How to Market Your Association Job Board on Social Media
Social network platforms have more than tripled their total user base in the last decade. Both job seekers and employers alike engage through their social media channels when looking for a job or recruiting for an open position. Ensure your association has some real estate within the most popular platforms so both job seekers and employers know to look to your online job board for help with their goals.
Make Social Media Job Board Marketing a High Priority
One of the most effective and free ways to market your online job board is by incorporating it into your social media channels. Data from our 2020 Association Communications Benchmarking Study found that one in three associations make social media a high priority. More than half of the associations surveyed consider social platforms very valuable to their communication programs. Social media emerged as the number one vehicle for driving traffic to association websites.
You can expand your job board’s reach by leveraging platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and any others your association members use. Regular and consistent engagement through these channels helps you to reach thousands of people in a short amount of time to outline the benefits and drive traffic to your career center. This additional traffic improves the ROI for your posting employers and encourages users to engage with other areas of your overall website.
Benefits of Social Media Job Board Marketing
There are many benefits of using social media to promote your online job board:
- Promotion of your career center adds content to your social media outlets.
- Increasing awareness of your career center drives additional non-dues revenue from employers who may not have otherwise known about your career center.
- Social media promotion can be no cost.
- Continued traffic to the career center helps to keep your association’s brand front and center for industry professionals, even if they’re not active job seekers.
- The broad reach your association can achieve by interacting with others on many social media channels combined pulls in a large and diverse audience.
Keys to Successful Social Media Job Board Marketing
Be consistent
The key to optimal engagement though your social media channels is to have a consistent marketing schedule. You want to be sure to touch base with your audience regularly. Review the social media outlets you are currently using and the type of engagement each brings. This will assist with deciding where to focus most of your efforts. You will want to promote through the top channels of engagement as this will ensure that you receive the overall best results.
Know your audiences
Next, determine your audience and the messaging you want to use. Keep an even balance between your job seeker and employer content as both are equally important for the success of the other.
Take advantage of automation
Some organizations find they may not have enough staff to management multiple platforms. Depending on the staff time and resources available, your association may benefit by using a social media management platform that assists with scheduling and automation. There are many to choose from such as HubSpot, Hootsuite or Sprout Social. Some job board providers may have integrations with certain social media management platforms which saves time and effort for your association. Be sure to connect with your job board provider to see what may be available.
Always have a call to action
Within all channels you want to be sure to provide engaging content or a call to action. Job listings are an excellent example to help draw in your job seeker audience. Graphics and images tend to receive much higher engagement than simply providing text. You want to ensure your graphics reflect the audience you are targeting. What would create engaging content for your association’s job seekers and employers? Providing a call to action will also encourage users to follow through. Invite your audience to “Learn More” or “Review our Resources” or link to the actual job(s) you are promoting.
A few examples of ways to promote your job board within your social media channels:
- Organic post to Facebook outlining your career resources or information about career development and provide a link to your career center.
- Share some interesting data about your career center through a tweet to capture interest. Provide the career center link to engage.
- Post a question to your followers to start a conversation. Tag the URL to your career center.
- Show off your career enter with a series of posts that highlight resourceful areas. Include photos or videos to spotlight certain features and tools available.
Communication and exposure are key for a successful, well-used career center. Review your social media engagement and strategy periodically to see what type of messaging and platform tends to drive the most traffic to your board and/or overall website and pivot your engagement accordingly.