Social media platforms have become increasingly popular for recruitment due to their wide reach and ability to target specific demographics. But they present a challenge for recruiters. The wrong content on the wrong platform is no use to your candidates – or you as a busy recruiter. In this blog we share our thoughts on what you need to consider to create the right content to achieve your objectives.
Who’s using social media?
If you are reading this, you’ll already know you have to be using social media and doing it well. Here are a few stats that really put the business case for investing in a social media recruitment strategy.
- Employers: 91% are currently using social media as part of their hiring process (Glassdoor) and 73% of employers have successfully hired a candidate through social media (CareerBuilder).
- Candidates: 79% of job seekers have used social media in their job search in the last year. 90% of all job seekers are using LinkedIn.
- Recruiters: 45% post content on social media to engage with candidates (StandOut CV)
So, most of us are using social media to either hire or engage with candidates. And candidates are using it to research employers, find roles and apply. No surprise really, so what goes into a strategy, and one that delivers on the content front?
Your content marketing strategy – 10 points to consider
Set your goals
Any campaign benefits from clarity at the outset. Are you looking to fill specific job positions, build a talent pipeline, or improve your employer brand awareness? Each requires different types of content. For example, the more you move towards building awareness of your employer brand and not just posting vacancies, the mix widens to video and career blogs.
Target audience and channels
One will dictate the other here. Who do you want to attract, hire or engage with – and where do they hang out? Consider their demographics, interests, and preferences. For example, LinkedIn is typically used for professional roles and networking, while platforms like Instagram or TikTok may be more suitable for creative and younger audiences. The content you’ll need to put on each varies considerably. We’ve recently updated our guide to using LinkedIn which covers content in some depth. It’s by no means the only channel you could use, but it’s currently the most popular.
Read more: Promoting your employer brand on LinkedIn
Competitor analysis
As with any marketing campaign, it’s beneficial to have a handle on what your competitors are doing. What sites are they on, how are they engaging with candidates, what content are they producing and who is engaging with it? This is particularly helpful in confirming if your strategy has potential – or may crash and burn. If you have an idea to try – perhaps recruiting accountants on TikTok is your thing – and no one else in your sector is doing the same, this might tell you something.
What internal resources do you have?
Producing content can take up a lot of time, this is one of the reasons that many clients ask us to help them. The other is that it calls for skills in writing, video production and graphics. It is of course entirely possible that you have your own talented people and if you do that’s great – involve them. But if you decide that a series of career blogs would be a good thing – and we agree it would – someone has to write them.
Respect your brand (or, even better, partner with them)
While social media can be highly effective in building awareness of your employer brand, it can also damage it and your wider brand too. The wrong content, that doesn’t look or sound like you will confuse candidates, those who already work for you and your customers too. You need to ensure that your content reflects your company’s values and your culture and mission are well-defined and communicated through your social media content. We suggest HR and marketing work together on content strategy and this is happening more and more.
Read more: How to reflect your company culture through your employer brand.
Consistent brand identity
Your content, and the visual representation of it, also needs to be faithful to your brand identity. Your career blogs should represent your organisation’s tone of voice so it sounds like you. Posts and other content across LinkedIn, Twitter/X and Instagram should all have a commonality with the rest of your employer branding comms. While some organisations are keen to give their people almost a free hand on social media, this shouldn’t extend to posting their own DIY visuals. What’s more, all of this can take up more of their time than you’d think.
You really can’t create social media content without visuals – which is why we developed TLA Create. It’s a simple system that allows users to use pre-approved templates, choose images, personalise the copy and export an image in the correct format and dimensions.
Find out more on our content marketing page: https://www.thatlittleagency.co.uk/content-marketing/
Presence and engagement
If you are serious about creating recruitment content for social media, you will need to be ready to respond when people engage with what you put out. So, you’ll need to keep an active presence on these platforms. Please don’t ‘post and forget’ content, instead respond to comments and messages promptly. Engaging with potential candidates and answering their questions helps build a positive image of your employer brand – it is social media after all. The best LinkedIn company pages are those where the employer, and their employees are active in posting, sharing and responding to comments.
Employee brand advocates
Your own people should play a significant role in the content you create and share. Candidates are most interested in hearing from people like them that they can relate to, doing the roles they are interested in. So, as well as making your own people the subject of your blogs, videos and careers stories, they can also play a role as advocates of your employer brand and help share your content and vacancies. Think of them as your very own influencers. And there’s a very good chance someone in your organisation will already be connected to someone who’d be a great fit.
Read more: Employer brand champions. How to get your people to share your story.
Content about the recruitment process
Don’t overlook creating content about the recruitment process itself. Candidates really enjoy tips to help with their application – such as guidance on video calls and interviews. And covering aspects of your recruitment process, perhaps on how you help those with disabilities will enhance your reputation and create an overall positive candidate experience. Don’t forget, social media, while it allows you to post content, is also where poor experiences are shared. So use it to create a good one.
Create a content plan
Finally, when you have all of this covered and you are producing the kind of content that will fly on your social media channels, it pays to get organised. By developing a content calendar outlining what you will post and when, you’ll be able to manage those contributing to your output, as well as creating a mix of formats. Consider incorporating a mix of content types, such as job postings, employee testimonials, company news, and behind-the-scenes content.
In conclusion
Every employer has a story to tell, and social media has become a valuable tool to help tell it, and its usage continues to grow. Building a social media content strategy for recruitment requires a thoughtful and ongoing effort. By creating engaging content that showcases your employer brand and resonates with your target audience, you’ll have the basis to create a strong social presence for your culture, roles and people.
Need a little help?
If you feel that you’d like some help, support or even a little chat around social media content or aspect of your employer brand and talent attraction strategy just drop us a line. After all, much of our best work has started with a cup of tea and a Zoom call.
