How to use social media to make something real - SmartBrief

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How to use social media to make something real

3 min read

Brands & Campaigns

How do you turn a company into the career destination for job seekers? Show them how your company makes something that they can relate to, something meaningful — something real. And, make them feel like they will have opportunity to grow.

Challenge: Textron is a multi-industry company that leverages its global network of aircraft, defense, industrial, and finance businesses to provide customers with innovative solutions and services. Like many companies, Textron lacked brand awareness among early career job seekers. The company wanted to speak directly to early career job seekers and find ways to extend the conversation beyond the career fair booth, so it focused on social media to create a highly targeted campaign that drove real results.

 

Our path:

The first step in strengthening and developing a brand position is to create a messaging platform to tie all communications together. Textron and Roberts Communication crafted a message, called “Make Something Real,” to showcase the career potential and opportunities at Textron. The message, tied with a bold new look, pulled together every element of the campaign, from the way their recruiters were dressed at career fairs to the social media engagement strategy.

Social media can be used to specifically target your audience and talk to them on channels where they’re already active. It gives you the ability to really participate in the conversation instead of shouting your message from the sidelines. To do this, it’s important to leverage both organic and paid content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pandora and other platforms that are popular with your target audience.

Since Textron was talking to early-career job seekers, it created an augmented reality trigger brochure to help drive them to a refreshed landing page and a new employee testimonial videos. A hero video, Make Something Real, used unique angles and transitions to highlight all the job opportunities at Textron and its sub-brands. These tactics drove awareness and boosted engagement with the brand among its target audiences. On social media, the power of video and Web content is undeniable—it’s key to building credibility and interest for your brand.

While social media can be a very successful tactic in a campaign, it’s important to complement social initiatives with other tactics to support the overall change or goal you’re working toward. This is especially true in a recruitment or brand awareness campaign. In addition to social, Textron updated its booth displays with the new look and feel to help attract college students during in-person career fairs and other recruitment events. It also created a surround experience on campus to draw more people to the booth. Instead of the recruitment experience beginning and ending at the booth, Textron extended its presence on one campus with sidewalk clings, a E-Z-GO golf car shuttle service to the fair, off-campus coffee sleeves and bar coasters, new collateral and giveaways at the booth. These types of tangible and memorable experiences support social campaigns to align with your campaign’s overall mission.

 

Results

  • Textron has grown organic followers by almost 3,000 since September
  • Impressions on social grew by more than 500,000 in less than one month
  • 14 out of 15 schools significantly increased job applications submitted with several schools increasing more than 50% and one school increasing by 211%
  • The program will continue into 2016


About the author: Katrina Busch is president of Roberts Communications.