Twitter is a great place to attract the attention of potential candidates yet many people are still unconvinced about using it. Once an advert is posted a tweet can then link to the specific job and be made visible to your followers in an instant. Suddenly followers retweet the link and the job advert reaches hundreds if not thousands of people in a single day.

Of course if you are just starting out on Twitter and have zero followers then this process suddenly seems extremely daunting! Here are a few tips for Twitter newcomers to help achieve results:

Decide what type of account you want

First up decide if you are creating a personal account or a company account. It is recommended to eventually have both but when starting out it might be easier to choose just one. There is no difference in the sign up process and the real difference is that the type of account might influence the kind of content that is posted. A personal account allows for tweets about business and general interests whereas a company account would usually just stick to job adverts and business updates.

Customise your account

It might seem irrelevant but no matter how interesting your tweets are, potential candidates and clients are likely to ignore you if you don’t upload a profile image. Make sure it’s a friendly and casual image rather than the more professional style people often prefer to use on LinkedIn. If you have created a company account then use the company logo.

Start tweeting!

Get a few tweets to your name before you start following people so they can see what type of content you will publish. That way people can get an idea of whether they want to follow you back. The great thing about Twitter is you don’t need to be a great writer as the character limit restricts you to a set character limit. Simply get your point across!

Get followers

It’s easier to gather followers than people think. Start by following your clients, friends and family and they will likely follow you back. Retweet content and comment when doing so. Find people in the same market as you and target their followers. There’s also a search function in Twitter where you can search by keywords. Search for the skills you’re looking for and you’ll start to get an idea of who the leading voices are in these areas.

Retweeting

If you spot a tweet you agree with or find engaging then click the retweet icon to share it with your followers. Retweeting is seen as a compliment in Twitter and quite often retweeting will lead to a follower.

Get involved!

As a recruiter don’t just use Twitter to broadcast job adverts. Use it for what it is designed for – a platform for discussion. Use the reply button below each tweet and interact with people. You can also send public tweets to other users by including @ before a username.

Use hashtags

The hashtag is now prominent across most social media platforms but did originate on Twitter. By using a # followed by a keyword in a tweet you can group together tweets on a topic by everyone who is discussing it. Including a hashtag can increase your tweets visibility massively. 

Monitor your mentions

Whether it be a good or bad experience, Twitter users like to tweet about it and might mention your company in one of their tweets. You will receive a notification if someone does mention you in a tweet and whether it is a positive or negative comment it is always better to respond. 

Create lists

As your following grows so does the number of tweets on your page. It can be hard to keep on top of what is happening and so creating lists is a great way to make sure you don’t miss anything. Lists is in the options section and is easy to setup and follow. Be sure to make your lists of candidates and clients private.

Relax

Twitter is a much more relaxed platform than LinkedIn and allows for more personality top shine through. Occasionally it might be beneficial to let potential candidates and clients see a human side to your company.