Social media for staffing firms: 6 success factors

By Candace Huntly

Social media has become an integral part of marketing, especially as more and more services move online. Staffing firms should look to social media as a way to establish credibility, trust, and strong, long-term relationships with both candidates and employers.

The approach when doing social media for staffing firms should be a people-first strategy. Think of social media as a way to extend your relationships and establish yourself as an industry leader. Here are six things to consider when building your strategy.

PICK THE RIGHT PLATFORMS

A question that weighs heavily on any business is knowing which social media platforms to choose. The question can only be answered for staffing firms by asking more questions. Where do your candidates hang out? Where do your employers hang out? Hiring managers? This means that you need to have a good idea of who your target audience is.

When considering social media for staffing firms, LinkedIn is a pretty safe bet as you can connect with most candidates (depending on the type of job placements you specialize in), employers, and hiring managers. When considering other channels, Instagram, for example, is great for connecting with creatives and Millennials. Twitter is perfect for educational and B2B candidates. Blogging is a great way to showcase success stories and trends within the industries you work within.

The number one thing to consider when you are picking your social media platforms is to work within the resources you have available to you. It doesn’t make sense to be on 5 different social media platforms if you aren’t going to post consistently and provide value on each of them. And don’t forget that resources are time, money, and knowledge. Those should all factor into your ultimate decision.

PROVIDE VALUE

You should always look to provide value in whatever you do on social media whether it is a conversation or a video you are sharing. Start by creating a content strategy that outlines how often you will post, when you will post, and what type of content you will post. This is your roadmap to content creation and will take the guesswork out of things.

Providing a variety of content like blogs, videos, images, infographics, eBooks, and more will keep your social media strategy fresh. In terms of the topics you should talk about, think of your content as a mix of three things:

• Job postings

• Learn something new

• New trends/innovation

THINK RELATIONSHIPS

Social media isn’t just a sales machine for you. Be human. Be social. Focus on creating opportunities for dialogue and building quality relationships with candidates and employers that will benefit you in the long-term.

PLAN AHEAD

Life can get busy. Business can get busy. With so many different aspects of your business to manage, sometimes social media feels like an afterthought. Without proper planning, it’s easy to miss consistently posting on your social platforms, which leads to less engagement among your community and loss of efficacy in this marketing channel.

Batch creating content one week or more at a time will help you to stay on top of the daily management of your community and reputation on social media. Using a scheduling software like Hootsuite or Later also makes life a lot easier.

ENGAGE YOUR TEAM

Your social media strategy can be amplified by engaging your entire team. Asking them to get on board with sharing social content on their channels and even contributing to ongoing blogs and social media features is a great way to increase your firm’s visibility. It also gives your team a chance to develop their own brand within your organization so candidates and employers get comfortable with everyone involved.

LET YOUR STRATEGY BREATHE

It can be tempting to change things up if you aren’t seeing results immediately. Sometimes you just need to let your strategy run for a bit to see if it is working or not. Give yourself three or four weeks before making any drastic changes.

Social media doesn’t have to be hard, but it does take a bit of hard work to get things running the way you want them to. For staffing firms that run on the quality of human connection, social media can have an incredible effect on your business. If you aren’t sure how to get started or your current social media strategy just isn’t working, set up a free 20-minute consultation with us to discuss it!