Different content formats on social media can be the key to catering to distinct audiences. Here's how it worked for our client in the healthcare recruiting industry.

Industry: HR
Content: Blog content, white papers, social media
Highlights: Revamped social media strategy doubles LinkedIn follower growth rate

Our client in healthcare recruitment didn’t think a social media strategy was worth bothering with. (Don’t be sad, social media marketers. This story has a happy ending.)

Despite presences across the major player networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – and a large follower base (we’re talking more than 10,000 fans on LinkedIn), they didn’t post often because they didn’t see the value.

The solution was coming up with a strategy that catered to different audiences. Because recruitment firms need to please both candidates and clients, our client was worried about posting to one audience, and in turn, alienating the other.

Problem:

  • This client was unsure how to best utilize social for two distinct audiences – hospitals and organizations looking for candidates versus healthcare executives exploring job opportunities.
  • They cater to a mature audience – CEOs, Chief Medical Officers, and other executive level positions – but weren’t sure how a professional tone would resonate on social.
  • They had a large follower base on professional networks like LinkedIn, but weren’t taking advantage of it (posting less than once a week.)

Strategy:

  • Perform an audience audit to determine each network’s demographics.
  • Create unique strategies across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, all featuring different content formats and unique wording.

Brafton Content:

  • Social media posting and engagement on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
  • Blog content
  • White papers (gated for lead generation)
  • Video testimonials

Results:

  • Follower growth rate on LinkedIn has doubled
  • 267% increase in Twitter impressions
  • Career page referral traffic from social has seen significant increase:
social strategy boosts web traffic

Here are three steps for creating a strategy that caters to different audiences on social media:

First, find your audience’s universal interest

Recruiters don’t need to see job interview tips. And job seekers won’t be particularly interested in employment retention strategies. But in the end, they’re both active within the same industries, and determining where their interests intersect is your social media sweet spot.

For this client, the certain common ground is they both have a stake in the current climate of the healthcare industry – they both need to be up to date on this news,” Social Strategist Bob McHugh said.

Next, cater most of your content to the audience with the largest demographic (on that network)

To kick off this strategy, we performed an audience audit. This brand is well known and already had a base of thousands of followers. Having this data at our disposal, we were able to determine trends within each audience’s job title, age and income.

  • LinkedIn had the largest base of executives in the healthcare industry. Because of this, we know we want to be posting job listings consistently.
LinkedIn demographics linkedin demographics 2
  • Facebook is split in terms of clients and candidates. This means we’re sticking to a universal approach, sharing news that would be relevant to anyone within the healthcare industry.
facebook demographics
  • Twitter is faster-paced and less personal. Not only does this mean we post more, but we post content that caters across audiences, knowing that it’s unlikely someone will see every post that goes live.  
twitter demographics

If your audiences are truly distinct from one another, it might be time to consider separate handles for different sectors of the business.

Then, keep it fresh with diverse content formats

Another way to cater to distinct audiences is to give them different content formats. Because this client receives content marketing services from Brafton, they have an arsenal of different content types on their website, including:

  • Video testimonials (great to promote on Facebook, where videos lead to a 25% more engagement  than text posts.)
  • White papers (gated for lead generation purposes – excellent for LinkedIn purposes where people are likely searching for more professional topics.)
  • Job postings (strong for Twitter, where you can implement hashtags that job seekers are likely to search.)
Elements_LtBlue_Arrow7

Looking for more social media best practices for HR brands? Check out:

Molly Buccini is Brafton's community manager. She joined the team with a background in digital journalism and social media. She's a theatre nerd, pop culture junkie and lover of summertime.