Originally posted on the SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Blog.

With the rise of sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, it is readily apparent of the importance of building connections into your Talent Networks. With every new connection you experience exponential growth to your network as you not only become connected to that one person but to all their connections as well. The bigger you build your network base, the more influence and reach you have to spread your message and employment brand to others.

The key to building these networks is candidate engagement or the process of interacting with interested candidates with your employer brand. This interaction can take many forms but the key is providing value to your Talent Network in their careers. Whether it's useful job searching tools / advice or great job opportunities, it's important to keep in touch with the best candidates on recurring basis.

Over the past few months, I've seen a lot of people stress the importance of candidate engagement in their recruiting process but few that have actually provided examples of simple ways to put this in action.

So here are 3 quick ways to help engage with interested candidates and build your Talent Network:

Get Social: One of the best ways to stay connected is through social networks. The key with social networks however, is the time commitment needed to make the initiative successful so make sure you have this commitment from your recruiting organization to provide value on a timely basis through this medium whether it's Twitter, Facebook or another social network. Lastly, once you create and start engaging with candidates, you need to make sure you are transparently providing incoming qualified candidates with a way to connect with these social networks whether it's a simple link on your career page or a call to action directly in your application process!

Starting a profile takes less than a minute, so try it out now!

Opt-In Opportunities: As candidates are coming to your career site and filling out job applications, you have a tremendous opportunity to collect their contact information and add them to your network. After that you have permission to engage. Through email & SMS, you will be able to provide the value to candidates that will ensure a steady flow of great candidates for future job positions. A monthly newsletter could be a great way to start engaging with candidates.

Career Blog: One of the best ways to get found and engage by qualified candidates is to create great content on the specific disciplines you are recruiting for. Make it a habit to consistently create great content that provides value to the best candidates in your field and you will instantly gain trust among these group of potential star employees. Make sure that your career blog provides an RSS feed for candidates to subscribe to, making it easy to follow your content.

Get started in improving your candidate engagement today as there are plenty of simple, free ways to keep in touch with your best candidates. The hard up front work of engaging with candidates and building your Talent Network will yield great results. As once you build that critical mass of qualified candidates, you will have an extraordinary recruitment marketing pipeline to work with as you look to find great employees for future positions.

About the Author: Chris is the Marketing Analyst for SmashFly Technologies. SmashFly is the provider of the first recruitment marketing platform called WildFire that enables companies and staffing firms to easily distribute and more importantly measure the performance of their recruiting efforts online.

The WildFire recruitment marketing platform offers every tool you need for your recruitment marketing needs all in one centralized solution including Real-Time Recruitment Metrics, Job Ad Distribution (job boards, social networks, SEM, email & SMS campaigns), Recruitment Opt-In Database, Recruitment CRM, Web Commercials / Micro-sites and Resume Sourcing services.