Employer brand

How to Use Content to Engage Talent on Social Media

I’m off to Santorini on holiday soon (I’m not showing off, this is related to recruiting, I promise) and I spent hours researching and reading hotel reviews online. What I was doing was a living proof that consumer behaviour has changed dramatically in the past few years – currently 60% of the buying decision is made by researching online before you talk to a sales person or commit.

Now, imagine how much more important is the decision people make about their next career move and how much they research your company before they are willing to commit for it. With that in mind, you have to answer the question – are you putting your company’s best foot forward online and especially on social media? Are your status updates effective and well-targeted? Are you putting the right messages in front of the right audiences in the most engaging way?

If you are not sure how to answer these questions, here are some tips that will help you make the content you post online more engaging and relevant to your target audience:

Think like a marketer

Have a 365-day online presence or at least every single work day. This way you will stay top-of-mind for your audience and the best way to manage your constant presence is to have a content calendar and a plan.

As you start posting content, always ask ‘why would my audience read this or care?’ It is better to post content that adds value instead of just filling up your volume quota – this way your audience will see your company as a valuable contributor instead of a spammer.

Remember that great content tells a relevant and transparent story of what it’s like to work at your company, it makes people aware of your business and if you’re nailing it you can turn passive content consumers into candidates and hires.

Share relevant messages that resonate with your target audience

Another important step is defining your target audience and setting objectives for how you want to interact with them. For example, if you’re looking for software developers in the UK, always ask yourself what’s interesting to that audience and what do they care about? What could you post that would make them engage with your company?

Produce content for each individual audience that will be useful and interesting to them, whether that’s market trends, industry news, company updates, research reports or career opportunities. Make your content simple, memorable and inviting to read and encourage your recruiters and hiring managers to like/share/comment in order to spread your message even further.

Increase engagement by adding links and lists

Once you are ready to post complelling content on social media there are a few tricks you can use to get more engagement.

  • Including links in your status update is shown to generate 45% more engagement on average.
  • Using pictures and rich media will get 98% more comments to your status update than when you don’t include them.
  • “Best of” and “Top 10” lists increase the reach of your update by 40%*

Following these tips to increase engagement is important because when people like/share/comment on your content, they become your brand advocates and expose your content to their own networks (which amplifies your message thousandfold).

Just don’t do this this:

social-media-engagement

Now that you know a few of the basic steps of how to use content to engage talent, start sharing and monitoring your success. Once you refine your strategy, you will notice that you are well on your way to building a vibrant talent community to nurture, engage and hire from now and in the future.

* Source for statistics: Company Pages and Followers Playbook

content marketing for talent acquisition

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