Social Media: It Drives Tri-Branding
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For recruiting, they use these social media: LinkedIn (78 percent), Facebook (55 percent), Twitter (45 percent), blogs (19 percent), and YouTube (14 percent).
Social media is also used as a branding tool. Tri-branding means using social media to link product and employment brand, and to get customers to sing your praises or live your brand.
When I work with new clients, I first help them define who they are. Why do people stay with their company? Why do people want to work for their company? Who are their stars? What are the common behaviors and traits their stars possess? I often ask them: "What do BMW, Apple and Southwest Airlines have in common? They are exceptional at linking employment and product brand. Apple hires the most creative people to make the most creative products. BMW hires people who are driving enthusiasts to build the ultimate driving machine. Southwest Airlines hires people who have fun in their DNA.
These three companies also excel at tri-branding. Beyond linking product and employment brand, they also get their customers to be brand ambassadors. For instance, I'm a Droid user, and I continue to be surprised at the number of iPhone friends who take delight at "trumping" my Droid apps with their own Apple apps. They're actually living the Apple brand.
To drive your tri-branding efforts, leverage social media in two key ways:
- Branding. Leverage social media to boost brand, to tweet, post, and blog job openings, and to share what a great place your company is.
- Communicating. Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y communicate differently. To engage and reach Gen Y employees, you need to speak their speak. You need to be sending text messages, tweeting, generating video pods to reach them.
Many companies fear the realistic downside of social media (employees saying the wrong thing, badmouthing the employer, inadvertently sharing private information). But if you want to engage and communicate with this generation, you must embrace social media by creating your own YouTube channel where your Gen Y employees articulate your firm's values. Have your employees join LinkedIn groups to share job opportunities and become your brand ambassadors. Hire people who are connected, and branding will be a chance to involve and engage your most socially connected employees.
About the Author:
Bob Kelleher has over 30 years as a Human Resources professional . Prior to founding the Employee Engagement Group, Bob was the Chief Human Capital Officer for AECOM, a fortune 500 global professional services firm of 45,000 employees. Bob has delivered this program to over 50 individual teams and thousands of team members and leaders resulting in hundreds of actionable business and performance improvement initiatives that resulted in positive change.
Bob is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Louder than Words - 10 Practical Employee Engagement Steps . . . that Drive Results. He has presented to and conducted training for many global companies, including Shell, NStar, TJX, Fidelity Investments, Unocal, Beacon, Balfour Beatty Construction, Millipore, Lawson Software, VHB, and BAE Systems. At the 2011 SHRM International Conference, he had the highest attendance for any speaker in his time slot. Participants at Bob's event's consistently rate him an average 4.8 out of 5.
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