A Business Facebook Guide

Understand the essence of facebook and learn how to engage with your target audience.

Introduction Setting up a business page Best practice Post ideas Terminology

This guide outlines the business benefits of facebook and is an elementary guide for recruitment businesses contemplating setting up a facebook business page. It can also be used as a reference guide for established pages, acting as a checklist to reaffirm best practices. For more information on how to utilise facebook please refer to our advanced guide.

Content

Social media and SEO techniques are becoming increasingly important assets for all businesses, particularly within the recruitment industry. Why? These marketing tools enable you to be found by potential clients, as well as find quality candidates. It allows you to connect and engage with your target audience and build a group of followers which you can communicate with on a regular basis.

Facebook was set up in 2004 as a social network for connecting with people such as family, friends, co-workers or people with similar interests and opinions. It has now become a premium marketing tool for big brands to build a group of brand advocates to communicate and promote effortlessly online. The marketing benefits of facebook are now realised by business to business (B2B) companies, who although slower to adapt to the facebook potential are beginning to maximise the communication benefits. Businesses are moving away from the one dimensional traditional marketing channels, and the customer/business marketing elements are changing, developing a more interactive relationship. Facebook is on the forefront of social media marketing. Recruiters, for sometime now, have been utilising facebook to attract and engage with people, in order to continue to find top quality candidates and build brand awareness. Facebook activity also contributes to search engine optimisation.

Introduction

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Introduction

The benefits and functionality of facebook continue to evolve as we live in an era of infinite mobility driven by the obsession with technology. Recruitment businesses are tapping into the potential utilising facebook to address core business goals: • Get found by people searching for recruitment activity

• Attract potential candidates who will be suitable for job vacancies

• Connect and engage with potential candidates

• Create a community of supporters who follow your recruitment activity

• Share job vacancies

• Promote company activity and website updates

• Project a positive company culture

• Continually nurture candidate relationships

• Showcase company activity to potential clients

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Introduction

Before you begin to set up your facebook page, take a little time to explore and observe what is being posted within the recruitment industry. Search for some of your competitors or other B2B businesses which you respect and aspire to be like.

The facebook search bar is not very robust and sometimes does not find the facebook page you are looking for - even when you enter the exact name of the page, so you may need to visit the company website and locate from there. Gather information, make a note of:

• What is the frequency of page posting?

• What times are they posting?

• What are they posting?

• What is getting the most interaction – pictures, links, videos, questions?

• How many people post directly on the page?

• How many respond to a post?

Does the page have a events and albums? How does the ‘About Us’ section showcase their business? What other tabs do they have? Also note what isn’t working for the pages and what you can do better.

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Introduction Even though we know facebook is a must for all businesses, it’s still a challenge for B2B companies who don’t share the same engagement characteristics as their B2C counterparts. However there are some B2B companies who are seeing extremely positive results from facebook, here are some examples

Setting up a business page

It’s important to complete all the sections.

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Setting up a business page Business pages are similar to personal pages, but are by default, public. People can like and become a “fan” of your page without requiring approval from page administrators, unlike personal pages. To set up a business page: Copy and paste this web address - https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

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Setting up a business page

Facebook web address If the name of your company has already been taken, try a slight variation by including your location.

Enable Ads Advertising your page can be very beneficial to your business. You can enable ads here, which will allow you go back later and set up an advertising account.

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Setting up a business page Once you’ve selected ‘category’ and input your address details, facebook will then guide through several simple steps.

2 About Confirm the company status as ‘recruitment agency’. Describe what you actually do, include any specialised recruitment sectors. Insert your website address and other sites such as Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube

Profile Picture This can be either a group photograph or company logo, whichever make sure it is a high quality resolution image, clarity of images are important.

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Setting up a business page

Once you’ve completed that section you will be directed to the administration page. You are the administrator of your page. Your name will not appear anywhere on your business page unless you choose to post as yourself. By default, you will be posting as your business page name.

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Here you can edit the information about your company, including about, location, phone number, website and more. This information is helpful in case people want to contact you or visit your agency. Include as much information as possible. You can decide and select who has permission to post on your page. Ideally choose only one to two people to co-ordinate and control the posts. Although you want to encourage everyone to get involved in facebook, you also require a degree of management.

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Setting up a business page Within the admin section you can upload and create a number of sections. Cover photograph When adding a cover image you may want to include photographs of your offices or staff. If these are not suitable, try using images that relate to the industry sectors you service which include some key words. You may want to think about getting this designed, it should only be a nominal cost and will be well worth it to achieve an impactful professional image.

