In a world that’s becoming increasingly defined by who or what you ‘Like’ on Facebook, your Twitter tweets, and your LinkedIn connections, dealerships such as Impact Networking in Chicago, IL are leveraging social networking tools to help grow their business externally and internally.
Impact’s Creative Services Group offers clients an array of services. Some of those include Website analysis and optimization, online branding, creating mobile friendly pages, branding design and graphics, account management, and content marketing as well as online public relations and media relations. They’re also leading by example using social media to support the sales side of the business as well as leveraging it as a recruitment tool.
“Recruitment is one of our big challenges; we want to double the size of the company and reach $100 million by 2017 so we’re trying to aggressively build up our talent pool of consultants,” says Rebecca Adolf, Impact’s senior designer and online marketer.
Impact casts a wide social networking net with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter as well as Google+ and Pinterest. They also have incorporated e-mail marketing into their social networking efforts.
In the Career Center page on Impact’s Website job seekers can find testimonials from current employees, awards won, benefits information, recruitment events, and apply for a position online. A recruitment video on the Website ranked third in the Career Builder Big Strides in Small Business contest.
A key element of Impact’s recruitment campaign involved enhancing its Website presence and presence on social media sites, including posting more frequently on Facebook and Tweeting more often. “These are ways to show that it’s fun to work here and we’re a young, vibrant crowd,” says Adolf.
It was also critical to increase the number of followers of Impact on Facebook and Twitter. Those efforts are slowly but surely paying off. Impact’s social media followers have grown from 780 total (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) as of May 2012 to 1,310 total (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+) as of August 2013.
Impact has seen an increase in Web traffic ever since launching their online recruiting initiative, which includes having positions filtered on Indeed.com.“It’s like Google in that they search for different job listings and grab them from the company Websites and add them into their database,” explains Adolf.
The Creative Services Group has also created an iPad form that candidates can fill out on their iPad, which will then automatically send them an e-mail with the positions that Impact has available. There’s also a social media page to the recruitment form.
Additionally, there’s an ongoing internal effort to encourage employees to share Facebook posts and Twitter Tweets, especially since employees are rewarded for referrals. This, Adolf concedes is an ongoing challenge.
Challenges or not, Impact has been successful with their social networking recruiting initiatives and to date have filled a secretarial position, a warehouse position, and added about 20 reps.
As Impact Networking continues to grow its staff with the help of social networking and other online initiatives, expect to see revenues from its Creative Services Group grow as well as more businesses acknowledge the importance of online marketing.
There is no rest for the online marketer, especially Impact’s Creative Services Group. An upcoming event, and part of Social Media Week Chicago at Impact’s headquarters, “InSIGHTs: Looking at Websites Through the Eyes of an Online Marketer” will educate attendees on how an online marketer analyzes a client’s social media presence and Website interface, including identifying weaknesses and areas to maximize. Another example of how Impact Networking is leveraging new trends and opportunities such as social media to create awareness for and grow its business along with the variety of services it now offers to clients.
