Head first, feet first, or just dipping your toes – whatever your approach to social media, understanding the value your business offers will help you manage your online presence more efficiently, by engaging with the behaviours of your audience.
Time-poor SMEs tend to lose momentum with social media as they struggle to manage running a business and efficiently managing an online presence. But the cost isn’t prohibitive and the value is greater than any price point – if you’re competent with the internet, a quick search will reveal a number of free tools that will help monitor your brand presence and manage your profiles much more efficiently.
A few clicks and keystrokes and you can start to monitor brand sentiment and directly engage in discussions directly with your intended audience – whether it be consumers or, equally important, potential employees. Understanding where your business is being discussed online means you can now become more intelligent when targeting your audience, by identifying how they behave within the digital environment. Remember – identifying behaviours is the key to sourcing talent online.
Think of how powerful this will be as the skills shortage becomes more apparent.
Your digital presence starts to become a tool for you to transmit your employer value proposition – in real time. It’s a way for you to measure the value you offer as an employer by encouraging complete transparency with your business and the values of your organisation. But be careful, complete transparency is just that – your audience will not respond kindly to a business with self-serving motives.
So my advice would be to consider the following elements from our recent white paper titled, “Social Media – The Future of Strategic Sourcing?”
- Know your business – understand what type of business you are trying to build and the behaviours required of key performers to support that;
- Know your target market – understand your key performers, identify opportunities to support their behaviours and retain their talent;
- Carry the approach and intelligence around employee online behaviours through your hiring, onboarding and management practices;
- Measure, review, refine and adjust – the great thing about the digital environment is its flexibility and cost effectiveness. Use this to your advantage to change your approach as the behaviours of those you seek evolve (and they will);
- Engage the right subject matter experts – not all digital strategists or talent sourcing partners are equal.
