The worst social media advice brands can receive

We talk a lot about social media in the recruitment marketing world, which is not surprising considering there

We talk a lot about social media in the recruitment marketing world, which is not surprising considering there are 3.03 billion active social media users in the world. Brands are putting more and more emphasis on the power of social media for marketing, in fact 91% of retail brands use 2 or more social media channels.

Now we’d usually be telling you what to do to improve your recruitment marketing but we’re conscious that there can be some pitfalls to social media, so we’d like to highlight them.

Bear with us…

We’ve all heard of or cringed at social media campaigns that just haven’t hit the spot, or have used inappropriate messaging to advertise their brand. Whatever you post on social media will have a wide spread of reach, so making sure that your posts reflect your culture and brand is incredibly important to avoid confusion and offence. Being straight with your followers, and addressing their issues is essential.

  • 58% of tweets about negative customer experiences are still going unaddressed by companies on social media (Bluewolf).
  • 30% of twitter users expect a response in 30 minutes.
  • 29% of Facebook users want a response in 2 hours.

If you want your social channel to fail:

  • Don’t create a social media strategy – If you have a strategy, you can monitor how your activity on social is performing. Without a strategy you don’t have a clear idea of who you are targeting, where, why and with what content. Lack of strategy can lead to you projecting an unclear message about your brand.
  • Use scheduling tools for all of your social media – Scheduling tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer are great when used lightly. It is important to login in to your channels regularly though, in order to interact with your followers and answer queries. Be conscious of what is going on in the world as an ill-timed tweet following a tragedy could cause upset and attract unwanted, negative brand attention.
  • Use inappropriate humour – Your social media channel will likely have a diverse audience – be careful not to offend with your jokes. Remember that whatever you say on your social channels reflects your brand, so think about the message you want to convey.
  • Ignore feedback and comments – Whether comments and feedback are positive or negative, you should reply with a personal response. Using an automated or ‘company line’ response will not help you build trust and a sense of authenticity with your followers.
  • Overpromote your brand – If you only use your channels to promote your services, or in the case of a recruiter, promote your job ads, your followers will quickly become bored. Offer them interesting information, such as curated content covering tips on parts of the recruitment journey. They will appreciate this and view you as offering value, making them more likely to interact.
  • Forget analytics – You monitor your SEO and how your email marketing campaign is doing in order to adapt and improve, so why would you not analyse your social media performance? Measure your followers, who they are and what they are engaging with. Use Google Analytics to track clicks to your careers site.
  • Add as many hashtags as you can – It’s tempting to try to cram in as many hashtags as you can, but this can blur the information that you’re trying to get across. Pick a few relevant hashtags by looking in the twitter search bar.

So what will make your social branding a success?

You may not like it but social media is here to stay. If you’re not getting it right, now is the time to sit down and take a good look. Engaging with your followers in a personal and considered way, providing them with useful information and tracking how your channels are doing will put you in a good place for success.

Your candidates also want to see a brand that is conveying a clear and consistent message. Get this right and they’ll be lining up to fill your vacant positions.

To speak to an expert in the latest social media trends please:

Please email [email protected] or call us on 01483 719020.

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Enhance Media

“Enhance Media have partnered with Reed Exhibitions globally to help us to improve our candidate attraction practices. They created a social media strategy including a review of leading platforms resulting in a more consolidated approach which improved coordination and saved costs. Enhance Media designed and build a new careers page for Reed Exhibitions and project manage our social media posting. Our teams enjoy working with the Enhance project group, we respect their professional approach, customer focus and flexibility”

Global Human Resources Director, Reed Exhibitions