February 22, 2020

Social Media — two little words for a vast network of people, companies, brands, and more that started as a way for people to keep in touch with old friends has evolved until it affects every facet of modern life. And staffing and recruitment is no exception. 73% of Millennials report finding their most recent job on social media. And 86% of people in their first 10 years of employment say they use social media to find work. At one point, LinkedIn and job boards like Indeed and Monster may have been enough to find qualified candidates for your clients. But not anymore. With Indeed and Monster charging recruiters for every job post and the competition ramping up on LinkedIn, it’s vital to expand your recruiting efforts to other social media channels and to have a robust strategy to use social media to expand your reach and attract new business to you. I’ve put together 10 social media strategies recruiting strategies that you can use at your staffing agency to get more followers, more candidates, and more job placements than ever before. 1. Define your goals It’s amazing how many companies throw themselves at a social media strategy with no real goals in mind. An increase in followers across your social channels is only useful if it’s helping you meet your goals. If your social media followers aren’t also becoming warm leads or converting to applicants, then it’s all just vanity numbers. Your goals will inform your social media strategy. If your goal is to increase your number of starts per week, you may want to focus more on your quantity of job postings and attracting qualified candidates. But if your goal is to decrease your new hire failure rate, you may want to focus more on the way those job listings are written or increase social chatter with prospects before bringing them in to interview. Until you have a clear goal in place, you will never have an effective, streamlined social media strategy. And as your goals change, your social media plan should shift as well. 2. Choose the right platforms...it's not all LinkedIn! Once you know your goals, are you on the right social media platforms? You probably have a social media account on LinkedIn. But at 660 million active users, its numbers are far behind Instagram (1 billion users) and Facebook (2.4 billion users). So you’ll increase your reach to both active and passive candidates by expanding beyond just LinkedIn. Staffing agencies should use a combination of platforms to reach the best, most qualified candidates. Which platforms, exactly, may depend on your industry and your target candidate. The best agencies are on multiple platforms so they reach their audience where they are already spending time, instead of expecting their candidates to find them on LinkedIn. I mean, one year ago, did you think any business was seriously considering using TikTok for marketing? Take a look at these stats and you'll understand why many businesses now are: Source: MediaKix We know many businesses that are quickly building massive attention with new audiences on TikTok while the rest of us sleep on the opportunity! Take Gary Vaynerchuck, who's already amassed 3 million followers on TikTok and created entirely new opportunities for his agency. But even if TikTok isn't a great fit for you, it's critical that you look beyond LinkedIn. A great example is Integrity Staffing Solutions, for example, who has over 75,000 followers on Twitter, 58,000 on Facebook, 12,000 on LinkedIn. Also consider the smaller, more niche platforms. While the user base of social media sites like Pinterest, Snapchat, or Tiktok is significantly lower than the major players, there’s also much less competition. Only 3% of recruiters report using Pinterest. But the platform has 320 million monthly users, which is on par with Twitter’s user base. Pinterest is a great place to share infographics and get blog traffic. And if you’re hiring for a lot of entry-level positions, you may want to be on the “younger” platforms like Snapchat or Tiktok. Think about who your ideal customer is, and find where they like to hang out online. Then make sure you’re there too. 3. Build a social media calendar Starting each day with a blank slate is a great way to either a) forget to post on social media, or b) post too much of the same kind of content. By setting up a social media calendar in advance, you can be strategic about your content mix. Job posts are good, but you’ll need more than that if you’re going to find followers on social media. Building an audience is all about providing value to the users. What do job hunters want to see? Interview tips, money management suggestions, interviews with top performers, opportunities for continuing education — all of these types of content could be included in your social media calendar. And of course, you’ll want to include job posts and success stories from your placements. Fortunately, you don’t have to create all of this content from scratch. You can curate content from across the internet to share with your followers. Interesting articles, quotes, or interviews with industry leaders could all be helpful to your audience. It’s also important to post content in different formats to keep your feed interesting and engaging. Video, images, gifs, memes, and text should all be part of your social media calendar. Instead of a written job posting, why not shoot a short video describing the job and company? And to make sure your posts go out when they’re supposed to, invest in a social media scheduling tool. Services like Later, Buffer, and Hootsuite will let you schedule your posts across social media platforms in advance. Then all you have to do is respond to comments and analyze your results. 4. Show personality! Although we all want to create a professional impression, the best social media accounts show personality! The reality is that people decide to work with people they like. You want to humanize your social media and use your content to connect on a more emotional and personal level. If your agency’s feed is stuffy and boring, candidates may think the jobs you place are stuffy and boring too. BOLD Worldwide CEO Brian Cristiano is one of our favorite business accounts to watch. He's done a great job of finding the right mix of personality and professionalism in his social presence. