Serene Yeung, Author at Stencil

Social Recruitment: How to Use Social Media to Hire

Serene Yeung — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:45:22 +0000

Are you having trouble hiring? You’re not alone. 50% of small to medium sized businesses can’t find qualified applicants for open positions. Posting a job on job boards and waiting for the perfect candidate won’t cut it anymore. It’s time to step up your social recruitment game.

What is Social Recruitment?

Social recruitment is about using social media to define and highlight your employer brand to attract candidates. Social recruitment lets you leverage existing social media networks with their millions of users to find the best candidates. It isn’t simply posting job openings on all your social media feeds. It’s about starting a conversation with potential candidates where they spend a lot of their time.

Does Social Recruitment Work?

We all know about LinkedIn, but it’s not the only place you can showcase your employer brand. 31% of jobseekers have found a job through Instagram, with Snapchat and Pinterest close behind. 59% of employees say a company’s social media presence was part of the reason they chose their workplace.

Social Recruitment for Your Social Media Channels

Be sure to include lots of visual content, it makes your recruiting efforts more engaging and effective. Content that contains images attract 94% more total views than content without images. So what kinds of visual content can you create and share to showcase your employer brand? We’ve put together a list of super effective, yet simple social recruiting posts.

9 Types of Social Recruiting Posts

1. Share stories and images that showcase your company culture.
Does your company value diversity, work-life balance, employee happiness and engagement? Tell your potential candidates about it!

2. Ask employees to share their stories and experiences, or ask to reshare content they’ve already posted to social media.
Potential candidates want to know what it’s like to work for your company and they love learning about it from people who actually work there.

3. Show off your perks and benefits
Social media is a great place to brag about your perks and benefits. It’s especially helpful if you can’t always compete on salary. Do you have flexible work hours or allow for remote work? Let your potential candidates know about it!

4. Inspirational quotes
Inspirational quotes garner a lot of engagement. Try pairing them with your job postings.

Stencil Tip: You can create inspirational quotes related to jobs and work and add a link to your job opportunities.

5. Share images of your workplace
Potential candidates are interested in seeing the offices and locations they’ll be spending their workdays at.

6. Highlight charity work
More than ever, candidates are placing a heavy emphasis on a company’s reputation and their commitment to helping their communities. They want to work with an employer that practices corporate social responsibility.

7. Highlight work life balance
Life isn’t all about work. Candidates want a good work-life balance.

8. Job openings

Stencil Tip: You can create images like this to increase engagement on your job opening posts.

9. Facebook Jobs Tab

Did you know you can add a “Jobs tab” on Facebook?

Head over to your company’s Facebook page. Hit “Settings,” then “Edit Page.”

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see the “Add a Tab” button, click that.

Then click “Add Tab” for Jobs.

Now you can publish job postings on your Facebook Page for free!

Always remember to stay true to your brand. Be authentic. Use social media to build up a positive employer brand, create relationships with potential candidates and keep your company top of mind when people think of changing jobs. A strong employer brand attracts the right kind of candidates who truly understand your company and what you have to offer.

We hope we’ve provided you with some inspiration for stepping up your social recruiting game! We’d love to hear stories about how you use visual content to promote your employer brand. Leave us a comment below!

The post Social Recruitment: How to Use Social Media to Hire appeared first on Stencil.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Real Estate Pros

Serene Yeung — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 02:09:03 +0000

Just like successful local and online businesses, successful realtors understand the importance of social media marketing. We live in a research-driven buying culture, so before homebuyers start seriously looking for housing options or before a seller looks for a realtor, they’re doing their research online. Real estate has a long sales cycle, and prospective clients have to be nurtured. By providing potential clients information and engaging content throughout their research process, you become an invaluable resource, and you stay top of mind when they’re ready to buy or hire.

The 80/20 Rule

Whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest, the 80/20 rule should be top of mind when deciding what kind of content to post. It’s simple: 80% of your content should be entertaining, engaging and educational, and only 20% should be promotional. People are on social media to catch up with friends, check out entertaining content and to find useful information, they’ll simply ignore your brand’s social media posts if they’re only full of listings.

Stencil user Josh deLacy from Real Estate Gals put its perfectly:

“Our success on social media has come from providing helpful content. It’s not about self-promotion–it’s about being a useful resource for our clients online as well as in-person. On social media, we provide articles and information that benefits our audience: answers to commonly asked real estate questions, tips about home ownership, and relevant information about our local Seattle community. Like everything we do, we use social media to build a community, one client at a time.”

Visual Social Media Marketing for Real Estate

Real estate is a highly visual market and that’s great news for your social media marketing efforts. Tools like Stencil make it super simple and fun to create images to complement your content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and more! We’ve put together a list of the types of posts you can add to your social media calendar to increase engagement.

12 Types of Posts to Successfully Engage Your Audience

1. Tips for first time homebuyers
Buying a home for the first time is a daunting task. By providing helpful tips and information to first time homebuyers, you become a go-to resource for potential buyers.

2. Answers to commonly asked real estate questions
By offering answers to commonly asked real estate questions you can demonstrate your extensive real estate knowledge.

Stencil Tip: You can use Stencil to create your own graphic for weekly real estate tips!

3. Articles related to the housing market
Potential buyers and sellers will be interested in the real estate market. By providing constant updates, you show you’re up-to-date with industry trends.

4. Photos and information on the neighborhoods you have listings in
This lets you highlight the best features of the neighborhoods you have listings in and puts your knowledge about them on display.

Stencil Tip: You can create images like this on Stencil for your own Facebook posts too!

5. Home Staging Tips
By providing home staging tips to potential sellers you show your audience that you’re involved in and on top of all the stages of the selling process.

6. Home Decor Tips

7. Information on local events and businesses.
This is another great way to showcase the neighborhoods you have listings in.

8. Inspirational quotes about homes, family, life and real estate
Inspirational quote posts generate high engagement because people can easily relate to them and they’re easily shared.

Stencil Tip: You can create beautiful quote images on Stencil. You can even search our 100,000+ quote library by topic!

9. Information on your upcoming open houses
Information on open houses falls under the 20% promotional content category, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create beautiful images that pique interest.

Stencil Tip: You can upload photos of your listings and create an open house graphic of your own!

10. Humorous posts

Humor goes a long way on social media! One Stencil user, Ray Ciampaglia has definitely got the right idea: “Before coming into Real Estate I was a Managing Partner of an online advertising and marketing agency so I know of the importance of online advertising and how imperative social media is to the creation of any brand on any level. Locally or nationally. In real estate, the agent is the brand. Chances are the general public knows of, or has heard of, the agency I work for, so in order for customers to find me as an agent I must do something to stand out. I use social media for just that.

Stencil has allowed me to become much more creative with my posts.

Sometimes I inject humor or some interesting information about the real estate market and sometimes I create motivational quotes. Whatever the type of posting I am creating the goal is always the same. To get my name out there in the public eye and become synonymous with real estate sales.”

Ray created this hilariously engaging post on Stencil:

11. Photos and information on your current listings
Another example of a 20% promotional category post, beautiful photos of your listings with information, geotagging and industry hashtags will definitely garner likes and interest.

12. Photos and stories of successful closings and testimonials from happy clients.
Testimonials show potential clients what they can expect from you as a realtor. By showcasing successful closings and happy faces, you’re building trust in your brand.

Now that you’ve seen how visuals can enhance your content, head over to Stencil and create some of your own! Not a designer? No problem! Here are some simple graphic design tips for the non-designer.

The post Social Media Marketing Tips for Real Estate Pros appeared first on Stencil.