Week 5 EOC: Social Networks and Job Hunting

Brand Ambassadors: Employing Real Customers to Get Out the Word.
Marketers are now working to harness the newfound communications power of their everyday customers, turning them into influential brand ambassadors. Marketers select their brand ambassadors very carefully, based on customers’ devotion to a brand and the size of their social circles. The ambassadors then tap into friends, family, groups, and broader audiences through personal conversations, blogs, live events, and online social media. They sometimes search blogs and online social networks to identify individuals who are already functioning as brand advocates. The ambassadors are trained with real brand knowledge to go along with their passion for the brand. For the ambassadors, it’s often a labor of love more than a paying job. Rewards include product samples, gifts, discounts, and token cash payments. Perhaps more important to many brand enthusiasts, they get insider access to company information, such as new products or services in the works.

Recruiters Turn To Facebook to Find Candidates.
Facebook's use as a job-recruitment tool remains small, but its appeal may be growing. Some recruiters say they have all but eliminated their spending on job boards, which can charge a few hundred dollars per job posting, depending on volume. In addition to posting jobs and videos of current employees on its Facebook page, the company has recruiters and other employees find user groups and join discussions. Facebook hires account for less than 1% of the total hires companies are making, according to Jobs2Web, which helps companies track the sources of candidates and hires.
The company also plans to pilot a new Facebook application that will allow them to search for candidates on BranchOut Inc.'s Facebook app which, similar to BeKnown, builds a professional networking layer on top of Facebook and has more than 2.6 million monthly users, according to AppData.com. Candidates have been 50% more likely to apply to positions they found through Facebook than through other means,