So you’ve started using social media to reach out to current and potential customers, but, what about your employees, or, more importantly, your future employees? How can you begin using social media tools to effectively tap into that unknown pool of talent?

We’ve assembled a list of the top four social tools that companies can use to attract potential employees.

1. Facebook allows you to connect with and recruit young professionals by maintaining a company page with the latest job information. By viewing the profiles of your fans, you can dig deeper into someone’s personality than a typical resume allows. If this doesn’t work, run a Facebook ad specifically targeting people with an age range and keywords.

2. Your Twitter followers offer a wealth of opportunity. Use your account to notify followers when a position opens in your company. With a few retweets you can reach hundreds of potentially qualified individuals (It works! I found this internship via Twitter.)

3. Scour LinkedIn for recruits in your area and industry at your leisure. User profiles detail past experiences, current jobs, and future goals. Many also include professional recommendations, which can give you insight to a potential employee’s work ethic and habits before meeting with them.

4. Post available positions on college or industry-specific message boards and online marketplaces like Craigslist. These online venues are becoming two-way streets of communication between employers and job-seekers. As an employer you can browse uploaded resumes and respond directly to the posts which interest you. And by searching industry-specific boards you can find those most passionate about their work.

The main point is to make the most of your current networks. You have invested time and effort into building a strong presence for your company online; don’t be afraid to take full advantage of what you built when recruiting applicants.

Here are a few college/professional job boards to get your recruitment process started.
http://www.collegejobboard.com/cjb/index.cfm
http://www.thejobplanet.com/
http://koda.us/
http://www.prsa.org/jobcenter

Yesterday, Google announced another game-changer in the world of online interaction. Their brand new Wave system will undoubtedly completely alter the way people communicate online for years to come.

Ben Parr, at Mashable has put together a great walkthrough of all of the features of Google Wave. In an attempt to not be redundant upon his article, I urge you to read his complete guide to Google Wave to get a full feel for all of the features Wave offers.

Google Wave gives users the opportunity to participate in real-time discussions with any number of people in their networks. What may begin as an email between two colleagues, can transform into a collaborative, wiki-type document that can be simultaneously contributed to by a whole team of people.

By creating a Wave, you are able to share photos, documents, links and videos by simply dragging and dropping them into the Wave. Due to the open API within Google Wave, you will be able to embed it into your blog or website where visitors are able to interact within the wave directly from your page.

“It is what email would look like if it were created today, not 40 years ago”, to quote Lars Rasmussen, the lead developer of Google Wave.

Google Wave is filled with great productivity tools like a very intuitive spell checker that takes the context of your sentence into consideration before determining if a word is misspelled, a very useful playback feature that shows all of the changes made to a document and by whom over time, and a translator that translates your message in real time as you are typing.

I strongly recommend you take the time to watch the live demonstration of Google Wave, you will see the power and potential that the system offers. Congratulations Google, you are the winner of 35 MGH WOM points for Wave!

Posted by Rusty

A few months ago, the talk of the town was Facebook’s interest in acquiring Twitter. It didn’t happen.  So as the cliché saying goes, “if you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em.” Ok, so maybe that’s not how it goes, but it seems that’s exactly what Facebook is attempting to do with their recently announced changes.

One of the more notable changes is to the homepage, which will now feature a real-time stream of content, as opposed to the old news feed which was only updated about every 10-mintues or so. Users will be able to easily post status updates, notes, images, or videos right from their homepage, via the “What’s on your mind?” box, instead of having to go into each individual application. When you do utilize this box, your information will be posted to your profile and the homepage of all of your friends.

However, unlike Twitter, this live stream can easily be sorted by groups, or application type, so users will be able to view content just from any subset of friends like family or coworkers from the homepage. Additionally, there’s a “highlights” section to the side which displays the most popular content among your friends.

Also announced today was the transition of pages to profiles, which will enable users to communicate with celebrities, politicians, and organizations as they would any other friend. The 5,000 maximum friend limit was also dropped, making Facebook another attractive option for celebrities and brands who have been turning to Twitter to connect with fans and consumers.

We, here at MGH WOM, give major props to Facebook for constantly re-inventing themselves in order to keep up with the competition and more importantly, to keep up with the ever-evolving way we communicate. Just over four years ago, Facebook was little more then an online directory. Now, it’s quickly becoming the “go-to” spot to connect and share all types of information with friends. Bravo, Facebook, Bravo.

If you’re not using Joongel yet, you need to. According to their About page, Joongel provides direct search results from the ten most viewed websites in a specific subject or subcategory.Here’s what it looks like:

Just use the search bar like you would on any other site. With Joongel, instead of getting the results for, say, just Google Images, or only Yahoo Answers, you get the results from the top 10 sites for that category. Also, running a general search allows you to search for your subject across every category and every site in that category.

What’s great about Joongel is that you can do it all in one window. It allows you to not only save time, but may also help in your brand monitoring efforts as you may come across content that you normally would not have.

Are you friends with your mom or dad on Facebook? Chances are if you aren’t already you will be soon! The face of social network users is changing and it includes a few more wrinkles.One particular group of adults tapping into Facebook, and other social media tools, are moms. A study done by MarketingVox, illustrates that moms are most interested in sites that connect them to other moms online. The study also shows that Generation Y moms are high involved in reading blogs, participating in online communities for moms, and creating and sharing videos.

New sites, created exclusively for moms, and parents in general, are popping up on a daily basis. These sites provide parents with a way to trade tips, swap family photos, and even create online journals. Below you will find the top new ways this audience is connecting online.

• Twittermoms -  a group of 3,900 moms who tweet. This site offers several sections includine a message boardogs.
• Totpsot - comprised of over 15,000 members, Totspot pegs itself as a site for parents to scrapbook, write journals and connect with other parents online.
• Clubmom - provides parents with a way to share photos and journal entries. Moms are also able to participate in their rewards program and online polls and blogs.
• MeetUp - with over 130,000 members nationwide, this site allows moms to connect online and off with other moms based on location.
• Family.com - a social network created by Disney that engages parents in conversations surrounding entertainment, food, coupons etc.

With their incredibly busy schedules, social networking sites give parents an easy way to connect with family and friends online. Moms and dads are hitting the social networks hard and everyone from advertisers to tech start-ups are taking notice.