If you’re an employer and you’re looking to have Monster spearhead your social media recruiting strategy, be prepared to shell out some major cash.
Companies that don’t have the time or resources to create a Facebook page or a Twitter profile with a jobs feed attached are asking job boards to do it for them. A post on Recruitment-blog.com describes the new social network package that Monster has put together, complete with public profiles on Facebook and Twitter, a Monster job feed to both sites, and social media ads.
According to the post, the profile pages can be customized with a logo, passwords, and admin interface. Monster is guaranteeing that if you incorporate social media ads on Facebook, you’ll receive at least 2 million impressions to help drive traffic to your site via a small banner ad.
Here’s the pricing: $12,000 for the initial set-up and $1500 per site if you just want the Monster job feed. Additional social media ads can be purchased for $650.00 per 1 million impressions.
What’s a little strange about this whole package deal is that Monster doesn’t have a Twitter profile or a Facebook fan page, unlike CareerBuilder, who has several employees tweeting daily through an employer channel and a jobs channel, plus they regularly take advantage of an ongoing partnership with Facebook. Their fan page boasts almost 50,000 members. CB personnel keep the content fresh by adding articles, videos, and featuring employers.
Designing a Facebook fan page is fairly easy and free. Once this has been achieved, you can create your own advertising campaign and decide the most you want to spend each day, when you want to stop and start your ads, and whether you want to pay based on cost per impressions (CPM) or cost per click (CPC).
What do you think? Is the price well-worth the labor and the added bonus of having a Monster job feed included on Twitter and Facebook, or do you think it would be cheaper and more practical to do it yourself?
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June 10th, 2009 at 11:06 am
You have really put a spotlight on the difference between monster and careerbuilder – a very interesting read!
If it were me, I’d have serious reservations about outsourcing community building. Sounds like an invitation to a serious backfire…
June 10th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Social Media is about transparency and community outreach.
It’s not blasting another set of press releases to more people. If you think it is, take a step back.
If someone is promising lots of traffic to your soon to be social media marketing campaign, ask them what results they have gotten in the past (especially in this case, since Monster doesn’t show up in any social media radar).
If Monster is such a great solution at doing social media, where is their own FaceBook and other social media platforms. I haven’t heard or seen much of them on Twitter. Knowing how they like the spotlight, why don’t they actually develop an internal strategy for themselves, first, instead of experimenting with client’s money?
There are already lots of great companies doing fantastic Twitter Job Solutions, including JobCircle, CareerBuilder (twitter job alerts), HashJobs (from RecruitingBlogs’s Jason Davis), and many others.
If you are considering a Twitter and Social Media strategy, consider who you are working with first and their previous successes.
Here are some questions your can ask your vendor:
What successes have you had, and can I contact them?
What number of hires came from the campaign, over what time period?
What were the quality of hires from the campaign?
Starting there, you should be able to get a better feeling about the ROI.
If you are considering outsourcing a social media strategy, I would take a step back, do a little more research, talk to other clients who have implemented, talk to a consultant, or anyone who is actively involved in social media (ask any Internet Recruiting Blogger), before you buy.
Social Media can either backfire, or fall flat on its face, both of which will leave lingering doubts going into the future.
Jonathan Duarte
SEO4Jobs.com
June 10th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
“$650.00 per 1 million impressions”
ok, lets do some simple calculation
average clic rate on a FB ad of 0,05% (not scientific, just based on experiments)
50 cents a clic
1 000 000 impressions would drive 500 clics and costs $250 :)
that’s assuming you already paid $12k for setup + $1500 per month + your jobs on monster
June 10th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I see no reason to pay 12k for something you can create for free! If you dont know how to effectively set up a facebook or twitter page, then Google it!
You can save yourself a lot of time and dollars. With Monster.coms horrible customer service that knows what they are doing about 75% of the time, I just cant see how they would even be able to service this product.
Monster.com just seems to not get it. Where is the value to the
customer? There is none; as its all about the dollars.
Screw CareerBuilder too!
June 10th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Customers would be crazy to pay pricing like that! We have already set up vertical Twitter Channels with full Twitter integration into JobCircle for some of the nations’ largest and widely known companies, and have a backlog of new orders that is two weeks out! The cost? Under $3K with unlimited tweets, job postings, job distribution to 40+ aggregators and literally hundreds of thousands of candidates to search through…and more!
