How ShortList Recruitment grew their organic views on LinkedIn by 2,666% in 4 months with Employee Advocacy using Postfity

Recruitment in the IT sector is the gold rush of the 21st century. Everybody wants to hire good programmers and designers. No wonder IT recruitment has become a booming business — as of 2019, there were over 40,000 recruitment agencies in the UK alone! But with fierce competition behind their back, and a limited supply of fitting applicants — a lot of recruitment agencies struggle to stay afloat.  But this does not apply to everyone. ShortList IT Recruitment leveraged the power of employee advocacy to grow their organic reach on LinkedIn by 2666% in just 4 months (!) which translated into exponential growth in the number of applicants. See how they did it below! ????

In this post, we are going to analyse three social media marketing tactics that ShortList Recruitment implemented using Postfity to promote their offers and attract high-quality applicants:

• ShortList’s Unique Marketing Strategy:  Employee Advocacy on LinkedIn
• Results 
• Type of Content that worked for ShortList Recruitment 
• How to Link Your Teammates’ LinkedIn Accounts Using Postfity 

…and then we will learn what impact these tactics had on ShortList’s traffic and the bottom line ????

A day in the work of a recruitment agency marketer

Helen Finnan doesn’t have any time to waste. As a marketing manager at one of the leading IT recruitment agencies in the North West, she has her hands full every day:

On top of writing and publishing on average one post a day on the company blog:

…she’s also responsible for posting on the company social media — several times per day!

We post 6 to 8 job banners a day (even on the weekend) on LinkedIn and Twitter — to our company pages and to the LinkedIn pages of all of our  ndividual employee, approximately 13 people. 

Of course, posting this much by hand, especially on individual profiles, wouldn’t be possible. That’s why shortly after joining ShortList Recruitment in September 2019, Helen started looking for a social media scheduler — and found Postfity on Google in October 2019:

I used Hootsuite and Tweetdesck before but it wasn’t that useful for posting on individual LinkedIn profiles — plus, we were looking for an affordable solution as we scale our operations. 

Helen uses Postfity’s Professional plan, which allows her to schedule up to 1000 pending posts to up to 30 social media accounts — for only $44.99 per month. And as ShortList grows, they will be able to still ramp up the posting without running huge bills: Postfity allows to schedule up to 10,000 pending posts to up to 200 social media accounts for only $119.99 per month — which is more than enough for most SMBs.

???? RELATED: Cheaper Hootsuite alternatives. Compare Postfity pricing and value for money with other popular social media schedulers. 

 How Postfity helps ShortList leverage Social Selling and Employee Advocacy on LinkedIn

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ShortList Recruitment team are a real team: they know that in order to succeed at their work, they need to put in the effort and share the job banners and blog posts Helen is writing on their personal LinkedIn profiles.

This practice, known as ’employee advocacy,’ can bring much better results than just posting on your business pages for a few reasons:

As Marcin Banaszkiewicz, a LinkedIn Social Selling Expert we interviewed last year claimed — personal profiles on LinkedIn get 20x the organic reach of business pages:

Using personal profiles of employees (employee advocacy) works excellent on LinkedIn for three reasons – it boosts the organic reach of posts (a single post shared by 20 employees who have only about 1000 contacts in their network can generate the same reach as a Facebook page with 1 million followers!)

It can also help employees feel more recognised (and thus motivate them). Finally, it helps with employer branding – by showing how cool the company is, that its employees are motivated and appreciated, and that it makes sense to work in this company.”

But it’s not only about the algorithms: it’s common sense that we all have relevant people in our network that may know people looking for a job in IT. Or any other service that our business provides.

It’s also something that people expect and appreciate on LinkedIn (unlike on Facebook, where your friends want to see mainly private posts — so don’t turn your Facebook wall into a job board!) — after all, if you’re looking for a job, and a friend of yours posts a relevant offer on LinkedIn, wouldn’t you be happy? 

