A while back I ran an experiment to help a client increase the volume of qualified social workers they recruit using an integrated social media approach. It was a huge success leading to a 500%+ increase in social workers that they successfully attracted over previous methods. This post is going to explain how the campaign worked, and how you yourself can leverage the network that’s been built for your own recruitment needs.
The diagram below visualises the original idea I had, which was to create a bespoke community of social workers that would attract other social workers via cross posted and circulated content from the major social networks, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & You Tube.
In the centre of the diagram you’ll notice the big NING logo. NING is a platform that lets you create your own social networks. They can be as simple or as complicated as you like. The back end interface for creating a network is quite easy to use and once you have chosen a network template, you ‘drag and drop’ the functionality (photo upload, video, RSS feeds etc) you want in the network. I opted to use some basic images and content to create a network called UK Social Workers. I then mapped the network to the domain http://www.uksocialworkers.co.uk.
It’s a private network so members have to be approved to ensure as far as possible they are genuinely social workers. Members can create their own profiles, upload videos and photo’s to the network and create their own groups around social work topics.
Once the network was built it needed content to attract users and allow it to reach a critical mass where the content becomes majority user generated. To do this I put together a 3 month content plan to ensure there was enough interesting stuff to read about around industry news, events etc . I also made use of RSS feeds from major industry portals. If you’re interested in specific tools I used to aggregate, monitor and distribute content I used a combination of Hootsuite, SocialOomph and Netvibes.
Alongside the network that was built I created a UK Social Workers branded Facebook page, Twitter account and LinkedIn Group (never got round to You Tube in the end). Content that was generated in the central UK Social Workers Network was then cross posted around the other social media platforms. As more people joined and followed these groups across the networks, more social workers joined the core network.
To help grow the facebook page I initially used some limited facebook PPC campaigns to target social workers. Very quickly we noticed the facebook page become a popular forum, and most of the sign up’s to the core network came from facebook. Looking at the engagement across the various platforms it became obvious that facebook would be quite strong for attracting social workers and thus more of our efforts should be concentrated there.
So eventually we needed to actually recruit social workers, what did we do exactly?
Firstly I created a jobs tab on the UK Social Workers Network that had 5 sub tabs for different categories of social worker jobs: Children & Families, Hospital Teams, Adult, Mental Health and one for Administrative roles. Jobs would then be listed on the relevant page.
facebook ppc advert
We then seeded the content schedule with information about one of the jobs every now and then. Whether it was a tweet, Linkedin update or a facebook post, it would link back to the jobs page on UK Social Workers. Along side this we ran facebook PPC adverts that targeted specifically members of the UK Social Workers facebook page. This way we could make them and their network aware of social worker opportunities regardless of whether they happened to be using the facebook page at the time.
Results
Within 2 months of the campaign kicking off the client begun to see registrations of qualified social workers increase 500%+ over their previous attraction methods. This translated into more placements of social workers and ensured they had a constant pool of talent that could be tapped, thus reducing the time it took to find and place candidates as well.
In terms of the most successful platforms, facebook was the stand out performer, although we did track placements to twitter as well. Linkedin at the time did not seem to work so well for this particularly niche, although there has been a boost in the number of social workers joining the group recently suggesting it will become more useful.
Creating such a network isn’t without its problems. Social work is a sensitive issue and it was made clear from the beginning that the network is for Social workers to connect with other social workers. The facebook page especially attracts people who often use ‘colourful’ language and it’s important to monitor and ban if necessary those who aren’t using the group for its purpose. There are also quite a few people who attempt to spam it completely with jobs.
The best approach we found regrading attracting social workers via the network was the following approach:
1) Place the job on the jobs section of UK Social Workers.
2) Use a content distribution strategy across the Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and core network about non job related stuff. Highlight industry events, topical issues etc, and seed in an announcement about a job, or job opportunities. This draws additional social workers into the network who are then likely to come across the jobs. This really helps to attract passive candidates.
3) In conjunction with the above, use a facebook ppc campaign to target fans of the group and their network.
And that’s it really, nothing too complicated but it worked extremely successfully and proved to be far more cost effective than alternative methods.
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Are You Recruiting Social Workers?
If you are a Local Council or other organisation looking for additional channels to recruit social workers, then contact me on Linkedin or via info@uksocialworkers.co.uk to discover our simple packages that will let you leverage the network described, in a cost effective way to recruit social workers directly.
Direct Recruiting 