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It’s 2018 and a whopping 75% of the adult population online, are using social networks.

Interestingly for corporate Australia, particularly in the recruitment & talent industry, there’s very little (if any) awareness of the importance of social listening.

Social Listening is the act of ensuring your business is aware of what’s being said online about your brand, your clients, competitors, staff, industry, the works. It’s what should be the first step in any sound digital, social & online strategy.

But how can you sift through all the chaotic, irrelevant data get down to what really matters in terms of promoting your business? Effectively leveraging social media in order to better understand the needs and objectives of your customers is a bit more complicated than it seems.

Businesses need to understand how to successfully learn from and subsequently harness this new arena of prolific, unrestrained communications. In turn, you will learn how to better interact with talent audiences and potential customers.

In order to make adequate progress, it’s imperative to understand how to engage with your prospective hires (and if you’re a recruiter, your clients as well) and determine why and where they ‘hang out’ online.

Here are a couple of useful strategies for incorporating effective social media listening into your strategy and how it can boost your recruitment marketing and social hiring goals:

1. It’s More than a Numbers Game

Once you start to measure social networking metrics and how they can impact your business goals, you may find it enticing to rely on technology alone, rather taking a more personal route and actually listen to your audience. Nuance can be everything.

Overall, it is more beneficial to use a multi-stage strategy incorporating both ‘listening’ and ‘monitoring’ aspects in order for you to discover how social networking really works, if you’re a newbie.

2. Use compelling messages

Most people are accustomed to being bombarded by a barrage of marketing messages on a variety of media platforms, including magazine and TV ads, website pop-ups, etc. However when it comes to social media, recruiters & employers can feel slightly different.

Certain marketing strategies that work well in some areas may be less successful, or even fail, in others. So keeping the message fit for purpose AND environment, is critical.

3. Strong impact on decisions

‘Importance’ and ‘popularity’ are two completely different concepts. It’s crucial to understand how much influence social networking has on brands in general, along with the engagement decisions of potential candidates in relation to other places online that they collect information (particularly about employers).

4. Brand relevance is important

In your category, how much does your particular audience use social networking in order to make certain decisions? To achieve success, it’s vital to fully understand just how important certain social channels are to your niche.

5. Look Beyond ‘Buzz’ Websites

Today’s world of social networking is one which is often difficult to make sense of, especially in regards to who is influencing and who is being influenced. While Facebook, Twitter, LinketdIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and Google+ all generate and receive a great deal of buzz, their individual importance pales in comparison to the bigger picture.

There are countless other social networking sites out there that could possibly have a much greater influence on your brand, depending on your particular category. Keeping an open mind is critical.

Due to the vast amounts of data available today, it’s easy to get caught up in gossip about what individuals and groups are saying about your products/services or brands. Whilst this can certainly help, it should ideally be just one aspect of a more comprehensive program that informs you of:

Which categories of your audience (e.g. candidates) should you target (e.g. mid level managers, entry level, Millennials etc) 

Which target audiences and channels will potentially be the most interested in your social networking messages and what you have to offer?

How will you allocate your resources? Traditional vs new media

What specific audiences should you target via social networking vs. traditional marketing and media efforts?

What you should expect

What are the various types of responses that you should expect from social network messaging across a number of audiences?

What you should say (and not say)

Which subjects and messages are your target audiences most interested in hearing about? Which ones could potentially fail?

Through the use of effective leveraging tools, social media can offer you a world of valuable, usable information. However no matter how much data is gathered, it won’t be of any value if it’s not put to good use.

Be deliberate and strategic, the same as you would when tracking your brand, segmentation, or other key evaluations; and your rewards may prove to be priceless.