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How Employers Can Create a Professional Online Presence using Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites are increasingly used by professionals who are searching for jobs. And because that’s where the employees are, employers are beginning to use social networking sites to find the people that they want to hire to work for them. But in order to do this, the employers need to have a presence on the social networking sites. It can be difficult to craft a presence for an entire business within the context of the sites. Difficult, but not impossible. In fact, it’s not only possible but it’s also critical if you’re going to want to hire the best people. After all, just like you’re checking out their social networking profiles to see how legitimate they seem, they’ll be looking at yours to see if they really want to work for your business.

The main thing to remember is that your social networking profiles should similar to … but also different from … your business website. On the one hand, it should have some of the same basic information so that potential employees can easily see what your business is all about. On the other hand, the social networking site can provide much more up-to-date and almost personal information than would be appropriate on your company’s website. You’ll want to start with providing the basic information in your profile and then use the other tools of the social networking sites to add fresh information.

The first thing that you’ll do is to set up your profile. You have to choose at this point whether you are going to set it up as an individual profile representing a business or as a business profile. In other words, are you going to be on AllFreelanceWork.com or Facebook.com as “John Doe, representative of Company X” or are you going to be on there as “Company X”? If you’re going to be an individual, you’ll include a professional headshot photo of yourself. If you’re there as a company, you should use the company logo as your photo and then include professional photos of all key people in the company as appropriate (depending on how many images are allowed by each site).

Next, fill in all of the information as appropriate to the company. This is where you’ll put essentially the same information as you have on your website. However, you should try to phrase it in a new and refreshing manner. That way, when people follow the links from the social networking site to your website, they won’t feel like they’re reading the exact same thing over again. You should also include some information about why you’re on the site. Will you be hiring through the site? Do you want to update people about new products? Are you interested in collaborating with other companies? Let people know what you’re all about.

To get credibility on these sites, your company will need to have contacts. No one wants to befriend a new company that has no contacts. Go through your Rolodex (which is hopefully actually an online address book these days) and ask every one that you know to join your online social network. The more connections that you have, the more professional you appear. Always add any new contacts that you make. And regularly invite strangers on the site to network with you as well. Take the development of your profile seriously if you want to be taken seriously as a professional business on the site.

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