Social Media is the hot topic on many peoples’ minds at the moment. For businesses who understand how to use Social Media for company development and consumer marketing it has the potential to provide a serious competitive advantage.
Let’s explore how you can use the leading Social Media platform for industry professionals, LinkedIn, for recruitment.
LinkedIn is the business-to-business social network with over 100 million members worldwide and 2 million members in Australia. Like many of the social networks, its use has grown rapidly in the last 2 years.
With 69% of Australian LinkedIn members over 35 it provides a great platform for building your brand awareness with savvy business professionals who may be perfect candidates to join your business network.
It’s critical to develop a clearly defined strategy first. Like any marketing initiative, knowing what you are trying to achieve, and why, is the first step. Recruiting team members on LinkedIn is no different.
To give you some ideas and help you get started here are the top 7 ways you can use LinkedIn for business development:
1. Develop a complete and keyword rich company profile on LinkedIn.
Your company page on LinkedIn is the face of your brand and acts as a central hub for disseminating your information and gathering powerful word-of-mouth referrals.
Through your LinkedIn company page you can provide potential employees with range of information on your brand and your product.
It’s important to carefully consider your copy on your company page, as well written information that is optimised with the correct keywords helps your brand get found in the major search engines like Google as well as when people are searching on LinkedIn.
We’ve found very few examples of businesses of all sizes using LinkedIn Company Pages to their full potential and there is a great opportunity for those that get there first.
To get started, visit LinkedIn's Company Page.
2. Gather recommendations from existing industry members and employees.
The true power of social media comes from word-of-mouth referrals. Once you have built your company page you can gather powerful recommendations from your existing network that is displayed and linked directly to your business’s offering.
On the Products & Services tab of your company page, develop a description of one of your products and outline your story, features & benefits. You can include links to further information or application forms on your website as well as include any YouTube videos, images or presentations you might have.
From this page you can seek recommendations from existing employees, who can describe how great your business is. When prospective employees are researching your business what better social proof than glowing recommendations from your existing team members?
3. Actively search for prospective employees based on keywords, qualifications and experience.
One of the little known power user
features of LinkedIn is its advance search capabilities. You are able to search for people based
on Keywords, Job Title, Company and Location.
LinkedIn also offers more advance search filters to premium users (available by upgrading your account starting at $19.95 /mth) which allows you to search by Seniority Level, Groups they belong to, Interests and Job Functions.
If you have very specific prerequisites for your business this will help connect with the right people to start a conversation with.
4. Proactively service people by responding to questions in LinkedIn Answers.
LinkedIn Answers provides a ‘knowledge marketplace’ for people to ask and answer business related questions.
To position yourself and your
business as experts in your field you can proactively provide expert answers to
common questions posed about your business or industry in general.
A word of warning – this is not the place to be hard-selling or promoting your business. People pose questions because they need help and want genuine and authentic answers, not a sales pitch. You should either answer the question directly or direct them to people you are connected to or places on your website that can answer their questions.
By providing the best answers you earn expertise and can be featured on the Answers home page as subject matter expert in your field. This builds trusts and credibility and can lead to more leads and ultimately more sales.
5. Actively participate in LinkedIn Groups or develop a LinkedIn Group bigger than your brand.
There are nearly one million Discussion Groups on LinkedIn, encompassing a huge range of industry topics, business categories and professional groups. Joining and participating in an existing group is the fastest way to build new relationships quickly. Within a LinkedIn Group you can share relevant information, start new discussions or participate in existing conversations.
Unfortunately there can be a lot of spam within certain LinkedIn Groups, so as with LinkedIn Answers this is not the place for a sales pitch. It’s a place to engage in conversation, share good quality, relevant information and build relationships. Selling your business comes further down the relationship path.
If you do wish to start your own group, carefully consider the topic. Unless you are a significantly sized business, groups around brands tend to be avoided by LinkedIn users. Pick a topic or purpose greater than your brand for people to connect around.
For example if you are a cleaning
services business, consider creating a group around the advantages and use of
environmentally friendly cleaning products and trends within your industry.
6. Use the Careers Section to post new employment opportunities
Just like many companies
have success using seek.com.au for business development, LinkedIn can also be used
for attracting potential employees.
LinkedIn is heavily used as a talent attraction and recruitment tool within the recruitment industry and I personally have had great success finding new team members for our business through my extended LinkedIn network.
The Careers tab on your Company Page can provide a great place to advertise your business opportunities and can provide lots of additional information about your brand as well as links to your application forms.
The extra advantage of listing your employment opportunities on your Careers tab is that you can also post these to the careers tab of the LinkedIn Groups you belong to, helping to put your opportunity in front of a highly relevant audience.
LinkedIn Advertising
The final tip is to consider is LinkedIn Advertising to promote opportunities at your business.
Targeting capabilities of the
LinkedIn Ad platform include geographic, job function, seniority, industry,
business size, age and gender.
There are various ad formats you can use from premium display advertising to LinkedIn DirectAds which consist of:
· Headline (up to 25 characters);
· Description (up to 25 characters);
· Your brand name;
· Image (50x50 pixels); and
· Link (through to your website or LinkedIn page)
LinkedIn provides a very powerful way to connect with the right people in a professional environment and while it is still early days can provide a great opportunity for businesses who get there first.
I’m here to help so if you any questions or success stories about how you have used LinkedIn to develop your business please post your comments below.
Matt Forman is the
Founder and Managing Director at Traffika. You can connect with Matt on LinkedIn or join Traffika on Facebook.
