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Pinning Facebook Posts is an incredibly useful aspect of Facebook your profile.

Along with the basics like your profile picture, cover image and customized tabs, pinned Posts offer an awesome opportunity for branding.

Pinned Facebook Posts live at the very top of your Page’s Timeline and, as such, they are the first piece of content visitors to your Page encounter… If you’re actually using them!

Unfortunately, pinned Posts are often overlooked. Many of the Jobcast users I speak with don’t even know that the feature exists.

Pinning Facebook posts will help you get more ROI and better reach for your most important content. The results you’ll see will depend on what you want to measure, but there’s no doubt: pinning tweets should be something you add to your Facebook strategy, today.

You can pin any Facebook post that you want and it will instantly move to the top of your Timeline and stay there for 7 days or until you pin a new post.

How to pin a post

Quick note, you’ll need to be an admin or editor to pin Page Posts.

1. Go to the post on your Page’s Timeline.

2. Hover over the top-right corner of the post and click the dropdown arrow

3. Select Pin to Top.

Your pinned post will move to the top of your Page’s Timeline and a small yellow icon will appear on the top-right corner of the post.

Your post will stay pinned to the top of your Page’s Timeline for 7 days. After that, it will return to the date it was published on your Page’s Timeline.

Keep in mind that you can only pin Posts created by your Page.

You can’t pin Posts that other people add to your Page’s Timeline and you can’t pin Posts to your personal Timeline.

Pinned Posts are not re-shared so they will not reappear in anyone’s Timeline.

What Posts should you pin to your Facebook Page?

Now that you know how to pin here are a few ideas for what you should pin.

What you pin will depend on the main goals of your company’s Facebook Page.

If your Page is specifically geared towards hiring then you may want to focus on promoting your Career Site or specific job openings.

If your company Facebook Page is used by multiple departments then you’ll need to incorporate a variety of different content into your pinned posts and may want to keep your social recruitment posts focused on promoting your employer brand rather than specific jobs.

Here are some specific types of Posts that you can pin:

• Job openings that you need filled right away

• A link to your Facebook Career Site

• Current job listings

• On-going job posts, the ones you always need filled

• Recruitment videos

• Current and on-going promotions

• Time-sensitive campaigns

• Top performing content

• Photos or video from recent company events

• Important company announcements

• Information about upcoming events

My number one recommendation for Pages dedicated to Facebook recruiting is to create a post that advertises your Facebook Career Site and pin it to the top of your Timeline.

In this post, you’ll want to include a nice image, a clear call to action, and a link to your Facebook Career Site.

Here’s how to create a Facebook Post that advertises your Jobcast Career Site.

No matter what you choose to pin, remember to think about why your company is using Facebook and make sure that what you post is in line with your goals!

Engagement is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Especially in the world of social media marketing.

Engagement refers to the ways in which people respond to your social media presence and content.

Do they like your Facebook posts? Do they retweet your tweets? Do they share, comment, follow, unfollow, click, or otherwise interact with your social media efforts?!

If the answer to these questions is no, then try these simple content ideas to boost your social media engagement and get better results for your online brand.

Here are 7 ways to create social media content that starts a conversation.

#1 Get Personal

People want to connect with other people. They do not want to interact with bots that are pushing out stiff, formulaic content.

The more your social media presence resonates with your audience on a personal level, the more likely they are to engage with your posts.

Don’t be afraid to share some personal insights or to show people what it’s like behind the scenes at your company.

For example, I am about to become a mom, so reading social media posts about the difficulties of being a working parent by bloggers like Jessica Miller-Merrell.

You don’t have to share everything, but do try to share things that will help relate to you as a person.

#2 Ask Your Audience for Help

People love to give advice. It makes us feel good to help and when our advice is followed, it makes us proud.

Ask your audience to help you make a decision or give you insight into a particular topic.

This gives your community a chance to be heard and to feel like their opinion matters.