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Within the photo section you can create albums, here are some ideas: Company Section Upload any imagery or photographs relating to your agency such as company logo, external and internal signage, thumbnail of a company newsletter, branded items such as pens, pads etc. If you don’t have these items or don’t have high quality photographic images, you can always get some designed, including external signage, again it doesn’t cost a lot but can look very impressive. UK Employment Section You could include a selection of images relating to employment and industry sectors which you service, for example, logistics – lorries, steering wheels, petrol, tachograph. Charity Include any charitable or sponsorship activity employees are involved with. Or include any local or regional charity campaigns. Working Life Include a montage of working shot photographs of employees not only in the office but out and about visiting clients, all contribute to building up a positive company image.

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Setting up a business page 5 You have the options to include some personalised sections. Click on this button to

drop down the other available sections.

This is where you can really make your facebook page come to life and project a professional proactive image. Here are some ideas. UK Employment – an inforgraph relating to employment, unemployment and recruitment around the UK, statistics shown by region. You could also include an infograph relating to industry skills, how many people work in retail, logistics, IT etc. Career Guidance – an overview of the most popular careers, the training required. Obviously you could focus on the industry sectors you serve. Include some contact details of industry bodies whereby more information can be sourced. Recruitment – an overview of the recruitment process, from CV filtering to assessment centres. You could showcase some successful candidates. Wow Jobs – have some fun by showcasing some of the most unusual jobs in the UK. All of a sudden your facebook pages looks more interesting and engaging.

UK Employment Career Guidance Recruitment Jobs

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Setting up a business page

Once you have completed all the main sections you can now add some additional details. Directly underneath the main panel you will find highlights.

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Events Use every tool that is available to you to promote your company. You can use the event section to promote any company or national activity that will enhance your company image and knowledge.

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There are three sections to ‘highlights’, Events, Milestones and Questions.

These dates will then be listed within your company events schedule.

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Setting up a business page

7 Milestones Milestones are key achievements or moments you’ve decided to highlight. These may include company anniversary (how long have you been in operation), how many placements fulfilled each month, how many temporary hours processed through your system, how many candidate interviews arranged or some fun items such as how many cakes eaten within the office! Include any charity details such as much raised ‘reached £1,000. Ensure you upload a photograph or image.

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Setting up a business page

8 Questions Asking questions are one of the most effective ways to inject engagement, simply follow several easy steps.

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Best practice

Facebook has the potential to be your candidate attraction funnel – use it well.

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Best practice

Be interactive, fun and helpful. When people reach your Facebook page, they’re looking for a slightly more light hearted tone than your website and a connection to your recruitment agency. Give advice and tips relating to recruitment. Post entertaining content, such as short videos, candidate case studies, and appealing photos.

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Give people on facebook a sneak peek at new releases. Your facebook fans are often looking for some perks for being a fan and following your agency. Provide them with the latest vacancies or information about local companies with the highest number of vacancies.

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Post interesting industry news. Don’t use your page only for self promotional use. Make it a place people want to visit, keep up to date on employment news and recruitment trends. Posting details about activity within your industry is a great way to become a thought leader and increase your fan base. Include any opinions popular tv show news such as the Apprentice.

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Like other company pages. Facebook is a social place after all, and connecting with professional bodies and associations such CIPD, can strengthen your image and your facebook business page credibility. It also acts as a communication feed, keeping you aware of any industry news.

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5 Look beyond the recruitment industry to find industry groups which you specifically recruit for, such as IT, Logistics, Retail etc. Again this keeps you up-to-date with industry news. It will also help you attract candidates who are interested in those sectors.

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Best practice

Focus on engagement. You are trying to connect and get response from your community. Ask questions, post helpful tips, link to articles that your audience will ‘like’ and ‘share.’ When you make the posts about your audience and what they need rather than selling to them, you will develop a richer and deeper relationship with your community..

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Don’t oversell or undersell. No one likes a never ending sales pitch. But equally share your successes, how many placements this week, client feedback! Use the 80-20 rule for sales messages vs. content/connection posts. So if you decide to post five times a week, one of the posts should be a sales message and four post could be relating to finding a job, tips and of course vacancies can be posted throughout the day.

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Run the odd competition. You don’t have to offer high value prizes. Recruitment related prizes such as 2 hour interview training, CV critique, etc can be seen as high perceived value prizes without costing you the earth.

