By Jennifer Openshaw

If you're wondering how to add value to your company, you're not alone.

"We're all trying to save our jobs," said Joshua Donahue, of the ad agency Omnicom, at a conference I recently attended.

Tapping into social-media sites might be one way to help your company - and in the process boost your own career.

As I said in previous columns, you can use social media to brand yourself. It's also plenty easy to make social-networking mistakes that can put your job at risk.

But social-media sites also can make you more valuable on the job. You only need to look around or talk to your friends to know the pink slips are still coming. But you hardly have to be an ad agency to have an impact. You can bring business to your company on your own.

Charlene Li, an expert on emerging technologies and social media, says it makes sense for employees, whether at junior levels or at the top, to consider adding value through social media.

"It's very cheap to do social media, so it's a way for a company - when they don't have a lot of marketing dollars - to do different things," she said.

But that's not the whole story: You have to do it right. "Marketing has fundamentally changed, so companies have to work even harder to get someone to buy their product," Li said. "Just putting your product in a new medium isn't going to work; you have to talk to customers in a different way through these different channels."

So what are companies doing and what can you take away? Here are four great examples.

 
   Engaging Employees

Intuit Inc.'s (INTU) TurboTax not only embraces consumers, but also encourages employees to "get out there and engage," said David Binkowski, an executive at MS&L Worldwide, a public-relations firm. Binkowski has a distinctive title: senior vice president of word-of-mouth marketing.

A handful of TurboTax employees maintain their own Twitter accounts and use them to follow people, address complaints, and promote new features. Internal as well as external tax experts get into the community and engage in the discussion to help software users address tax-filing issues. During tax season, the community and all of its questions and answers are fed into the software product, so you can ask someone as part of "live community:" "I'm getting this message - can you tell me why?" The community is answering, and the company no longer needs a spokesman.

Can your company's employees be used as evangelists? The experts I spoke to all agree that failing to leverage them is probably a big mistake.

 
   Engaging Users

Multiple examples from Google show how Web developers are encouraged to use its open-source platform to build new applications. Then there's MyStarbucksIdea.com where you can share and vote on ideas.

And there's business-intelligence firm QlikTech. Go onto Qliktech's online community and you'll find folks from all over the world providing technical support to one another and, at the same time, using the community to show off their product. For the company, "it's a potential sales tool because they can now use that community to show potential customers that other experts are already engaged," Binkowski said.

Why is this so valuable to a company? Because it's a heck of a lot easier and less expensive than putting up a multi-million dollar ad campaign and hoping people will click through and ultimately buy.

 
   Overcoming Barriers To Buying

Today, most companies find it harder to sell their products, not just because everyone's pulling back on spending, but because of the many messages we're barraged with daily.

Women's clothing company Dress Barn Inc. (DBRN) - known more for its stores than in the online world - has suffered from a "misconception that it's their mother's store," Binkowski said. To overcome the hurdle, the company plans to leverage its fan base and encourage them to show off their newly purchased outfits through social-media channels. Fans will be encouraged to show off their new look and get feedback from peers.

The upshot: The company takes its offline brand to the Internet and, as a result, will expand its brand and customer base.

 
   Offering Reasons To Return

Coca-Cola Co. (KO) gives perhaps one of the best examples of the ultimate social-media program: No effort at all.

With some 3.4 million fans on Facebook, its social-media efforts were started not by some Coke executive, but by Coke fans who created its Facebook page. Recognizing the value of letting real fans serve as its ambassadors to the world, Coke - which technically owns the page - decided to let them continue managing the Facebook page while it also can post its own new promotions.

"Coke posted a comment that they have the best fans in the world and 15,000 commented," Li said. "You could never do that before social media."

Hopefully these ideas may spark some ideas of your own for your employer. Don't forget that no matter where you are within your organization, there's no question that you can add value to your company. If not now, soon your employer will recognize the power of the new world of social marketing. You have a chance to lead the way.

Jennifer Openshaw, a nationally recognized financial commentator, is author of "" and founder of , which offers a youth leadership program at the United Nations. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter @jopenshaw or email at jennifer@familyfn.com.

-Jennifer Openshaw; 415-439-6400; AskNewswires@dowjones.com