Are you looking for organic recruitment marketing campaign ideas for Instagram?
We recently used Instagram and LinkedIn organically as marketing platforms for our recruitment purposes here in Finland.
In this episode of the Building a Modern Employer Brand podcast I share with your how we planned the campaign, what features we used and what goals and objectives we chose. Next week, in episode 94 I share with you the results.
Please scroll down this page to find the podcast episode or start with my go-to ideas for ramping up a three-week recruitment marketing campaign for social media.
How to come up with recruitment marketing ideas for Instagram, or other social media?
Adding a twist to your recruitment marketing on social media is easy and fun because there are many cool features available these days.
All you need to know is which social media is the best for reaching your target audience for your campaign and then start ideating!
If you google for recruitment marketing ideas, you’re going to get lots of advertising campaign ideas.
However if you ask me, the best campaigns on social media rely on what social media was built for: conversations and relationships, not on advertising.
How to create a recruitment marketing campaign for social media?
Follow these easy steps to create a recruitment marketing campaign for social media that doesn’t require big bucks and an advertising agency.
(1) Set your campaign goals
Start from your campaign goal. How do you need this campaign to help your hiring?
Remember, this is marketing and communications, not selecting candidates. Your goals need to be the kinds you can achieve with communications and marketing actions.
Goals I recommend for your campaign:
- Grow awareness you have an opening and you are about to start the selection process.
- Improve understanding of what Work to Life Riddle this career opportunity will solve for your prospects.
- Help your prospects in anyway you can to choose your opportunity.
When you have your campaign goals clear you are in a much better place to start planning what you actually do.
When your campaign is over, you want to make sure your candidate experiences exceed expectations and help your applicants to commit to your process instead of your competitors.
This online course below at Talent Marketing school teaches you how to do just that.
(2) Decide on your campaign timeline
Your campaign has a timeline based on the start date and the deadline for applications. Your timeline should be minimum of 14 days, but ideally 21 days. That’s three weeks.
What you need are daily content and activities. Before you go bonkers, remember why you are doing this: to maximize the success of your hiring process.
Your maximum hiring success is out of the window unless your best available prospects commit to your process until your company is ready to make final decisions about each of them.
Think about your campaign timeline as the Candidate Journey of the Information Era™️.
If you have three weeks for the campaign, week one should focus on goal one, week two on goal two and week three on goal three.
(3) Spend a little time ideating your activities
Next, start ideating the content and activities for each week, pursuing the week’s goal. You need to post at least three times but preferably at least five times during each of your campaign weeks.
What this means is, you need at least 3 to 5 ideas for posts and actions for each of your campaign week. This comes to a total of 15 content ideas and actions during those three weeks of your campaign.
Week 1: What could help your relevant audience to become more aware of your opening?
- You need your campaign to drive prospects to the landing page for this role from day one. The most common landing page is the job post.
- Posts that start with “We are hiring [who] for [role]” and continue in a conversational tone about and around the hiring need are great for growing awareness about the active recruitment process.
- Topics such as the about role, the hiring process, the goals of the role, introducing the people connected to this role and what success looks like in this role make great talking points for plenty of posts for week one.
- Additionally, posts that call people to ask your team questions about the role and the process open you a window for extra activities on social as you come back to answer those questions.
Week 2: Focus your talking points on why your prospects should choose your company.
During week two, your posts and activities should focus on clarifying what work to life -related needs this opportunity and starting a career in your company can solve for your prospects.
Hardly any employer touches this crucial question in their recruitment messaging: Exactly how will a career in your company transform the my [candidate] life for the better?
How to answer a question like that?
Find the answers in your unique leadership culture, values, and company mission. Asking your longest employees why they have chosen to stay is another way to figure out your competitive advantage as an employer.
To get more ideas what topics to address during week to, learn more about Work to Life Riddles because those ultimately drive talents to make career changes. If you can address how your company takes away any of those riddles, your recruitment messaging is going to be on another level.
Understanding also what goes on in the minds of your prospects when they start planning career changes can help you to select your talking points for week two.
Week 3: Make sure all open questions are answered and actively remind your prospects about the deadline for applications.
The final week of your campaign needs to cover rest of your prospects’ open questions, shed some light on how the selection process will look like and firmly call action to send their application.
I like to talk about the interview process during week three of the campaign. I share what questions we will be covering or if there are tasks we ask the candidates to do. Helping your candidates to succeed in your selection process is a win-win for both of you.
This type of a recruitment campaign idea works best on Instagram because Instagram has so many versatile features we can use to make the campaign fun for our prospects and us.
- Single photos and other types of images on the newsfeed.
- Short and longer videos including replays of Lives.
- Multiple images and copy texts shared as a carousel post.
- Animated posts which you can create for example with Canva.
- Reels and Stories
- Engagement Stickers used in Stories to call action and increase engagement.
Organic or paid campaign?
The first decision you need to make is whether you choose only an organic campaign, a paid campaign or a mix. Your choice impacts the content you need.
An organic campaign requires:
- An active and relevant job seeker audience.
- Focus on engaging and building relations with your prospects.
- Daily activities to engage your audience in a conversation with you throughout your campaign.
- Making sure your prospects get all the information they need to decide to apply by the end of your campaign.
A paid campaign requires:
- A decent budget.
- Catchy images or a short video, compelling copy texts and clear calls to action.
- Enough campaign days for the campaign effect to kick in and produce results. For example, Facebook ad algorithm is notorious for the required learning period.
Probably your best choice is a mix of organic and paid campaign.
Listen to episode 93 in the Building a Modern Employer Brand podcast with Susanna Rantanen
In this episode:
- Why we chose Instagram for our recruitment campaign?
- The goals and objectives we had for our recruitment marketing campaign.
- The key elements in our campaign.
- The chosen Instagram features we applied during our campaign.
Check out this blog post about recruitment marketing campaign on Instagram >>
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