{"id":31022,"date":"2015-02-23T06:29:37","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T14:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/?p=31022"},"modified":"2017-10-17T13:20:15","modified_gmt":"2017-10-17T20:20:15","slug":"how-to-develop-a-winning-social-recruiting-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/how-to-develop-a-winning-social-recruiting-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Develop a Winning Social Media Recruiting Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

All the self-proclaimed social media junkies raise your hands.<\/p>\n

All of the social media skeptics, keep reading.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing about social media, you can tap into a huge audience \u2013 between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, and all those other platforms that seem to pop up on a daily basis \u2013 but you need to be willing to commit to the effort of keeping up your social media efforts on a consistent basis and you need a strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why? Because reasons (I kid, I kid!).<\/p>\n

But really, you need a social media strategy for reasons that mirror why you need a general marketing strategy. If you want to get results, you need goals and a way to measure whether you\u2019re achieving them. Otherwise, you\u2019re just posting to post (which is kind of like talking to hear your own voice).<\/p>\n

So what do you need to know and do to be sure you win at social media in 2015?<\/p>\n

Define Your Audience<\/h2>\n

Which networks are you going to use? Which networks are going to reach your audience? Recently, analyzing some metrics for a client, we discovered that Facebook had delivered over 100 leads while LinkedIn delivered none, nor did Twitter. This doesn\u2019t mean everyone should double down on Facebook (another client had the exact opposite results, with zero leads from Facebook and over 100 from LinkedIn), but it does mean that you\u2019re efforts should be focused on the platforms on which your audience is most likely to be found.<\/p>\n

Find out where your audience is interactive. Maybe they\u2019re mostly on twitter. Maybe they\u2019re on Facebook. Another client of mine regularly has content shared via Twitter retweets, even though they have the most audience interaction on Facebook. A good way to learn more about your audience is through the creation of an audience persona. Download our audience persona template<\/a> here or create your own.<\/p>\n

Defining your audience and figuring out where they\u2019re active leads us to the next part of your strategy\u2026<\/p>\n

Set Goals<\/h2>\n

Like any other marketing (or business) effort, you can\u2019t measure your success without setting goals. Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Share your content to drive traffic? Generate more leads for your business?<\/p>\n

How are you going to measure the success of your social media marketing efforts? These goals should be in line with your overall business goals; for instance, if you\u2019re looking to grow your business by X%, you may set a social media marketing goal of generating Y number of leads through your social marketing efforts.<\/p>\n

As always, the key to setting goals is to ensure that they are SMART \u2013 specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.<\/p>\n

Have A Content Strategy<\/h2>\n

You\u2019ve found your audience and you\u2019ve set your goals. What\u2019s next? Now its time to determine what exactly you\u2019re going to talk about. Think of social media as one big cocktail party. Just as you would never walk into a party and talk only about yourself (and if you DO, you may have noticed that nobody talks with you for very long), you shouldn\u2019t just post about your products and services on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. It\u2019s okay to talk about yourself a bit, but the self promotion should be mixed in with conversation (ask your audience a question, comment on a trend, etc.) and education (tell your audience something helpful, offer up a suggestion, solve a problem, etc.).<\/p>\n

To be educational, you\u2019ve got to have good content to share. Ideally it should be your own and not someone else\u2019s. This is your opportunity to showcase your expertise, establish thought leadership, and position yourself to make a sale \u2013 all in a way that is subtle and percieved as helpful. Your content can come in the form of blogs, whitepapers, ebooks, videos, infographics, webinars, etc. The list goes on and on and the key thing to understand is that it is less important what FORM your content takes than how helpful is to the person consuming it.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve got some good, educational content, you\u2019ll need to determine which content will be shared on which networks. This is where good audience personas<\/a> can help. If you know your audience and know what platforms they\u2019re on, you can identify opportunities to get in front of qualified leads by sharing your content on social media. For example, if you are targeting meeting and event planners, its a good idea to share your great content on LinkedIn groups for conference planners, event organizers, etc.<\/p>\n

Look at the times when your audience is most active so you can determine what content will be posted when on which network to obtain the greatest reach. Facebook and Twitter both offer insights to help you find out when your audience is active and what type of content they\u2019re interacting with.<\/p>\n

Plan to Monitor Your Streams<\/h2>\n

Posting is all well and good but if you\u2019re not monitoring what people are saying, you\u2019re not supporting your posting efforts. What are you listening for? Well, here are a few ideas<\/p>\n