Series 1: Post 1: Social Media - Advertising or Marketing?

Social Media is a great vehicle to communicate a company’s culture as it allows you to share information and build relationships.  Before I start this series I have to first state that social media should not be your ONLY recruiting tactic for millennials. If your company does not have strong on-campus recruiting efforts and a great employment brand you should not be focusing on social media as you have bigger priorities at hand.   If you already have those priorities under control, it is time to get into social media as likely your competitors are already there! There are a couple of techniques for using social media: the first is paid advertising, typically purchasing ads focused on your target market through profile analytics, and the second is marketing, building your online presence and sharing your company culture with perspective candidates.

Advertising can be very experience as you typically pay a cost per click with Facebook or job platforms on a yearly contract basis. For some companies, the use of advertising, like job boards, is the right solution. For the work I do, young adult recruiting, social media marketing is where I need to be these are platforms where students spend time thus, as a recruiter; I need to be on there too! There are so many ways you can use the inherent nature of social media sites to your advantage as they are built to share information and connect with friends or in your case, candidates.

I believe that building your brand through online free social media platforms allows you to target future candidates in a more cost effective manner than just advertising if it supports a strong employment brand and campus recruiting techniques.  Social media (online techniques) should boost your offline/campus activities. The key to using social media sites like Facebook is to first have a strategy on how to use these platforms organically, bring in the right alumni and current employees to build employee engagement and share your culture, which in turn creates a great recruiting tool as candidates see the real story about working at your company. Social media is not about pushing information but is about creating a dialogue – a push/pull – and answering the question “what’s in it for me?” for perspective candidates. Hopefully I can help you understand how to use these sites and build the draw factor that starts off a discussion that hopefully ends in an accepted job offer.

Over the next month, I will be sharing insights on how to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare by sharing your culture, creating engaged current employees and excited candidates.  If you have any specific questions about using these sites please post a comment on this blog post so I can tailor my upcoming blogs to meet your needs!