Originally posted on the SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Blog. If you missed the 1st part and 2nd part, check them out: Job Ad Posting Distribution: Rise of Niche Job Boards & Job Ad Posting Distribution: Job Search Engines.

For the third part in this series, we will be taking a look at Social Networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and the benefits of utilizing them in your recruitment marketing campaigns. Social Networks are becoming a popular space for companies to navigate and experiment with their brands and products. Marketers and Recruiters alike are working hard to figure out what works and what doesn’t work in this space as the potential of social networks as a community building and customer interaction tool are too good to pass up.

So what are the attributes that make social networks a possible game-changer in the industry? Here are a few of the major benefits that social networks provide:

Lasting Relationships - All Social Networks are relationship based. Users that interact with you or your brand do so because they receive something from the relationship (great content, humor, news, insight, job opportunities, etc.) Building relationships with individuals can be difficult to do, but once you build them you should have these relationships for life (unless you do something to really screw it up.)

Viral Effects - Social Networks have a rabid sharing culture. If you produce remarkable content or post a fantastic job opportunity, be sure to expect this content to spread like WildFire in these social networks. With every job you post or great recruiting content you produce, you have an opportunity to have this content go viral. It’s extremely hard to produce this content (and you don’t get to choose the content that is shared, the community does that) but when it does happen you reap quite the reward.

No Monetary Cost - Social Networks are free from a cost sense (although to be successful there is a huge time cost). Due to this you can fail numerous times without it hitting your bottom line. Experimentation is encouraged in social media and is necessary to be successful in using it.

2 Way Interaction - While you’ll see application numbers and resumes come in from job boards and job search engines, you won’t see immediate responses from job seekers. Social media enables you to receive immediate responses and feedback to the jobs you post. On top of that, it also enables you to have conversations with online job seekers. If they share or respond to your job post, you can immediately reach out to them and form a relationship on-line to gauge their interest.

Social Networks / Media enable you to connect with possible candidates better and create relationships with candidates that can last a lifetime at little to no monetary cost. The initial work to form these relationships can be extremely hard but the positive long time impact of this work make it an exciting and intriguing sourcing and recruiting method to include in your recruitment marketing plan.

Most importantly, remember to collect recruitment metrics to measure how well all your job ads do, whether they are on job boards (major & niche), job search engines or social networks. And see for yourself what job ad distribution portals are most effective in bringing in high quality candidates for your company.

About the Author: Chris is the Marketing Analyst for SmashFly Technologies. SmashFly provides a recruitment marketing platform that enables companies to easily launch and more importantly measure their recruiting campaigns online.