How to Utilise Facebook ‘Instant Experiences’ for Recruitment

While it might not be the first social media platform that pops into every recruiter’s mind when they

While it might not be the first social media platform that pops into every recruiter’s mind when they think of sourcing candidates, Facebook can be a great place to attract talent.

Part of the reason for this is the platform’s willingness to try new services and features. While some are admittedly just fun distractions (Facebook’s Lip Sync Live is a personal favourite), others can be a fantastic tool for recruiters and marketers.

One of these is ‘Instant Experiences’, an evolution of Canvas. At a basic level, Instant Experiences lets you add an extra dimension to your standard digital ads on the platform, by giving advertisers numerous options, such as video & animations, carousel images and information capture forms. This, in theory, will make your Facebook ads more memorable and attention-grabbing.

If you are a recruiter are looking to differentiate your roles in a candidate competitive environment, or an employer looking to spread awareness of your employer brand, Facebook Instant Experiences could be an important part of your digital marketing strategy. Here are a few reasons why:

Lots of Options

One great feature marketers can take advantage of is the wealth of options Instant Experiences give you when it comes to how to present your adverts. Not only can you select from a myriad of advertising options, but you can also take advantage of the ‘Tilt’ feature.

Tilt allows the user to move their mobile device to manipulate images – basically, you can move your phone to move your perspective on a 360° image. As well as being a very eye-catching and interactive way of advertising, this is also a great way for recruiters to show off things that make their roles unique, such as a great open plan office, stunning views or a fun break out area.

While some of these options might seem a bit too novel to some marketers, it is a great way of attracting attention to your roles and making yourself stand out in a candidate competitive marketplace.

Fully Mobile

This might sound like a disadvantage, but Instant Experiences is only available on mobile devices. Excluding desktops might seem like a bad idea, as they are still a very popular way of accessing Facebook, and could reduce the potential number of viewers of your ad content.

However, by removing desktop access from the equation, you lose all the compatibility issues you would sometimes encounter when using a service that works on both desktop and mobile devices, such as slow loading times, low resolution images and issues with buffering. In fact, Facebook claims this feature loads 15 times faster than standard mobile sites.

With the increasing popularity of mobile devices, especially amongst those tech-obsessed Millennials and Gen Z candidates, this actually works to your advantage if you are trying to recruit in this demographic. Also, it’s easy for candidates to swipe right out of your ad and return to your feed, so there’s no danger of annoying users by being a detriment to their social media experience.

Huge Audience

Statistics show that the average person spends at least one in every seven minutes they are online on Facebook. It’s also a service that is popular across a variety of demographics, unlike other social media services which tend to have their own niches.

Despite competition, Facebook still has a huge audience

While you may be losing some of that potential audience due to instant experiences’ exclusion of desktop devices, there is still a massive potential audience to advertise to on the platform.

It’s not uncommon to find baby boomer grandparents talking to their Gen Z grandchildren over Facebook. It’s this kind of inter-generational audience which can make it a fantastic service to use, regardless of what demographic you are targeting.

So Should You ‘Instantly Experience’ This Channel?

While there are some drawbacks to this service, such as the mobile-only format cutting down on the potential audience size, Instant Experiences do offer some interesting advertising options to recruiters and marketers.

Because of the service’s ease of use, you can generate unique and interesting content quickly. As a result, you can either market roles in interesting and novel ways as a recruiter, or grow awareness of your employer brand as an employer.

It may be worth recruiters and employers experimenting with this platform, as the interesting and novel ways of advertising could make this a great addition to your digital marketing strategy.

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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