Social Media: Looking Beyond the Buzz to Develop Strategies that DeliverYour nurses are on Facebook. Great candidates are following your competitors on Twitter. And many hospital executives believe that social networking is a magic bullet for talent acquisition. But crafting a sound social media strategy takes more than throwing up a profile page and hoping candidates follow you.

s with most new approaches, there is confusion about what makes an effective social media strategy for recruitment. The most important thing to remember is that social media is just another tool that should be one part of your overall employer

brand and recruitment communications strategy. To help you, we’ve compiled a list of best practices—key dos and don’ts—to help you navigate the world of social networking.

AA L O O K I N S I D E SociAl MediA do’S And don’TS

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Social Media Do’s and Don’ts

Do’s: Define Your Audience

Many hospitals have Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, but very few organizations have profile pages that are specifically dedicated to communicating with staff and prospective employees. If your social media presence is “owned” by your corporate marketing department, their focus will be on developing patients as followers, providing consumer health tips and promoting your corporate brand. Though marketing and HR have shared interests, messages designed to attract patients are very different from content that supports recruitment. For your efforts to impact talent acquisition, messages should be relevant to the segment of the audience that matches your greatest hiring needs.

Focus on Conversation

Successful social networking relies on two-way conversations. Provide opportunities for prospects to interact with employees, physicians, nursing leaders, hospital executives and even each other. Make it a habit to pose a question to your audience that relates to the item you are posting. For example, if you post a link to a television news interview of your CEO, include a question that relates to the story. Invite your audience to comment and your post becomes a conversation.

Keep Content Fresh and Relevant

Candidates will form their opinions—and ultimately their interest in you as an employer—based in part on your social media presence. Incorporate inspiring stories, videos, photos and surveys to engage your audience and foster connections. Evaluate every post from the employee or candidate’s perspective to answer the question “What’s in it for me?”

Prepare a response strategy

Every hospital has learned to deal with disgruntled employees and angry or misguided patients and family members. With social media, you may have to deal with unpleasant situations in a public forum. Decide in advance how you will deal with negative feedback.

If a comment is inaccurate, find a way to correct the information while remaining friendly and respectful. Fight the urge to delete every negative comment, research has shown that prospective employees actually respond favorably when negative impressions are addressed in a straightforward and honest manner. Involve corporate communications to develop appropriate responses to offensive or inflammatory comments. Request guidance from HR leaders to help define when postings should be documented, such as capturing screen shots of the posting, before they are removed from your sites. And make it a priority to express appreciation for compliments and positive feedback.

Social Media: Looking Beyond the Buzz to Develop Strategies that Deliver

Make it a habit to pose a question to your audience that relates to the item you are posting

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Make it apriority

to express appreciation for compliments and positive feedback

Be Mindful of HIPAA

You want your employees to be able to share great patient care stories on your social sites, so your social media activities should support that goal while protecting patient privacy. If you don’t already have a written social media policy, involve your legal and risk management teams to create a policy to distribute to employees, physicians, residents and new hires. Monitor content on your social sites to ensure that “personally identifiable information” such as a patient’s exact age, date of birth or death, unique physical description or medical record numbers are never shared. A simplified way to think about HIPAA is that a patient’s family or closest friends should not be able to identify them from the information that you publish.

Engage Your Employees to Spread the Word

Keeping content fresh on social media sites can be daunting. Recruit key employees to serve as “Social Ambassadors” to increase your reach and improve content relevance. Form a committee to develop guidelines for posts and shares. Ask your marketing and public relations departments for assistance in social media training for the employee committee before allowing administrator access to your social sites. Keep tabs on things your employees participate in—whether civic

events such as a Habitat for Humanity home build, fun runs, local festivals or professional awards ceremonies—and encourage your Social Ambassadors to attend and post or share details and photos.

Don’ts: Don’t Limit Social Sites to Just Job Postings

Social networking works best when there is two-way communication. A constant stream of job postings may actually be counterproductive to effective recruiting through social sites. Instead, focus on providing a glimpse of your environment and culture through relevant postings that feature your physicians, leadership and employees. From stories that chronicle new procedures to recognition of your employees’ professional achievements, give prospects the opportunity to engage with your team. Make every effort to include content that appeals to your current staff as well as healthcare professionals who are not currently job hunting. Use videos, photos and links to published stories to engage your audience.

Don’t Forget About Referrals

Pepper your content with job postings and encourage your fans and followers to forward those openings to their friends and contacts. Use your social outlets to showcase unique opportunities and to promote special considerations such as sign-on bonuses or distinct benefits like paid time off. Encourage your own employees to follow your social media outlets and use the relationship-building potential of social media to promote and energize your Employee Referral Program.

Advertising | Marketing | Digital | Employer Brand | Talent Technology | ©2013 | Page 3

Social Media: Looking Beyond the Buzz to Develop Strategies that Deliver

DavidGroup.com

Social media is about

relationshipsso integrity

is key

developing and nurturing

Use videos, photos and links to published stories to engage your audience

Advertising | Marketing | Digital | Employer Brand | Talent Technology | ©2013 | Page 4

Social Media: Looking Beyond the Buzz to Develop Strategies that Deliver

Keep It Real

Avoid marketing ‘spin’ to ensure that your messages are authentic and represent an accurate portrayal of your organization. Social media is about developing and nurturing relationships, so integrity is key. Be sure to present your hospital or system in its best light without stretching the truth.

Don’t Waste Your Audience’s Time

Irrelevant content will turn off your talent communities. While some content updates—poll questions, event invitations and FAQs—can be scheduled in advance, most of your postings should relate to timely information that your audience wants to know about. One way to judge the success of your postings is to evaluate how much conversation you spark. If none of your fans or followers bother to comment, it is likely that your post did not hold their attention.

Get Started

You may feel overwhelmed at the thought of starting a social media recruiting program. You may be tempted to wait, thinking that in time you’ll gather enough content to hit the ground running. Don’t delay, social media is a long-term recruitment strategy that you can build over time.

Social Media is Here to Stay

There is no “cookie-cutter” solution when it comes to developing a social media strategy, attracting an audience and keeping your content interesting. Your process should be based on your own goals and your organization’s culture. Use this guide as a place to start, and build your presence on social sites over time.

The David Group is a leader in healthcare recruitment advertising, marketing and communications. We work with clients to help them find, attract, engage and keep talent. Our services include advertising, marketing, digital, employer brand and talent technology.

We know what works.

DavidGroup.com

Social media is a

long term recruitment strategy

that you can build over time

One way to judge the success of your post-ings is to evaluate how much conversation you spark