You can ask them to help you choose blog topics or what apps they recommend for a particular project.

Asking for advice is one of the easiest ways to get your audience talking!

#3 Have Fun

The main reason that I check my personal Facebook account throughout the day is to see something lighthearted and silly.

Yes, I’ve used social to look for work, promote myself, and most recently to find a new home, but what keeps me checking back is the fun stuff!

A great example for social recruiting is to share pics of silly antics that staff get up to with a fun caption about your company’s culture.

Making your audience laugh is a surefire way to get them more engaged with your brand.

#4 Say it With Pictures

Images and video are proven to boost engagement.

Photos get more engagement on Facebook than any other kind of content and videos are shared 12x more than text and link posts combined.

With tools like Pablo by Buffer, making your content more visual is also one of the easiest ways to get your audience to interact more.

#5 Inspirational Quotes

Inspirational quotes get a lot of love.

My Instagram feed is full of beautiful images with text overlays telling me how to live my life better.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan. I rarely double tap an inspirational quote unless it is extremely cheeky or enters me in a contest to win cute yoga gear.

The rest of the world LOVES inspirational posts.

The formula for creating them is as follows:

• Think about what your audience aspires to.

• Find a quote in line with their goals.

• Find a gorgeous and inspirational image on

  Unsplash or Pixabay.

• Layer the text over the image using Photoshop or a tool like

  Canva.

• Share your inspirational post with a nice caption and some hashtags like #motivation or #inspiration

• Sit back and watch the “Likes” roll in!

All of the types of content shared in this article can be used alongside the more strictly business related content that you’re posting.

You don’t want all of your content to be staff party pics or inspirational quotes, but you do want to create a nice balance of fun and serious content in order to encourage more interactions from your audience.

Recruiting on Facebook is about so much more than just posting jobs or Glassdoor scores.

This is great content, but how it fits into your Facebook recruiting narrative is equally as important.

An effective social recruiting strategy tells a good story.

Your Page banner, your content, how you word your job posts, and even the order in which you share all create a digital narrative.

In marketing, there are two ways of thinking about these digital narratives that are proven to work well on Facebook: Funnel-based storytelling and prime-and-remind storytelling.

Funnel-based storytelling

is about using a series of messages to walk potential consumers (candidates) towards the end goal that you have for them (converting them into applicants.)

Prime-and-remind storytelling

is when you use multiple Facebook posts that “prime” people with your employer branding and then you share content that “reminds” them of those posts but are more goal focused. Facebook recently ran a series of tests to explore the effectiveness of this type of storytelling on their platform.  

For their study Facebook teamed up with 6 companies, each from a different industry, and had them run funnel-based approaches that were set up to guide a person down the purchase funnel in three phases.

“For example, the first phase, called ‘Meet the Brand,’ would be a brand’s introduction to the market. This phase occurs no matter if the brand is new to the market or an established brand. The next phase, ‘The Teaser,’ would feature a product-focused ad. The third and final phase, ‘The Hook,’ would feature a call-to-action ad.”

This is a very commonly used structure for funnel-based campaigns.

Facebook also had those companies run prime-and-remind campaigns where they used multiple ad formats, like display or video ads, to show people the brand’s relevance to their lifestyle in two distinct phases.

“For example, the advertiser would use creative that showcased the brand’s value proposition to ‘Set the Stage’ in the first phase. In the second phase, ‘The Synopsis,’ the advertiser would use their creative to ‘remind’ people of the main brand storyline found in phase one.”

They found that both forms of storytelling positively affected all of the brands’ marketing efforts.

According to Facebook, “Storytelling sells!” Their research shows that interspersing strategic brand messaging with typical calls to action significantly improves conversion rates.

For Facebook recruiting this means using content that is specifically focused on employer branding along with job posts or calls to action encouraging job seeker to Like your Page or join your talent pool in order to tell an engaging story that job seekers will respond to.

