Wikipedia, a social media success which has been proven to be as reliable as the Encyclopaedia Britanica, describes Social Media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” Social media can take many different forms, including collaborative projects, blogging, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual communities. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few.
Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics says Social Media “are fundamentally changing the way businesses and consumers behave, connecting hundreds of millions of people to each other via instant communication. This is a massive socio-economic shift that is fundamentally changing the way consumers and companies communicate and interact with each other.”
To compliment his book Erik has produced a fascinating You Tube video called Social Media Revolution with some powerful facts about social media.
To highlight a few stats:
• 96% of new millenials have joined a social network
• Facebook has topped Google for weekly traffic in the US
• The highest growing segment on Facebook is 55 to 65 year old females
• 80% of companies use social media for recruitment with 95% of those using LinkedIn particularly
Erik feels “we don’t have a choice on whether we do social media or not, the question is how well we do it” So is Social media a fad or a fundamental shift in the way we communicate? Well the common thought is that if your business is embracing social media now then it is likely to still exist in 5 years, so that’s reason enough for us @ Frog Recruitment. It is clear by the way we have brought social media into our everyday and business lives that it is here to stay, so we have decided to embrace it rather than try to bury our heads in the sand and hope it goes away. It’s a continuous learning curve but we’re excited by the opportunities and possibilities it presents both in recruitment and for our business in general.
