You may have used Instagram on a personal level, but have you ever thought of using it as a recruitment, branding or networking tool? I spoke to Angela Bortolussi, who is a Recruiting Manager at Recruiting Social, and just happens to be a dab hand at tapping into Instagram for professional use.
Here is a link to Pablo as recommended at the start of the show.
What’s the key to success on Instagram?
I think really it comes down to good content, and a lot of people even ask me, “What does that even mean?” It really does come down to the quality of pictures. And it doesn’t mean that you have to go and buy a professional camera to take these pictures. I use my iPhone. So that is key and I think to a moment that can capture who you are, and what you’re doing. So usually saying good content comes with quality pictures but also a theme.
If you look at my Instagram account, you can see that the theme is coffee, computers, networking, branding, and Recruiting Social. It’s very through and through, so I usually say if you are going to use it to build any type of brand awareness, make sure that you follow a theme. And the next thing too, is about using hashtags, owning that hashtag. At Recruiting Social we use #RecruitingLife as our main go to hashtag, so that’s always key as well. And then when it comes to posting photos, you did mention about the whole personal, versus keeping it very professional. I’d say if you do have something public, just make sure that whatever you are posting, it’s not like it could be critiqued in a bad form so to speak. I think that’s always key. If you ever doubt yourself and the picture that you’re posting, it’s probably best that you don’t post it.
How do you get more engagement on your content?
Yeah, and I think that’s great when it comes to engagement, and maybe growing your followers. And I think it depends on the community that you’re in, so for example, mine would be like the tech community and the HR community, so usually what I say is the engagement component can liking photos, it could be commenting on photos.
Having even a small conversation. I always say Instagram has been, I would say, a more productive networking tool than LinkedIn, because essentially you are capturing a moment with someone, because we always say Instagram is within the moment, it’s very authentic. You get to see someone’s life essentially, so that is one that’s your comments back and forth.
Another one is if you’ve got followers on, for example, Twitter, or on Facebook, encourage them to follow you back on Instagram as well and create that sense of community within your Instagram plot.
Another tactic that I’ve seen a lot of companies taking part in is IG takeovers. So you have someone that’s an influencer in your industry take over the account for the day, it could be for the week, usually if the say a day is successful enough to build those followers. We’ve done it at Recruiting Social as well. We’ve had people in the HR industry, the tech industry take over our account for the day, and just shows people the life of someone else that you might want to be associated with as well, so that’s big.
Tagging other people and your photos is an important one. I know the subject lines in caption lines are key to building your followers. I think if you are more authentic when you’re writing your captions, and telling people how you feel in somewhere from, again keeping it professional if you do have it public is key, and then, of course, leveraging trending hashtags is always a big one.
And I know sometimes people are a bit hesitant about how many hashtags they do. I usually say cram in a bunch of hashtags, it doesn’t hurt. After an hour usually they do often expire, meaning your pictures are no longer at the top of the explore page you’re usually at the bottom, and so you can delete them after as well.
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