Whether you use a funnel or a prime-and-remind based strategy for storytelling is up to you and your recruitment goals. But, no matter which path you choose, your Facebook recruiting needs to tell a story!

Most companies do not have dedicated social recruiting teams.

These companies rely on HR, recruiters, or even just a socially savvy employee to manage their employer brand and run their social media hiring strategy.

This is no easy task, especially when you still need to manage all of the responsibilities of your primary job description.

If you are one of these ambitious employees, then you can’t afford to spend hours each day on social recruiting. You have other stuff to do!

In this post, we’ll look at how, with the right set up and plan, you can manage your company’s Twitter recruiting in 20 minutes per day.

Set Up

Before you get started with your daily Twitter recruitment campaign, it’s important to get a solid foundation in place.

1) Automate your job postings

Automation is one of the most effective ways to save time on Twitter.

Sharing job posts is a great task to automate because doing so does not involve content curation, significant customization, or an immediate response.

With a social recruiting automation tool, you can set up a schedule so that your latest job posts are shared at peak times throughout the day.

2) Build Twitter Lists

One of Twitter’s most beloved features is Twitter lists.

Lists make it possible to segment Twitter users into categories based on defining characteristics such as occupation, interests, influence, and the type of content they Tweet.

You can make these lists private, or public, it’s up to you.

You can also follow other people’s lists. This is an awesome way to find new people to follow, or candidates to reach out to.

Here are few Twitter lists that you can create for social recruiting:

• Influencers in your field

• Candidates you are interested in connecting with

• Your competition (make this list private!)

• Potential candidates (you can find people to add to this list by searching bios for skills such as “Software Engineer” and location with tools like FollowerWonk.)

3) Arrange Content Curation

Yes, Jobcast is a tool specifically focused on job sharing, but I cannot in good conscience tell you that you can share nothing but job postings and expect to get good results.

Effective social recruiting requires diverse and engaging content sharing.

I like to use Feedly to create a news feed out of sources that are relevant to my Twitter audience.

I also use Buzzsumo and Digg to help find new sources to add to my Feedly.

Now that you’re all set up, here’s what your daily Twitter recruiting routine will look like.

8 Minutes in the Morning

• 1 Minute:

  Check the news and your calendar real quick. It’s important to know what’s going on in the world to avoid any serious making any serious gaffes on social and if there’s a holiday coming up you’ll want to include it in your content strategy for the day.

• 1 Minute:

  Check your notifications and respond to DMs (direct messages), @mentions, check out new followers and thank them or follow them back if they look legitimate.

• 1 Minute:

  Browse your Twitter feed to see what’s going on with your network. Comment on one or two tweets, star the ones you like, and retweet at least one tweet that you think your audience would find interesting.

• 1 Minute:

  Check out your lists to get ideas for conversation starters or topics to focus on for the day.

• 4 Minutes:

  Scan your content feed of choice for interesting articles or videos to share and schedule 2 -3 of them for sharing with your favorite tool, I use Buffer.

9 Minutes in the Afternoon

• 1 Minute:

  Check your notifications and respond to DMs (direct messages), @mentions, check out new followers and thank them or follow them back if they look legitimate.

• 1 Minute:

  Scan your feed and your lists again and do some commenting, retweeting, and favoriting.

• 2 Minutes:

  Look at your lists a little bit more closely to see if there are any new potential candidates there that stand out to you. Engage with those candidates and move them to your potential candidates list.

• 5 Minutes:

  Try to connect with the candidates that you find in your Twitter lists on LinkedIn and follow any potential candidates that you’ve connected with on LinkedIn on Twitter.

3 Minutes in the Evening

• 1 Minute:

  Check your notifications and respond to DMs (direct messages), @mentions, check out new followers and thank them or follow them back if they look legitimate.

• 1 Minute:

  Scan your feed and your lists again and do some commenting, retweeting, and favoriting.

• 1 Minute:

  Do a quick check to make sure that all of your tools are running as desired.

