The answer is probably "no."

Sure, your company is on social media. Every staffing company is. And you probably use LinkedIn every day for recruiting or prospect research. You may use Facebook to post jobs. And Instagram for employment branding.

But are you really getting the maximum value out of social media?

The deck is stacked against you... but don't take it personally.

Ten years ago, marketing on social media was easy. Create a company page. Invite people to follow you. Share content. If you were consistent with building your following and sharing good content, you'd get lots of likes, shares, and traffic to your website.

But over the years, social networks changed.

Or, more accurately, they updated their algorithms. Social media exists to make money for the mega tech companies and their shareholders. And the way they make money is by getting companies to pay for advertising.

So how do they get you to advertise? By taking away your ability to reach your audience organically. Over the years, the algorithms that social networks use to determine who sees what content have been adjusted so that content from company pages is less likely to be shown and content from friends, family, and groups gets greater priority.

This year, if you share a post on Facebook from your company page, it will reach about 5.5% of your followers (source: Hootsuite blog). And that's down 2.2% since 2019.

In other words, if you've worked hard to get to 1,000 followers on Facebook, that job post you just shared will only be seen by 55 people. Of those, only 3.6% will engage with the content.

And Facebook is not alone. All the major social networks prioritize content shared by individuals over content shared by brands or company pages. For example, LinkedIn has stopped showing content to anyone who is not a first-level connection.

How can you beat the algorithms?

Option 1: Pay to play

Most companies are integrating paid content distribution (PPC) in with their organic content sharing. The beauty of social media is that it allows companies to target their ads with a great deal of precision, so ads are hitting the right people with the right message.

But there is a catch...

For staffing companies, ad targeting options are limited. In reality, any job advertising (almost any paid content by a staffing company) gets classified in a special ad category for employers. According to Facebook, this includes:

Ads that promote or directly link to an employment opportunity, including but not limited to part- or full-time jobs, internships or professional certification programs. Related ads that fall within this category include promotions for job boards or fairs, aggregation services, or ads detailing perks a company may provide, regardless of a specific job offer.

Because of this classification, ads cannot be targeted based on most demographic factors or within very tightly defined geographies.

Despite these limitations, you can still reach your target audience quite accurately with social PPC. Targeting by behaviors, interests, job titles and more. You can also upload a list of contacts (e.g., all the candidates in your ATS), and target ads to that list to re-engage and reactivate your candidates.

But what if you don't want to pay for advertising?

Option 2: Team-based social sharing

Team-based sharing, or employee advocacy, is when your team members to share your company content with their connections on social media. Unlike company pages, social media algorithms don't restrict the content shared by your team members.

If you need to be convinced this is a good idea, consider these stats:

• 84% of consumers value recommendations from friends and family over all other forms of advertising.


• Leads developed through employee social marketing convert 7x more frequently.


• Content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement.


• Sales reps using social media outsell 78% of their peers.


• 79% of firms reported more online visibility after implementing team sharing; 65% reported increased brand recognition.


• Messages shared by employees went 561% further.


• Employees of social-engaged companies are more likely to stay at their company.

How are companies using team-based social sharing?

Brand awareness and positioning. Companies produce content to illustrate their positioning, convey their value proposition, and build their brand recognition. Blog posts. Infographics. Video. The content can come in any format. Once produced, these organizations invite their employees to share (more on this in a minute).

Lead generation. Some companies use team sharing to promote services, special offers, and jobs directly. They create content with a strong call to action – and usually a focus on driving people from social media back to a landing page on the company website.

Employment branding and recruiting. For most staffing companies, the most significant value of social sharing is recruiting. Team based sharing increases company visibility, expands reach for job posts, and builds employment brands.

Personal branding for salespeople and recruiters. Social sharing is not just about company branding; it's also about building the brands (visibility and reputation) for individual contributors. In staffing, personal branding is a BIG deal because staffing is a relationship business. Job seekers want recruiters they trust, and personal branding is an ideal way to develop that trust.

How do you get your team to play along?

If you've ever tried to get your team to share company content, you know the frustration. You create amazing content. You promote it to your team. You send countless email reminders.

And crickets...

Or maybe your team shares the company content for a week or two, and then it stops.

To ensure the success of your team social sharing, don't beg, automate!

There are lots of tools available that can help you to automate sharing. Two that we've used for a long time at Haley Marketing are Buffer and Dlvr.IT. They are great for individuals that want to put their social sharing on autopilot.

But what if you want more control... or at least more coordination?

NetSocial is a software to automate social sharing across your entire organization. Recruiting. Lead generation. Branding. NetSocial increases your content reach...and your social marketing impact.

NetSocial is a platform for managing and automating the sharing of content to social networks, like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The beauty of NetSocial is that it allows you to centralize content curation, so you keep control over what your people share. You can create sharing groups for your entire company, individual branch offices, sales teams, recruiters, people who work in the same job specialty, or any other group you choose. With centralized curation, you select the content you want each group to share.

Content sharing is distributed for your people, so individuals stay in complete control over their social networks. Each person can choose when to share, where to share, and whether they want to approve content before it is shared (approvals can be done via text or email).

Want to know more about NetSocial?

Contact us at 1.888.696.2900 or visit https://www.netsocialapp.com.

Want to know more about team social sharing?

Watch our on -demand webinar: https://lunchwithhaley.com/2020/07/27/team-social-sharing-for-staffing