Here’s just a few we’ve done so far:
@estensonlog – Estenson Logistics
@georgeweston – George Weston Bakeries
@jmwallerjobs – JM Waller Associates
@libertyjobs – Liberty Personnel Services
@qvcjobs – QVC
@softwaremethods – Software Methods
@yellowbrickjobs – Yellow Brick Financial
And you can also check out our own channels at http://www.jobcircle.com/twitter
June 10th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I think it’s too expensive.
From a jobseeker standpoint, Monster is only good for recruiters to find you. I and many of my friends (and their friends) never had luck getting a job through Monster.
Monster in its early days is fabulous for a jobseeker – now it’s just another overated source for jobs. It’s a good source to know what positions companies are looking for. It’s not a good source if you want results — real results! — for your job searches. Good economy or bad many people I know, including myself, never got an interview for all the jobs we applied for at Monster.
‘Don’t think Monster’s social media strategy would work for people who want real results.
June 10th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Very interesting. We recently launched both Twitter and Facebook US recruitment pages. Initially I was in favor of Monster or CareerBuilder creating it, but now that I know how simple it was….SO glad I did it myself. On Facebook the only difficulty is adding content. My plan is to add a little each day about our businesses. Become a friend/follower: http://twitter.com/riotintocareers – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rio-Tinto-Careers-US/81789028426
June 10th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Vanessa,
Are you serious? Did you do any research before writing this? Are you paid by CareerBuilder? Or is it the same old Monster hating here on the “Cheez”?
It took me 2 minutes to locate 3 Monster Twitter profiles:
@MonsterCareers
@MonsterUX
@MonsterWW
Not to mention the numerous employee Twitter accounts I saw. The people at the “Cheez” need to learn how to report the facts rather than simply a one sided view.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
This just goes to show you that the Monster just does not get it when it comes to social media. 12K for something an employer can do for free and why would a employer want to drive traffic to Monster.com when really they want to drive a job seeker to their own career site. Hmmm. I don’t get how they think this benefits an employer.
Besides it’s not the Facebook page, Twitter account or any other widget or gadget itself, it’s the strategy that goes into using these tools. How is the organization going to use it as part of their recruitment strategy. This is what is valuable to employers and their recruiters.
June 11th, 2009 at 11:58 am
I think it is funny you never mention CB, they pitched this to me, I think it was more.
The difference I see is that you can get the job feed from Monster or CB with their page. I am sure they will sell this to you directly at some point.
Bernard Hodes will build you a page as well (they just pitched this to me), not sure the cost though.
June 11th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Monster and CB have pitched me with social media. Hotjobs always says they can reach people with their newspaper network. Realmatch is pitching putting our logo on their network and on NBC television locally, Linkedin says they reach everyone so post there. Lots of offers in the market. I’ll tell you one thing I know for sute, craigslist is crap.
June 11th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Wow, everyone needs to get their facts straight. Monster doesn’t have any relationship with Facebook, so the ads they’re pushing are the self bid mostly ineffective ones. Of course anyone can build a page but that’s not the point. A Facebook page has to be updated and made relevant daily, you need to be able to create fan networks, upload videos and more. No big deal they’re feeding jobs, so what who cares?
I do know that CareerBuilder has the exclusive recruitment relationship with Facebook, and the only one able to resell content rich home page ads. In addition they will project manage the entire site for you and do all the work, and that’s worth something.
Monster, JobCircle, they all blow, and for god sake Hodes is the worst, they’re just blood sucking dopes.
June 11th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
CB has a partnership wth facebook and is the only authorized reseller… my targeted impressions have brought so much value and marketing positioning to my company. Thank you CB you, I would’ve paid more for the return I’ve gotten in only 4 months!
June 11th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
“Unlimited tweets” is a funny phrase.
June 11th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
To clarify, Monster has been active on both Twitter and Facebook with our Keep America Working Tour. Follow the Tour on Twitter @MonsterKAW and join us on Facebook(http://www.facebook.com/pages/Monster-Keep-America-Working/87877000648?ref=ts).
