Fish Where The Fish Are (Part 1): understanding your LinkedIn audience

Is your business maximising the full potential of its LinkedIn account or, has a lack of collective belief in the benefits resulted in it being under-utilised? If the latter applies, it’s time to reconstruct your perception and begin to understand LinkedIn as the pivotal business tool that it has become.

Nobody wants to be the first person at a party; in the same way, nobody wants to follow a company with few connections, little activity and minimal content. The average LinkedIn user only follows 6 businesses, so it is vital that you ensure one of them is yours and not a competitor’s. Adobe and Kellogg’s, with around 300k and 130k followers respectively, are two great examples of company profiles. Both pages share regular and engaging content and view LinkedIn as a central component of their marketing strategy.

Why do people follow a company?

People want to follow companies on social media and LinkedIn is no different. In fact, LinkedIn research concluded that 88% either currently follow a business or have the desire to. The motivation for this however, varies across different social media platforms. Whereas Facebook and Twitter users follow companies primarily for brand association, to show support and to receive new product and promotional information; LinkedIn users have a different agenda. Their study concluded that 71% of members are interested in jobs, 68% in news and insights and 61% in company projects and initiatives. Users wish to maintain their professional identity and seek out new opportunities, whilst also networking through their contact database. It is therefore vital to understand your followers and that different social media audience’s desire different interactions.

What do your followers want from your profile?

Tom Peters, an American Business Management expert, once said, “Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders”. If a user follows you, shares something from your profile or comments on your activity, their entire network is notified raising awareness of your page. Creating interesting content is therefore paramount. Research has found that followers of recruitment profiles can be grouped as 80% ‘passive’ and 20% ‘active’ users. These active users are seeking employment, so require industry news, job posts, interview help and key market information – summarised as career opportunities and personal development. Passive users instead wish to be informed and entertained, with industry news, projects and general career advice amongst their requirements. If your followers are an 80/20 split, then your content should be too.

Three key principles can be used to guide the management of your LinkedIn page: Blogging, Integration and Advertising. We will be exploring these in further depth in our follow-up blog: ‘Fish Where the Fish Are (Part 2): 3 principles for managing your LinkedIn page’.

“Building Your Follower Ecosystem and What This Means for You” – Webcast - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 11.00am - 11.30am - LinkedIn

“7 Steps to LinkedIn Publishing Success” – Blog - Siofra Pratt, July 15, 2014 – Social Talent  

“12 Things to do after youpublish a blog on LinkedIn” – Blog & Infographic - Siofra Pratt & Jonathan Campbell, July 18, 2014 – Social Talent

Wates Appoints New Resourcing Partner to Win the War for Talent

As the construction industry begins to see signs of recovery, attention will turn to how the construction sector meets a growing skills shortage. How construction companies attract, recruit and retain talent will be more critical than ever for meeting their growth plans. Mark Boorman, Head of HR Operations at Wates, explains:       

“In the past our approach to attracting talent has been reactive and heavily reliant on third party recruitment agencies as well as our own personal networks. This has meant that we have sometimes struggled to compete in the ‘war for talent’ in an industry where skills are highly sought after by many of the competition.

To enable our business to recruit quicker, better and smarter, we have partnered with Resource Management - experts in providing recruitment solutions and services that help companies to attract and recruit the best talent at reduced cost through developing their employer brand.

Over the past three months, Resource Management has been working closely with the Wates’ HR Leadership Team and HR Operations to design a service that will bring a number of benefits and cost savings. As part of the new partnership, Resource Management will provide a dedicated recruitment function that will take ownership for acquiring new talent and remove a lot of the burden of recruitment from hiring managers and HR.

The service, officially launched in April this year, will raise the profile of Wates as an Employer of Choice, maximising exposure and use of the Wates employment brand, and will fully embrace new channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter to attract the right people to our organisation.”

Will Chitty, Recruitment Business Partner, Resource Management comments: “My role will allow Wates’ hiring managers to focus on their core business while I manage the process of securing the best talent available in the marketplace. I am particularly excited about using my social media expertise and witnessing the benefits of utilising various social media platforms effectively to establish a strong position for the Wates brand.” 

Gocompare.com Appoints Its First Resourcing Partner

Resource Management (RM) has been awarded the contract to provide a full end-to-end recruitment solution for price comparison website Gocompare.com.

Following a rigorous selection process, the national recruitment outsourcing and talent management provider, which is part of Resource Solutions Group, is now providing a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solution for permanent and fixed term roles at Gocompare.com.

Gocompare.com is a UK financial services comparison website for a variety of insurance products, such as car, home and pet insurance; breakdown cover; utilities; and financial products. It was the first such site in the UK to focus on policy details, rather than purely listing them according to their price.

Chris Buckingham, Head of Practice & Implementation, at Resource Management, explains: “This is the first time that Gocompare.com has engaged a partner for its recruitment and we’re very pleased to have been awarded the contract. Our on-site presence will help to build an even stronger relationship with Gocompare.com.

Our scalable solution will enable their HR function to focus on strategic initiatives and harness the power of Gocompare.com’s brand to source candidates directly and improve the quality of employees.”

Martin Spencer, HR and OD Director, Gocompare.com, said: “We are really pleased to be working with RM. We hope that our partnership is going to help us achieve our goal of attracting the best talent to come and work at Gocompare.com, which will enable the company to flourish in the coming years.

Having a permanent member of RM staff based here at Gocompare.com, working so closely with us, is already paying dividends. That direct contact with managers is ensuring that we really are getting the right people for the right jobs.”