What should I (as a recruiter) Tweet on Twitter?

 

Even though Twitter has been around for years now (and has gone mainstream), it still provides me with the 'most asked social network question' when I am doing social media training with recruiters. For some reason Twitter, more than others, evokes brain freeze when it comes to posting tweets. The question is always is >> What should I (as a recruiter) Tweet on Twitter?

Ironically for many, it is the fear of saying 'the wrong thing' coupled with the fact that this 'wrong thing' they say, could be shared widely and quickly. Of course the reality is that unless they have some super-hot news, or have done something outrageous or have had a bird sh*t on their head (seriously!!), then they are unlikely to be the unlikely victims of a viral tweet! Seriously amongst a trillion tweets an hour (OK, that maybe a little high, but it feels like it sometimes!) your one or two tweets become insignificant to the populous - sorry!!

Now, just to demonstrate that it doesn't take much to make your Twitter stream look thoughtless, self-centred and unappealing take a look at this stream:

It takes all of about one second to click away, doesn't it? Totally uninteresting and it probably does give the wrong impression of what the company are really like. And yes the rest of their stream is exactly the same!!

So what do you tweet then?

The first thing to do is not think about you, and think of your audience (Followers in Twitter parlance) you are trying to cultivate. You need to post content that you believe (through your experience) your audience will find interesting to read. AND ALSO you want to post content that your audience will happily Re-Tweet (share for the Twitter uninitiated) with their own audience. <No pressure then!>

You do know what your audience is, don't you? 

 Strangely a difficult question for may people! This is the easy part to be honest.

• What types of people (roles) do you recruit for? 
• What are the aligned industries and sectors of who you recruit for? 
• What type of people do you interact with every day? 
• Who do you sell your products/services to? 
• Who are the people who influence decisions on what you sell/promote?
• Who do you network with to gain access to your markets?

THESE are your audience. These are the Followers you want to cultivate. These are the people you need to interest with your content (and not just on Twitter by the way), but whichever social network they are on.

Let's move onto what content to Tweet. Here are three easy places that you can find content to share on Twitter. (You can of course post your own blogs, news and information, if you have it, but you will need to mix that up as well so it isn't all about you!)

1. Your audience itself. Who better to have content that may be of interest is the people you want to be reacjing out to. Find them on Twitter using tools like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and Followerwonk using the keywords, job titles and industry buzz words you already know, and then Follow Them. They will be sharing relevant content for you to use (and share via RT's).
2. Industry blogs. These are always excellent sources of material to share, because they are advice based (like this post) or voice industry opinions - and who doesn't want to read either of them? Go to Technorati (a global blog directory) and Google Blog search ( go to More underneath the top search box on Google and there is a drop down for Blogs (below). Search for your industry blogs.

   
    Then when you find the blogs, subscribe to them by email and create a folder in your inbox for them (setting a rule) or use an RSS subscription tool like Feedly to collate them.

3. LinkedIn Today. People forget this resource, but simply click on the words LinkedIn Today on the left just above the main image section on LinkedIn. Then go to the top right of the LinkedIn Today page and click the cog (customise your settings).

   
   Follow your industry sectors and suddenly you have a wealth of content in your industry you can share on Twitter and LinkedIn.

4. LinkedIn Signal. Many of you will not even know about this awesome (and underused) part of LinkedIn! Simply go to LinkedIn.com/signal or click the dropdown box by the top search bar (updates) shown below This is all the updates that get posted on LinkedIn via the status updates and on LinkedIn. LinkedIn Signal is an absolute gold mine of great information. 
   You simply search for the content you want (using those same keywords, industry buzzwords etc as before) and you will see loads of great content. You can also filter the results down the left hand side, as normal on LinkedIn, and the best bit is you can save the search and return to real-life results whenever you want to!

So now you have loads of content to share with the audience you want to be cultivating, now, how to you go about posting this wealth of great information?

There are many Twitter posting tools, from Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Twitter (itself) BufferApp, Mobile apps etc and that is for another day and another post, but they are all good - it just depends on how you are going to use Twitter. Personally mine is a mix of Hootsuite, BufferApp and Twitter (desktop and mobile for all three).

As I have shown above, you need to avoid the Twitter ME, ME, ME syndrome, so you need to vary the content you share on Twitter. You need to be interesting, you need to show that you value other people's content by sharing it (RT or ReTweet) and you should be engaging in conversation with people (Replies and @username). And you also want to be sharing YOUR OWN content - whether that be your blog, news or a latest job (nothing wrong with posting jobs as long as there are other tweets wrapped around it to add value to your audience.)
If you work on a 7:1 ratio as a minimum (7 pieces of content not your own including RT's, @username replies/conversation and  other good content - to one piece of your own content), you won't be boring people and you should be adding value to their Twitter stream and encourage them to follow you.

Hopefully you now have an idea of how you can start to use Twitter more effectively within a recruitment context. And of course if you want to find more content like this then> Follow @andyheadworth

And if you are also considering all your other social media channels as well, here is where I share my content on the social networks that I use.

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