I recently wrote about the importance of website usability and making the visitor experience personal, this week I would like to take this further and look at how this is a key consideration when implementing a social media strategy.
Imagine the situation; you’ve created a fantastic Facebook Career Page, you’ve got some great testimonials from employees and you’ve got a regular supply of articles and comments from bloggers within your organisation.
Alongside this you have set up segmented Twitter accounts to align with you company’s job families and have made sure that relevant content is distributed to your followers; you have a mix of highly professional employer brand videos on YouTube, coupled with more personal videos taken by employees at work or out in ‘the field’. In summary you have a great social media campaign and by segmenting your potential employees and using targeted content, the social media campaign is really generating Followers, reTweets, Facebook fans and referrals to the career website.
BUT
Why is there no increase in the number of applications?
What is going wrong?
This scenario could easily happen with a large number of employers.
The reason?
For the same reason that the new Waitrose website generated so many complaints; the visitor experience has been lost when they land on the career area of your website.
Controlling the destination for your social media visitor is critical in continuing the engagement process. All too often the visitor lands on a generic homepage or worse the ATS vacancy page, with the only option available being to register and wade through page upon page of application form. In some cases the page does not have any menu links to allow the visitor to navigate to further information on the main career website.
This has been proven not to work with a direct correlation between a reduction in pages in an application form and an increase in the number of visitors who convert into applications.
The opportunity to convert the visitor into an applicant has been lost. All of the personalisation and engagement on Facebook has turned to generic content which leaves the user confused or frustrated. Neither of these emotions will increase conversion and will create a negative association with your brand. This doesn’t have to be the case. There are many ways in which the candidate experience on the career site can be dramatically improved, aligning the content with that of the referring site.
Amazon is probably one of the best examples of personalisation of content, and career websites can take advantage of their lead to deliver content relevant to the individual. How can this be achieved:
- Segment your visitors by interest, job family or location.
- Create content relevant to these groups.
- Segment your content to match these interests or job family groups.
- Make sure your website contains the vacancy adverts – that they do not only sit within your ATS. Your vacancies need to be on the same website as your content not www.myATS Company.com Read my blog on ATS integration and download the white paper here
- Link Videos and Blogs to these groups.
- Make sure this content is displayed with a design where it can be accessed easily by the visitor
- Pull through the brand and values of the company?
- Provide a one click sign on?
Now imagine the scenario:
You have a career website which is dynamic, rather than the traditional career brochure. Content is displayed based on what page the visitor has landed on.
A Facebook user clicks on an interview with a Marketing Executive, which has been shared by an employee within that team and lands on the relevant employee profile page. Alongside the main content and the video, are a selection of other relevant employee articles or blogs, a selection of marketing vacancies and a news article discussing the latest company product launch.
The visitor continues to browse through the marketing section content and decides to view a relevant vacancy; with a single click they can view the vacancy (no searching for jobs as we know that they are interested in marketing)and another click takes them to the application page. This is integrated seamlessly with the ATS, but on completion the candidate is presented with a ‘next steps’ page, offering them with options to enhance their application experience as well as explaining the next steps and how to keep in touch. This would include following your company on Twitter, LinkedIn, or signing up for a newsletter.
Not only does this personal approach to web design improve conversion rates, but by providing pages of content designed and segmented by visitor group, the website becomes more attractive to search engines such as Google. The relevancy and depth of content means that Google will not only index the website pages, but is likely to see your website as one which is valuable.
To quote Google:
“Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible.”
“The latest algorithm update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on”
In Summary:
By focussing on the visitor and delivering content relevant to their needs, your social media attraction strategy will engage and generate referrals to the career website, where a focus on personalisation continues to engage and will not only convert more visitors into relevant applications, but also improve search engine optimisation. This will attract additional relevant visitors and further increase application rates.
For further information on Making Career Websites Personal read my Blog
If you would like further information, please feel free, as always, to contact me
David Johnston
07854 162863
email: david.johnston@4MAT.com
