Cracking the Code of Social Analytics: Universum Presents Inside Social Media
Editor’s Note: Employer branding firm Universum recently released its Inside Social Media report, which surveys the “current state of the social media landscape for employer brands and the trends shaping how and where you engage talent today.” This is the first in a series of articles based on the report.
Introducing Iris: Crowd-Sourced Social Content Analysis
Engagement metrics are social actions that signal deeper interest and understanding. We’ve found that the message received by candidates is often quite different from what employers intended. To tackle this problem, we built Iris, a social analytics platform capable of evaluating and categorizing employer brand messages.
Essentially, Iris aims to eliminates the time wasted second-guessing what messages work well within your employer brand by revealing which messages and values are the most relevant to your audiences around the world.
You’re Not Looking for Attention; You’re Aiming for Engagement
It is important to note that not all attention is good attention. Don’t over-focus on vanity metrics, such as views or likes. Instead, ask whether your message is reaching the right people and whether those individuals are taking any kind of meaningful action based on your message.
Cracking the Code of Social Analytics
Iris allows you to drop unclear and broad messages in favor of tailored and relevant messages that attract the specific talent you’re looking.
To achieve this, social posts are randomly assigned to real talent for evaluation through crowd-sourcing. By asking real talent of all experience levels, located across the globe, what they think the employers are trying to communicate, we can begin to understand what messages and subjects carry the most weight with followers of employer brands on national, regional, and global levels.
Every post is categorized based on 40 corresponding values from Universum’s “Employer Brand Framework,” such as prestige, sensitivity to environmental issues, and level of innovation. Thirty-five thousand posts from leading social platforms are captured by Iris’s databases every month, and all post data is then aggregated and analyzed by Universum’s research and analytics department.
Tools within the Iris platform allow member companies to comb through data and filter information by individual company, industry, country, social channel, and time frame. This allows users to drill down to fine-grain details to steer their social media activities and leverage competitive data to attract talent before the competition can get to them.
The channels we use to reach and attract talent are constantly evolving. Now more than ever, it’s imperative to stay ahead of the curve and adapt to the trends early and in an optimized way that ensures long-term success.
Mega Trends Affecting the Social Media Landscape
Results from a recent study presented at the WSJD Live Conference 2016 indicate that people spend about 11 hours and five minutes a day on tech activities like social media and gaming. Internet time is spent on a precious few apps and websites. For example, 79 percent of a person’s app time is focused on only five apps, while people spend 44 percent of their website time on a mere five websites.
Social recruiting has become a huge phenomenon, with 84 percent of job seekers having Facebook profiles. Add this to the fact that research carried out last year revealed that 87 percent of 1.5 million people surveyed from around the world said that they want to hear from employers via social media, and it becomes clear that capturing and communicating the true essence of your employer brand is crucial.
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A version of this article originally appeared on Universum.
Lars Zander is the global chief marketing and communications officer at Universum.