When organizations talk about implementing social media into their recruitment marketing strategies, most often times they are not really sure to start.  In many cases, they begin to talk to their existing recruitment technology providers to see how to start.  The thing with this is that in many cases recruitment technology does not provide any more value to the free social media tools that marketing professionals use to build engagement on these sites.

It’s due to this that I think when you being your social strategy I would focus on the free social media tools that exist in the marketplace already as they can help you manage and execute your social campaigns.  There are a number of tools out there that people use to run their strategy and for this post, I’ll only share a few that I use on a daily basis (this is by no means exhaustive of all the useful tools out there & probably is slanted towards Twitter than any other social media network.)

Bit.ly

What it is: There are a number of different URL shorteners out there but here is the one that I use and is supported by many of the tools listed below.  This will help you track the popularity of the links you share.

How I use it: I’ve created my own bit.ly account and make sure to add it to the account settings for any social media apps I use.  This will ensure all the content I share is tracked centrally so I can see what content has been the most successfully shared.  This allows me to try and duplicate content that is more successful.

Where to find it:  https://bitly.com/

TweetDeck or Hootsuite

What it is:  Both TweetDeck (now owned by Twitter) and Hootsuite help users manage all of their social feeds including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others.  The real value they provide is helping you track when other users mention your profiles, enabling you to easily find and share follower content and overall stay connected with your social contacts.

How I use it:  Today, I use TweetDeck on my laptop and Hootsuite on my Android phone.  I’ve set up a number of different streams of followers in my TweetDeck account including mentions (anyone who uses @smashfly), followers, Twitter lists and different hashtags.  It’s also a great resource in following conversations at conferences we attend.  Lastly, it helps me share content and post updates to all of my social profiles including my personal Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts and our corporate Twitter and Facebook accounts.

As for Hootsuite, I use it mostly to receive updates on when people mention my Twitter accounts so that I can respond in a timely fashion.  You can do a lot more from the app but that’s the main way I use it.

Where to find it:  TweetDeck (http://tweetdeck.com/) & Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com/)

Buffer

What it is:  This is a good little app to help you schedule relevant content in your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn streams.  While you can schedule content in TweetDeck and Hootsuite, Buffer offers what I think is a better solution to share content as you are surfing the web.  To get the most benefit, you should make sure to set up your feeds and scheduling settings via the website and then download the browser add-on.

How I use it:  I rarely go into the website (other than to check stats) but I use the browser add-on all the time.  This enables me to share any webpage directly from my browser window.  So when I’m reading an interesting article I can quickly share them with all my accounts while tracking them through my bit.ly link account.  Best of all it enables me to set up set times to share any of these updates.

The key here is that I can spend the morning finding relevant content and add them via the browser add-on and Buffer will send out the updates at various times that I set up when I created my account.  This helps keep your stream fresh and ensure that you don’t have too many dead periods in your stream during the day.

Where to find it: http://www.bufferapp.com

Twitterfeed

What it is:  Any blog you read has a RSS feed that you can use to alert you to new articles that have been posted.  This tools enables you to share articles to your social profiles based on new updates to a sites RSS feed.

How I use it: I have a few blogs that I really like and share whenever they have a new article.  This tool enables me to share it and include text to the tweet (I include “by @TWITTERNAME” to my posts) for these tweets.  I use it to ensure that my streams consistently have relevant content in them from sources I trust.  While I wouldn’t use this for every blog you follow, it can be a good resource to sources you trust and to share your own organization’s content in your feed without having to manually add it.

Where to find it: http://twitterfeed.com

Twitter

What it is: The native app for Twitter can also be useful for the right actions.  While I don’t suggest using it to RT or post updates all the time, it can be a good way to see new updates to your audience and find other like-minded Twitter handles to follow.

How I use it:

Where to find it: http://twitter.com

These are just a few of the tools that I use to update my social streams and engage with my followers and connections. I hope this will help you get started in building out your social recruiting strategy.

I’m sure there are others that I’ve missed, so please include them below in the comments.