Social media has changed how individuals and businesses interact and has become a very effective tool for organizations to inexpensively broadcast their employment brand. The largest social media platforms on the Internet are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, a site devoted to professional networking. As a result, this site gets the most views in terms of talent acquisition. Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest are growing as platforms for business networking as well. These platforms are a good place to start conversations with customers who may be potential candidates. Here’s how to strengthen your employer brand.

When using social media as strategy to strengthen employer brand, it is important to have a plan. It’s important to have someone within the organization monitoring all of these social platforms so customer posts and comments (good, bad, or otherwise) can be reviewed, responded, or if needed, deleted quickly. Your organization’s brand can suffer within hours of an angry post, tweet, or security breach.

Social media is constantly changing, but one thing will be consistent: content is key. Driving traffic to your social media sites and increasing your brand recognition all comes down to the content you create or post. Quality content is a great way to strengthen your employer brand. This content can be generated by your organization or can be reposts of compelling content from related sources. The trick is to have a content calendar where content can be planned a day, week, or even a month in advance. Your content can posted on several social media sites. A service like Buffer will allow you to load all of your content at once and then Buffer will make sure they get posted regularly on multiple platforms immediately or at a later date.

A recently published guide from Fast Company looked into when most people were looking at the different social media sites. Consider posting during these hours to get the most views for your content:

• Facebook: 1-4 PM
• Twitter: Monday – Thursday 1-3 PM
• LinkedIn: Tuesday – Thursday
• Google+: 9 AM -10 AM
• Pinterest: Saturday mornings
• What should you post?

Facebook is moving toward a “pay to play” model for posting marketing-related content. If your company doesn’t pay to sponsor a post, it may not show up on your followers’ timelines, but it may be worth it. Posts with visuals, photos, or videos, are a great way to drive engagement for your brand. Posting images is an easy way to engage on all social media platforms and to get past any marketing filters like those used by Facebook.

Your employees should all be encouraged to “Like” or “Share” your company’s sponsored content and social media pages, tweets, and posts. You can use their existing social networks to expand your reach.

Asking followers to share the content you post will create a larger audience and can result in more even more followers and shares. Gaining followers through sharing rather than paid posts strengthens the organization’s brand and presence on social media. Harness the power of social media to share an organization’s employment brand, engage and inform your customers, and to gain referrals. With a full content calendar, a social media strategy, and a designated social media monitor, you can harness the power of several social media platforms as an inexpensive branding and marketing tool.

For more expert tips on finding and keeping top talent, give the Salt Lake City recruiting gurus at Recruiting Connection a call at 801.278.1220.