Striking the Right Recruitment Tone on Social Media

SHARE THIS
Social media has become a major facet of our personal and professional lives. Harnessing the power and reach of your business’ presence on multiple social media platforms can help you increase your recruitment efforts and cast a wider net to potential applicants. But how do you strike the right professional tone in a less formal forum?

Pithy, But Professional
The main difference between a traditional job description and the content on social media sites is the length of content. Twitter forces users to post in 140 characters or less and while Facebook allows for longer posts, users tend to prefer content in the 200 character range. This means that your company must get to the heart of your recruitment pitch in very little time. Consider posting the most exciting sentence or two from your latest job description, along with a link to the full posting on your company’s site. Or, use the unique features of visual social media, like Pinterest or Instagram, to share unique insights into your company’s culture. Show your potential hires what a typical workspace in your company looks like by taking care to choose an employee’s space that embodies the type of values you want to promote.

Sharing images of your staff hard at work can also increase interest in joining your team. It’s appropriate to share images or posts that allude to the perks of working in a close-knit office, but take care not to focus on how hard your team plays once the weekend comes around. For businesses, social media can be a chance to communicate the values and vision that drive its products and people. Resist the urge to lower your recruitment efforts to the lowest common denominator, even if you think those types of posts will generate “shares” and “likes.”

Powerful Personalities
If your staff is fairly social media savvy, be sure to highlight their interesting posts, tweets, videos and images. As you work to recruit quality people to your company, you can help this effort by showcasing the already stellar people on your team and communicate your commitment to their success both on and offline.

Socialize Your Public Relations

SHARE THIS

Influencing public opinion is oftentimes the lifeblood of small-, mid-, and large-sized businesses. And there’s no medium where this fact becomes more sharply crucial than media relations. What many public relations departments are learning is that social media, mobile applications, and “gamification” of a company’s more traditional assets can offer huge boosts to PR success. Here are a few emerging spaces for your public relations content to live—and how best to engage.

Pinterest – As one of the fastest-growing websites/platforms in history, Pinterest has assembled hundreds of thousands of fans, followers, and “pinners”. It’s a great time to engage these ready-made consumers of media by re-pinning messages and developing your own place on this gigantic virtual pin board.

Youtube – This media mogul has stumped many PR professionals for years. The trick to getting noticed is NOT to use your company’s video presence as a marketing platform, but rather to tell the human story behind your business. Evoke drama, get personal, and stay funny.

Twitter – The key to success in the Twitterverse: have an opinion. With scant few characters to punctuate your point, it’s up to you to figure out a way to connect with industry issues people really care about. Be specific and chatty—a high frequency of posts will keep you relevant.

Good luck!
Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

New Technologies and Growing Pains

SHARE THIS

Sometimes, the little guys have it easy. While it’s easy to conceive of modern, social-media aligned initiatives, implementing them is a task that requires a nimble touch. If you’re a peppery bunch of 20 employees, designing and implementing a tactical approach to blogging, Facebook,’ing and tweeting is a matter of a few afternoons. For larger entities, you’re looking at meetings, discussions, brand decisions, approval rounds, and more. Months of work could be in store before you even give a shout out to your very first of fans.

Our advice to these larger organizations: be like the little guys. The smallest companies can amass enormous followings through charm, personality, and transparency. Shoot for the same attributes—even if more obstacles stand in your way. As a marketing department, stand unified in your decision to engage social media. Set guidelines and milestones from the start that are flexible enough to allow multiple contributors while keeping your voice unified. Here are a few more tips:

– Create Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts—even if you have nothing to say (just yet).
– Your blog should be professional and informal—practice style before posting.
– Once you start, don’t stop! Maintain a regular schedule of updates.

Until next time,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Recruitment Pain Points (and Remedies)

SHARE THIS

Employees. Every company needs ‘em. Whether yours is a bustling enterprise of hundreds or a smaller operation of 10 people, the quality of your hires will eventually reflect the quality of your organization. High-powered individuals make for a red-hot organization. As you build out your recruitment strategy, keep in mind these pitfalls and the best way to avoid them.

1. Small applicant sizes. You spend all day writing up a beautifully-worded job description, and the following week you receive only 4 resumes. Boo. Creating an attractive workplace starts at home. If you haven’t already, sit down and define the value you provide to employees in the form of an Employer Value Statement, or EVP. Using that as a tool, get the word out through print and online that you’re looking for the next great employee at a great place to work.

2. Falling behind on the times. New technology based around the Internet allows virtual interviews, electronic portfolios, pre-qualifiers even before potential hires arrive at the office. Technology and digital interview tactics allow you create a “short list” of candidates that reduce overhead and narrow down on quality candidates.

3. Not keeping what you’ve got. Employee satisfaction extends beyond wages and bonuses. The culture you create at the workplace and affects both retention and productivity for the years your employees call your office home. Work in the concept of flexibility. Find creative ways to reward (and not punish) hard work and keep your base engaged. Good luck!

Until next time,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Helping You Post Jobs to Facebook… Is Facebook.

SHARE THIS

Facebook is huge, and it’s looking to get even bigger. As part of its joint agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor, the social media giant is looking to buff up its arsenal and service offerings by posting jobs online. The effort comes from a government-approved attempt to lower the nation’s 9.1% unemployment rate. One nice side effect (for Facebook): they’re increasing their offerings even further.
What does this mean for companies looking to recruit talented job seekers? Something to watch. Still in its formative stages, Facebook promises a “system where new job postings can be delivered virally through the Facebook site at no charge.”

