The following transcript is from InSights, a staffing and recruiting podcast from Haley Marketing Group dedicated to providing quick-hitting takeaways on Social Recruiting, Content Marketing, and Employer Branding. Listen to the episode. Click play on the player above or visit the episode page [InSights] Measuring the Response from Your Marketing
Brad Bialy: Matt, this is a topic that I continue to see right now. I don’t think that marketers, recruiters, staffing specialists have a firm understanding of what social media KPIs you should track and monitor. And it hurts to say, but as I look collectively across the industry, not just at Haley Marketing Group and what we’re following, but as I look at different research from thought leaders and innovators and thinkers that I respect, it seems like everybody’s kind of all over the place. So what I want to do for this segment of Social Reach is breakdown what social media KPIs (key performance indicators), recruiters and staffing specialists, and the industry as a whole should be tracking right now.
Matt Lozar: I think it goes back to what your goals are. That’s one of the tried and true principles we have here at Haley marketing. It goes back to strong business practice. It goes back to Jay Baer’s quote of-
Brad Bialy: “The goal is not to be good at social media. The goal is to be good at business because of social media.”
Matt Lozar: Correct. Because 30 years ago, your goal was still to be good at business. Social media wasn’t anything.
Brad Bialy: Right. Social media is a tactic.
Matt Lozar: Yes. So we got goals, strategies, tactics. So our goals are more than likely job applications and conversions, contact signups, talent network signups, growing the number of people that are converting with our content. So then we’re going to use our strategy of going to social media and then what are we going to do on social media would be our tactics. So then what do we need to grow? Let’s focus just on social media right now. What are some indicators on social that are going to show we’re successful, at least in… Might not be a straight business capacity, but they could be other indicators that lead to business goal success.
The “Billboard Metrics” of Social Media
Brad Bialy: I think the first thing you want to look at is your billboard metrics. So how many people are you reaching? How many impressions is your content making? I consider that a billboard stat. You think about driving down the highway. You see that billboard for a cheap car insurance, and you don’t take action, but you stay top of mind. They remain top of mind because of that. I think when we think about social media KPIs and critical performance indicators, we’re looking at things like impressions and reach. How many people are seeing our content and from there what’s important then is followers.
Matt Lozar: Yeah, it’s, and it’s also building out their impressions and reach. It’s something that I think we need to think about how we’ve held previous tactics accountable or deemed successful. When we placed classified ads, not we but other staffing agencies or recruiters placed agencies, 10, 20, 30 years ago. You had no idea people were converting really. Maybe if they called me, if they walked in the office. So what’s the impression is the reach of that newspaper, whatever publication. Getting back to Brad’s point here, so that impressions and reach, but then also follower growth. They kind of play off each other. If you have 100 followers, your impression and reach are going to be lower than if you have 1000 followers or 10,000 followers just naturally. So what can you do to grow that follower base that leads to more impressions and reach and hopefully leads to more engagement and or clicks?
Start Measuring Engagement
Brad Bialy: That brings you to your next point there. I think another social media KPI and benchmark that you want to be mindful of is engagement. Are you sharing the right content? Does every post have a purpose, and is it written for your target audience in a way where somebody is engaging with that content, or are they just scrolling by it in the newsfeed? Is your imagery captivating enough? We’ve talked on InSights before about how you need to create that thumb-stopping imagery. Are people being captivated by what you’re sharing, or are you just sharing noise into the clutter that is social media?
Matt Lozar: And that’s when social isn’t successful. And it’s hard because-
Brad Bialy: That’s when no marketing is successful.
Matt Lozar: Correct. Is social successful because your executives, your directors, your C suite, your owners are going to see the number of follower growth, you’ve had impressions and reach, great. I had a call yesterday, not about social, something else. All I care about is hires. I don’t care about anything else. So how is that leading to an increase in hires for your staffing agency? And that’s where we can kind of shift this over and more that recruitment side. What KPIs can we focus on that lead to actual revenue?
Every Post has a Purpose
Brad Bialy: So social media KPIs, reach, impressions, engagement, it’s all great, but it doesn’t matter. What Matt’s getting at is that what matters is the point that every social media post has to have a purpose. And what is that result because of those other social media KPIs, applications, job orders? Everything that we do as marketers or as staffing specialists, as recruiters, everything that we do in this space should ultimately come back to, did that post… Did that time that we tweeted or that one published post on Facebook, did it result in more applications?
Matt Lozar: And here’s the hard part is you can’t just blast job postings 24/7. You will get unfollowed, and you’ll get scrolled past, you will have no ROI. So it’s this finding the balance. It’s testing. Mackenzie talked in segment one about testing. You have to check things on social. How much content should be nurturing, relationship-driven, funny, real content from your team? And then when do you come in? You’re jabbing and then the right hook to come in and ask for that contact information. And then once you capture is when you can start to see the ROI.
Brad Bialy: Yup. So if we just kind of want to wrap this up and we want to get it done here. When we think about social media KPIs that you should be tracking right now on the social media front, we want to look at things like impressions, reach, engagement, those social media billboard metrics or vanity metrics. Those lead to our correct KPIs, more applications, more job orders. And we don’t just want to look at the final step of the process and say, “Okay, in June, we had 100 applications.” We also want to look at things like job views. Maybe it’s contact form submissions. It’s all of this funneling of traffic from social to the business metrics.
And again in the words of Jay Baer, “The goal is not to be good at social media. The goal is to be good at business because of social media.”
It’s a quote that I love. It’s a quote that I’ve shared in just about every single presentation that I’ve delivered, and I appreciate you sharing that today, Matt. But when we think about what matters right now in social media, we can’t compete as a staffing industry against entertainment, against sports. We need to think about every post having a purpose and what is that going to do for us on the recruitment side of the house.
The transcript above is from InSights, a staffing and recruiting podcast from Haley Marketing Group dedicated to providing quick-hitting takeaways on Social Recruiting, Content Marketing, and Employer Branding. Listen to the episode. Click play on the player above or visit the episode page [InSights] Measuring the Response from Your Marketing