• Sign off and disconnect.

  When the day is done, it’s time to turn off or face serious work/life balance repercussions!

Give this routine a try and monitor your results. You may find that you need to make some tweaks along the way to fit your needs like spending more time on lists and less time on content curation. But even if you do, having a solid routine in place will keep you on track and prevent you from getting overwhelmed by Twitter recruiting.

Every individual in marketing today recognizes the importance of video. They know that video is the most effective medium for selling a product via social media. When it comes to marketing your jobs to top talent, video is just as effective. Recruitment videos can increase applications by a third and they are 12 times more likely to be shared on social media than text only job posts. But many companies are still ignoring this powerful hiring tool. Use these six ideas to jumpstart your video recruitment.

1. Highlight your employer brand.

Explain your company’s core values, give candidates a virtual tour of your facilities, and introduce job seekers to their potential coworkers. Strong talent brand leads to 2.5x more applicants per job post. And millennials often employer brand as being a more important factor than salary when applying for a job. Giving job seekers access to this information about your company in a video creates a level of trust and connection that you cannot achieve through other mediums.

2. Show off perks and benefits.

Video is the perfect way to show candidates all the bonuses of working at your company. Film snippets of staff events or parties and all the everyday stuff that makes your employees love coming to work. Like staff lunches, after work drinks, or an attractive workspace. Share interviews of employees where they talk about their favourite perks of working for your company. Or what benefits they enjoy. Again, video is much more compelling than texts for this type of content because showing always carries greater weight than telling.

3. Explain your hiring process.

This is a win-win situation. You’ll help job seekers understand how and why you hire so that they can make more informed decisions about which jobs to apply for and what to include on their resumes. In turn, you’ll see a higher caliber of applications come across your desk… Or, more likely, your computer screen ;) For content like this you can try using an animated video or a quick whiteboard explainer ideo. They’re relatively inexpensive and excellent for conveying a process or giving instruction.

4. Have employees give you a glowing review.

In the vein of employee referrals, this tactic is highly effective for encouraging job seekers to apply. Reviews the most powerful piece of content for persuasion in social media marketing because people are 71% more likely to make a purchase if they read a recommendation via social. Having an actual employee sing your company’s praises is recruiting gold! These testimonials are even more meaningful when candidates can see and hear the employee delivering this message. These are easy videos to make as all you need as a happy employee and a smartphone with a good camera.

5. Answer job seekers’ questions.

You probably get a lot of questions during the interview process. Chances are the job seekers considering applying to your company have a lot of the same questions. So why not answer them with a video? Have your hiring team compile the questions that interviewees most frequently ask and then answer those questions in detail in a video.

6. Share your company’s biggest wins and coolest projects.

Potential for advancement, and job satisfaction are two major deciders for potential applicants. Job seekers want to know that your company is growing because that means they’ll have an opportunity to grow with you. They also want to feel pride and fulfilment in their work which means the type of project that your company undertakes matters a great deal to them. Using blog posts or Facebook posts to share updates like these  is very effective, but when you have something extra special to show, then a video is worth the time investment. Don’t be intimidated by video recruiting, have fun with it. Even if your videos are shot simply with a smartphone, a little creativity and confidence are all you need to create and awesome video that will engage job seekers!

Even though social recruiting has been with us for a while now and has been embraced by most recruiters, the strategies best practices still confusing to many professionals out there.

And, thanks to a general lack of firsthand experience with social networks, misconceptions about social recruitment abound!

Here are 6 common misconceptions about social recruiting – debunked and explained to help you avoid making mistakes that can hurt your talent brand.

1. Social recruiting is free

Yes, the platforms might be available to you for free, but the time, people, and other resources required for developing an efficient process of social recruiting are definitely not free!

Even if it’s your internal workforce that’s taking care of your social media presence, you are still paying them for their work.

And social recruiting isn’t easy.

You won’t get anywhere without a smart strategy in place – and those change for every season and sector.

