Companies keep approaching us to ask how to optimize social media for talent acquisition. They are not talking about those pesky "we are hiring" job posts that you see every day. They are talking about employee brand and brand awareness to make them seem more attractive to potential employees and for the purposes of retaining existing employees. The thing is, there is one very very important thing ALL companies need to be doing to leverage social media for talent acquisition, and most are NOT doing it!

Advocacy!
The most important resources that you have at your disposal for social media are the people who currently work in your company. If you are not leveraging them, not just with introduction bonuses, but through brand awareness and story telling. Then you are missing a very important channel for talent acquisition.
Most companies spend a fortune on 3rd party tools, such as on Linkedin jobs or life pages trying to optimize the visibility of their hiring needs. Not only that, the most active members of staff, on social media, are normally only the HR people. But an HR person, even with the best intentions, can only reach so far into the digital world. Companies forget that the people who work for them are the best brand ambassadors that they have. When a devops team lead shares that the company is looking for new people, he or she is more likely to have a network of relevant connections, than the HR personnel. Especially, if they share more than just a "we are hiring" post and actually leverage social to tell a story about the technological advances of the company or great reasons why it is a good company to work for. Employee pride says a lot more about a company than all the thousands of $$$ spent on paying linkedin to host a JOB or LIFE sections on Linkedin.

We recently helped 2 companies with different talent acquisition "pains" look at how they could optimize social media to tell a better brand story, using their employees. We not only brainstormed the messages that we thought would help them "sell" those open positions better. We looked at who to leverage in the company and how those advocates could help drive better quality and more visibility for their brand and specifically for open positions.

One company with over 20,000 employees, just by recruiting several hundred advocates has managed to drive 20 times more applicants to their jobsite than before. Another company with 6,000+ employees, of which only 1,500 are active advocates, has managed to double all social engagements YoY.
It speaks volumes that the posts that are winning our 20K employee client more engagements and click-throughs than any other posts, are the ones that highlight employee success, showcase reasons why the company is a great place to work, and even show the fun side of the company.

So how can businesses face this challenge? Here are three things we recommend that you can do right now to implement a successful talent brand on social media.
1. Strong Social Media presenceWhy does a strong social media make a difference to potential new employees? It is likely future employees will do online research on your company to view if the company offers work-perks, learning opportunities, benefits, and showcases positive employee-employer relationship.
Being transparent and active on social media shows that the company is advanced and not scared to move towards the future. Showcasing real people and real stories is a great way to leverage your successes and entice new employees. At the same time, involving your existing employees instills a sense of pride in the workplace and the contribution they make, making them more likely to stay the distance.

What to implement: Increase day to day social media posting and story-telling, not only job postings.
2. Showcase Company Perks/BenefitsPotential employees want to see that the company offers above and beyond what other companies in the same field offer. This includes things like training, advancement opportunities and free perks like travel and meals. Some of the things our clients have implemented include once a week sushi lunch for all employees. Career learning and advancement opportunities etc...
3. Positive Employee Advocacy - tell stories through the eyes of your employeesHaving your employees share company posts/news will show that your company is involved with their employees. Shows potential employees that the current employees enjoy working at your company and that they can enjoy it too. The more employees share/like/comment the companies posts on social media, the bigger/wider the reach will be. Use your employees to be the "stars" in your social posts. Highlight their successes and impact on your clients.

What to Implement: Have your employees share on their own social media accounts a positive experience they had with your company. This will show other companies/potential employers a real feel of your company. The employee with the most likes/shares/comments receives a reward.
Summary:The people who work for you are your best path to people you want to have work for you. Telling your brand story on social media and having these people share it opens you up to a much wider audience and will ultimately help you to identify and employ the right people much faster.
Do not be afraid to use social media for this avenue, trust us, you would be surprised if I could show you the actual results of who is looking at your page on social media, what demographics they are in and how they are engaging with your posts. Many of them are potential hiring candidates and NOT the analysts, journalists and business partners you WISH were engaging with your social brand. Although they are there too. But I will leave you with this one thought. If you are pushing a positive employee brand on social, for the purposes of talent acquisition, using the best practices we have mentioned above... and... an analyst or potential customer sees these posts. They won't shy away from your product and not take you seriously, AFAIK, they will probably be more impressed at your pride and transparency and curious to work too with a company that takes such pride in its' people and work. Now that's brand positivity!
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ZoecialMedia is a social media creative agency. We will help you face any challenge on social media and create a strategy and creative plan to leverage your digital channels for more brand visibility and credibility. Speak to us about a no-obligation audit of your social channels. www.zoecialmedia.com

As you can see we have updated our branding and website! 