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Don’t be hesitant in asking for a ‘call to action’. If you want people to like say ‘please like our post’ if you are looking for comments ‘we’re interested to know what you think, please post your comments’ or even ‘go to our website to download our latest newsletter’

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Create a themed content calendar which provides you with an overview of what you’re posting. The benefits of this are twofold, firstly it forces you to plan what you will posting each week or indeed month, to prevent you from updating just anything to fill a void. Secondly you can create some themes, for example ask a trivia question every Friday and make it Fun Friday, or post a motivating quote each Monday to create Motivating Monday. Posting regularly themes begin to show a pattern, your community will soon notice and watch out for their Motivating Monday quote!

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Best practice

Check what’s working and what’s not. Ensure you evaluate your posts, it’s simple enough to do, just click on the ‘insight’ page on the left handside panel you’ll find sufficient summary data to easily see what people have clicked, liked, shared etc.

Post everyday, it’s key to keep engagement with your community, if you are updating them with interesting and informative updates they won’t get fed up. You may decide that you might take the weekend off as the office is closed but remember facebook is busiest at the weekend!

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People engage with images, they can evoke more emotions than words, so when striving to engage with your community images play an important role. Ensure you post images throughout the week. Encourage your team to take photographs so you can build up a bank of images.

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Even though facebook is a social platform projecting a chatty and relaxed tone, beware of spelling. Double check your posts, it is so easy to miss a word out or fail to spot a typo but slap-dash content will have a negative effect on your image – so take the time to check.

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Feedback is critical, yet listening and accepting feedback is trait most of us shy away from. Ask for feedback and embrace any negative comments, Harry Selfiridge once said “we can learn far more from a dissatisfied customer than we can ever learn from a satisfied one”.

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Best practice

So what triggers people to like? A recent survey conducted by Salesforce found that the most likes were derived from images. Yet out of 1,000 B2B facebook pages analysed only 32% took advantage of images. Funny images particularly receive a high volume of likes. However you need to strike a balance between content and image, not every posts requires an image. Facebook have numerous image apps which allow you to alter and reconstruct images, you can then utilise within posts and create competitions or pose questions.

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So what triggers people to comment? Questions of course! Particularly multiple choice questions. Obviously the question needs to be relevant, try and maintain the theme of recruitment, skills or employment. We would not recommend posing a question for every post, but once a week should evoke some interaction.

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So what triggers people to share? People like to share links to useful information or interesting content. You may not be the author of the content but commenting on it and including a link to a source of information is a good way to trigger interaction. People also like to share videos, although we’ve not discussed the use of videos within the guide, we do explore in our more advanced guide. Video sharing is rapidly growing, YouTube has now become one of the prime social media platforms and is extremely engaging.

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Best practice

The graphs above and below clearly show that fun facts and giveaways are popular for gaining likes, but not so much for generating conversation. If you’re after comments, questions are the out-and-out winner.

Post Ideas

Facebook enables you to build up a group of advocates, opening up a new style of communication.

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Ideas for posting Facebook posts should relate to your business objectives, the following ideas are general but hopefully may trigger further ideas which are more relevant to your business. Here are 10 ideas relating to showcasing and highlight the most …..

1 Posting vacancies are very popular in the recruitment industry, but don’t fall into the habit of only posting vacancies and doing too many throughout the day.

2 Candidate of the month - showcase a candidate who competed against many others to successfully be offered a position.

3 Job of week – highlight a position which you think has the most potential out of all your current vacancies.

4 Placement of the month - showcase a placement which against all the odds you managed to fulfil, it could be a skill in demand or awkward shifts etc.

5 Temp of the month – highlight a temp who has ticked all the boxes in terms of punctuality, attendance, output and client feedback.

6 Fan of the week or month - highlight which follower has liked and shared the most on facebook, send them a case of wine or beer.

7 Achievement of the month - showcase employees who have exceeded expectations or gone beyond the call of duty.

8 Most popular vacancy – highlight which vacancy received the most applications within the month.

9 Most popular industry sector – showcase which industry sector receives the most applications.

And for a bit of fun the most bizarre interview question! 10

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Ideas for posting Charity events always receive ‘likes’ on facebook, here are 10 ideas to maximise any charity events you are participating in.

1 Announce any commitment to charity evens such as marathon, swim, etc. include a link to any donation page.

2 Detail any training or special preparation required for charity events, which your staff are involved with.

3 Declare a target you wish to aim for in supporting a charity and post updates on target milestones.

4 Upload photographs relating to the charity and ask your followers to share, remember people engage with images.

5 Send good luck wishes to any charity that you donate to, again share a link to their donation page.

6 Let people know how your efforts have helped, what your fund raising has achieved or contributed to.

7 Post thank you comments from the charity organisers you have helped, or ask them to post for you on their site, you can then share.

