Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker
The international social media consultant notes that there’s no great difference between online marketing and recruitment.
The basic currency of social media marketing is enthusiasm. The international social media marketing consultant strives to create a presence that enthuses real people about a brand’s message. Once the audience is converted, the word spreads and the brand’s authority rises.
Social media works in the same way for recruitment. The best recruitment happens when people want to come to your business. So they’re looking for jobs even before you have them to give away. They’re more enthused about association with your brand than they are about job specifics, often, so there’s a “foot in the door” mentality that means you can develop positions in order to bring talented individuals into the fold – reshuffling the internal dynamics of your existing job positions to accommodate the new architecture of the company.
Because, as the international social media consultant will ask you, what’s the core of successful businesses? Ideas and (again) enthusiasm. Over and over again the stories you read about, successful companies that came onto the scene with a great concept and ran with it, are stories of people passionate about the brand they’ve created rather than the precise role they play within that brand.
The international social media marketing consultant suggests that by developing your brand as an authoritative figure within business-relevant social networks, the HR potential may go through the roof. Candidates enthused by the identity and reputation of your brand come to you, rather than you having to look for them.
So how do you go about raising the profile of your brand in the right places? You do it the same way people have been getting ahead for years. You find the current big shots and get close to them. The international social media consultant’s first recommendation is that you get your own brand included in all relevant groups and circles, where the current arbiters of your industry sector have a strong presence. The more well aligned you are with them, the more your presence will be felt where it counts.
Of course you can also use the social network to develop targeted job advertising campaigns. The international social media marketing consultant will point out that you can use the basic principles outlined above to place your job adverts where relevant and talented people will see them.
You can even use these principles to find out what your target audience responds to in a job advert. Make use of the interactive nature of social media to get respondents telling you what they want from a job advert – and then give it to them. Any way to get an edge over the competition is welcome!