Social selling is crucial to any recruiter’s business development strategy nowadays. We rely heavily on social media to grow our networks, create new leads and build our reputation as experts in our industry.
But with the market getting more and more crowded, some recruiters are taking drastic measures to get noticed - and they don’t always pay off!
Here are 7 social selling techniques that are likely to work against you rather than help you sell your expertise in the recruitment industry.
1. Connect-and-pitching
The number of recruiters who think it’s a good idea to immediately follow up an accepted connection request with a pitch is astounding. At least pretend you don’t have an ulterior motive - #InMailFail!
If you’re keen to follow up, use the opportunity to ask questions about them that don’t come across like you’re fishing for an opportunity. Otherwise, just don’t message them straight away!
Take your time warming them up by getting involved with online discussions to slowly build credibility in their eyes. Don’t be salesy – Be Human!
2. Social stalking
You might think liking every one of your prospect’s posts is cute and shows support, but it’s more likely you’re pissing them off by pinging notifications at them every 5 minutes.
Sure, everyone appreciates a ‘like’ or two but if you’re showering your prospect, their business partner and the twitter account they created for the office dog with constant attention, this will just look a bit desperate.
Only ‘like’ posts you actually read and have an opinion on if you want to get respect from prospects – if you’re not genuinely engaging with their posts, your ‘likes’ will just look like empty gestures.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that your network can see everything you click or comment on, so you’ll be clogging up their feeds and could get a lot of unfollows!
3. Irrelevant tagging
Receiving a notification that we’ve been tagged in something on social media instantly makes us think we’re being alerted to something of relevance to us. Therefore, there’s nothing more annoying than being tagged in a post that’s totally irrelevant!
Approach tagging with caution – only tag a prospect in something if you think they genuinely need to know about it/ get involved in the discussion. Otherwise, you’re just wasting a busy person’s time, and they won’t thank you for it.
And never tag a prospect in a motivational quote – it’s just attention-seeking, pure and simple.
4. Acting the groupie
Of course it’s good to get involved in discussion and make yourself visible, but commenting on absolutely everything a prospect posts to say “totally agree”, “love what you do”, “looks fantastic” just gets annoying. Cool it down, #Fanboy!
Hot air comments like this only undermine the genuine comments you make when you have a valuable point to put across… to half your network because the other half have deleted you for spamming.
5. Trying to pass someone else’s ideas off as your own
LinkedIn is a good place to post funny or interesting observations about your industry to expand your network as they’re highly sharable and stand out amongst all the business talk.
But the issue is that as these kinds of statuses are simple plain text, they’re easy to copy/ paste and pam off as your own. If you’re keen to share something you’ve read with your network, hit the ‘share’ button! Or at least provide a full credit and tag the originator of the post.
6. Making demands
Social selling is all about providing value and allowing people to make informed choices about whether they want to engage or work with you based on your online behaviour.
That’s why contacting people on social and making demands goes against everything social selling is about. Reaching out to your network with phrases such as “like my page,” “share this content with your community” or “vote for us in X awards” comes across terribly and will not get you the results you want.
7. Anonymously bad-mouthing the competition
It really doesn’t matter how cryptic you are about it – leveraging a competitor’s bad practice in order to try and sell yourself will always backfire.
Trying to make yourself look good in spite of others will always do the opposite as it looks really unprofessional. Would you want to work with someone who shames ‘a certain unnamed agency’ publicly on social media for bad practice?
With no gate keeper to ninja past when you want to reach decision makers, it’s no surprise that forward-thinking recruiters take full advantage of social selling as a way to communicate with prospects. Don’t let these cringeworthy tactics get in the way of your strategy!
Looking loads more guidance on how to nail your social selling strategy? Download our eBook!
