As in the world of recruiting, social media moves like the speed of light. We blink and the channels have released new features that we need to get to grips with. If we don’t, we can be certain that our competitors already have!
We can’t say it often enough, having an excellent social recruitment marketing plan in place is essential in order to reach every possible potential candidate. The numbers of us using social media are astronomical: 68% of US adults between the ages 18-29 are on Facebook and 100 million hours of video is viewed daily on Facebook. This is just one channel of course, we also need to optimise our engagement on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and other channels.
If you’ve taken your eye off the social media ball, don’t panic. Here’s a quick rundown of the latest trends on the most popular channels.
What’s happening in the world of social and why should we care?
Stories
Facebook now allow you to create a story for a group or event. As with individual Facebook stories, these will only be available to view for 24 hours and only to the attendees of an event and members of a group. Encourage attendees of your event, such as a recruitment open day, to share their own story with other attendees of the event.
Watch
Being trialled by a small group of users in the US, Watch will enable you to create TV style shows that a user will see depending on their interests and what their friends are viewing. ‘Watch’ this space. This could be a great opportunity for a ‘day in the life of’ video.
Add audio to your video
You can now add a free soundtrack to your video using Facebook’s Sound Collection. A soundtrack will make your video appear more professional and polished. Make your brand video stand out from the crowd.
Stories
Your Instagram Stories can now feature a guest and if your broadcast receives good engagement, you could feature in Instagram’s Search and Explore Tab. Your guest could be an employee in the role you’re recruiting for, saying what they love about working for your organisation.
Stories Highlights
With the Stories Highlights feature you can now keep your favourite Stories on your profile, as these won’t disappear like all other Stories. They appear directly below your bio. Use this feature to bookmark some of your best recruitment videos.
280 character limit
Are you making the most of the doubling in the Twitter character limit? Of course, Twitter content is best kept brief but the increase in character limit does give more scope for promoting a position you are recruiting for.
Twitter’s direct message card
With the direct message card you can share engaging images and videos with customisable call to action (CTA) buttons in your message conversations. This might be useful when engaging in a conversation with a potential candidate about a role. Having some template direct message cards will allow you to send the relevant video relating to the role and a link to the application form.
Career Advice feature
The Career Advice feature is a new way of seeking mentorship from other users. To gain advice, the user can enter preferences and the type of advice they’re looking for, then LinkedIn will make relevant recommendations. This is a great way of snaring passive candidates. With LinkedIn making the recommendations, the user may end up seeking mentorship from someone that they hadn’t thought of asking.
If you’re not harnessing the power of social you should be
As we know, social media should not be ignored in our recruitment marketing. It is not surprising that ad spend on social media is on pace to outgrow TV ad spend for the first time. When we think back to the success of TV advertising we need to put the same emphasis on social media branding, especially as it’s clear that users respond to very visual branding.
If you don’t have a watertight social marketing strategy in place, now is the time to put one together. It’s worth taking some time to maximise on each channel’s unique features and benefits. You can start by looking at the features we’ve listed here.