Happy belated Mother's Day!

Moms are pretty great. They teach you things, give great hugs, and keep the human species from going extinct. And moms spend way too much time tidying up toys, diapers and sneakers randomly dumped around the house by their oblivious offspring.

That's probably why spring is not just about Mother's Day brunch, but also about serious cleaning. And sadly, now that we are all grown up, we have to stay tidy all on our own. But, if you're looking for a way to do some serious spring-cleaning without touching a mop, pail, or toilet, then look no further.

Your social networks can always use a little sprucing up, so follow our handy guide to spring-cleaning your employer branding on Facebook. No rubber gloves required!

Start using Facebook Lists

Now. Seriously.

If you use Facebook for recruiting, branding, or marketing, eventually your potential hires, colleagues, and customers will start to reach out to you via your personal Facebook account. This can be tricky, especially if you are like me and enjoy posting a lot of rap videos and MMA knockouts on your timeline. I don't want to offend anyone, but I also need to show my pals how amazing Uriah Hall's roundhouse kick is! That's where Facebook Lists come into play.

FB Lists let you select exactly who sees what content you post, so you can appear squeaky-clean to colleagues, while still sharing cool, but potentially offensive, stuff with your close friends. For a detailed description of how to use Facebook Lists, I highly recommend this article by Jennifer Baker.

Freshen up your posts

It's easy to fall into a bit of a social media rut. Sharing nothing but Seth Godin quotes and cat pictures, no matter how amazing, does eventually get old. Make sure you post a variety of valuable content on your Facebook Employer Page. Intersperse job posts with brand updates, images, and informative links. Using an RSS aggregator like Feedly makes finding great content much easier and a bookmarking app like Pocket helps you save links to content for future posting.

Keep your content relevant, short, sweet and varied by posting valuable advice, links you have actually read and vetted, attractive images, and relevant updates.

This Infographic gives 18 specific tips for making your Facebook posts sweeter. It's also super cute. Win win!

Yes, use that big data, but don't forget to ...

Experiment

Why is Facebook always testing out new, occasionally weird icons, page layouts and call-to-actions? Because experimentation is the only way to find out if something works.

Sure, we can theorize as much as we like about Facebook best practices, but the only way to know for sure is to try things out.

If your cat pictures haven't been getting any Likes, try a Ryan Gosling meme. If you post mostly case-studies, try throwing in the occasional inspirational quote. The internet loves inspirational quotes!

Your employer brand will benefit from a little experimentation.

This article shares some solid advice about getting into customers' heads. Just replace the word 'customer' with 'candidate' and it transforms into a killer social recruiting piece! Magic.

Think back

If you haven't used it in the last three months, throw it away. I apply that rule when cleaning out my cupboards, closet, and fridge (maybe three weeks is better rule-of-thumb for the fridge... eeew.) It works for your Facebook content as well.

If you've been posting three times a day for the past three months and only your morning and evening posts are getting any attention, maybe it's time to ditch the afternoon post.

To improve your social strategy, it's important to understand what works for your employer brand, and what doesn't, by studying your previous successes and failures. Any good Facebook Recruiting app will supply you detailed metrics.

Keep things under control

If you want to keep your future social network spring-cleaning to a minimum, staying up to date on the never-ending stream of changes that Facebook makes is mandatory.

It's a daunting task, yes, but it is doable! My personal favorite way to keep tabs on Facebook news is to use Feedly to follow InsideFacebook, AllFacebook and TechCrunch's #Facebook.

I also follow Failbook, but this is sheerly to boost moral. Check out this blog post for even more ways to stay on top of the latest innovations from Facebook.

Let technology do it for you

Using a smart Facebook recruiting app can give your employer brand a clean sweep. Branding your Career Page with custom colors, embeding recruitment videos, and provided easy to use metrics should be part of any premium app, so it's an easy, affordable way to improve your Facebook Recruiting and employer branding.

We Hope these tips help freshen up your Facebook efforts and that your Mother's Day included waffles!