​We have chosen the colors blue in combination with yellow to our new style a fresh and bright look. 

The color blue gives a feeling of trustworthiness, and many financial companies choose the color for their branding. Which companies do you think of when you think of the color blue?

The color yellow gives a happy feeling. It reminds us of the sun and summer! We feel that the combination of the two colors perfectly captures our identity.

For the logo we have chosen a speech bubble. It reflects our desire to help companies share their message in the best possible way through Social Media. 

We hope you like the new look and feel! 
 
Naomi

This week Facebook updated their app to include a button down at the bottom of the screen for their new Marketplace feature. Now people and small local businesses (and hopefully soon service providers too!) can sell their products through Facebook Marketplace.
To Sell: 
Simply click on the + Sell Something button and fill in the details and add image.
To Buy:
Simply search by price range, distance you are willing to travel, or use the categories to filter to the products you want to buy.

Watch this short video clip we recorded for you to show you how it works >>

No need to cue panic for this announcement. LinkedIn are telling Group Admins that they will be re-integrating group functionality back into the main fold of your LinkedIn home page. And... It's about time! For too long now LinkedIn has ruined the Group experience by locking it away and having too much control on it. Making it more difficult to find groups, difficult to grow groups and the worst thing they did was make it impossible to post in groups using 3rd party tools.
Now admins will have all sorts of new tools for engaging members of their groups. They are also planning to make it easier to discover and join groups, although what that will look like isn't yet known.
These are very welcome changes. I cannot wait to test them out and write about how to optimize them so you can be better community managers. I honestly believe the future of successful social marketing will be in how we as business owners and consumers engage with each other in communities. I am always telling the sales and product marketing managers I train, that they need to be socially selling. Not "Hi I am so and so and work at so and so and here is my product, buy it." But... really living in these communities, forming relationship, adding value to the conversations and by doing so creating opportunities to sell when the time is right.
Stay tuned... I will update again when we know more about these changes.

Facebook announced that they are making sweeping changes to the way we see content in our personal feeds this week. And I say it's about time!!
Here's why...
We are not all the same type of consumer:
There are always those that are on Facebook for the friendships, the birthday messages, the happy news, the funny life moments. There are those that are there to read an interesting article, see some trends, laugh at a video, buy a product, engage with a brand. And then there are those that will happily, and in equal measure, do both! Facebook until now has made the decisions for us on what type of person you should be, and has let the algorithm decide for you. 100% of frustration with Facebook comes from people not understanding or embracing the algorithm and working with it to optimize their own feed experience to see more and more of what you want to see.
What Good Social Media Managers and Publishers Need to Do:
Embrace the change. Work with it to find out how best to optimize it so that you are beating the rest, who are either too lazy or too busy complaining, to be able to figure out how to engage your consumers in this new way.
What good Facebook Users Need to Do:
Enjoy! Finally Facebook is going back to the fun news feeds we used to have 15 years ago. Where you could poke a friend because you wanted them to be thinking about you, or where connecting with old school friends meant more than just having one of them randomly see and like a post about something totally not related to your relationship with them. Who knows what the change will look like, but I say bring it on... for too long we have all been moaning that we don't see enough content from the people we want, while business are moaning that not enough people are seeing their content. It just doesn't make ANY sense and Facebook are right to fix it. What Facebook is doing is giving the consumer the right to choose what they want to consume and how!
What Facebook Needs to Do:
Give the user the ability to choose, on an even deeper (not AI or ML or Algorithm) level, what they are interested. Its stupid to keep feeding a user an ad for a new car based on a search they did for a new car, months after they have already bought said new car, because your algorithm has no way of knowing that about the user. Let the consumer, who wants to, choose what commercial content to be shown... Make the advertiser pay premium to target these people so that the ad revenue is based on clear targeting FACT and not some wishy washy algorithm that classifies someone by "interest" or "demographic." As both a super consumer on Facebook and the manager of over 40 brand pages for my clients. I can guarantee you that the users will appreciate it more and the advertisers, although paying more per leed, will be getting better value. It's a WIN WIN!!.
Be the Change:
Change happens - you can spend hours, days, weeks , months or years moaning about it. Or you can be like me and work on understanding it and capitalizing on it, so that you leave the moaners behind.
Bring it on Facebook! ...and thank you!
(PS: The irony is not lost on me that I am writing an article about Facebook and publishing on LinkedIn. But who knows where I will publish this in the future, that's the beauty of change)
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