Recruitment PR, marketing and social media tips

Three social media hacks to increase the visibility of your posts

Written by Dan Stobbs | Oct 30, 2018 8:00:05 AM

Social media continues to transform the way in which recruitment agencies are able to reach their target audiences, source candidates and showcase their company culture.

However, with organic reach plummeting due to algorithm changes and saturated feeds it can be extremely difficult to get your content in front of followers. To help with this, I have rounded up three of the latest social media hacks for recruiters to use to increase the visibility of your firm’s posts.

1. Add a URL to LinkedIn posts AFTER they have been published to increase views

Like other social media algorithms, LinkedIn penalises the circulation of posts that contain external links to try and encourage users to stay on its own platform. However, there are now a few different workarounds that you can use to maximise the reach of your posts.

The simplest and most effective method, in my opinion, is to publish your post without an external link before immediately clicking the ‘edit’ button and then adding the external link in this way.  This is because the algorithm only scans the original post as part of its content quality scoring stage and therefore doesn’t realise that a URL has been added in the amended post.

2. Use hashtags on LinkedIn to be discovered by your target audience

Whilst hashtags have become an integral part of a user’s online experience on Twitter and Instagram they have only recently taken off on LinkedIn. However, actively encourages the use of hashtags and the platform is now prompting users with suggested hashtags to add to their posts as they type.

To help ensure that your posts are seen by your target audience, I recommend using no more than 3 hashtags which include a mix of niche and broad search terms. For example, if you are an accountancy recruitment firm sharing a blog on the implications of Making Tax Digital then the hashtags you could use include specific phrases that are related to the blog, such as #MakingTaxDigital and #CloudAccounting, as well more general ones like #Accountants and #Accounting as the topic is likely to be of high interest to the individuals that follow those hashtags.

3. Create a Facebook group to build an engaged community

As part of Facebook’s algorithm changes, the visibility of Facebook group posts received a boost in the news feed as part of the platform’s efforts to prioritise ‘meaningful interactions between people’. This is in stark contrast to the ever-dwindling organic reach of Facebook Pages - which some sources cite as being as low as 2% - and, as such, groups are fast becoming a viable option for businesses that are looking to reverse this decline.

Whilst groups may not be the right fit for all recruitment firms, with many Facebook users searching for geographical-based groups they can be a fantastic solution for local and regional recruiters that source candidates for entry to mid-level roles.

Author: Dan Stobbs