We took a closer look…

As we researched the best way to build brand affinity for Vision on the leading social media platforms, we concluded that you have some choices.

Commitment to Facebook in the staffing industry is minimal. Most pages (if they even exist) are ghost sites…

Tek Systems

CPSI

ACI Group

Computer Management, Inc.

MRI Global Network Search

The best Facebook presence in your competitive set, Aerotek, has an engaging and user-friendly page:

Yet despite this pointed and direct effort, Aerotek averages just 1.7% user engagement* each week

*Facebook “user engagement” is the number of people interacting with a page (likes, wall posts, and shares) as a percentage of total likes in a given week.

Monster.com ranks 122nd in overall US web traffic*.

Monster has 26,000 likes…

*Alexa.com

…which is less than half of this Garden City, NY cupcake shop (that we randomly found

while researching brand pages)

<1/2

Like your competitors, Vision’s most valuable content is its jobs—not the quick-hit photos, memes, and videos that Facebook users prefer.

The confidential nature of Vision’s content doesn’t help on Facebook. There are real limits on how much you can reveal about clients, salary, etc.). And most job seekers are equally reluctant to be active in a place where their employers might find them.

confidential

Many businesses are coming to the conclusion that Facebook is not an effective medium for building brands or initiating transactions.

$

In study by Intellimon, only 29 percent of businesses considered Facebook an effective way of driving traffic to their website.

29%

Intellimon, “The Traffic Survey” Nov. 2010

Bullhorn Reach studied social media use in the recruiting space. They found that not only is

Facebook the slowest growing recruiting tool (12.5x slower than Twitter), it is also trails LinkedIn and Twitter in “applications per job posting” (8.8x fewer than LinkedIn) and “applications per network connection” (8.4x fewer than Twitter).

Bullhorn Reach, “The Social Activity Report” Feb. 2012

Vision’s page is modeled after Aerotek’s: photos, videos, funny posts, and thoughtful polls. It’s engineered to take advantage of Facebook’s EdgeRank system, which rewards pages with exposure based on the quality, context, and recency of the content they create:

What’s the best case scenario?

Affinity Weigh

t Time Decay

Edge

Assume that approach and effort propels Vision to Aerotek’s level of engagement – 1.7%. With the current number of Likes that Vision has, you would reach a total of…

Engaged users per week8

Given the size of Vision and the Facebook dynamics, it’s optimistic to expect substantial growth in “likes.”

If we doubled our likes, it would give us 16 engaged users per month. If each of those engaged users actually visited the site (also optimistic), we could expect…

applicant a week from Facebook.1

If you welcome “engagement,” customer complaints require significant, everyday attention.

“Your online application process is too complicated!”

“Aerotek does not help their employees at all!”

“Worst staffing agency. Good for nothing.”

It just doesn’t add up: for now, a strong commitment to Facebook won’t deliver the ROI to make it worthwhile.

So there’s a choice:

“Deactivate” your Facebook page with little or no opportunity cost.

Or, communicate, in a friendly, Facebook-like way, that you’re aware that this isn’t the space for you…

So what about Twitter?The microblogging platform

is growing quickly.

Bullhorn research shows that Twitter is the most effective social network when it comes to converting contacts into job applications.

It’s a relatively underexplored medium—trailing Facebook and LinkedIn in recruiter participation—but showing more promise at of exactly what you’re looking for:

Apply________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

applications.

So how do we tweet?

Your content is right: jobs. But the current RSS feed method needs rejuvenation. (Boring tweets are the worst tweets.*)

*According to the definitive study on tweet content, “Who Gives a Tweet?”

@Similarly, we need to avoid old

news, “presence maintenance”,

and heavy

use of #s and @s.

#

What we do want is information, humor, and transparency.

1. Start by listening to your competitors2. Tweet milestones (number of placements,

new relationships, etc.) that illustrate how you help clients and consultants

3. Tease job listings with key attributes (work from home, Fortune 500, downtown Baltimore…)

4. Segment by job types5. Tweet special offers and bonus programs periodically6. Tweet market hiring trends that argue for contract

work7. Maybe even retweet jobs your competitors list but

you don’t8. Ask bonus winners, full-time placements, and others if

you can congratulate them9. Ask if you can tweet about employees (interesting)

outside-of-work stories10. Include a few humans (staffers with real photos)

And there’s more to think about… more to explore

11.Assign more than one tweeter12.Ask questions (that you and followers might really be interested in

hearing answered)13.Always explain or make clear what’s to be found at a link14.Follow interesting people and retweet away15.Tweet 3 or 4 times a day…at most; link to a job at least half the time16.Don’t get caught up in apologizing every time something negative

is tweeted, but your first instinct is to reply17.Use twitter search to see if anyone’s talking about you18.Ask how companies in your space could get better19.Follow your clients and retweet their tweets that are relevant20.Check out tweetmyjobs.com and others

The key? Having a point of view, a personality—a vision. Bland, annoying updates won’t engage and connect with followers.

And how does LinkedIn fit in?

As the Bullhorn Reach Study indicated—and as you already know—LinkedIn is hands-down the leader in the recruiting industry:

Social Activity Metric

ValueLinkedIn’s rank

among social media platforms

Connections per recruiter 616 1

Connections added per week 18.5 1

Views per job posting 5.7x Facebook 1

Applications per job posting 8.8x Facebook 1

Credibility is the coin of the realm in the professional setting of LinkedIn, so maintenance—by your recruiters—of businesslike profiles is critical.

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Discussion: Shouldn’t a professional profile on LinkedIn for Vision recruiters and employees be a mutual expectation, if not a condition of employment? It’s where you live.

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, content creation is not the driver of

LinkedIn success; connections are. Vision recruiters

must relentlessly pursue the

connections that drive success.

Credibility and connections depend on effective maintenance of the Vision brand (which includes your people). Thoroughness,

timeliness, and accuracy* should be the values that guide all LinkedIn activity.

*And be concise. Always.

That means complete, well-written profiles for the company and employees alike; up-to-date resumes; professional photos.

S M T W T F S

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Maintenance needs to be scheduled… a religion.

The content that is created should be highly relevant and useful, with a more serious tone than other networks. Posts and company updates should lead to exploration of the Vision page, not distract from it.

Our recommendations

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a recruiter’s best friend. From a company perspective, keep it thorough, professional, and timely. Remind employees they are the Vision brand!

At this time, graciously respect the “personal space” of users. Until maintenance costs and confidentiality dynamics shift, it remains an inefficient medium for recruiters and job seekers.

Facebook Twitter

Listen. Keep tweeting, but better. Twitter’s been shown to work as a recruiting tool. It’s the fastest-growing network, with huge potential for your industry.