NAS Talent Talk

New Year Baby Steps for Social Media

January 10, 2012 at 2:39 pm sarahwering Leave a comment

By Kendra Pearson

I am privileged to be a part of the board for my local SHRM chapter, the Raleigh-Wake Human Resource Management Association. At our recent chapter meeting, I shared the ways we are advancing our chapter’s mission through the use of social media. I asked attendees to raise their hand if they found social media to be “overwhelming and time-consuming.” I expected a lot of agreement with this question, but the speed with which so many of our members’ hands shot up demonstrated what a barrier this perception is to many HR professionals experimenting with these tools.

 This time of year is full of many lists of goals for the new year, including tips for watching what you spend, watching what you eat and watching what you do with your time. Lots of people make lofty goals on January 1, only to find they fall into old habits by January 10. I fell into this frustrating category in the past, which is why I began spacing my resolutions throughout the year, focusing on different areas of my life each month.

If either launching a social media strategy or building upon an existing presence using these tools is among your goals for the new year, I recommend breaking down your goals into baby steps throughout the year to avoid that “overwhelmed” feeling that often accompanies the thought of actively engaging with social media resources.

Below, I have included a sample month-to-month guide for your social media efforts this year although I would encourage you to edit this plan as it fits with your goals.

January: Identify your social media goals. What do you want to accomplish using these platforms? Do you want to build your employment brand? Engage with qualified candidates? Further your own development goals? Use this month to make a list of what you hope to achieve by the end of the year.

February: Enhance your LinkedIn profile. If you are not already active on this professional social networking site, take this month to make sure that your profile is 100% complete. If you are on this site, review your profile and update your skills, your summary, your achievements, your connections and your profile photo.

March: All about LinkedIn groups. If you are not a member of any groups on LinkedIn, take this month to join relevant groups. If you are looking for ideas, you can view the groups that your connections have joined by viewing their profiles. In addition to joining, look for opportunities to be a part of the conversation. Post a question, answer a colleague’s dilemma and take advantage of opportunities to post information about your company’s openings or events when appropriate.

April: Examine your company’s LinkedIn presence. There are a number of opportunities for enhancing your organization’s presence. Make sure that you are taking full advantage of your company page, including products and services. Also, take this opportunity to consider how the investment of more advanced tools, such as adding a career page or gaining access to LinkedIn’s Recruiter Platform, could fit into your overall objectives.

May: Build your blog reading routine. If you are reading this blog, chances are that you already carve out time in your schedule to take advantage of the excellent industry knowledge shared in quick articles online. Take this month to review your reading list and eliminate blogs that are no longer of value and add new blogs that have great content. For ideas on new blogs to add, visit sites such as http://technorati.com/.

June: Time management check. Before you go any further in your year, take this month to consider the various platforms that make your social media life manageable. For blog reading, sites such as Google Reader allow you to organize your online reading. Platforms such as HootSuite and TweetDeck allow you to monitor and update several social media sites at once. Consider which of these tools are the easiest to use for you, and set reminders in your calendar for devoting time to social media (such as 9-9:30 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday).

July: Consider Facebook as a professional tool. Many of you may consider Facebook as purely a personal pursuit. However, the site also has great potential for you to reach qualified candidates and share how your organization is a great place to work. This month, evaluate platforms such as BranchOut and BeKnown, which allow you to create a professional presence on Facebook that is separate from your personal profile.

August: Leverage your company Facebook page. If your marketing department has created a Facebook page for your organization, look for ways to include your organization’s opportunities on this existing page. Consider building out a separate Facebook tab dedicated to careers with your organization.

September: Join Twitter. I talk to a lot of HR professionals that consider Twitter to be the most difficult social media platform to weave into their routines. Read more about reasons to love Twitter, and this month, just join the site and start reading what other individuals are posting.

October: Join the Twitter conversation. In September, you may have joined Twitter, but take this month to start tweeting. Repost interesting articles from your blog reading, or share content fellow professionals are posting to Twitter.

November: Join Google+. Google+ is the newest major player in the social media space, and the site is consistently making improvements to its potential for organizations and employers.

December: Evaluate your year on social media. Look back on your objectives that you set in January. Where you able to achieve what you set out to accomplish? Take time to celebrate the progress you made, and consider what goals are on your horizon for 2013.

Kendra Pearson is passionate about helping companies attract and retain top talent. She assists organizations with perfecting their employment messaging, utilizing the right channels to deploy that message and then measuring the ROI. Kendra has been with NAS Recruitment Communications for six years, and currently serves as director of the Raleigh, North Carolina office.

Entry filed under: Digital Strategies, Kendra Pearson, Social Media. Tags: .