Help Wanted: Strategies For
Surviving The Social Media
Revolution
Sarah Rotman Epps
Analyst
Forrester Research
September 8, 2008
Have you rated your CEO today?
Steve Jobs:
90% approve
Jerry Yang:
41% approve
Source: Employees of each company on Glassdoor.com
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George Colony:
59% approve
Consumers trust information from each other
“How much do you trust the following information sources?”
[selected 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale]
Email from people you know
77%
Ratings/reviews
60%
Portals/search engines (e.g., Google)
50%
The Yellow Pages (not online)
48%
Print newspapers
Social networking profiles from people you
know
Online content sites (e.g., NYTimes.com)
46%
39%
Print magazines
39%
TV
38%
43%
Wikis
33%
Radio
29%
Email from a company or brand
28%
Direct mail
Message board posts
21%
Online classifieds
20%
Social networking profiles from a company
18%
Personal blog
18%
Base: US online consumers
4
25%
Company blog
16%
Source: Forrester’s North American Media and Marketing Online Survey, Q2 2008
Entire contents © 2008 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Glassdoor lets job seekers get the inside scoop
on companies – free and anonymously
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Wikis are blowing the lids off hiring processes
Academic wikis benefit
job seekers by providing
more visibility into the
process, and make
universities accountable.
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TwitHire: Job seeking for micro-bloggers
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Definition
► Groundswell
A social trend in which people use
technologies to get the things they need
from each other, rather than from
traditional institutions like corporations
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The groundswell has a material impact on your
business
job.com
• Job seekers are getting harder to reach
• It’s hard to know where to connect with them
• They can’t get everything they need from you
• Advertisers have more alternatives
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Three strategies for success
1. Aggregate content and functionality needed to
meet key job seeker goals
2. Syndicate broadly to engage job seekers
wherever they are
3. Use social technologies to get job seekers to
engage with you -- and each other
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Entire contents © 2008 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
1) Aggregate content and functionality to meet
key consumer goals
job.com
• You know your audience
better than anybody
• Leverage the
relationship to be the
first resource
• Creates more page
views to drive ad
impressions
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Consider aggregating content from blogs like
BlogHer
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2) Syndicate broadly to engage consumers
wherever they are
job.com
• Syndication means going to
where your readers spend most
of their time
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LinkedIn
Blogs
SimplyHired syndicates content to LinkedIn
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3) Use social technologies to get consumers to
engage with you -- and each other
job.com
• You become part of the
community you serve
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Dan Black, Director of Campus Recruiting for
Ernst & Young
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Ernst & Young talks to college students on
Facebook
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Idealist energizes job seekers to spread its message
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Massify: Video resumes for the YouTube generation
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Forrester’s four-step approach to the groundswell
P
O
S
T
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People
Assess your customers’ social activities
Objectives
Decide what you want to accomplish
Strategy
Plan for how relationships with customers will change
Technology
Decide which social technologies to use
Entire contents © 2008 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
One in five US online consumers use job boards at
least weekly
“How often do you use job boards (e.g., monster.com)?”
5%
6%
6%
At Least Daily
At Least Weekly
12%
At Least Monthly
71%
Less Than
Monthly
Never
Base: US online consumers
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Source: Forrester’s North American Technographics Benchmark Survey, 2008
Entire contents © 2008 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Social
Technographics
Ladder
US adults
Use job
boards
14%
21%
16%
25%
Collectors
11%
24%
Joiners
22%
36%
Spectators
43%
61%
Inactives
49%
30%
Creators
Critics
Profile your
customers at
groundswell.forrester.com
Base: US online adults and US online adults
that use job boards
Source: Forrester’s North American
Technographics Benchmark Survey, 2008
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Gen Y leads the way, but consumers of all ages are
active in social media
Percentage of each generation that belongs to each Social Technographics group:
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Creators
Critics
Collectors
Joiners
Spectators
Inactives
Gen Y
(18-28)
Gen X Younger Older Seniors
(29-42) Boomers Boomers (64+)
(43-52) (53-63)
Base: US online consumers
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Source: Forrester’s North American Technographics Benchmark Mail Survey, Q1 2008
Entire contents © 2008 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Gen Y’s behavior is the future of job seeking
Newspapers
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Online
portals/classifieds
Entire contents © 2008 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social media
sites
Aggregators
Social media affects advertising and the economics of
your business
• Impacts the content and context of advertising
• Expands the insight you have about your
audience—and the solutions you can provide for
advertisers
• Creates new partners and M&A targets
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Recommendations
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•
Empower employers with tools to participate in the
conversation
•
Pursue strategies of aggregation, syndication, and
social engagement
•
Use POST as a guide for your social initiatives
Entire contents © 2008 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Thank you
Sarah Rotman Epps
+1 617.613.6249
[email protected]
Download a copy of this presentation at:
www.forrester.com/iaewsfallmembercongress
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Entire contents © 2008 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.