 2011

FB, Twitter and LinkedIn are definitely light years ahead of any others, but if pushed I would go for the following (no particular order):

- Reddit (would have to be in the form of some kind of news/promo articles though)
- Google Buzz
- Ecademy
- Plaxo
- Delicious (good way to do this would be to create an account of great resources such as interview tips to get people following/visiting)
- FriendFeed / Lifestream (more to pull everything together in one place than anything)

If there are any creative/thinking-outside-the-box jobs/recruiters/companies:

- Flickr (this would depend on the type of job, but you may be able to get around it by posting screenshots of companies/job listings or use of clever promo images)
- YouTube (short viral-style videos would work really well to promote companies rather than specific jobs)
- DeviantArt (would need some creative promo work)

Just my opinion though, could make plenty of different arguments for different sites. StumbleUpon might be okay too.

Hope that helps a bit anyway!

I work for a reasonably big UK company doing SEO and social media, but I do various freelance bits on the side.