Every Monday morning brings new opportunities, as well as some old problems. As you look at your week, mark off 1-2 hours to work on your long-term social recruiting strategy. This effort will help you construct  better inbound candidate lead generation. When a recruiter starts to think about "social recruiting", it is easy to become overwhelmed with determining when and where to start. Try to keep it simple, and take one step at a time.

The first thing to establish is time. You no doubt have several other tasks and duties for this week, so be realistic about how much time you can spend. The second thing I recommend is to spend time on the channels that will be a staple of your "social recruiting" strategy long-term. In my view, choosing tools that help you easily create awesome content are most important. Without awesome content regarding your company, people, and jobs you really have limited differentiation on social channels such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Start thinking about the best tools you can quickly come up to speed on to create great content that people will want to share.

Over the past year, I have sat down with hundreds of top candidates to see what is most important when considering a new job. The top three answers that I hear:

• Who will I be working for?
• Who will I be working with?
• What is the culture like?

As I digest this feedback from top candidates, it becomes clear: written job descriptions have a hard time telling the story that top candidates are interested in seeing. With that in mind, I am recommending that you start with one of these three tools this week (if you have not already):

Instagram

Most people know about Instagram as the $1 billion dollar acquisition by Facebook. You should also view as an awesome way for you and your team to capture photos of the office, events, and team members.

It is super easy to apply "filters" to give your pictures the look and feel you are looking for. It is then super easy to share them across your Facebook page, Twitter, and various other social channels. Be sure to use the hashtag methodology similar to what you do on Twitter when writing comments in Instagram for your photos. Hashtags are searchable in Instagram, and translate to your tweets as well.

Setting up an Instagram account is simple for both iPhone and Android. It will also create a simple way to create content worth sharing across your social networks, or directly with candidate prospects.

Wordpress

While most organizations do a nice job of blogging, not all have one set up specifically for employees to blog. I'm putting up Wordpress as my blogging platform of choice, but Tumblr is another awesome blogging tool that is easy to use. The nice thing about these platforms is that you can do a lot for free, and it is easy to invite other people to contribute.

The intent behind an employee blog is to create content about your team and culture that can be shared with your talent community. Think about it, you cannot just send jobs to members of your talent community all of the time. You want to share articles about your people, culture, products, business, etc. You want to use the blog to communicate with passive candidates, and build a relationship. This way when you do send a job dow the road, they will be more apt to listen.

You are not going to master a platform such as Wordpress in an hour or two, but you can get your free account established. I recommend playing around in the tool, and getting your settings taken care of. You may have some slight modifications to make if "staying on brand" is important, but I would get used to maneuvering in the tool first. Dare I say, you may actually become slightly addicted to being the "editor" of your blog.

Meetup

There is no better way for potential candidates to size up your organization than by seeing your office first-hand and meeting some of your employees. If you have not signed up on Meetup yet, you really need to. You can join various meetup groups interested in similar topics as you and your company.

The big reason for signing up is not just for finding groups and attending meetups. It is actually to evaluate who is hosting and attending meetups for topics that impact your company. You can quickly see how you may be able to attend or sponsor events. However, the absolute best approach is to connect with group organizers and offer to host events. You may even have an opportunity to establish your own meetup group on a subject of interest to your company and your talent community.

If you are not part of the meetup scene, you should be. Start with getting an account established, and joining groups of interest. From there, you can start to evaluate meetups you can start to host. You may also find that there are opportunities to create new meetups.

You Must Walk Before You Can Run

The bottom line is that you must be smart with your time. It is free to get started with each of the tools described above, but your time certainly isn't free. Thus, be aware and be smart about taking one of these on at a time. Also, be stringent about the amount of time you use in getting started. 1-2 hours on one of these tools this week is a good way to get started.

The bottom line is also that the time you invest is a launchpad for creating better content to attract top candidates. They want to see: who they would work for, who they would work with, and what the culture is like. These are three tools that allow you to communicate those items to the audience you are seeking.

Best wishes, and have a great week!