We’ve covered ways of using social media to promote your job board and recruit candidates before, but it’s always worth refreshing ourselves on the basics.
There are several dead-simple ways to use social media to help promote your jobs and reach candidates. By implementing these small, “low hanging fruit” ideas, you can can make a significant difference to your reach and influence.
1. Create the accounts.
Go ahead and do it now. I’m just going to go ahead and quote myself here:
Pick 3 or 4 platforms that your target market uses, and focus on using those channels. Specialize in retail, food, fashion, or another industry big on visual presentation? Instagram and Pinterest may serve you well. High finance? LinkedIn is appropriate. Whereas writers and journalists tend to flock to Twitter and Medium. Recruiting Gen Z? Bite the bullet and figure out how Snapchat works.
(It’s also not a bad idea to create accounts on more platforms, even if you don’t intend on using or promoting them. Think of it as planting a flag in the ground. You have a brand and you’re ready to make use of it when you need it.)
Plant the flag. Use your messaging. Hootsuite has templates for sizing your social media profile pictures and banners properly (check #6), so you have no excuses not to get going.
2. Social share options.
Someone reads a job post on your board. It’s perfect for their best friend or their online community, so they share it on Facebook and Twitter, or email it to someone.
This one has got to be the easiest, lowest-hanging-fruit item on the list. You wouldn’t want to create barriers that prevent people from viewing or sharing your jobs, so why not make it really easy for them to do so?
Don’t lose an opportunity for someone to promote your jobs on your behalf. Personal referrals count for a lot in hiring, and there is similar value in social sharing.
We like Simple Share Buttons Adder as a tool to set up social sharing, but there are lots of other options out there, too.
3. Scheduling.
You run a business and don’t exactly have oodles of time, so please don’t share and tweet everything live. Plan ahead and use a scheduling tool to save yourself some time and be more efficient.
Most of these tools also offer web browser extensions, so that you can add content to your queue/schedule as you check your email, read the news, and browse the internet.
Sharing links to jobs and other content like news articles, your own blog content, and other items to engage, inform, and delight your audience can be planned and scheduled ahead of time. Depending on the volume of jobs you publish, or whether or not your services to employers is high touch, you might consider giving extra “air-time” to featured jobs or jobs posted by featured employers.
You might also think about populating your social feeds with tips, advice, and insights for your job seekers and customers, with a link inviting followers to search for jobs on your site. Do this on a regular basis to familiarize new followers with your brand and services, and get them on your site.
4. Automate It.
There are tools you can use to automatically share your jobs and website content to your chosen social media channels. One tool I recommend is the Social Network Auto-Poster plugin, made by NextScripts.
Use the setting options to choose what social media channels you want to share to, what types of content to share, and ta-da! Now every time you post a new blog post or job, it will be automatically posted to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, and be seen by your followers.
These are all small tasks that don’t take too much time, but they can help make it that much easier for job seekers to find you, your website, and your jobs.
Read more posts on how job boards can use social media to their advantage: