A Recruiters Guide to SEO: Making a Website your No.1 Consultant (Part Four)

Social Media Marketing and SEO metrics for Recruitment. What can you offer a candidate?

Let me give you a proposition. If you were a jobseeker and I were a Recruitment company and I asked you “Can you please like my Facebook page?”, how would you feel. You probably wouldn’t feel anything. It’s a bit of a nothing-statement that gives you no real reason to do anything. Now If I asked you this statement how would you feel. “Why not Visit our Facebook page as we have a careers page offering Interviews tips, Careers advice and up-to-the-date relevant opportunities for you. We also give you the opportunity to recommend someone you know in a related Industry and if we help to find them their next opportunity, we give you £200.” Well, I would imagine there is enough of an Incentive to get you to the Facebook Page, Indirectly, the opportunity of a more educated job search and directly, £200! There are so many ways to get candidates to your Social Media pages without asking for a “like”, or a “tweet” directly that don’t involve £200 (a small price if you can place the candidate in question for £4000). You must however add value to the candidates. As discussed in the last post, the biggest reason people like or follow a business is offers, discounts, and savings. Apply this to Recruitment, whether this be giving knowledge or Incentives.

A Recruitment Social Media strategy requires consistently engaging content and a thorough plan to grow your audience. Any Recruitment Company can set up a branded Facebook Business Page but to do the above is much harder and that is the main reason why Recruitment businesses fail quite miserable at this!

Here are a list of points that Every Recruitment consultancy should consider in relation to their Social Media. This primarily focuses on Facebook and Twitter but can be applied to all Social Media Platforms. The key concept of Recruitment Social Media to take away from this post below is:

MAKE YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE A JOBSEEKER’S TOOLKIT AND ONE-STOP PLACE FOR HELPING TO EDUCATE, ENGAGE AND PREPARE THEM FOR NEXT OPPORTUNITY (The strongest piece of advice we can give you!)

•  Much of your content should be aimed around the ongoing development of candidates. Candidates will remember you for this and regardless of the position they accept, (with you or a lesser agency!) will come to you again if back in the market, or better yet tell somebody in their peer group with similar skills. This can consist of anything from Interview Tips, Questions to ask, Information to take to an interview etc.
• If your consultancy is relevant to a few specific Industry then post relevant industry news that will strengthen the candidates knowledge of their Industry. Even if a candidate doesn’t find their next opportunity trough your agency, they can still use your Social Media platforms as a reference point for Industry news or Personal Development.

“An effective SEO strategy attracts Candidates to your Consultancy and an effective Social Media strategy keeps them!”

•  By default your Facebook username and memorable URL is a list of numbers. Change this to the company name or something relevant , ideally the business name, as this helps to market the business and appears much more professional to clients and candidates. Remember also, this cannot be changed more than once!
•  Customise your Facebook Apps and have clear call to Actions. The Facebook Apps are located directly below your cover banner and are the clearest way to set you apart from the competition. You could possible have a tab for “current vacancies” so you don’t need to push several vacancies out to your audience. A “submit your CV” would also be a great call to Action to capture the candidates information. All of these applications can link directly to your website to increase traffic.

Monitor any conversations on your wall and reply swiftly. You have the ability to show your audience that you reply swiftly and are great at engaging candidates and ultimately your Customer Service. Unfortunately, you also have the ability to show you don’t get back in touch with candidates and are the same as every other “agency”.

• How often do you post to your page? Your audience switches off after your 4^th post of the day…
• A word on Twitter: As most recruitment companies post job, after job, after job on a daily basis to their Twitter platform, why not try and communicate with your followers and acknowledge any comments/retweets or follows. This strategy will drive much larger levels of engagement and ultimately built more relationships than talking at your audience.  Most candidates won’t be familiar with this approach and may even find it refreshing!
• Monitor and Measure your Social Media – Although this can be quite time intensive there are several ways to monitor the success of your Social Media Campaign, right down to the success of every tweet. Although your “likes” is important, there are several other metrics that count, in particular “talking about this”. This shows the interaction over a 7 day period and is a crucial metric for measuring the engagement on your page. If this figure is low then look to change your content. If candidates aren’t interacting with your page, why are you doing this? Please feel free to give us a call to understand this further as we have clients with a 40% engagement rate, meaning 40% of their audience interact on a weekly basis. This most definitely leads to a conversion!
• And finally, if you can’t commit to a consistent and relevant campaign that includes 10 unrelated job posts a day and nothing else, take down your Social Media platform in question. Seriously, it is better create no impression than a bad one. If you posts are inconsistent and unhelpful to the candidate it will create the impression that you cannot help them find a relevant career for them, and they will probably be right. If you don’t think that’s you ask us for an honest assessment! There are always ways to improve your Social Media Marketing campaigns and this no recruitment company that has a perfect online presence, however, there are many recruiters who, on a daily basis, are engaging with candidates on their page for the first time leading to a successful placement. Is this you?