Social media is an essential tool for recruitment marketers looking to keep their brands front of mind and generate new followers and leads. However, getting started on social media can be difficult especially if you are a new business and are deciding which platforms you should establish a presence on.
To help you make this decision here are some tips to help identify the most relevant social media platforms for your recruitment business.
How to identify suitable social media platforms for your recruitment business
Narrow down your choices
One of the biggest social media mistakes that we often see recruitment businesses make is adopting a ‘spray and pray approach’ with their social media activity. This is where they establish a presence on each of the major social media platforms and push out the same messaging across each one. Not only should you be tailoring your messaging to each platform and its audiences, but this approach also often results in few posts being produced because of the time it takes in posting across 4-5 channels. It is much more beneficial using one or two platforms effectively that your audiences have an active presence on rather than being on every single one.
Define your social media goals
When identifying the most relevant social media platforms for your business, it is important to map out specific goals. These should be SMART goals and aim to support your organisation’s overall objectives.
Below are three examples of recruitment firm business objectives and social media goals that have been aligned with them:
1. Business objective:
Increase brand awareness within a specific sector.
Social media goal:
Acquire 30 new social media followers each month that work within that sector.
2. Business objective:
Increase the number of candidate leads.
Social media goal:
Increase the number of candidate registrations generated via social media traffic by 10% month-on-month.
3. Business objective:
Increase the number of resource downloads, such as e-books and on-demand webinars.
Social media goal:
Increase the number of downloads generate via social media traffic by 5% month-on-month.
Not only will these help you think about what platforms will be most beneficial to achieve these goals, but it will also help you measure your social media ROI further down the line.
Find out what channels your target audiences already use
To have any success on social media you need to have a presence on the platforms your audiences are most active on. To find this out, you should create candidate personas to gain the insights needed to make your recruitment marketing as effective as possible – whether that’s social media, website content, email marketing or printed collateral.
Candidate personas will provide you with the information needed to establish which social media platforms your target audiences are using. Ask questions such as:
- How do they find new information online?
- Which social media channels do they use? In both a personal and professional capacity?
- Do they follow any industry influencers on social?
- What publications or websites do they read?
There are also a number of research reports which breakdown the demographics of social media users such as We Are Social and Hootsuite’s Digital 2020: The United Kingdom report.
Look at the content you produce
Certain social media platforms have different functionality, so a social media post that works well on one platform may not necessarily be suited to another. For example, a lengthy LinkedIn post summarising the key findings of a salary benchmarking report won’t work on Twitter because of the 280 character limit. Therefore it’s essential that you consider how you can make the most out of the differences in the platforms’ functions and how the marketing content your recruitment firm produces can be repurposed for the channels you establish a presence on. You should consider how content can be repurposed and posted on your social channels to ensure maximum levels of engagement from your target audiences.Such as:
- Blog posts
- Testimonials
- Ebooks
- Market reports
- Webinars
- Photos and videos
- Podcasts
Popular social media platforms for recruitment businesses
Once you have decided on your social media goals, gained insights on where your target audiences are spending their time online and what content can be repurposed, you should then compare the platforms to see which ones will best meet your recruitment company’s needs.
Here is a brief overview of the four most popular social media platforms for recruitment businesses:
Facebook:
Facebook has around 37 million users here in the UK, and while those under the age of 25 are less active on the platform than before it can be beneficial for recruitment firms - especially those recruiting on a regional or blue-collar role basis.
However, it is important to note that the organic reach of Facebook pages has fallen heavily over the years and if you are to reach your target audience on a regular basis you should consider investing in paid social media campaigns on the platform.
Twitter:
Twitter has over 16.7 million UK users. If you plan on sharing curated news articles as part of your content mix, the platform’s focus on breaking news can be a great way to generate brand awareness and position your business as a thought leader in its industry.
The use of hashtags on this platform is incredibly important if you are to get your content in front of potential candidates and clients. A study conducted by Agorapulse found that using four hashtags generated the highest number of impressions.
LinkedIn:
LinkedIn has around 28 million UK users and is the de facto choice for B2B businesses, such as recruitment industry suppliers. As LinkedIn is a professional networking site its demographic is much more different to other social media platforms with more users between the ages of 30 to 49 than under 30. This focus also makes it the ideal platform for recruitment firms who place graduate, mid-management and executive roles.
Instagram:
Instagram has around 24 million users in the UK, and has become the social media platform of choice for millennials and Generation Z. The sites focus on engaging visuals has seen it used successfully by recruitment businesses to showcase their company culture and hire internally rather than advertise candidate-facing roles.
Whilst organic posts lack the ability to present a clickable link to users, you can do this via promoted Instagram posts which you can also run across Facebook.
Social media is incredibly important marketing channel for recruitment businesses of all sizes - whether you are a start-up or an international organisation - however to be successful you need to make sure that you are on the right platforms for your target audiences and can produce content suited to the nuances of each one.
Author: Dan Stobbs
