Every time the subject of social media in recruitment- aka social recruiting -  (and I mean EVERY time) starts to get discussed, when I am working with companies, the subject quickly turns to content.

• “Where do I get all the content I need, and what do I post to each social network? 
• “Should we post the same content to all or different content to each network?”
• “How often should we post content?’
• “Should we outsource our content to an agency?”
• “What content do you share on your social networks?”
• “Where do you find all the good stuff?” 

My answer is simple - know your objectives and know your audience on each social platform - the rest is simply a matter of doing some homework, testing your audience responses and then delivering the content …….. consistently every week!

I thought the easiest way of demonstrating this is to share where, how and why I post my content across the social media platforms I use for my business -  Sirona Consulting. 

Let me do this by the platforms I use and why. I use many more but these (for the moment) are business focused. With many different content locations, I use them to share different types of content as they all represent a slightly different audience with different levels of expectation. 

First you need to establish a few simple ground rules:

1. Understand the objectives you have for each of the social networks you plan to use (or are using). They will and should be different. 
2. When you are clear (or have an idea anyway) on these then you can start to source content. You are trying to find articles, blogs and other content that your specific network audience will not only just like, but (ideally) share and comment on. The secret here is to source and read….. and read!
3. As well as external content, you need to be providing your own self-generated content. (original content IS THE WAY FORWARD for maximising SEO). This is really important as part of your content strategy. (short of ideas - here are 101 of them!)
4. The most important part of this process is monitoring the success of the content. All the social platforms have tools to give you insights on the content you have posted. You can quickly understand the types of posts, articles, videos, pictures etc that prove popular. The next bit isn’t rocket science - give your audience more of the same!

Right, now me explain a little about what I do. I have included the links to my social networks so feel free to visit them and like and follow accordingly - after all it is different content!

Needs no sales pitch from me - it is the default platform for business, and if you haven’t yet got your Company Page sorted, then you are nuts! This is the first reference point that people use when checking you out, having received that InMail/Invite or have met you. They go to your profile AND THEN they go to the page of the company you work for (and that is according to LinkedIn themselves!).

Two types of content here - my personal ‘brand’ - Andy Headworth and the Sirona Consulting Company Page. Both allow you to post ‘unlimited’ status updates. My objectives and content I share for LinkedIn are:

1. Andy Headworth Page: continue to build my reputation around my industry knowledge, expertise and content that I write via my blog. It is also an important part of my client attraction strategy, as I want as many potential clients reading the content that I write on this blog. I also want to further build my LinkedIn Network by connecting with more good people in my industry (feel free to connect with me).
   Content shared includes my blog posts, other industry relevant blogs, personal observations and insight into the recruitment industry, and (maybe) breaking news (although others do enough of that so I don’t need to!) 
2. Sirona Consulting Page: to grow the number of people that follow this page, so that I am able to reach out to more relevant people with content. I also want to create a location that is known for sharing great tips, advice and guidance on using social media in recruitment.
   Content shared includes previous posts from this blog, other good blog posts sharing latest advice and tips on best practices in using social media for recruitment. Follow the page today to make sure you get the latest great advice. 

This has been an interesting experience and was initially a hard one to crack to be honest with you!

1. My objective for Facebook is to share images, graphs, graphics, and videos (some with a healthy dose of humour) that I wouldn’t necessarily share on my blog. And of course I want as many people to ‘Like” the page - a little ‘Like Love” always makes you feel good.
   While people are on the page, there is of course a tab explaining what we do, but that is all. I occasionally share something directly about the business but not often - I use the blog for that. So go and have a look at some of the superb images, graphics and video I have unearthed and posted on our Facebook page (and don’t forget to ‘Like’ it when you are there!)
   Note: I don’t ever share my blog posts here, as they don’t get as much engagement as they do on LinkedIn, Google+ or on Twitter. I learnt that through the insights on Facebook - my Facebook audience is different.

