Twitter is a great asset to have as a recruiter to advertise not only jobs but also your agency and your clients. It's free, it has the potential to reach millions of people, and it allows you to get your point across in the most concise way. But let’s be honest: not all recruitment agencies are the best at it. I'm going to let you in on the main mistakes that a lot of recruiters make on Twitter so you can cut ahead of the crowd.
1. Giving up too soon
I understand. You got Twitter, it was a new and exciting and you really made an effort to tweet as often as you could. However, the initial spark went out and the motivation to tweet dwindled. I would encourage you to rekindle your relationship with Twitter. If time is the issue, did you know you can set up automatic tweets? Software like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite make this dead simple, so you don’t need to dedicate time to being on Twitter every day – just take 15 minutes to queue up a week’s worth of tweets and you’re sorted.
2. Uninspiring branding
Whilst the most important thing about your Twitter account is what you have got to say, there is absolutely no harm in branding up your page and including a nice background picture. There are so many recruitment agencies on Twitter the worst thing that can happen is that you blend in with the rest of them. Let your profile reflect on how you do business - ditch the default cloud wallpaper and plain header photo and insert a motivating picture. I like the colour coordination of the Twitter accounts shown below. It's so easy to do, it's effective, and you'll wonder why you hadn't already done it!
3. Tweeting to an empty room
Have you noticed that you haven't actually got that many followers? Bit awkward. Let's be honest, if you haven't got many followers on Twitter then it kind of defeats the purpose of tweeting. However, please don’t despair! One simple way to combat this is to look at the number of accounts that you follow. If it's looking a little low then that might go some way to explain it - it's time to do some following. All you need to do is take some time to think about the kind of clients or candidates that you are trying to attract then search and follow them. It should have a chain reaction kind of effect – you’ll find a lot of them will follow you back.
4. Marketing jobs, but not the agency
Of course it's important to make sure you're firing out the job adverts as and when they come to you. What about marketing your agency itself though? Candidates and clients are both looking for a business that they can work well with, which means communicating with them on their level. Establish yourself as an industry thought leader by sharing relevant blog posts or news articles that your followers would be interested in or, even better, start your own blog for candidates and/or clients.
5. Hash tag spamming
#are #you #making #everything #a #hashtag? By all means pick a relevant one for your tweet but it isn't necessary to overload your audience with hash tags. If nothing else, it’s a waste of the already limited character space. Besides, between you and me, it looks like Twitter will be getting rid of the hashtag altogether in the not too distant future – so don’t get used to relying on it!