It will be an interesting road ahead. This move puts Facebook in direction competition with sites such as Monster.com and LinkedIn.

Stay tuned for future developments. The infrastructure that the social network already has in place is a great vehicle for propagating hot jobs—and better yet, would do so at no cost.

Signing off for now,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

4 ‘DON’TS’ FOR TWEETS

SHARE THIS

Investing in your social media strategy—for recruitment or marketing initiatives—is a sound plan. Not only can you get your message out to more people in record time, social media can do it cheaper, faster, and more effectively.

The trade-off? There are a lot of pitfalls to make as a company exploring Twitter, especially those who are taking a first stab at the big blue bird. Here are 5 no-no’s to consider as you prepare to tweet.

1. Honking your own horn constantly. Good news is great. Good news 100% of the time is bad. Aim for a mix of announcements, industry information, and peeks behind your office doors. Above all, provide a reason for people to subscribe to your feed. Which leads us to number 2…

2. Not being a resource. Even though your social media output is free, provide value to your customers. Let people know what’s happening in your business, your field, and how they can improve themselves or their operation.

3. Spamming up followers’ feeds. Nothing makes netizens click “unfollow” faster than 5 tweets in one hour. Keep content brief and information moderate—a post a day, at most, will do the trick.

4. Being dull. Be confident. Be whimsical (but still professional). Mix up your messaging and use clever headlines to hook interest.

Signing off for now,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Weird-vertising

SHARE THIS

Finding the balance between “edgy” and “on-point” can be a tricky tightrope to walk. You watch in wonder as the goofy commercials from Old Spice become viral hits on YouTube, and can only sit back and contemplate if a similar strategy would work for your company. But for every successful venture into the land of bizarre advertising, there are a hundred examples of spacey videos, confounding print ads, and even re-brands that have left company loyals confused and consumers scratching their heads.

As always in our industry, we need to think of the customer first. Old Spice is deodorant that goes under the armpit so you smell nice. Medical instruments and baby formulas have an entirely separate consumer base—weird shouldn’t be part of your vocabulary. In order to be different, make sure your customers are hip enough to “get it”. Even if you do decide to take a plunge in to the odd, make sure
you still convey your message. Advertising that doesn’t make a point is just… well, weird.

Above all, challenge the conventional with a fresh approach that doesn’t sacrifice your integrity, offend the masses, or lose track of your message. You’ll be surprised at the results.

Signing off for now,
Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Anatomy of a Viral Video

SHARE THIS

Ah, the viral video!  It’s both a striking media debut and a tool many marketers aspire to, but few achieve. There is no 100% magic success formula that will send a video spiraling across Facebook pages and racking up the “likes” on YouTube, but there are some common themes and characteristics you can aim to hit when crafting your own spot. Here’s what it takes:

Short. A viral video needs to be fit for mass consumptions, and if there’s one thing the masses have in common, it’s a short attention span. Keep the length of your video under a minute.

Weird. Puppets smelling fingers? News reporters flubbing it on air? Shirtless men swan diving out of kitchens? Viral videos all have a touch of the bizarre, and it’s often that impulse to “figure it out” that keeps people viewing and sending it to their friends to weigh in. Aim for the offbeat if you’re looking to go mainstream.

Accessible. Make sure your video is hosted in a place that can support the bandwidth that you’re hoping to achieve. Keeping it on your website is great for company exposure, yes, but if your counter hits the tens of thousands, your site will be down and your video’s 15 minutes will be over before they begin. The tried and true usually works: go with YouTube.

Siging off for now,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Quick SEO Tips for Recruitment

SHARE THIS

Promoting jobs online is a great strategy. Not only is it a cost-effective way to advertise specific opportunities, online venues have the potential to reach a younger demographic—often an attractive hiring range for companies looking to fill positions. But even by accessing a variety of online job posting opportunities, if nobody’s reading your postings, there isn’t anybody who’s going to apply through this medium.
One important topic to address is optimizing your jobs for search engines. The more index-able your postings, the more potential employees will connect with your opportunities. Here are a few tips.
Cross post: Promote opportunities on your site, as well as through Facebook, Twitter, and your blog.
Optimize: Use searchable phrases common to the industry. Shoot to hit these job phrases that are based on what people would actually type into their search engine.
Integrate real media: Use print and brochures to send potential hires to your job listings.
Stay current: Post often. If you don’t have any new openings, stay fresh by posting topical news and other career-related interest bits.

Signing off for now,
Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com

Is Google+ a Positive or Negative?

SHARE THIS

Announced just days ago, Google has fired a shot over the port bow with its newest attempt for a piece of the social media pie. The appropriately-named “Google+” is made on the heels of two rather striking social media failures—Google Buzz and Google Wave—but this time around, the social media universe (yes, that includes the Twitterverse) has high hopes.

Google’s new innovation includes “Circles”, a new feature to counter massive lists of friends that’s the mainstay of Facebook. By dragging and dropping individuals into these customizable groups, users will have a tighter control over who sees what information (or that drunken party picture from last night). A piece of media shared in one circle goes out to all members of that group.

Google+ holds new opportunities for advertisers. With “Sparks”, an integrated feature of this new platform, Google will tailor entertainment information specifically for users based on their lists of interests and activities while logged into the platform. With a more comprehensive analysis of user data, we wouldn’t be surprised to find more targeted opportunities for HR professionals and marketing gurus to pinpoint their target demographic.

Google+ is still undergoing testing, but keep an eye out for future development!

Signing off for now,

Buyer Advertising
www.buyerads.com