For most recruiters these days, it’s important to maintain at least a LinkedIn or Twitter presence. However there is no doubt that managing multiple ACTIVE social media accounts is time consuming. Sharing open jobs across different sites with regular updates can often take so much time that there’s not enough opportunity to engage and talk to the people within your network, much less pick up the phone and call people.
Although you should never automate all of your social media activities, automating some aspects can help make your online efforts more efficient and effective in the long run.
The simplest way to automate your social profiles with your latest job posts is by using RSS feeds. RSS is simply a format for delivering regularly changing web content without asking users to visit the website regularly or signing up to a newsletter. Most websites will have an RSS feed functionality built-in. If you’re unsure, just look for the orange button with the radiating white lines. The functionality is not just for candidates who want to subscribe to the latest jobs from your company, but can also be used to supercharge your recruitment initiatives.
Dlvr.it
Dlvr.it monitors your website’s RSS feed at specified intervals and re-posts new items to your social network.
1. Register then set up the automated posts by clicking on “Add Route”
2. Add a source. Click on “Add a New Source” and in the pop-up box enter the RSS feed URL for your job
3. Under the “Feed Update” tab, select how often you would like Dlvr.it to check the feed for any updates and how many times a day you would like to post on your social profiles.
4. Add a destination. Select the social networks you would like to post updates from by linking your accounts to Dlvr.it. You can then set how you would like your status updates to appear by adding standard prefixes, suffixes or hashtags to each on
5. Select route settings. You can adjust your route settings to filter out certain posts for your website by specifying any keywords you need.
Using a free account limits users to five feeds and three social profiles but you can raise those limits by upgrading to a pro account.
A significant downside to Dlvr.it is that update speed is restricted to 30 minutes for free users and there is no ability to schedule specifically when updates will go out. This means that some of your updates may go out in the middle of the night when none of your followers are online.
However, the free account is enough to get you started. It even allows the use of your chosen shortening service or custom domain as well as adding tracking tags to your links for enhanced site analytics reporting.
IFTTT
IFTTT is a service that lets you create automated actions for pretty much anything on the internet based on a simple IF statement. This service is similar to Dlvr.it but offers more flexibility in terms of sources. You essentially build a ‘recipe’ using one statement, IF THIS happens THEN do THAT.
For example, you can easily use IFTTT to share jobs posted on your website as your LinkedIn status updates in real time without having to use an additonal piece of expensive recruitment software.
1. Create a recipe. Once you have signed up for a free IFTTT account, you can create your fist recipe by clicking on “this” (in blue) in the statement. Select the RSS Feed icon from the list of channels available.
2. Choose a trigger. You don’t want every job posted on your website to be pushed to LinkedIn and end up spamming your network. To restrict your status updates to only a specific type of job, select “News feed item matches”.
3. Complete trigger fields. Specify the keyword or phrase you want the feed to match, like ”project manager” if you only recruit for individuals with that skill. Alternatively, if your name appears in the RSS feed as an author or contact person, you can use your name as a keyword. Then enter your feed URL.
4. Choose an action channel. Select LinkedIn from the channel menu then select “Share an update”. You can then customise what is finally shared as your status update by selecting more ingredients from the trigger.
5. Click “Create Action” and you’re off. The result should look like this:
As IFTTT is not restricted to RSS feeds and status updates only, you can explore creating new recipes once you’ve understood the basic concept. This tool offers the ability to automate more than just your social media presence as seen in the recipes other people have shared on the site.
For those looking for integration with Twitter, unfortunately IFTTT is no longer able to use Twitter triggers due to the recent API lockdown.
Between these two tools, there’s a lot of scope to automate more than just your regular social network updates. However too much of a good thing is harmful to anyone.
For any recruiter just starting out and thinking that automation is a quick win for online networking, remember the cardinal rule of social media: Do not spam newsfeeds! Be selective of the jobs that you share with your network and space them out accordingly. At the same time, don’t leave your social profiles completely unattended for long stretches of time. While you can leave the “administrative” tasks to an automated service, there is no substitute for your actual presence if you aim to be a truly social savvy recruiter!
**If your company website or blog does not offer any RSS feed functionality because your web developers believe RSS is a dying technology, watch out for my next post where I’ll talk about how you can create feeds without having to write a single line of code!
RELATED: Beginner’s Guide to FREE Social Media Monitoring Tools
