With the rise of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn over the past decade, you’re probably already familiar with the idea of using social media to assist with your recruitment advertising campaigns.
There are plenty of clear advantages when it comes to sharing your roles on social media. Probably the most obvious one is that social media sharing is a free way of promoting your vacancies. And, if your company has a large social following, this exposure can be extremely beneficial.
However, not all companies have a high number of followers on social media; so how can they make social sharing work for them?
Webrecruit has put together a list of our top tips for using your company social media accounts to increase your candidate reach.
1. Encourage your followers to share your vacancies
Although you might not have thousands and thousands of followers, you should try encouraging the people who do follow you to share your vacancies to their network.
Sharing a vacancy takes minimal effort in the world of social media. On Twitter, it’s the simple tap of the ‘Retweet’ button. On Facebook, your followers can click on the ‘Share’ button or even tag friends who might be a good fit for the role.
Encourage engagement by including a call-to-action when sharing the role on your company’s social media pages.
2. Actively reach out to passive candidates
Using social media is a great way of identifying strong potential candidates for your vacancies who might already be employed or not actively seeking a new role.
Social media allows you to reach out to people who’ve previously engaged with your company or who’ve liked your posts but not applied yet by messaging them directly.
Approach with caution though; don’t send out dozens of generic messages. Take the time to tailor your message according to each individual’s profile. Also be aware of the fact that, while people might be open to new opportunities on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter tend to be for more personal use and people might not be open to discussing recruitment on these platforms.
3. Produce targeted campaigns with Facebook advertising
If you want to give your vacancies a boost on Facebook, you can produce targeted campaigns with their sponsored advertising options.
When setting up your campaign, you can specify the demographic you’d like to reach – this can be people who live within a certain geographical region or have specific interests.
Facebook advertising can help you achieve any goal you want, whether that’s attracting more traffic to your careers site or promoting your business locally.
Allocating a portion of your advertising budget to run targeted adverts on Facebook is a great way of accessing more candidates. With billions of people across the world using Facebook, it allows you to reach a much wider audience.
4. Use social media as an employer branding tool
When sharing your vacancies on your company’s social media accounts, try sandwiching your roles with posts about what it’s like to work for your business.
Share photos of your team, social events and employee testimonials. If you use your company’s social media pages to really sell the opportunity to work for you, it will encourage jobseekers to click through and view the details of your vacancy.
5. Experiment with your content
Get creative on social media and experiment with different types of content.
Most online advertising sources won’t allow you to post visual content so use your social media accounts to try new mediums. Video is a great place to start – in fact, one third of all time online is spent viewing video content.
Don’t just limit yourself to LinkedIn; if you have a company Instagram or Snapchat account, try sharing your content and videos there to reach a different audience. Think outside the box and don’t forget to measure your success so you can see what’s working and what isn’t.
Want to find out more about Webrecruit’s social media recruitment campaigns? Request a call from our team.
