Getting it Right: Social Network Recruiting

I've been spending a lot of time working on some new products designed to help recruiters with social media recruiting. While we - and most sites- have many of the basic tools (Facebook Share, Auto-Twitter posts, etc), there is always something new to add or develop.

Part of the process includes research. And In spending a good deal of time looking at what other companies are doing with social network recruiting, I've made one simple conclusion: There are a lot of people selling you social network recruiting who simply don't know what they are talking about. (or at the very least leave you with the impression they don't have a grasp of the system they are selling)

Take, for example, "Company A": They refer to posting a "Status Update" on your Facebook page as "e-mailing". What?!? Maybe I'm hyper-sensitive to this because I've been using Facebook since it's inception in 2004. But there is a crevasse between what it means to post a "status update" and "e-mailing". In my mind, this company loses all credibility by pontificating about social networking when they don't even 'get it' themselves.

Then, take "Company B": Their entire marketing campaign around Facebook refers to the networking site as "FaceBook". This is a small thing - but it is being made by a big company. Again: If you are going to try to tell people how to use "social networking tools" - you should probably get the name of the big fish right. What if I tried telling you I was a guru on Twitter and then said you send "Tweats" rather than "Tweets"? You'd move along to another self-proclaimed 'guru'.

These are small things that, right now, are probably not making a huge difference. Many of the the people venturing into the "social networking" scene probably have a less-than-fine-tuned knowledge of how it all works. But beware: these little things will likely come back to haunt.

As more people become more "social-media-savvy", the margin for error grows exponentially smaller. Being extremely careful about what we can promise customers in the social media realm has become paramount. When doing the social media 'thing' - we want to make sure we get it right. Because little slip-ups can cost credibility.... especially in a social media-savvy world.