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brian Cristiano (@boldceo) on Jan 29, 2020 at 6:42pm PST Humor is okay. A little bit of 'edge' is ok. Be willing to show your personality and stand out. Yes, you want to continue producing more professional, educational content as well, but be sure to mix the personality into your content mix! 5. Join groups and make lists Facebook and LinkedIn both have thousands of specialized groups that you can join. Some are specific to recruiters and are great places to share tips and industry news. Others will be specific to niche industries, like web developers or legal administrators. By becoming a trusted member of the group, you can add value and learn about your candidates. Post jobs when appropriate, but make sure you’re contributing to the conversation, too. Twitter doesn’t have groups, but it does have the option to create your own custom Twitter lists. This is a great way to organize your feed, so you can easily find specific users or content. Create private lists of users that have caught your eye, or people that weren’t quite the right fit for previous placements. You’ll be able to keep track of them easily in lists for future outreach. Source: Hootsuite This is a great way to keep an eye on the competition or monitor conversations on topics that are important to your business. You can also make public lists of people that you’d like to interact with. When they see that you’ve added them, you’ll increase the chance of a response if you reach out in the future. 6. Source passive candidates outside of LinkedIn As a successful recruiter, you have undoubtedly used LinkedIn to directly reach out to potential candidates. But so is everyone else. People are used to outreach from recruiters on LinkedIn, and it's getting more and more difficult to get a response. But on other social media platforms, it’s more unexpected, which is why you must start prospecting using the other channels. The big social media networks all have impressive search functions that you can use to find candidates. Search for industry terms and keywords to start. Then you can narrow your search based on qualifications and location. Also, search for your LinkedIn contacts' accounts on other platforms and send requests to connect with them there. If you reach out to candidates on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you may have a much better chance at actually reaching them. 7. Promote your content The days of easy organic reach on social media are long gone! Don't expect people to see your content unless you are willing to put a promotional budget behind it. Source: Neil Patel At TrackerRMS, for example, we budget at least 2X the cost of creating our content in the promotional budget. So if we spend $100 to source an article, we'll plan on at least $200 to promote it on the social ad platforms - more if we get good engagement. The downside of having to spend more money is more than made up for by the increased reach, more precise targeting, and better reporting that we get from using the ad platforms. And the reality is most of your competition won't do this, giving you the leg up! 8. Build remarketing audiences What's a 'remarketing audience'? According to Google, a remarketing audience is "a list of cookies or that represents a group of users you want to re-engage because of their likelihood to convert. You create remarketing audiences based on user behavior on your site or app, and then use those audiences as the basis for remarketing campaigns." Our translation: you can collect an audience of people that have visited your website or social content, then promote your content specifically to that audience. This gets great results because now the same people are seeing your content and brand over and over again after they've already expressed some degree of interest (by visiting your website in the first place). On Facebook these are called Custom Audiences, and on LinkedIn they are referred to as Matched Audiences. In other words, just about every social platform with an ad network has this capability. Facebook Custom Audience Set up from AdEspresso This is one of the most powerful and high ROI social media marketing strategies you can use! 9. Offer a 'lead magnet' Don't expect candidates to want to have a direct conversation with you on their first interaction - give them options to stay in touch that require less commitment and add value. You’re a recruiting pro, but many people who come across your social media content may have never used a staffing agency before, and won’t know how it works. So think like a marketer and include an offer for a 'lead magnet' with your posts. What's a 'lead magnet'? OptinMonster defines it as is "an incentive that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address or other contact information. Lead magnets usually offer a piece of digital, downloadable content, such as a free PDF checklist, report, eBook, whitepaper, video, etc." A call to action tells candidates what they should do next. Encourage them to contact your team with questions or to share their resume. Here's one of our lead magnets as an example: What lead magnets could you offer? Here are some ideas: A guide to negotiating their best salary A guide to nailing an interview A salary and benefits benchmark guide The key is to deliver value in exchange for their contact information and the right to stay in touch. 10. Stay analytical and agile Once your social media calendar is set and your content is out in the world, it’s time to track your results. You can do this manually by adding likes, comments, and shares into a spreadsheet. But if you use the paid version of a scheduling tool like Later, Buffer, or Hootsuite, you can view analytics reports and save yourself a lot of time. These reports will show you what posts are getting the best results from your audience. Did that one Twitter post perform particularly well? Why do you think it resonated with people? Is that interview series that you started a few weeks ago not getting any engagement? Then maybe it’s time to scrap it. You should also track what performs or doesn’t perform on each individual platform. Maybe your memes are racking up the likes on Twitter, but falling flat on Instagram. That information will help you place your content on the right social media channels in the future. Any successful social media strategy has to be agile. Don’t stick with a campaign just because you like it. Remember your goals. If your social media strategy isn’t moving the needle, it’s time to regroup and start again. Get Social Social media recruiting is something that you’re never “done” with. It’s a process, rather than a task. But when done correctly, it can build your brand, establishing you as an authority in your niche. It can help build relationships with other industry leaders and drive traffic to your website. It lets you stay on top of trends and industry news. And it provides an endless resource of talent that you can visit again and again, finding top candidates for your clients. With all those benefits, it’s worth investing the time and resources into a robust social media strategy. It’s the best and most affordable way to take your business to the next level in 2020. Cheers! -David Alonso About Tracker Tracker is a leading recruitment and applicant tracking software designed for the SMB Staffing Company. Our industry-leading onboarding and analytics technology will improve both your recruitment speed and quality. With over 20 years of experience, our ATS System is built with you, the staffing professional, in mind.

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10 Social Media Recruitment Strategies Staffing Agencies Can Use For Faster Growth