Best Practices: How to Write Job Tweets for Best Results
Every day, more than 9,000 jobs openings are posted by recruiters and job posting utilities to Twitter. For the most part, these announcements are formatted pretty similar from one to another. However, every so often you will come across a tweet announcing a job that has so many #tags that you can’t tell what they are recruiting for.
So, for those of you who do not currently use a Twitter job posting utility (like TweetMyJobs, TweetaJob, or TweetThisJob) or a HR / recruiting software solutions (like eQuest, Taleo, Jobvite, or Jobs2Web), here is a quick primer on how to best write your job tweets for maximum job seeker attention.
With only 140 characters to play with, you might think this should be a pretty easy task. But when you get down to it, 140 characters gives you a lot of room to communicate to the Twitterverse. Here I will offer eight easy tips to make the best use of your tweet’s real estate.
1. Use a URL shortening tool for the job posting link. Okay, I feel like I really shouldn’t need to address this but some job tweets actually have full length apply URLs still. How this gets past Twitter, I don’t know. Most tweeters use bit.ly for all their links. If you type a full length URL into Twitter, it will automatically reformat it in to a bit.ly URL.
To get the best results from your short URLs, the best thing to do is go to bit.ly and sign up for a free account. Having an account let’s you track number of clicks on the link and see all sorts of analytics like the geography of where the clicks are coming for.
There are options though other than bit.ly. Some Tweeters like ow.ly or tr.im. These offer the same service as bit.ly but your link may stand out from the crowd simply because it looks different. There is also a new recruitment specific URL shortening site. Emp.ly was created so that job seekers who see the emp.ly would instantly recognize the short URL as a job opportunity.
2. Use the #jobs or #career hash tags. Hash tags are the way that the Twitter search engine knows the subject of a tweet. If you type jobs in a tweet without the # in front of it, your tweet will most likely get lumped in with tweets about Steve Jobs from Apple. The #tag insures that your tweet will get categorized correctly with the rest of the job announcements put out.
I mention using #jobs or #careers above. What’s the difference? In theory both #tags can be uses interchangeably. #jobs is by far the more popular of the two with well over 8,000 tweets per day referencing it. #careers gets a good 2000 daily tweets, but it serves the same purpose. There is a growing use of the two tags for different kinds of job opportunities. A cursory glance at #careers tweets show a more professional, higher paying job than a typical #jobs tweet. #career tweets often advertise jobs like “medical writer,” “financial analyst,” or “network engineer” whereas #jobs also encompasses retail or hourly jobs.
3. Use #tags sparingly. Some tweets have so many #tags in them that you can’t hardly make out what they are saying. Use you hash tags sparingly and strategically. Always use the #jobs and/or #careers, then if you have room use one and maybe two more methodically. You might want to add a vertical #tag to go along with your #jobs tag. For instance, you are tweeting an IT job. Use the hash tags #jobs and #IT. Lastly, you can also add a location #tag. These are popular for large metro areas like #Chicago.
4. Make sure to include the location. There are a plethora of job tweets on Twitter that don’t list the city where the tops takes place. These tweets are essentially a waste in my view and constitute Twitter Spam. A simple addition of a city and state will help make sure you get the attention of job seekers who are actively looking for jobs where yours is available.
5. Avoid Abbreviations. Even with the 140 character limit, most of the time you can get the full, unabbreviated job title and location. If you have a job title that’s so long that it doesn’t fit, you are probably recruiting for a job that is so hard to fill anyway that it will be tough to find them anywhere, let alone on Twitter.
6. Don’t put #tags in job titles or tweet text. This one is pretty self-explanatory…it’s important of course to use the hash tags so your jobs show in search, but put them at the end. Having #tags in the body of the tweet is just disruptive and makes them hard to read.
7. Make sure the hiring company’s name is in the tweet. Again, should be a no-brainer but job seekers don’t like going into a job posting blind. This is a great way to brand your company alongside the openings. If you are posting these jobs manually (i.e. not using a utility) the best practice is to have the company name and log as the Twitter account name and user icon. If you can’t do that, put the company name as the first thing in the tweet. Some high profile direct Twitter recruiters are @ATTjobs, @KPMG, and @HyattCareers.
Lastly, let me touch on two job tweeting strategies. If you are a smaller recruiting organization and intend to tweet just a handful of jobs, feel free to go out and amass as many relevant followers as you can. You have to be careful to not send too many tweets a day as your followers might get annoyed at you for clogging up their Twitter feed with irrelevant job tweets.
If you are a larger recruiting agency, feel free to post as many job tweets as you’d like, just don’t be surprised if your followers drop you. Some of the biggest Twitter recruiters turn to a TweetMyJobs or TweetaJob so that they can put out as many tweets as they want, but also foster a Twitter follower community to whom they can share direct messages too, not just send job tweets.
Well, there you go. I hope that helps you tweek your tweets for maximum Twitter recruitment exposure.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by sociallattice: #recruitment Best Practices: How to Writing Job Tweets for Best Results: So, for those of you who do… http://bit.ly/bUAe1a #social #media…
Thanks for the comment about @hyattcareers. Didn’t relaize we were high profile. 
[...] Best Practices: How to Write Job Tweets for Best Results Mar 12, 2010 … Use the #jobs or #career hash tags. Hash tags are the way that the Twitter search engine knows the subject of a tweet. … socialmediarecruitment.com/…/best-practices-how-to-write-job-tweets-for- best-results/ – Categorized under: Uncategorized. Tagged with: no tags. [...]