How to Use Social Media as a Caregiver Recruitment Tool
Home Care Pulse
73% of job seekers between the age of 18 and 34 years old found their last job through a social media platform. Are you using the right channels the right way?
Social media has been around now for 15+ years. LinkedIn launched back in 2003, Facebook in 2004, YouTube in 2005, Twitter in 2006, Instagram in 2010 and Snapchat in 2011. It’s been an incredible ride watching these channels grow and develop over the past two decades.
As these channels have grown to acquire millions and billions of daily users, business owners have begun to capitalize on these channels. Posting, engaging, running ads and interacting digitally with consumers right from these platforms have opened up endless opportunities for businesses.
Like most industries, in home care, there’s a prime opportunity for agencies to find and interact with potential employees and clients (or their responsible party) directly on these platforms.
A recent study found that 73% of job seekers between the age of 18 and 34 years old found their last job through a social media platform.
In order to capture that demographic, you’ve got to make sure you’re using the right platforms, posting the right content and putting forth the right effort at the right time. Here’s how to make sure you’re on the right track:
Choosing the Right Channels for Recruiting
Today there are basically 8 platforms that the majority of people are using: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube Twitter, TikTok and WhatsApp. Not all of these channels will make sense to use for recruiting caregivers or other staff.
Most importantly you should be using Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, but if you have the time and resources, Twitter and Snapchat could be worthwhile because of the demographics found on these platforms.
Keep in mind that your social channels are public. That means that you can use them to attract and push your recruitment brand, but be mindful that your clients or their responsible party would also be able to see your brand’s social pages. Keep them well-rounded and relevant on both fronts for whoever comes in contact with your pages.
Here’s why Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram are your most important social platforms for recruiting.
How & Why to Use Facebook
Facebook reported nearly 1.7 billion active daily users at the end of 2019. Facebook has been around for 16 years and yet it continues to bring millions and billions of people to its platform every month. The demographic on Facebook does vary, but you’ll continue to find men and women ages 18 – 65 on the platform every day.
The platform itself continues to evolve. With more than 60 million active business pages, users aren’t just connecting with friends and family anymore. They’re connecting with businesses and brands. Most likely your agency already has a Facebook Businesses Page. If you don’t, here’s your first step: set one up.
Once you’ve got it set up, make sure you take the time to get a profile photo and banner image up that represent the energy and opportunity that your agency brings. Make sure your contact information is accurate and you fill out the ‘about’ section. These are small details but make a huge difference when recruiting.
After you get all the page logistics set up, make a plan and assign someone on your staff to maintain the pages. We highly recommend that you select a team member that is a digital native—someone born and raised with the Internet. You want someone that knows the platform and can relate personally to the demographic on that platform.
Maintenance on Facebook looks like posting daily, responding to comments and DMs (direct messages), connecting with users and pages by inviting them to like your page, running/checking on boosted posts or ads and updating any information as your business sees fit. Due to Facebook’s algorithms, your company’s posts will perform better when you’re consistently posting and engaging with people.
If you create a page and let it sit for days or weeks at a time, chances are it won’t perform well, meaning people won’t see it or find it as easily in their own feed.
In the 2019 Home Care Benchmarking Study, as shown below, most agencies are posting weekly on their social channels. We’d recommend you increase posting to daily rather than just weekly. As mentioned, these platforms are algorithmic, and your performance and success are based off your engagement.
How & Why to Use LinkedIn
LinkedIn has grown exponentially over the last 3 years. It started out as a platform for businesses to connect but has turned into the professional platform for people to interact with each other and businesses.
LinkedIn is an essential platform to use in your recruiting efforts. It’s got nearly 600 million registered users with millions of active daily and monthly users. Interestingly enough, nearly 40% of those users are millennials, with 57% of them being male and 43% being female.
LinkedIn houses more than 20 million businesses pages and has millions of job openings which draws people to its site every day. According to Kinsta: LinkedIn Statistics, employees sourced through LinkedIn are 40% less likely to leave the company within the first 6 months. Now, that’s not home care specific, but for all industries. But, 40% is an impressive number and is worth your agency’s time to recruit on LinkedIn.
As mentioned with Facebook, LinkedIn is algorithmic and requires daily upkeep and engagement. If you haven’t already, you can set up a LinkedIn Business Page here. Once you’ve got it set up, you’ll want to pick a member of your staff to manage the site. Make sure you select a digital native that is comfortable and confident in the platform.
