The most frequent comment I hear from recruiters when we talk about social media is that it takes too much time… they are super busy finding candidates and filling reqs and don’t have 2 -3 hours a day to spend on social channels, updating their statuses and sharing information. While I agree that it takes a bit of time up front, once you have all your social profiles completed you really only need to spend 30 minutes a day monitoring and updating them.
I’m
all about automation to save time. My
favorite tool right now is Buffer App.
This is a free tool that allows you to schedule
up to 10 articles at specified times of your choice. Use this scheduling tool with Feedly.com or whatever reader you use and set
your updates to your social networks in advance. By using a reader you can follow blogs and
online papers like Mashable, TechCrunch, Fortune, VentureBeat, INC.com, Wired, Engadget
or any of the many, many other great publications. Then use RSS feeds to your reader or
Outlook. You can quickly scan and click
on interesting articles and then use Buffer App to
schedule sharing via Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
HootSuite or TweetDeck are great tools to manage social
feeds and schedule postings. I use
HootSuite and have linked it with my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Feeds. I have tabs for each stream and can schedule
posts to all of these networks, multiple times.
It’s easy to post your current job openings directly from HootSuite.
You can also schedule them to recur every week and keep them at the top of your
social profiles.
Use
your downtime and leverage mobility. While
you are waiting, pull out your mobile device and check your social feeds and
retweet, share, like and repost articles that you find valuable. I’ve spent many hours at the salon, doctor’s
office, auto repair shop, coffee shop or restaurant catching up on my Twitter,
Facebook and LinkedIn feeds and sharing content from them.
If
you decide to automate (and I hope you do) remember that it is best to read the
content that you want to share first and then share with your network. If you allow the tool to pick the content,
you might end up sharing content that is not relevant to you or your
network. People follow you for a reason
and you should be sharing what you consider valuable information. If it’s not valuable to you, it probably won’t
be valuable to your followers.