Creating and implementing such a strategy takes time and time is money.

2. A couple of social profiles = social recruiting

Regularly post job offers to a Facebook Page liked by only a handful of people is not good social recruiting.

Similarly, creating a profile on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you’re recruiting – especially if you don’t have many 1st degree connections, your profile isn’t 100% complete and you never post any status updates or otherwise engage with candidates.

In order to reach job seekers with your social recruiting, you need to post engaging and interesting content that inspires job seekers to follow you and engage with your posts.

You need to offer them value.

3. Everyone on social media is a job seeker

Many recruiters treat social media as vast candidate pools – repositories of people desperate for a job.

This is just not true.

According to Jobvite, only 51% of professionals in the US are actively seeking new employment opportunities. It’s safe to say that the figure above extends beyond the US.

This means that you must encourage social referrals.

Ask your community to share links to the jobs that you post to their friends, family, and colleagues. Engaging your community in this way is a fantastic way to grow your talent pool.

4. Connecting with recruiters is every candidate’s dream

This misconception is unreasonably widespread among recruiters who expect candidates to be interested in connecting with them without an introduction or even a personalized message.

Even if candidates are looking for a new job, they are not necessarily looking to connect with recruiters.

When you reach out to potential hires make sure that your message is warm, human, and above all make sure that it’s tailored to them and their specific talents.

And remember, a genuine compliment will go a long way!

5. Only LinkedIn is good for social recruiting

LinkedIn might be the largest professional network on the web, but social recruiting can, and should happen on all platforms.

Jobvite’s research shows that 76% of social job seekers found their positions through Facebook. With contacts sharing job opportunities and providing them with valuable perspectives about the company, no wonder this and every other social network could become a perfect choice for recruiting.

6. Social media recruitment works wonders – instantly!

Social media requires patience – you cannot force your audiences to perform specific actions without first making them trust you and recognize you as an expert.

Building your employer brand’s reputation and following can be a slow process, but the payoff is awesome.

Have patience, work your way through the social web and send a positive brand message – that’s what ultimately draws in talented candidates.

Author, Cindy Boesel works as a marketing manager at BizStats. She’s an incurable technology addict and great enthusiast of new branding strategies.

Editing and images by Samara Parker.

Passive candidates make up three-quarters of global candidates making them an essential part of all recruitment strategies.

Unfortunately for HR, these candidates are not checking job boards.

But they are reading blogs, Tweeting, and checking their Facebook. And that is how these candidates find you.

This is why HR pros believe that recruitment will become more and more like marketing in the coming years.

And why “75% of global Talent Acquisition leaders say talent brand has a significant impact on their ability to hire great talent”. (Source)

An enticing, prominent employer brand is the key to attracting top talent.

On the other hand, an unappealing employer brand with send top talent running for the hills!

LinkedIn’s 2015 Global Recruiting Trends Report, surveyed 4,125 talent recruiting decision makers in 31 countries.

Making it the largest report of its kind.

The report devotes an entire section to employer brand because the data shows that it plays a crucial role in a company’s’ ability to attract qualified candidates.

One of LinkedIn’s central findings is that an unattractive employer brand can lose companies up to half of their applicants.

LinkedIn’s Winning Talent report found that no amount of money could convince 50% of UK workers surveyed to accept a role at a company with a poor employer brand.

Having no employer brand will also hurt your bottom line. Not as much as having a bad one, but enough to significantly affect your recruitment.

Investing in employer brand is shown to cut back employee turnover by a third.

A robust employer brand can reduce cost per hire by 50%.

Employer brand is vital to reaching passive candidates.

And, if your competitor’s employer brand is stronger and more prominent than yours, then they’re reaching more talent than you are.

Thankfully, LinkedIn’s research doesn’t focus entirely on the negative!

The Winning Talent Report includes some actionable information that you can use to improve your employer branding.

The research shows that offering flexible benefits and perks is the most valued benefit for candidates.

