This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant
The average consumer spends 30% of their total online time and more than 2 hours a day on social media. Given these consumer habits, if your small business doesn’t have a social media presence, you’re likely missing out on potential business and quality job applicants.
How can your small business stand out from the competition to attract new business and job applicants? Whether you’re looking to improve your current social media strategy or don’t have one in place, we’ve pulled together several ways your small business can embrace social media to reach your target audience.
Encourage Engagement
To get the conversation started on social media, consider offering social media contests or encouraging members to post about your small business. You can ask your Facebook community questions such as, “What’s your favorite time of day to work out?” if you run a fitness center or “What’s your favorite product of ours?” if you run a retail store. Or identify a hashtag on Instagram and encourage members to post a photo using the hashtag for a chance to win a prize. As an incentive for interacting with your brand, consider offering social media followers a discount at your business.
Increased, positive engagement across social media channels can help you create a sense of community among followers and reach new prospective customers who see mention of your small business in friends’ social posts.
Solicit Feedback
Beyond encouraging engagement among your followers, social media can also be a great tool to collect customer feedback. Since your customers are constantly connected to social media, many choose to use this channel to leave feedback. For example, they might leave an official Facebook review of your business or tweet something related to your business – whether it’s positive or negative.
Rather than seeing social media as a threat, your small business should embrace it as an opportunity to create a positive online reputation. Encourage satisfied customers to leave feedback by posting signage in your business, reaching out via email marketing or asking for feedback directly on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other channels.
When your members post positive feedback on social media, you can share it across social media channels or on your company website so even more members – and prospective members – can learn about the positive experience. The more people who see great reviews across social media, the more likely you’ll attract new members to join. But not all feedback is positive – if your small business receives negative feedback, make sure to respond in a timely manner and use the feedback as an opportunity to improve the customer experience.
Post Job Openings
When your small business has a job opening, make sure to to promote it across social media – including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, among other channels. Social media enables you to reach potential applicants who are already engaged with your business. On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, many of your followers are likely enthusiastic about your business and might even want to join your team. Or perhaps they know friends or family members to recommend for open roles.
While Facebook and Twitter can drive some traffic to your job openings, the most important social media channel when it comes to recruiting is LinkedIn. When you post jobs on LinkedIn, not only will members who follow your company see the job openings, but those with skills or titles related to your job description will see your posting through the “Jobs You May Be Interested In” feature. And you can reach even more candidates through LinkedIn Sponsored Jobs.
Social media is just one of many ways to attract customers and job applicants. To learn more about how to attract top candidates to your open roles and build your best team, download The Hireology Employment Brand Playbook below.
