Use Infographics to Make Your Job Ads go Viral

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Infographic elements Thanks to the emergence of social media, recruitment and HR are becoming much more like marketing everyday; the lines between marketing and HR are blurring in the areas of employer branding and social media marketing.

So, expect there to be a bit of a land grab over the next few years as HR and marketers divide up the employer branding and social media marketing pie. But, HR should not roll over and simply hand over HR marketing to marketing; it makes no sense to drop out of the race just as things as starting to get exciting. In truth, there are many exciting social media marketing channels that HR can and should exploit.

One new job and brand marketing medium that HR and recruiters should take notice of is infographics, which are more than just pretty pictures – and have a clear role to play in employer branding and job marketing. Why? Well, they represent a new channel through which employers can increase their reach into the candidate market and gain incremental traffic to their career’s site and job adverts. Absolutely, because recent research from slideshare has shown that infographics are more viral than text documents, (e.g. your job descriptions), being shared 3X more than documents on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

So, quite simply, an infographic-based employer branding message or job marketing message will be shared 3X more than a mere text heavy web page, no matter how nicely formatted it is.

Also, if you present your job adverts and brand messages as infographics you will also be able to take advantage of two additional (and often disregarded) marketing channels: slideshare.net (120th largest site in the world) and the not to be forgotten pinterest (26th biggest site in the world).

Now, I am not casting aspersions on these sites by using terms like ‘disregarded’ and ‘forgotten’, I simply mean that HR and recruiting teams from outside the creative and PR industry sectors did not largely see the relevance of a graphics based social network campaign for job marketing. It’s time for this to change as infographics-based job ads and branding messages are the ticket into these graphic based social networks, giving text-based HR marketers some additional marketing channels.

OK, so HR has a new marketing channel, but the question is, “What specific marketing messages can HR and recruiting teams put out in an infographic?” Well, ideally, you could create a theme/story/title for your infographic, much like a blog article, and have an infographic developed that reflects that theme and tells the story. Such themes could be:

  • Visual presentation of job vacancy in terms of tasks and duties
  • Visual presentation of “Top Reasons To Work For Us”
  • Your approach to, ‘staff well-being’, in graphic format
  • ‘Top perks and benefits’, in graphic format
  • How you motivate and engage your employees

(Keep it positive and inject humor where appropriate.)

Now, I am not suggesting that you go out and start trying to make these graphics yourselves. I mean, the marketing folks don’t; they just get a designer to do it and you should do the same as it needs to be designed professionally to work. Still, you don’t want to go into this blind, and you might want to take a look at this infographic titled, the 7 Superpowers of a Knockout Infographic by Socially Sorted. It provides seven great tips on infographic creation so you don’t go on your encounter with your designer blind, but instead, you can give them informed input on how the infographic should be developed for maximum viral effect.

I look forward to sharing your job employer branding infographic!

By Kazim Ladimeji