36% of employees say that flexible work will persuade them to take a job with a company.

Almost as many (34%) say that evidence of a positive company culture is what most influences their decision to accept a job offer.

And 28% are looking to work at a company that has a good reputation within their industry.

Job security, professional development opportunities, and a high caliber internal team are the other top motivators for recruiting top talent without offering any increase in salary

“Finding the best people remains the number one driver of success for any business. Better communicating the benefits and attractions of their business to potential recruits has to be top of the agenda for recruitment, resourcing and talent professionals.” – Chris Brown, director of UK talent solutions at LinkedIn.

Your employer brand is the first impression that you make on potential hires.

Make that impression a good one!

As the war for talent heats up, an increasing number of companies are turning to social recruiting. This means more competition for social recruiters everywhere. More competition for you! Do you know what your competitors are Tweeting? If not, then it’s time to find out! Your rivals are a prime source of information. Inspecting your competitors on social media helps you better understand your industry and gives you valuable insight into the behavior and interests of the audiences that you are targeting. Their most popular content can inform your future content and their failures can steer you clear of social media disaster. In this article, you’ll learn how to analyze your competitor's social media strategy to ensure that you’re always one step ahead.

1. Harness The Power Of The Spreadsheet

Your first step in total social media domination is to create... A spreadsheet! If you are one of those amazingly organized people who ALWAYS makes a spreadsheet then please feel free to skip to step 2. Before you start scrolling through your adversaries’ Instagram accounts, make a simple spreadsheet that lists a few of your main competitors, which social networks they are active on and links to their accounts. This way you can approach your investigation in an organized, effective manner.

2. Gather Facebook Intel

Facebook makes it really, really easy to stalk your competitors. Facebook’s Pages to Watch feature allows you to create a list of business Pages that you want to monitor and then gives you their data. Seriously. You can see their Page Like progress, how many posts they’ve shared, and what their engagement was like this week. You can even go in and look at each competitor’s top posts to see what kind of content performs well for them.

Here’s how to get started with Facebook Pages to Watch. Use the intel you gather to create goals for your own Facebook Page, such as how often to post and to inform what content you choose to create in the future. Here are a few more things to consider when Facebook stalking your competition:

• How many followers do they have?

• What topics are they posting about?

• Are they posting mostly internal content or curated content?

• What kind of language are they using and what kind of language do their followers use?

• How often do they post?

• How many likes/comments/shares do they get per post?

• Do they post jobs to their timeline or have a Career Site on their Facebook Page?

And, if you’re like me, you’ll also want to add your findings to your social recruiting spying spreadsheet!

Follow Them On Twitter

Twitter is one of the most popular social networks for businesses. Twitter is also an excellent place to find information about your competition because so much of Twitter data is public The first step to accessing this data is to simply follow your competitors. But this is seriously un-sneaky! No honorable spy would out them self so readily. The sneaky way to follow your competition on Twitter is to add them to a private Twitter list. To create a private list on Twitter select “List” from the “Profile and Settings” dropdown, and then click on “Create new list.” Name your list, set it to private, and start adding your competitors Twitter accounts!

Within minutes, you’ll have a stream of relevant information to learn from. You can also use free tools to get even more information about your competitors.

• Simply Measured will provide you with a free Twitter follower report

  to help you analyze their demographic and interest data.

• Twitter Counter lets you monitor your Tweet volume and follower growth against two of your competitors.

• Followerwonk lets you analyze any profile's followers for free enabling you to build a comprehensive picture of your competitor's Twitter presence.

Here are a few questions that you’ll want to answer about your rivals’ Twitter presence:

• How many followers do they have? And how influential are those followers?

• What do they tweet about?

• How many favorites/replies/retweets do they average per post?

• What kind of content gets them the most engagement?

• Have they created lists? If so, what lists have they made and who’s on them?

• What hashtags do they use most?

• Do they run or participate in any Twitter chats?

• Do they use Twitter ads?