8 Include some employee comments on how they’ve helped and why they decided to get involved.

9 Try and obtain a short video from your charity detailing their work and charitable events for you to upload.

If you are not actively involved with any charities directly promote local charitable events, by simply sharing some links. 10

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Ideas for posting Projecting an image of expertise can be derived from knowledge, including the odd post relating to statistics, recruitment trends and employment cements a professional image, here are 10 ideas relating to industry facts, which can be sourced via the internet.

1 Post the national monthly employment, unemployment and vacancy figures each month, visit www.ons.gov.uk you will find updated details each month.

2 Post trends in the hiring of permanent and temporary positions, you can also drill down by industry sector. The REC release these details each month www.rec.uk.com

3 The CIPD run a series of reports each quarter including, HR Outlook, Labour Outlook and Employee Outlook, extract some key statistics and post each month www.cipd.co.uk

4 Post some regional labour market statistics, relevant to your area, employment figures, gender split, professional split etc this can be obtained from www.ons.gov.uk

5 Look out for employment forecasts within the industry sectors you service and predicted trends, this will prove useful and interesting to job hunters.

6 Periodically post the Top 5 skill shortage occupations in the UK, the national Skills Council releases this type of information www.ukces.org.uk

7 Include key facts about the industry sectors you cover, how many work within the industry, how much revenue they contribute to the economy etc.

8 Occasionally post any milestone legislative dates or facts, such as CRB, Drivers CPC, include a link for followers to find out more.

9 Post some fun skill facts, the job which requires the most qualifications, or demands the longest training period.

Watch out for any general news you can piggyback on, with simple comment and a link to the article 10

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Ideas for posting Finally some good luck and congratulation ideas. Hopefully these ideas will help those new to facebook and at least get you started.

1 Good luck post to those candidates attending interviews this week, you may want to add an interview tip or link to interview tips.

2 Congratulations to any candidate who has been offered a position whether permanent or temporary, obviously this can be one generic post.

3 Congratulations to candidates who have completed the first week or month at the new job, again this can be a generic post.

4 Well done and thank to employees celebrating their annual anniversary of working for you, add in ‘cakes all round this afternoon’!

5 Include some ‘enjoy’ posts for national holidays, Easter, Bank Holidays etc. with tips on checking the roads etc.

6 Comment on any national sporting events, Wimbledon, FA Cup, Ascot, Grand National or any special event.

7 Piggyback on any current TV or film craze that hits the UK, with comments such as ‘did you enjoy ….’

8 Add some inspirational quotes, particularly those centred around work, self development, motivation.

9 Include some logical riddles and teasers, you can find a multitude of them on the internet.

Post some company milestones that you’re proud of. 10

Terminology

Learn the jargon of facebook, here is your first lesson.

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Terminology

Application A program that allows users to share content and interact with other users. EdgeRank An algorithm used to determine what content is shown in users’ news feeds. Friend A connection on facebook Fan A fan is facebook user who has ‘liked’ a company or brand online. Like Within facebook, to like a business page means you’ve become a fan of that page. Network An association of facebook users based on a school or workplace. News Feed An aggregation of friends’ wall posts on your own homepage. Page Official presence for public figures, artists, bands, businesses, places, entertainment, causes, or products to share information and interact with fans on Facebook. This is a way businesses can use facebook to organically drive traffic and customers to a website. Profile Presence for individuals to share information and interact with friends and organisations. Wall The core of a profile or page that aggregates new content, including posted items (e.g. status updates, and recent actions, (e.g. becoming a fan of a page).

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Terminology

Groups Groups on facebook are slightly different than business pages. In some cases, it makes sense for a business to create a group as well. The main difference between a business page and a group is that pages represent a brand, while a group is a place for a community of people to discuss common interests. A group is essentially a page that is used as a chat room for a specific group of people. In a group, members can post all kinds of content just like on personal timelines and business. Tag Friends can tag their Friends in Posts, Pictures, Notes, and Videos by typing the @ symbol and then the person’s name. Then they select the name from a dropdown list to hyperlink it to the other person’s profile. The person will also get a notification that they have been tagged. People and other Pages can tag your facebook page as well by using the same method. A Facebook Page cannot tag a person unless the Admin of the Page is a personal friend of that person.

For more information about facebook or social media guidance contact …

Claire Doherty Mobile 07554 661927 Email claire@studio10design.co.uk Web www.studio10design.co.uk