Is social media all about personal networking and connecting with your family and friends? Not anymore as social media networks are being actively used by organizations too. Today, organizations, big and small, are focusing on building their online reputation and engagement with their online audience. Social media has become an essential tool not only to connect with your customer base but also your prospective employees. Social media has powerful influence on lives of people and employers are trying to leverage this influence to their advantage.  Several researched have been conducted on this topic and it has been revealed that in 2013, 93 percent employers already use or plan to use social media in their recruitment process.

Why Use Social Media for Recruiting

Social networking platforms have millions of users worldwide, with Facebook boasting over 1.1 billion users and Twitter over 500 million users. Research also states that 21 percent job seekers found jobs using social media. Thus, it has become a powerful tool to communicate as it brings people together and helps build relationships. There are various benefits of using social media in your recruitment process, the major ones include –

• Social media platforms increase awareness of your brand in active as well as passive candidates. It also allows the company to communicate with the candidates regarding latest openings and opportunities.
• Social media platforms allow employers to establish their reputation as an employer of choice thus gaining an edge over their competitors. It also lets prospective candidates gain insight into culture of the company.
• By advertising an ad on social media, employers can not only gain attention of job seekers but also those who are not looking for a job.
• As most companies are using social media these days, including your competitors, it has been seen that candidates sourced through social media are more competent.

Tips to Use Social Media for Recruitment

There is a common misconception among employers that social media in recruitment is all about publicizing their vacancies. Here are few tips to properly use social media channels for their hiring process –

• Select and prioritize the social media platforms you plan to use. While LinkedIn is considered to be the best network for professional communications, Facebook and Twitter are also helpful in reaching candidates. Remember, the type of message and format of communication will vary from one social platform to other.
• Develop a mission to create two-way relationships with your audience using social networks. From attracting potential talent to providing an insight into company culture, use social media platforms to create engagement with audience.
• Evangelize the mission, objectives and goals of your organization using social media platform.
• Monitor your conversations across social media channels to monitor performance of your social media efforts. It will also give you an idea of what methods work best in hiring talent, thus giving better returns to your social media efforts. Monitor effectiveness of your campaigns to gauge the influence of social media on your overall hiring strategy.

Social media has become the ideal way to attract high quality and competent candidates to join your organization. Utilize the power of social media to empower your organization with the best talent in the industry.

Every marketer constantly strives to stay at the top of the game when it comes to online marketing. As online marketing world evolves day-by-day, businesses cannot ignore latest online marketing trends and change their strategies accordingly. SEO is an integral part of online marketing plan of a business and algorithm changes by Google lead to drastic upheaval in the SEO world. So, it is very important for digital marketers, business owners and SEO experts to stay aware of key changes in SEO and to understand how it influences their website.

If you are planning your marketing and SEO strategy for 2016, here are few predictions you must keep in mind –

• Mobile searches will take over desktop searches as there is a constant increase in number of people possessing smartphones. With mobile searches reaching tipping point, businesses need to focus on mobile optimization of their websites and SEO efforts need to be focused on mobile devices too. Mobile design and mobile user experience become critical factors for a website. In-depth content on websites is expected to be replaced by short and precise content for better usability on mobile sites.
• There is an expectation that there will be a large update to the search algorithm by Google. This update is expected to shift balance of power while tightening the restrictions of search algorithm. Marketers need to be careful of their link building techniques and stay away from low quality backlinks.
• With increase in mobile searches, the importance of Google Local Pack and Google Maps is expected to increase. While searching from mobile, consumers prefer service providers within few miles of their current location, thus highlighting the importance of location based search results. Also, online reviews and customer feedback is also expected to play an important role in search results.
• Interaction holds the key for 2016. With presence of voice assistants, interaction with smartphones has become different. In 2016, text-based search is expected to become a thing of the past with voice search taking its place. SEO experts need to understand the difference in human behavior in text and voice search, and plan their SEO efforts accordingly.

For businesses, it is important to stay updated with the content marketing and SEO predictions for upcoming year. By predicting the changes, marketers can stay prepared and gain profit from the path where technology is taking the business. 

While setting up a new business, entrepreneurs face new challenges and difficulties at every step. From picking business idea to setting up infrastructure, there are several decisions that need to be made and each decision has the power to make or break the business. With so much attention of entrepreneurs is required in every detail, it becomes really difficult to focus on product marketing and brand building.

Are you one of these time-stressed entrepreneurs who wish to focus more on online marketing? Or have you heard a lot about benefits of blogging for entrepreneurs but never tried it? There is a common misconception among entrepreneurs that blogging is time consuming and tedious. Here are few quick blogging tips that will allow entrepreneurs pursue their passion for blogging –

• Success of a blog is not measured in terms of quantity of posts but in terms of quality of posts. Do not aim to update your blog every day. Even if you publish one quality post per week, it will be beneficial.
• Blogs do not necessarily mean text articles.  Try to find highly shareable content like infographics and images for your blogs. These types of posts are not only shareable and entertaining, they consume less time.
• Try to give impressive and unique titles to your blog. If you master the art of creating appealing blog titles, you can stay assured that you will find a loyal base of followers. Remember, the decision of a visitor to read a blog or not is usually dependent on the blog title.
• Do not treat your audience as readers, try to communicate with them and understand what they are looking for. When you engage with the audience, you will be able to find new ideas and topics for your blog.
• You need to find ways to make sure your blog reaches a wide audience base. SEO tags are not the only way to improve the reach of your blog, you should also use your social networking platforms to promote your blog.
• Use customer success stories in your blog. These are interesting, appealing, add value to users and do not take much time.

Remember, a great blog does not sell products, it shows customers why your business is better over your competitors!