Find the answers and add them to your list!

Blogs Are The Gateway To The Sole

Companies are beginning to catch on to the fact that recruiting should be treated like marketing. And marketers everywhere are switching over to inbound/content marketing. One of the pillars of content marketing is the blog. Blogs allow companies to write in depth pieces that highlight their employment brand and connect with job seekers on a deeper level than the short form content shared on social networks. If you want to understand your competitor's message, their values, and their mission then their blog is your best resource. Their blog can also give you a deeper insight into their audience than studying their social networks. Read the comments left on your competitions’ blog posts to see how their audience is responding to their message. Check the amount of social shares each blog post receives to learn their most popular topics.

Find out if they use guest bloggers and if so who, then consider reaching out to those bloggers yourself.

Tying It All Together

Facebook, Twitter, and blog posts are my favorite sources for competitor analysis. If your competition is focused on other social recruiting channels, then you’ll want to monitor those as well. Here are 37 excellent tools to help you spy on your competitors across all of their different social networks! Once you feel satisfied with the information you’ve gathered, revisit your list and start piecing it all together. You’ll soon see what’s working for your competitors and what is failing horribly! You’ll also learn where your own social recruiting strategy is ahead of the curve and where you need to pick up your game. Either way, you now have the information that you need to win the war for social recruitment domination and crush your opponents!

Whether you want to hire new talent, sell products, or grow your audience… You need to focus on your brand because none of these things is possible if no one knows who you are! Your ability to generate any of these results is based on your brand. In an era where the average person spends so much of their time online, the best ways to build that brand is through social media. This is why 78% of companies now have a dedicated social media team and why 76% of companies choose social media to communicate their employer brand. Although the use of social media branding is ubiquitous successful social media branding is not. Many people still struggle with using social media. I get emails and calls every day from people who have been tasked with growing their organization’s employer brand on social, but don’t know where to start. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by social media or want to expand your knowledge, then this list is for you!

1. Choose the Right Social Networks.

There are hundreds (possibly thousands?) of social networks out there. Trying to create a thriving brand presence on all of them would be exhausting, expensive, and ridiculous! Yes, social media is a great tool for branding, but the majority of social networks are not worth your time. Instead of trying to broadcast your message to as many networks as possible, find the platforms that align with your brand and are frequented by the audience you want to reach.

Here are a few things to consider when making this choice:

• LinkedIn is a great place to build credibility. It’s worth having a company page on LinkedIn just to show job seekers and potential partners (investors) that you have one. Whether you make use of any of the networks social capabilities should depend on your desired audience and how they use LinkedIn.

• Facebook is still the best platform for promoting brand awareness. The network has over 1 billion users and makes sense for most brands because of its diverse user base.

• Instagram and Pinterest are both excellent choices for companies with highly visual brands. Instagram tends to work a little better for brands targeting a younger demographic and Pinterest is best for brands looking to grow their popularity amongst women.

• Twitter is awesome for having a conversation with your audience. The network is best used in combination with Facebook and/or blogging as you can use it to promote the longer form content that you share there.

2. Share Valuable Content.

You can’t build your brand without engagement. Creating content that your audience thinks is valuable will make them want to share, comment, and like. This is the key to growing your brand, not witty calls to action or flashy logos.

Here are a few things to consider when crafting content for social sharing:

• Tailor your content to the social network. Twitter demands short, snappy copy whereas Facebook user tend to prefer longer more detailed posts… And remember, you can’t share to Pinterest without an image!

• Everything you share on social media must reflect your brand. For example, emojis are fun, but if you use them in your employer branding, don’t be surprised to see your candidates use them in job applications!

• Use visual content as much as possible. Content with engaging images gets 94 percent more views on average than that without. Facebook prioritizes posts with images and Twitter users are twice as likely to click on tweets that include a picture.

