Tapping Your Untapped Audience – Social Media
Have you checked your Facebook page today? Tweeted? Updated your LinkedIn profile? Chances are you have completed one, two, or all three of those items today. Social media can have a huge influence on both our personal and professional lives, and it can be a great resource to effectively promote our organization as well.
Building a Social Media Presence
Social media offers individuals a way to instantly acquire information and “be in the know” about an organization–its events, news, and culture. If your organization does not have a Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn page, or if those pages are not updated often, it is time to change that. Here are a few eye opening statistics about social media users.
Facebook: Facebook currently has approximately 1.35 billion users monthly and is the most most active social media platform in the world. Over 23% of Internet traffic is from Facebook.
Twitter: There is approximately 284 million monthly active users, and 500 million tweets are sent daily. Interesting note: Eighty percent of Twitter’s active users are mobile users.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 332 million members in over 200 countries and territories. More than four million companies have LinkedIn company pages.
Looking at that data, clearly there are a lot of people in this world using social media. So it makes perfect sense for your organization to be there. But to have a meaningful presence, you must look beyond your immediate network. Do this by exploring who your followers follow, and then connect with them where it makes sense. However, know that once your organization is “liked”, “followed” or “connected”, you are not finished–this is where the road gets exciting!
Maintaining a Social Media Presence
Display your organization’s culture via social media so that viewers can get a solid feel for your work environment, along with learning your organization’s goals. Content updates should radiate excitement and invite curiosity. Regular, relevant updates will keep the Likers liking, the Followers following, and the Connected connected. Occasional or irrelevant updates, will result in an audience that stops listening or disconnects all together. Remember: there is always another organization ready to steal your audience’s attention, and your future talent may be among that audience.
Finding Time to Be Social
If you are concerned about the time it takes to post updates, work closely with your marketing team to see how tasks can be coordinated. Solicit content ideas from the organization as a whole, and of course, identify the types of content that your audience finds meaningful. If your organization is small and your team members wear many hats, look at identifying a team member to coordinate updates, but with the understanding that everyone is responsible for providing ideas, interesting facts and data, and overall enriching content that emphasizes your organization’s mission.
Promoting Social Media Offline
Effective promotion of your social media sites is essential for reaching new audiences. Actively promote your pages on your corporate site, but also share your social media sites within your professional and personal networks at conferences, events, meetings, or even volunteer activities–wherever you can reach people in-person and wherever it makes sense.
Promoting Social Media Through ExactHire’s HireCentric ATS
Users of Exacthire’s HireCentric ATS can promote their organization’s social media pages from within our system. When job applicants view the company’s job listings, they can also access social media sites to learn more about the organization and its latest news. If you are a HireCentric user and not currently using this feature, please contact the Support Team to discuss ways promote your social media pages.
Do not let your organization miss out on expanding your audience through the use of social media. Actively update your social media and share your news with the world. People want to hear what is going on within your organization!
And of course, we like to share what is going on at ExactHire, so let’s connect!