This is a superb channel and probably my favourite of the social networks. I have one account - @andyheadworth - and I use it for business and personal (which means I have to be a little careful sometimes!). My objectives for using Twitter are:

1. Increase my followers so that I can share my own blog content with more people
2. Maintain a constant stream every day of informative blogs from around the recruiting, social media and digital marketing industries. 
   How? >> I subscribe to and read LOADS of brilliant blogs from all over the world. And I mean a lot!
3. Engage with and converse with people as much as I can.
4. Follow industry industry people on Twitter to learn from and engage with.
5. Through Twitter Lists, keep ‘tuned in’ to the conversations I want to follow - industry, friends, #hashtags, opportunities and of course football gossip!
6. Drive traffic back to my blog and website (ultimately leading to new business).

To make sure I consistently share content every day ( I don’t do it at weekends - my choice), I use BufferApp to schedule all the great content I find. I monitor the success of the tweets every week and adjust my content accordingly. And of course I post all my blog posts via Twitter. Feel free to Follow Me -  it would be great to connect.

This is my primary channel of self generated content. I have been blogging for nearly five years and have a ‘library’ of over 950 posts I have written (like this one!)

My objectives for my blog are:

1. Position myself as someone who knows what they are talking about in this industry. It also allows me to be myself - I have a fairly straight talking, ‘keep things real’ approach and have been known to offer an opinion occasionally, and my blog is the perfect place to do that. A knowledge expert, thought leader, industry expert maybe?
2. Demonstrate my knowledge and the value it could add to companies.
3. Provide original content to share on my social channels.
4. Increase the readership of the blog - currently over 1250 subscribers, 17,000+ unique visitors a month and c24,000 page views a month. Not bad for a niche blog, but I would always like more
5. Drive traffic to my website
6. Gain new business for our consulting business i.e new recruitment company clients and new corporate clients
7. Generate event speaking opportunities

My content inspiration comes from my experiences, my knowledge, my insights, other posts I read, my clients, articles I read, people I follow, things I read on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to name a few. Have you subscribed yet? 

This one is a bit of an enigma. My objective is to use it to ensure I maximise the SEO benefits of Google by keeping an active presence on this platform. I also want to be included in as many people’s circles as I can, so that when I share content it gains the biggest reach. Unlike others Google social networks (Buzz and Wave) I think G+ is here for the future, it is just a slower burn to get people using every day. The Sirona Consulting G+ page is here, but the main traction I get is with my own personal page here.

We post all our videos through our Sirona Consulting YouTube Channel to make them easy for people to find, and to maximise SEO because they are owned by Google.Our objectives are knowledge sharing, content distribution and of course driving traffic back to the website.

This is a site where we post all our public powerpoint presentations. It is a great way to share my presentations.
As with most of the above the objective is to share knowledge, demonstrate our expertise, show the way we think about what we do, and to drive traffic back to the website (to ultimately help gain new clients). See our presentations here.

This is a new channel for the business, and we are going to use it to share photgraphs and pictures  from our work, events we attend, people we meet and anything else we think you might be interested in. We have just started this channel, so you will see photos (when we have posted them!) from events this week, including TruLondon and HRTech Europe in Amsterdam. So if you are an Instagram user - on your mobile of course -  and/or interested in seeing our photos make sure you follow SironaConsulting on Instagram.

This is not live yet, but we have some great ideas on this that you will be seeing soon.

So there you go - that is where we share our content and why. I use many different tools for all these, and no they don’t take as long as you may think. Social media has just become intrinsically embedded in our everyday work, so it becomes second nature. But there are some tools that we simply could not do without, and they are:

1. Hootsuite
2. BufferApp
3. SocialBro
4. Evernote 
5. Mobile phone
6. iPad

There are of course many different ways that we put these social networks together and combine their ‘powers’, and that is the trick of a good strategy. 

I hope this helps and gives you an insight into the world of social media content. It would be great to hear your thoughts below.

We work with recruitment agencies and corporates to help them with recruitment strategy, recruitment process and social recruiting. If you require guidance, advice or social recruiting training, get in touch today.

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