Week 5 Midterm EOC: Social Networks and Job Hunting

Using bloggers as brand ambassadors has become a new marketing strategy to reach a bigger demographic and show the product or service from a different perspective globally. Bloggers have created their own platform to document and display their talents/hobbies of travel, fashion, writing, music and food. Most bloggers become social with other people in the same cyber web industry and then develop a group of readers that follow their website and support their movement. “Companies such as JetBlue, Sony, Microsoft, and McDonald’s, among others, are now developing a new breed of brand ambassador programs that organize and supercharge consumer-to-consumer interaction about their brands” (Armstrong, Gary, Philip Kotler. Marketing: An Introduction, 10^th Edition. Pg. 143. Pearson Learning Solutions, 01/2010. VitalSource Bookshelf Online). Brand ambassadors have a way of speaking about a product to their readers without shoving an advertisement down their throat. Their blogs show the power of peer-to-peer communication and how to reach a person that you can trust to be honest in their product reviews. As a Sony brand ambassador you are given a camera for free and “They were then encouraged to show the camera to friends, associates, and anyone else who asked; hand out discount coupons; and blog weekly about their travel and picture-taking adventures on dedicated Sony microsite” (Armstrong, Gary, Philip Kotler. Marketing: An Introduction, 10^th Edition. Pg. 143. Pearson Learning Solutions, 01/2010. VitalSource Bookshelf Online). Some employers are looking to social networks like Facebook over LinkedIn post job listing for potential employees, it’s believed that candid’s are 50% more likely to apply though Facebook. “The company also plans to pilot a new Facebook application that will allow them to search for candidates on BranchOut Inc.'s Facebook app which, similar to BeKnown, builds a professional networking layer on top of Facebook and has more than 2.6 million monthly users, according to AppData.com” (http://online .wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903885604576490763…).