An excellent way to find content inspiration is to look at what your competitors are doing! Pay attention to what types of content they tend to focus on and what content is most successful for them. I’m not advising you to steal their blog posts word for word, but if you notice that infographics work well for your competitors, then you may want to start posting some yourself.

3. Get Help

If you have a relatively unknown brand or are new to social media then you’re likely getting lost in the noise. Being consistent with your content will eventually remedy this, but it will take a while. You can speed things up by getting help from your team, your current audience, and, ideally, influencers in your industry.

Here are a few different ways to reach these influencers:

• Mention influencers on Twitter and engage them in a conversation. You can also reference them in blog posts and then let them know so that they can Tweet about it.

• Connect with them on LinkedIn and let them know why you think that they are worth connecting to and what you respect about their work.

• Tag any influencers you’ve referenced when sharing content to your social media profiles.

• Ask influencers if you can interview them for your blog or website.

• Email influencers after you’ve published your content to let them know they’ve been referenced in your work.

It takes time to build up relationships with influencers in your field, but it’s  the second best way to get your content shared to a large audience.

4. Spend a Little to Get a Lot

This is the best way to get your content shared to a large audience! Social media used to be free(ish). This is no longer true. Facebook and Twitter ads, especially if you carefully target those ads so that they reach people who want to hear what your brand has to say. Always use your most valuable content for paid ads and tailor that content to the audience that you are targeting so that you get the best ROI for your ads.

5. Be Authentic

The word authenticity gets thrown around a lot my social media professionals. But it is often used as more of a catchphrase than it is to provide people with real, actionable advice. When I say be authentic I do not mean be yourself. What I mean is: Do not lie. If your company is not young and hip, then don’t try to deceive people into thinking that it is. If your product will not bring about world peace, then don’t say that it will (I’m looking at you CocaCola!) You’ll get the best results by emphasizing the things that truly are amazing about your brand, not by trying to trick people. Social media is one of the most powerful ways to reach people, but it’s also an easy way to  alienate people if you don’t use it appropriately. This is what makes having a robust social media strategy in place so important. If you choose the right networks, share valuable content, reach out to influencers, advertise intelligently, and stay true to your brand then your hard work will pay off. Sources:

• Business2Community

• CareerArc

• NewsCred

• Buffer

Happy Canada Day! Did you even know that it was Canada Day? I forgive you if you didn’t. Especially if you are not Canadian. Jobcast is a Canadian company, based out of Vancouver BC, so to honour our Canadian roots this week’s Link Love is all about Canada. To start, here’s an interesting fact for anyone looking for a job in our home and native land: Monday is the best day of the week to turn in your application. Monday applicants have a 10% higher chance of being chosen for interviews. For more fun facts about working in Canada check out this article over at Workopolis:

By the numbers: The cold hard facts of finding a job in Canada in 2014

They also found that the average interview lasts about 40 minutes, but Canadian interviewers make many crucial decisions within the first 4 seconds!

50 Insane Facts About Canada

As a Canadian, none of these facts are insane to me… Of course, I know that we 2.4 million caribou and that we invented basketball… We’re also responsible for peanut butter.

8 Non-Boring Moments in Canadian History

The history of Canada is notoriously boring, just ask any of our high school students! Apparently this has more to do with our teachers than history itself as Mental Floss found some pretty fascinating stories that my history teachers never taught in class. In 1885, the world’s most famous elephant was killed by a train in St Thomas, Ontario. The people of St Thomas butchered the elephant and lived off of its meat for months. We are a pragmatic people.

13 Strange Things You Didn't Know About Canada

The weirdness just keeps on coming! My favourite part of this slide show is about Nanaimo’s annual bathtub race. This one is near and dear to my heart because I grew up on Vancouver Island and because I believe that bathtubs have a need for speed.

Stuff Canadian People Like This link is to a Tumblr devoted to being Canadian, the things that we find amusing, and the stuff we have that the US does not. Like Shreddies the best breakfast cereal ever.

Happy Canada Day from all of us at Jobcast!