In an effort to Keep America Working, Monster kicked off an innovative, interactive networking job fair Tour in March, connecting people with local job opportunities throughout the U.S. Unlike traditional job fairs, the KAW Tour is free to Monster.com employers and all job seekers, provides tips & career advice in live presentations for seekers on site and much, much more. Thus far, we’ve visited 33 cities and will hit 100+ cities by the end of this year.
Additionally, MonsterTRAK, dedicated to preparing college students & recent grads to enter the job market and find the right job, has also been active on Twitter @MonsterTRAK, Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Monster-Keep-America-Working/87877000648?ref=ts#/MonsterTRAK?ref=ts) and LinkedIn Groups(http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1846319).
Much more to come with our social media efforts, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, connect with us on Twitter & Facebook.
– Kathy O’Reilly
Monster.com
June 12th, 2009 at 12:45 am
Monster is still missing the point of Social Media. Social Media is not going to be the place for big job boards to squeeze as much money out of corporations as possible. It changes everything about the pricing models that they are used to. The cost-per-connect is much cheaper, so I’m not sure if they are going to be able to compete. This post strengthens my blog a couple weeks ago even more:
http://www.cheezhead.com/2009/06/01/the-rise-and-fall-of-monster/
We’re the largest Twitter Job board in the world right now, and have no plans on even coming close to the pricing that Monster is proposing….
June 12th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I just did a search on facebook. Careerbuilder definitely knows what they are doing with many fan pages, the top one having almost 50,000 fans.
Search Monster.com and its dismal with 126 fans. In fact, the subject line for “type” says: just for fun–totally pointless.
Let’s look at this from a candidates perspective. Monster is not going to have a presence here and would not be helpful to them. The “innovative” campaign would only work unless a candidate specifically searches for keep america working, it’s the second result. It’s a cool campaign though! just needs to be positioned and targeted better.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Yes Careerbuilder has some very smart people working there. They paid facebook 20 million dollars and they have 50,000 fans…this is ROI focused marketed for sure. $400 per fan…totally brilliant. Some of those 50,000 fans might actually take a break from LOLing and ROFLing to visit careerbuilder. Totally amazing how they can strech 20 million.
June 14th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Uh, didn’t MonsterTrak close up shop? Facts are Monster has no partnership with Facebook and can only sell ads that aren’t home page ads.
Monster will pretty much hire anyone as a sales rep, they’ll hire car salesmen if given a resume that is spell checked.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:47 am
If you have to spend $12k+ on this, then your company should go out of business or is run by someone who has been living in a hole for a while.
I agree with Mr. Duarte that “Social Media is about transparency and community outreach.”
Also NO ONE has found a way to measure the ROI on social media, so if Monster found the holy grail then it’s sure worth more than $12k+… but highly unlikely.
June 16th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
You can use an outside source to create your social media profile pages if you lack the time, technology or creative staff to do so in-house, but you must make sure that you have a company representative willing and able to spend the time necessary to communicate with “friends” and “followers.” We create Facebook and Twitter pages for our clients, and even provide on-going maintenance (adding photos, videos, content) but we encourage our clients to have a company representative participate in the conversation. “Friends” and “followers” are expecting a voice from the company, not a PR firm and they will detect if it’s not an authentic voice.
Make sure that your profile pages are not branded with logos and content if they are done by an outside source.
Make sure your strategy for social media / social networking starts with the question “what is your goal with social media?” I don’t recommend just jumping on a site to be there – have a clear strategy and ask your agency to help you create that strategy. Not all social media sites are the same and you need to have a plan for your company.
Ginger Dodds
Shaker Advertising
http://www.twitter.com/gingerdodds
ginger.dodds@shaker.com
June 19th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Shaker, TMP, Hodes, JWT, these companies are all non thinkers and just resell product. Shaker wouldn’t know a social media strategy from job posting, which is about all they’re capable of “mocking” up.
June 24th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
bruzzy,
U seem to hav an opinion abt a lotta big company’s as if they r bein run by jst one person. Wonder who yer workin for?
I mean your critsizing the company’s that hav an employee size of some thousands…….
giv yer brains some rest n chil out man!
in short – GET A LIFE!
June 26th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
the funny-named people seem kinda angry. dammit all.