You’ll want to post at least 1 time per day on your business page or at least 3-5 times per week. On top of posting, LinkedIn likes to see you engaging and connecting with users. With the user-friendly search bar on LinkedIn, you can search for people, jobs, companies, schools and groups. Take advantage of these search options and connect with individuals that would be potential recruits.
One hack you could also try is connecting with other local businesses and connect with the individuals that follow them, if they’d be good recruits for you too!
How & Why to Use Instagram
Instagram is another platform you’ll want to focus your recruitment efforts on. 75% of 18-24-year-olds and 57% of 25-30-year-olds use Instagram. Most likely you’re recruiting a good portion of your caregivers from these age groups and Instagram is a great way to find them and capture their interest.
Instagram is known as the lifestyle platform. As a business, you’ll want to use Instagram to portray the lifestyle and personality of your agency’s brand. Your business Instagram account should include photos and videos that highlight the unique, fun and fulfilling opportunities that home care can offer.
One of the most important elements of having a high-performing Instagram account is authenticity. Make sure your photos are original and genuine to your agency. Avoid stock photos across platforms, but especially on a visual platform like Instagram.
On Instagram, users often use the ‘discover’ feature found inside the platform. Make sure to prioritize hashtags and tagging on each of your posts so that your posts can make their way into your audience’s discover page.
If you haven’t already, you can set up an Instagram account now.
If you have to post multiple times a day, what should you be posting?
Now that you understand which channels to focus on and why, it may seem daunting that you have to come up with engaging fresh content to post every day and on multiple channels.
The content you post should be relevant, interesting and have a soft call to action. Such content can include:
You want your recruitment brand to be fresh, fun and accurate as to what a new hire would experience and be interested in. You won’t be posting job ads every day on these channels, so you want your daily posts to pique their interest and help them want to learn more.
As a recruitment brand on social media not all of your content needs to be job posts. You want to convey your brand image and brand message through photos and words, not just job posts. Including soft CTAs (call to actions) to encourage users to comment, like or share your content is a great softer way to get them to engage with your brand.
What to include in a social job post?
Less is more but make sure you include the essentials. You want to give them a snapshot of what they’d be applying for, but leave them wanting more after seeing the initial job post.
That being said, make sure you include the essentials:
On both Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram you can post jobs as regular posts, or on Facebook and LinkedIn you can post them as official job posts.
Within each of these platforms, there is the opportunity to promote these posts and put some ad spend behind them.
Running Ads on Facebook
On Facebook there are two ways you can run ads. You can ‘Boost a Post’ or you can go into Facebook Ads Manager and create a paid campaign to promote your job post.
Here’s a few tips/how-to’s for both methods:
Boosting a Post
At the bottom of each of your posts you’ll see a “Boost Post” button. Click it to begin the process of choosing an audience and ad spend for this particular post. It’ll walk you through the ad creation that should be pretty self-explanatory.
Here’s a few of our recommendations:
Building a Campaign in Facebook Ads Manager:
If you’d like to have more CTA options, segment your audience even further, run ads on Instagram (Facebook owns Instagram and you use FB Ads Manager to manage Instagram ads as well) and track analytics, then using Facebook Manager would be a better option than Boosting a Post.
Inside Facebook Ads Manger, you’ll have more options and overall find that you have more control in the building and maintaining your ads. To get started, you can click here to setup your Facebook Ads Manager.
Here’s a few of our recommendations:
Optimize Your Social Media Efforts Accordingly
Social media when optimized correctly can be a leading force in your recruitment efforts. Taking the time to update and maintain the right channels can help current and future employees feel valued and a part of a company culture that motivates and inspires them.
Be consistent in your posting and engagement on each channel. If you find yourself not keeping up with a channel, make a change or consider leaving it behind so you can focus more energy on the channels that are performing and driving results.
Be timely in responding to all messages and comments on all of your platforms. You want to show potential recruits that they matter to you. You never know when the right time will be for them, so you’ve got to be on the ball at all times to make sure you don’t lose out on any opportunities.
Lastly, remember to include soft CTAs regularly on your posts. Continually invite people to engage and take action from your channel. You don’t know how interested they are or will become until you ask them to take action and engage with your business.
Let social media be an avenue for growth and opportunity. What you put into you it; you’ll get out of it. Best of luck and happy social recruiting!
