Social media and recruiting are a match made in talent acquisition heaven; the evidence is clear: this infographic reiterates the continued growth of social networking platforms and the increasing amount of time they spend on these.

Another confirms the reliance on social networking sites for talent sourcing and hiring. When you put the two together, the benefits are obvious.

But, what if you have never created a social recruiting campaign? What if you are just getting used to this whole social thing?

Check out these tips to build a social media driven recruiting campaign, ensuring you are reaching the right audience, marketing and distributing the job to the right audience in the correct way, and landing those dream employees:

Go to where your audience is

As with any other recruiting campaign, it is important to know where your target audience is. After all, just because 555 million users are on Twitter, does not mean your specific audience uses the platform actively and exclusively.

Conversely, some industries have a better than normal social networking presence in comparison to others. So, you first have to do your research to clearly understand the following:

• Where is your target audience? LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or other?
• What time of the day are they most active?
• What kind of messaging are they attracted to?
• Who would you want to follow and build relationships with?

When you know the answers to these questions, you are better positioned to attract and engage the best candidates for your open positions, on social media platforms.

Craft special job descriptions

Social media friendly job descriptions are typically a bit different than the traditional ones. Think of them as short and sweet teasers to attract your target candidates to your open positions on your career site, your Facebook fan page, or your Google+ page. If the content is appealing, informational, and interesting, you are more likely to attract the right audience.

These job descriptions are often succinct and to the point, but do not think that means they are easy to craft. On the contrary, social media friendly job descriptions need to hook potential employees right away, while at the same time submitting to any restrictions these platforms may have, like character or posting limits. It can be quite the feat, particularly if it is your first time creating them.

Here are a few things to consider and add:

• Job descriptions need to direct candidates in the right direction, such as to a career website or to an application link.
• Descriptions need to include relevant keywords, hashtags, and phrases for the purpose of search engine optimization.
• The title for the position should be something people will actually understand. "Chief Happiness Officer" can mean a myriad of different things to different people. For the purpose of social recruiting, be sure position titles make sense to the majority of your target audience.

Ultimately, think of social media recruiting as an avenue to find better candidates. When you craft descriptions that only your target audience will be drawn to, you will likely receive higher quality applicants. You do not want to waste your time with submissions that do not fit the bill.

Address the passive problem

Did you know 74 percent of job seekers are passive, meaning that they are silently looking for new opportunities? How can you find such candidates and present job opportunities to them? Your internal network through employees, colleagues and friends can help.

Employee referrals typically result in a large portion of hires for most companies. It, therefore, makes sense to do this in an even more methodical and systematic way where everything gets tracked and results can be measured.

For instance, employees and co-workers can refer jobs to the right individuals in their own social networks, many of whom are probably interested if approached, but otherwise passive. This helps hiring managers and recruiters reach their target candidates in almost no time and at a very low cost – two critical advantages!

Additionally, platforms such as Simplicant track all the information and provide recruiters and their co-workers with the details they need to see what happened as a result of the referrals. This allows recruiters to find out where these referrals came from, and reward those who contributed most effectively to the process.

Make communication easy

Nothing makes candidates more frustrated than not having a way to reach the recruiter or hiring manager they expect to hear from.

Make the communication process as simple as possible by including a person of contact, as well as a phone number or email address, in the job description. Be sure to also utilize automatic emails at each step of the hiring process so candidates are always informed and not kept in the dark about their application.

Additionally, answer any questions you get through direct messages, tweets, posts, etc. You never know who you will be missing out on if you do not provide them a way to reach you, so make the lines of communication as open as possible.

About Sajjad Masud

Sajjad Masud is Co-founder & CEO of Simplicant, a cloud-based recruiting platform transforming the talent acquisition market and making enterprise-level recruiting technology accessible to companies of all sizes. Simplicant's collaborative platform includes social recruiting and redefined candidate relationship management to help organizations optimize their cost and time per hire.

This article was originally published on June 14, 2012 at http://blog.simplicant.com/how-to-build-an-effective-recruiting-campaign-with-social-media at Simplicant - www.simplicant.com