A company can’t afford to be just any old company anymore. It must be a brand.

One company that took this relatively new concept of employment branding to the next level is Suncor.

What they found applies to many organizations interested in establishing their own unique employment brand - one that will set them apart from the competition in attracting the right talent:

• Employment branding begins with research into future hiring needs and trends as well as what people thought about the company

• Employment branding is different than product branding. In employment branding you are targeting specific groups of people who you want to identify with your company, you want them to join your company and become part of the culture.

• How you communicate your brand also requires careful consideration. It is critical that you identify and use language that your target group understands.

To find out more about how Suncor went about establishing their employment brand, check out this video (Firefox users need to install the following ActiveX compatibility plug-in: Windows Media Player ActveX plug-in / if your default browser is Firefox you may also simply copy and paste “http://broadband.bnn.ca/?vid=26653″ into an Internet Explorer browser) .

Are you using the web to attract new talent?

According to a January 2008 Warrillow study, the percentage of web-centric small business owners in the United States has risen to 45%, up from 24% in 2005.

Warrillow defines a web-centric small business as having an owner who considers his/her “Internet presence” (includes a web site, social network profile, etc.) to be important for driving business results.

The dramatic growth of the web-centric segment is being fuelled by a number of products that have come of age in the small business market over the past three years:

• Facebook has become an advertising medium for small businesses social networking.

• The Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing platforms can be navigated by a layperson in a career search.

• A LinkedIn profile is now more important than a business card for many entrepreneurs.

• Email deployment services like Constant Contact can send professional-looking emails to a small business owner’s customer/membership list.

How is your organization taking advantage of the Facebook Factor?

Do you have a project that requires input from a number of your staff? Are you struggling with the cost of traditional software that encourages online collaboration? Have you heard of wikis?

It’s not just for online encyclopedias: smart business owners use the new wiki software to encourage collaboration and save money.

A recent article in Fortune Small Business profiled a law firm with 30 employees that had switched from traditional and costly software to using a wiki which saved a lot of money.”The biggest reason that we’re switching is that the wiki is easier to use,” says the company owner. “If employees see a better way to organize or present information, they can just go ahead and do it with a wiki. Traditional software often requires a programmer.

At its simplest, a wiki is software that lets users work together to create and edit a collection of linked web pages. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is the best-known example - its 85,000 contributors have written, edited, and policed the content of more than nine million entries. Like Wikipedia, all wikis benefit from the network effect. The more people who use it, the theory goes, the better the quality of the information.

The transition to a wiki may not be without tension. Given the power to organize all documents, it is not uncommon for staff clashed over how to categorize and classify documents.As with many contentious entries on Wikipedia, the two sides can edit each other’s decisions repeatedly until they come to a compromise. It forces everybody to learn about each other’s job and that benefits everyone in the long run.

A Seattle-based financial investment company started a wiki for self-managed investment retirement funds. Users of the site read articles on how to manage retirement funds, and can edit the articles and post their own – the company does no editing. Another benefit – many readers are clicking on the link to the companies regular website. About 16% of those users become paying clients - more than double the conversion rate for those who find the company through search engines. “The results are undeniable, and the returns exponential,” according to the company president.

It appears that wikis can boost teamwork and collaboration, not to mention attracting potential clients and members.

Read the full article.