Introduction
According to Alexa, Facebook is the second most trafficked site on the internet, second only to Google. It has one billion monthly active users – more than the other well-known social networks – MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn – combined, with over 526 million people logging into Facebook daily. In terms of advertising, Facebook have two types of advertisement – Facebook Adverts and Sponsored Stories. Using their advertisements, Facebook has the ability to target candidates which may not be reached through the normal advertising ways.
With an easy-to-use interface, it’s extremely simple for recruiters to create a Facebook page, and run all their advertisements through that page.
Cost & Targeting Options
When a recruiter sets up a Facebook advertisement plan, they are in control of their budget (daily and lifetime) and how much they spend – it is a low-cost, high-effect recruitment method. When a recruitment advertisement or sponsored story is run, the recruiter is only charged for the number of impressions or clicks it receives (and this will never be above the budget). Compared to LinkedIn’s professional network, Facebook holds more of the general population – meaning you can reach more passive candidates that may not be looking for a job.
Facebook allows for ads to be targeted according to information on user’s profiles. Ads can be targeted to users based on location, sex, age, likes, interests – and can also be targeted to the users already connected to your page.
Tools
Facebook advertising can be an extremely complicated process. One of the tools that can be used to make it easier is Qwaya - a specialist Facebook advertising/marketing tool, with three different pricing options – Starter, Basic and Premium. Qwaya is good at saving time when creating and managing advertisements. Qwaya allows users to control different ad campaigns from one dashboard:
The dashboard gives an overview of activity from the last 7 days, including how much money has been spent and the number of clicks.
From within the Qwaya programme, you are able to create ads that link to one of four options: external websites, Facebook objects, page post ads and sponsored stories. Multiple advertisements can also be created quickly, with URLs, headlines and images bulk added to them all. Work can be saved as ‘templates’ (a unique feature for Qwaya) and used again in the future to help recruiters always improve their content.
Additionally, in accordance with the Facebook targeting options, Qwaya makes targeting ads even simpler, with specialised fields and split targeting (targeting ads on a multiple scale):
Once you have created your design, and targeted it – the ads can be finalised and published – with one unique ad created for each target option and design.
Qwaya helps recruiters to conquer Facebook advertising with ease, and takes a way a lot of the work and time that could be used elsewhere – saving money and resources along the way. Have you used Qwaya? Have you had any successful applicants from your campaigns?
Laurence Hebberd
Laurence Hebberd is Community Manager for Link Humans in London. He also runs the Link Humans Twitter feed - @LinkHumans.
