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Today we’re talking about all things social media, and specifically six key strategies that you want to consider as you move forward with your social media throughout the rest of this year.
The pandemic has created many shifts in how people interact with one another and how people utilise online portals, online media. You only need to look at the growth trajectories of social media channels such as LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook to realise how vital it is that you don’t just use social media to upload your latest job.
Yes, of course, I’m sure you want to do that too. However, remember that social media is often the first place that people will come across you. They may not know you and your organisation. Many recruiters that I speak to want to have more clients this year, and they want to get in front of high-quality candidates. Social media is likely to be the first place where people enter the buying cycle when talking to you.
1. Share Valuable Content
First of all, let me talk about the relevance of adding content and what sort of content you might want to think about when it comes to social media. Remember that as a recruiter, as a staffing business owner, you need to be sharing content that is relevant for your market and at the same time adding advice and insight. The great thing about the recruitment sector is it’s so rich when it comes to utilising content marketing as a vehicle for you and your message.
Because if you think about it: from building a talent pipeline through to developing your career, there is so much advice that you can give to someone.
Think about what is relevant to your market. What do you need to be talking about? What insights can you be sharing with people as well? We’re in a situation where people are being made redundant that haven’t been out on the active job market for many years.
Share information about developing your career, writing a CV, and performing well at an interview.
And similarly, for your clients and the new clients you want to attract, share your knowledge and expertise and insights.
2. Automation
Number two is automation. You might be thinking about whether to put live information out there or automate your posts.
The answer is to do both.
The reason I say that is because something might happen that will spark an organic post from you, which you can share ‘live’. You might see something on the TV, or you have a conversation with somebody, and that great thought or piece of information could be lost if you don’t get it out there right away.
The great thing about social media is there are many, many different types of software out there that you can use. There’s a great new piece of software called Paiger that many recruiters are using now, which you can use to post relevant recruitment news and job adverts to your social media channels.
You can also use something like Hootsuite. Hootsuite is great if you’re a smaller organisation. We use MeetEdgar, which is fantastic because you can put posts into different categories. You can send it out just in time, and you can also automate posts.
One of the things about being a recruiter is that no two days are the same. You get incredibly busy, and then suddenly you think, “Oh dear, I haven’t got any social media out there. I need to get something out.”
That’s the benefit of having an automated system; so you can automate some of your content, and your channel is never left to run dry.
Make sure that you have a range of content that adds value to your brand. Some of this can be automated, and it doesn’t have to be war and peace. It might just be a couple of sentences that add value for someone that’s reading it.
3. Use Images and Hashtags
The next thing to do is use images and hashtags.
Last week I talked about multiple modalities and how important it was to remember this with your marketing. Visual media can stop people in their tracks.
Rather than just putting a heavily dense piece of text content out there, make sure there is a relevant image related to what you’re sharing. It will make a massive difference.
In a recent training session with one of our programs, we talked about getting attention. We did a whole training session on the science of getting attention, and using imagery are central to this.
There’s plenty of places where you can buy images online, and I know some pieces of software give them away for free.
A top tip here; if you are on Facebook or LinkedIn, these websites are very ‘blue’. So when you use a colour that’s a real contrast, this will make your post stand out and stop people momentarily as they read your piece of content.
Hashtags are great because people follow specific hashtags and check them regularly to see new posts with the tags they’re following.
You’ll notice we often tag our posts with recruitment, marketing, and lead generation because those are terms people are searching for. You can even go online and find out the most popular hashtags on LinkedIn that might be relevant for your market.
4. Tag People
Number four is to remember to tag people.
Yes, this can be overdone, but if you are sharing something out into your market, and it’s relevant to someone else that you know, maybe an influencer in your market, then I’d suggest you tag them.
Even LinkedIn will tell you; you will get more views on this post if you tag XYZ.
If you’ve got a great piece of content that you know is relevant to someone in particular, tag them, and it will appear on their feed. They may like or comment or your post; if you get a like from an influencer in the market, that can really help you too.
5. Keep Consistent
Consistency is absolutely key.
That’s one of the reasons I talked about automation because you want something going out every single day on social media. This helps to promote you, your brand and your expertise as a recruiter and an authority in your sector.
Often when we first start working with a client, we’ll go and have a look at their social media. It’s not uncommon to notice that they post a couple of times a month on their LinkedIn company page rather than a couple of times a day; it should be more around that level of posting.
You might think, oh, gosh, well, it seems like a lot of hard work; how do I manage to map all this out?
6. Create an SOP
The way you map it out is by having a process. We recommend creating an SOP, a standard operating procedure that will speed up the process of writing social media exponentially for you.
Let’s say you’re going to share twice a day over this month, so that’s 60 pieces of content.
Your SOP will be a plan of the different content you will share each day. Mix-up the content so that each day you’re posting a variety of things, and it’s not just job adverts.
It might be that you want to send people to a landing page on your website to download an E–book. You might share an image, or it could be that you want to share a role or your job board at least once a day. It could be that you want to share a blog that you have written on something relevant for the market at the moment or a piece of news.
Your SOP will be a plan of when these different pieces of content will get shared, scheduled out over the month. Break your SOP down into weeks and days if it makes it easier for you to plan, such as:
Monday am: A blog you have written
Monday pm: A job vacancy
Tuesday am: A sector news article
Tuesday pm: A link to a downloadable report
When you plan your content out like this, it makes it much easier to write, as you already know exactly what you need to share.
Next Steps?
So that’s a quick whistle-stop tour around social media. If you would a more in-depth explanation of social media for recruitment companies, click here to download our social media marketing report. The report contains a lot more detail on specific things that you can do with your social media.
If your website is lacking in content to share, we can help with that too.
Our content packages are designed specifically for the recruitment sector, and they can increase your Google rating – get in touch with us here to find out more about how we can help improve your website’s reach.
This is Denise from Superfast Recruitment saying bye for now.
