Employer branding through Social Networking Sites : "An Explorative Research towards the Benefits and Limitations of Social Networking Usage for Employer Branding Purposes"

Social networking sites today can be seen as the most utilized services within Web 2.0, in which Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace have attracted hundreds of millions of users which integrated these sites into their daily practices. Because of the large number of individuals active on SNS, it is also frequently used as a tool for promoting purposes within businesses. So has social networking sites already have proven to be an effective tool for the branding of products and services. Even more recently SNS is increasingly used as a tool for promoting the employer brand, referring to the image of desirability and uniqueness as an employer.This study is the first one to expose the experiences of practitioners regarding the usefulness of social networking sites for employer branding. The aim of the research is to help businesses to better understand when, and when not to use social networking sites for their employer branding purposes. To shed light on this subject, this study applied the Delphi method with a panel of 13 (employer) branding practitioners through a three-round issue identification and consensus-building process. Moreover, the usefulness of SNS for employer branding purposes are suggested and ranked in four areas: the benefits, limitations, conditions and the usage of SNS for employer branding.