Speaking as an Employer Brand specialist who helps our clients attract candidates via Social Media, we know how important it is to engage your Twitter audience. Not only will this help you build and attract potential employees and build useful talent pools, but it will also help you to stand out from your competition and attract new clients! If that’s the case then why isn’t every internal recruiter / HR professional out there doing it?! A lot of it is down to these two factors:
“I don’t know where to start”
And
“I don’t have the time”
Luckily we have 10 Tips that will help you increase your Twitter engagement that won’t eat into your busy day of sourcing:
You’ve gotta be in it to win it
Don’t let your Twitter activity fall flat – if you aren’t posting then you OBVIOUSLY aren’t going to get the most engagement. Try and aim for 2-5 tweets per day and don’t do them all at once – try posting steadily throughout the day. Scheduling tools (such as the JobHoller Twitter scheduler) will help you do this if you find yourself forgetting to tweet – try not to rely on this too heavily or you’ll miss out on trending topics and live conversations that can really help you boost engagement.
Quality not Quantity
With 2-5 tweets in mind just remember – that’s purely a guideline. Don’t be throwing pointless tweets out just to fill your quota! Everything you post is an extension of your employer brand so you need to make sure your online persona represents this in the best possible way.
Be relevant and be niche
If you are recruiting for Digital Design roles in Manchester then there isn’t much point posting about changes in the healthcare sector or events happening in London at the weekend. Know your audience! It will strengthen your brand if you post and share content that’s relevant to your sector, plus you build your following around the same demographic so you are more likely to get engagement this way. It’s good to focus on a niche subject as well – for example there are hundreds of different Development languages, but if you specialise in Java and focus on sharing content on this specific language then you are more likely to attract candidates with the relevant skillset.
Be funny
Some of the most engaging tweets are ones that do nothing other than make you laugh so don’t take yourself too seriously. Remember @IcelandFoods’ tweet of: ‘Unexpected result in the bagging area’ after England’s shocking defeat to Iceland? This racked up over 1.2 million impressions! So don’t be afraid to crack the jokes out!
Use media
Twitter research has shown that tweets with photos get 313% more engagement. That’s 313 more reasons why you should add images and GIF’s to your tweets!
Use Hashtags – #but #not #too #many
Hashtags receive on average a 16% boost in engagement than tweets that don’t include them – plus if you hashtag relevant keywords (e.g. location, job title, content type etc.) then it makes your content more searchable to those people that may not be following your company yet! Don’t go hashtag overkill though – #you #don’t #need #them #on #every #word.
Share content from other sources
Worried you can’t think of 5 engaging, funny, relevant to your industry tweets to post each day? Fear not! You don’t have to be a thought leader – you can be a though follower and share content that will interest your audience! Build yourself a ‘content bible’ with sources to find interesting blogs and articles to share to your followers. E.g. if you recruit for fashion marketing roles you may look to sources such as Drapers, Fashion Monitor and Vogue to find the types of content that your followers will engage with. Plus sharing topical, interesting stories relevant to your recruitment niche only helps reinforce your image as an expert!
Join in with Tweet Ups
Don’t just use Twitter to post your own content – join in with others! You may find there is a ‘Tweet Up’ at a scheduled time on a subject such as ‘Employer Branding’ that you can take part in – live tweeting means there is an audience listening and reacting as your tweeting, plus the organiser is likely to retweet your comments to a larger audience!
Follow and engage with others
Part of your role as a ‘social sourcer’ is to find the right accounts to follow based on your target demographic. You will speak to clients and candidates every day so why not follow them as you go! Tools such as Followerwonk and Twiangulate are also really useful to find people that could be relevant as well. Don’t just follow and sit quietly – spend a bit of time on your news feed each day and engage / reply to other tweets! People are more likely to RT your content if you’ve done the same for them in the past!
Seeing is believing
Don’t just post and run away – make an effort to view and record your analytics so you can see what’s working, and what’s not. This is a great way to set yourself engagement targets for the next month too (you could even make it a competition with other internal recruiters / HR professionals in your team). Simply log into your twitter account, click the profile icon in the top right corner then hit Analytics – You’ll get a 28 day summary showing your number of tweets, number of impressions, number of profile visits, number of mentions and number of new followers plus a snapshot of your top tweets, top media tweets and top follower.
So there you have it – ten tips to twitter triumph! Make sure to follow @JobHoller while you’re at it!
