More Employers Using Social Media To Promote Their Companies

More than one-third (35%) of employers in the U.S. use social media to promote their company, according to a new CareerBuilder survey.

Twenty-five percent of these employers are using social media to connect with customers and find new business, while others are using it to recruit and research potential employees (21%), or improve their employment brands (13%).

"As communication via social media becomes increasingly pervasive, organizations are harnessing these sites to help achieve a variety of business goals," said Jason Ferrara, vice president of corporate marketing for CareerBuilder.

"Social media allows organizations to communicate in ways that didn’t exist ten years ago, promoting their services and brands while also supplementing their recruitment strategy."

Businesses of all sizes and types use social media to promote their companies. Twenty-nine percent of organizations with 500 or fewer employees use social media, followed by 38 percent of companies with 501 to 1,000 employees and 44 percent of companies with more than 1,000 workers. Breaking it down by industry, leisure and hospitality led with 57 percent using social media to promote their business, followed by IT, (48%), retail (43%) and sales (41%).

When it comes to managing social media, 43 percent of employers have their marketing departments take care of their social media strategy, followed by public relations (26%) and human resources (19%). Twenty-five percent of employers have 1-3 people communication for their organization, while 7 percent have 4-5 people handle the work. Eleven percent have six or more people communicate for their company via social media and fifty-seven percent said they did not know.

Workers who come across company pages on social media sites shared what they would most like to see, including:

*Job listings-35%

*Q&A or fast facts about the organization-26%

*Information about career paths within the organization-23%