You would. And the connections of the teammates at ShortList Recruitment clearly are — leveraging this power of connections on LinkedIn was something that really moved the needle for ShortList Recruitment.

But having all the 13 employees post 6 times a day wouldn’t be possible without tools.

Here, again, is where Postfity came in handy:

Since Postfity allows to link and post to personal LinkedIn accounts (without giving the password to the account) — Helen used this feature to post on behalf of all her colleagues — at once.

They simply logged into their LinkedIn accounts on my computer and we added their account to Postfity in a few clicks. It was really easy.

That way, ShortList Recruitment teammates can all help their company succeed, without actually putting in the extra work. This saves everyone tons of time, and had the biggest impact on ShortLists’ marketing efforts (see the ‘results’ section below).

Results

ShortList Recruitment saw a whopping 80% growth in LinkedIn followers since they started using Postfity for LinkedIn in late October 2019:

Before we started using Postfity and posting regularly, our LinkedIn page had 592 followers, we currently have 1,076 followers and is growing. It had a big impact on the number of impressions of our posts and on the business in general. Most of our applicants come from Linkedin these days.

But the growing number of followers is not the only factor influencing ShortLists’ success. Thanks to the employee branding, the number of impressions per post grew exponentially — from on average 15 impressions per day to over 400! That’s 26.6 times more views each day! 

Here’s how ShortList’s impression stats looked 30 days prior to using Postfity:

…and here’s the last 30 days (February 2020):

Source: Postfity Analytics 

Here are examples of the posts with the highest impressions:

Types of Content That ShortList Recruitment Used

How did ShortList achieve these results with LinkedIn?

We know that posting very regularly (6-7 times a day) to 13 private accounts accounted for the volume. But what about the content of these posts? 

ShortList quickly realised that posting exclusively job offers could be a little boring.

That’s why they mix things up with really intriguing, funny and short blog posts targeting the target audience — people looking for or considering a new job. 

Helen found which top-of-the-Funnel (ToFu) ‘infotainment’ posts worked best for them:

“Some of our most popular blogs include: 

5 ways to spot if your boss is a psychopath (115 page views)

The 7 signs your workplace is toxic, (125 page views)

How to fit exercise into a busy schedule (145 page views)

and Do you shake hands like Donald Trump?

All of these page views are directly from social media, predominantly LinkedIn.”

But apart from posting compelling posts with very enticing titles, Helen did something at the end of each post that made sure it can convert potential applicants: added a clear call to action, relevant to the post — e.g. the ‘5 ways to spot if your boss is a psychopath’: 

As you can see, Helen asks the reader to get in touch with ShortList Recruitment if they are considering a new job. If someone is Googling ‘Is my boss a psychopath?’ It’s very well likely they have a reason and may be thinking of changing their job!

The same applies to people who are looking for job interview tips:

How to link your teammates’ LinkedIn accounts on Postfity?

If you and your team want to replicate ShortList Recruitment’s success and post on your teammate’s LinkedIn feeds — it’s simple to do with Postfity!

• Sign up for Postfity account here 
• Once in the account click the ‘+’ button on the top-left:

• It will show you all the accounts you are currently signed into or you’re an admin of:

• Simply click on your personal accounts and click ‘connect accounts’
• You will be then taken to LinkedIn to authorize Postfity to post to your account; click ‘approve’ and you’re done!

• Now log out of your account, let another of your teammates log in, and repeat the process!

You can replicate the success of ShortList Recruitment too!

Simply follow their advice:

• Link all your teammates LinkedIn accounts to Postfity
• Post on all LinkedIn accounts every day — preferably several times per day!
• Mix up your offers with educational/ ‘infotainment’ blog content — with catchy headlines

???? Sign up for Postfity now to start using Employee Advocacy in your business!

ShortList Recruitment Team — The Chester-based IT recruitment experts in matching the best and brightest brands with outstanding IT talent.