Social marketing is infiltrating all areas of business, and human resources is no exception. While HR management might involve some tried and tested methods, developed through decades of business experience, the age of social networks is altering the playing field.
HR managers need to get involved with social marketing if they want to be considered as one of the top performers in their profession. Plus, without employing a solid social marketing strategy, you will likely be missing out on some of the best and brightest talent in the business.
To be certain that you’re doing your job well and attracting the best talent to your business, make sure you’re implementing the following seven steps:
Showcasing your business is the first step you need to take. Before you can even think of promoting jobs or advertising vacancies, you need to make sure your business has a strong online presence.
Savvy candidates looking for job, now do complete research about the job they are applying for, and only if the information available online is regarding specific job opportunity, your candidate is likely to keep looking.
You need to have a business profile that shows what you do, how you do it, and how you treat your employees. This is a great chance for you to show off and position yourself in a great light, so that the best candidates are attracted to your business and would want to work with you. You can then have your pick of the bunch.
One thing a lot of your potential employees would like to know is, how your business treats staff. Your social media account should mention individual staff members who have exceeded business expectations, who have had ideas implemented by the company and such employees brought onboard by the firm, or who have worked with the company for a significant period of time.
Providing snapshots with ‘day in the life of an employee’ posts on social media channels can give potential candidates a sneak peek into the company culture and an idea of what their new job could entail. This helps ensure that the right kind of candidates who really understand the job are applying for positions.
Social marketing requires multiple blog posts, all of which need to be promoted across several social media platforms. When you’re not posting a blog, you should still be posting updates and promoting yourself around the web. After a post is published, you are also required to be prepared to engage with readers who comment or leave questions on your updates.
Altogether, implementing social marketing creates another full-time job opening, and it is generally too much to add onto someone’s existing workload. For this reason, many HR managers outsource the writing or editing of blog posts to a professional. This way, you will have time to do everything you need for your job, and you will also have high quality and original blog posts provided by a professional.
Hiring a writer is also super simple. Some websites offer you the opportunity to simply select the services you want, and they will then assign the work to an expert. This is available with UK Writings.com or Big Assignments. If you want to post an ad and interview candidates, it’s possible with Upwork, or Freelancer.
See: Placing Social Media at a Vantage Point: Facts HR Pros Should Know
While there are many platforms for social media, there is no need to spread yourself thin and share content on every single avenue available. The first three social media platforms that you really need to focus on are LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
This is because LinkedIn is aimed directly at careers, you know the people you are reaching out in the job market, and the people using LinkedIn are often looking for jobs. This is a great way to make sure your audience is relevant and your message is delivered to the right people.
Facebook is being used for more and more reasons, from buying and selling to advertising and even job hunting. This is a great way to reach a huge audience. Twitter can also expand reach; however using appropriate hashtags can make it really easy for job hunters to find you.
If you decide that you want to write your own posts and to make sure your voice is present within the content, then you can use some of the online editing tools to optimize your post. As all successful blog posts are at least 1000 words long, you can monitor this with Easy Word Count.
After you’ve written your piece, you may want to look for a proof reader to make sure that your text is perfect without spelling errors or sentence fragmentation mistakes before you post. This can be done using Essay Roo.
While you can provide lot of information about your business and job openings on social media, you can also find a lot of information about your candidates. While this is an ethically grey area, businesses that implement things like morality clauses in contracts, might as well look into the social media accounts of candidates.
In the worst case scenario, you may find inappropriate conduct by a candidate such as use of foul language or racist comments, that you wouldn’t want to attract into your business. Otherwise, it’s a great way to simply check the identity of your candidates, and that they have attended the schools or courses they say they have.
When you have great staff, they probably have friends who would make great staff. Most of your employees have social media profiles, and asking them to share job openings is a great idea to attract potential talent.
There are no downsides to implementing a social marketing strategy into HR management; however the only question is how long will it take for you to get started.
Author credit:
Sharon Conwell has been a content manager and ghost writer for over 20 online projects, she is now a part-time educator and freelance writer. Sharon specialises in content creation and optimization, with a penchant for great tastes in life – coffee, tulips and her Shih Tzu named Bobby. Feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn.
Also read: Brands in Singapore and Asia Pacific Now Place Social Media at the Heart of their Strategy
Image credit: Freepik
