The number one workforce attraction resource isn’t money, although money is up there, it is social media. If you don’t have a social media recruiting strategy, you are spending more time and money then you need to in recruiting. Stop using your words and burning your time. Connect to potential new employees by meeting them where they are via social media. People relate to those they see as having commonality with themselves. Have a current employee in a gorilla marketing video for your manufacturing facility and post it. Not only will you see organic sharing of it, the shares will be right to your target audience. Management vs. Workers. Human nature propels a very us vs. them dynamic be it in sports, school rivalry, politics, management vs. workers, etc. Who is doing your outreach, is it someone your target audience will work alongside with, or answer to? Connecting to someone that you’ll work alongside presents a potentially higher level of trust. BIG difference in seeing a picture of a supervisor vs. a picture of a group of co-workers on Instagram. Quit saying and/or writing things like ‘it’s not your grandfather’s factory,’ no matter what age of worker you are trying to attract. Why? Because when you do so you’ve automatically planted ‘the past’ into prospects minds. You’ve also planted the idea that there was something wrong when a prior generation did the work. Both reference points are negative. Pictures/videos through social media will automatically convey the setting you are looking to engage others in. Let the pictures/video do the work for you.
Marketing vs. Engagement
I believe both nonprofits as well as for profits often confuse sales, marketing and engagement. Or even more challenging weight engagement last. The fact is, without engagement of donors, clients or customers your sales and marketing have far less impact. Social media absorbs so much of our time these days. One of the great draws of social media is it makes us feel engaged in both our own life and with others. It is easy, immediately gratifying and of little to no expense, monetarily to us. So that is your competition. Sectors, let’s take the food industry, see market share shrinking, even though we’ve never seen more choices on the shelves. Why? Because the donor, client or consumer doesn’t care if you’ve created tens of options. In fact it can be feel oppressive to decide when we are already overwhelmed with a lengthy to do list. It reminds us you are thinking of everybody, and we want to feel special. What we want is immediate gratification and to feel as if you are speaking to us as individuals. The day of mass marketing’s return on investment is coming to a close. If you can’t engage your target audience, making them feel as if you are talking only to them, or providing them with a special benefit, cost and/or return on their investment, quite frankly you are sunk.
Social Media…Marketing or Fundraising?
Social media is here to stay and often I am asked the question of whether it is for marketing or fundraising. My answer is both as marketing and fundraising meld into one. If you are a small, or even medium sized nonprofit you are already understaffed so the trend of fund development melding with marketing should be good news…at least you can do them together. Easy and impactful ways of doing so will be included in upcoming posts. Marketing and fundraising are all about messaging. They are about communicating with and engaging donors, not talking at them or trying to sell them. Social media is here to stay and not embracing it is the same as leaving money on the table. Luckily it can be utilized without a lot of expertise and without a lot of upfront investment. Low cost outreach…what’s not to love?! Network for Good has a great graphic, the one below, showing a ten year trend of online donations, and it only continues to grow.
How Your Life Is Like Social Media
I was reading a blog the other day about social media marketing. It occurred to me how similar social media marketing and connecting professionally/personally are. I believe two points in the blog post I read are particularly important to remember: Numbers and quality should not be individualized. (If you lose quality you will eventually lose numbers.) Frequency of engagement counts. All this is to say if you are overextended and telling yourself you are “maximizing” your time, you are kidding yourself. Being over extended will lead to numbers overtaking quality and a lower sense of engagement from those you believe (falsely) you are connecting with. It really is that simple. The blog referenced above follows: http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=5563564617914908683&ids=dPsNdP0MczcSdPoNc38QdjoRdiMTczoVdPwUc3oOe3cOcz0RdzkRb3cRczwNc34Rc3kRczwScPcSdjkIe3wOdj0VejkPd30McjoMdjoRdiMPe3oUc3AQcjATcjoQdzkPdzkR&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod2-b-pub-0&ut=3bKXWTJk3RtR41