If you’re like most recruiters I come into contact with, you’re probably eager to make big advances in your social media presence this year. But you’re probably also anxious that there’s a great deal about social media that you just don’t know! What do you need to do to get results? What distinguishes those who reap rewards from those who struggle to gain any traction on social media?

These are all valid concerns.

Social Media Marketing Agency

Social Media: You Can Do It!

But what if I were to tell you that a lot of the success traits in social media are the exact same character traits you have to demonstrate to be successful as a recruiter? The challenge would feel more within your control, right?

So you can read on with the weight lifted from your shoulders, because if you’re half decent at recruiting there’s absolutely no reason you can’t make a success of your social media presence! So let’s look at the success factors in turn.

 

3 Keys To Building Your Social Presence This Year

  1. Setting goals and objectives. I really enjoyed Will Thomson’s piece on The Work4 Blog and the insights regarding what he’s learned on his social media journey. What particularly resonated was the idea that you should give, give, give and expect nothing in return. This is an approach that I wholeheartedly endorse, but at the same time I’d have to stress the importance of having an overriding objective for your social media presence.It’s essential that you think from the outset about the end results you want to achieve. The objective could be to drive more candidate traffic to your company website and job listings. It could be to strike up a relationships with potential new clients. Maybe it’s going to be your USP when selling to new clients. Maybe you see it as a means of improving your Google rankings. Maybe it’s a way for you to open the door to alumni networks.The key point here is that you have to know your objective from the outset – and you should then break that down into short-term goals, so that every day you’re taking little steps that are leading you ever closer to the fulfilment of your objectives. Sounds familiar, right – really not that different to what you do in your role as a recruiter?
  2. Planning and being organized. One major success factor I’d point to on social media is consistency. Consistency of presence – and consistency of message. To have a consistent presence requires planning, making sure you’ve blocked timeslots into your working week when you will be able to focus on your social presence. This is especially important in ensuring you don’t miss out on opportunities to engage with your target audience. When conversations are sparked, you want to nurture them and make the other person feel like they have your undivided attention. You simply can’t achieve that if you only react to social contacts once a week!So planning time into your working week is key. But so too is being organized. Most aspects of social media I’ve found can be significantly streamlined through being organized. An organized recruiter will have a dashboard that just alerts them to updates from the people they’ve identified they most want to engage with. An organized recruiter will have a swipe file of great evergreen content they can share whenever they are short of new content that will add value to their audience. An organized recruiter will be consistently adding people to their networks and consistently looking for ways to engage.Once again, this isn’t so different from what you have to put into practice to be a successful recruiter. So you can do it, you just need to be committed to these principles from the outset.
  3. Having your personality shine through. Guess what, people appreciate dealing with other people who they feel they know and like. People who they’ve seen are helpful, considerate and fun. This is often the element that catches people out and stops them achieving their real potential on social media.In the rush to automate their presence as much as possible, recruiters will auto-share new content from a variety of great sources. They’ll automate sending “thanks for following” messages. They’ll thank people for being the most valuable contacts in their network that week with a robotic message. And so on and so on.Allow me to let you into a secret. The recruiters I’ve seen to be most successful on social media are those who really have a personality online. When they share content they put their necks on the line and voice their opinion about that content. They single out individual people for praise and take the time to say why they are praising their work or why they value their relationship. They recommend people to follow (#FF) with heartfelt reasons for why those people should be followed. They don’t tow the line, they share content that isn’t mainstream and so is much less likely to have already been seen by their followers. They allow their followers a sneak peek into their daily lives and their business challenges. In short they make you feel like you know them, like you could turn to them for help – and that you in turn therefore want to help them when you can.Now every recruiter reading this can relate to the importance of relationships and personality. It’s those bonds and connections that win you recruiting clients. It’s also what makes a candidate warm to you and treat you with respect. The same principles are true on social media – just have the courage to put your personality and viewpoints out there!

I hope the above ideas are helpful. If you’ve anything else that’s really been important in your social media success, please do share it in the comments below – and likewise if you’ve any questions I can address I’d be happy to reply to your comments in turn.

Tony Restell is the Founder of Social-Hire. For more info, visit the site to see how Social-Hire helps recruiters build their social media presence; or read the story of how they came to help recruiters with social media marketing. You can follow Tony on @tonyrestell or on Google+

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