If you’re a recruitment consultant thinking about using social media to target candidates, here’s a cautionary tale about how not to do it…
Last week I was followed on Twitter by someone whose bio said they owned a digital marketing agency and a recruitment consultancy.
As usual I said Hi to my new follower (I never use tools that send auto-DMs each to each new follower – they are so obviously automated and impersonal) and asked what caused them to follow me.
In reply I received an odd response that didn’t answer my question: “@markbower Are you on LinkedIn?”
Curious about where this was leading though I replied “Yes, wouldn’t be without it.”
A couple of hours later though I received a LinkedIn invite from the self-same person. Rather than ignore the invite I declined explaining that I only accept LinkedIn invites from people who I have met in person.
The following day I got a spam DM advertising a job opening that was in no way relevant to me. Needless to say I unfollowed and blocked the offending account.
What Went Wrong
Social media accelerates the know – like – trust –buy – advocate cycle of purchasing. That’s one reason social media is so great.
But it only accelerates that cycle – it doesn’t go away entirely!
What this person did wrong was to jump straight from “Hello” to trust, without working through the know and like stages first.
The Lesson
Don’t be in too much of a rush to close the deal. Just as you wouldn’t immediately (ever?)ask for the address book of a person you had just been introduced to at a cocktail party, you shouldn’t try to do the same in the virtual world.
Instead, use a tool like CubeSocial to help you get to know your new contacts better.
CubeSocial takes a Twitter ID or email address and automatically discovers all the other social media profiles for that person. It only takes a couple of seconds to scan a contact’s profiles to find something you can chat to them about. Within minutes you can move through the know and like stages without fear of coming across as spammy.
