Social media has the power to make or break a brand. Today, more than 90% of Americans use some form of social media. Yet as powerful as social media is, many brands in the trucking industry still underuse or misunderstand it—and missing the mark on social could cost you when you need to fill a driver vacancy.

If you manage your company’s social media accounts, you’re on the frontline of brand communication with the potential to help your company achieve critical marketing goals. Want to connect with a range of important audiences at once? Need to fill a vacancy? Your solutions may just start with social.

When you’re ready to increase sales or secure a driver solution, follow these six habits to create a highly effective social media presence for your trucking company.

1. Focusing on Strategy

Developing social media content isn’t a strategy—it’s a tactic that feeds into a larger marketing goal. You need to understand how social platforms fit into your company’s goals and define the tactical target within each social media campaign.

For example, if your company is looking to fill a driver vacancy, consider a Facebook page dedicated to drivers that features daily posts that are engaging and interactive. If the goal is to drive business leads, consider posting Twitter content that direct followers to compelling content on your website that can only be downloaded when they share their email address with your business.

2. Using Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of ensuring that your site or its key landing pages appear near or at the top of a search engine results page (SERP)—a task usually left to web designers and copywriters. Today, SEO is closely connected with social media because the effectiveness of your SEO is no longer determined solely by site URLs, headings, and keywords.

In establishing SERP rankings, search engines weigh links back to a website from reputable sources as well as shares, likes, and comments on social media. Positive engagement with fans and followers goes beyond immediate conversations to increase your business’s web presence and search results standings. If you’re looking for a driver solution to fill vacant positions right now, SEO is one of the most significant tools that you can deploy to attract qualified candidates.

Social media encourages external sites to link to your content as you put your information in front of brands and consumers through shares, retweets, and mentions containing your site link. The more reputable external links that your content and site secure, the stronger your SEO.

One of the easiest ways to boost SEO is to encourage external inbound links back to your website. But just posting links isn’t going to cut it—you need to enhance the appeal of your site, blog, or subpages by posting links with engaging and high-quality content that invites users to click and share.

3. Focusing on Interpersonal Communication as a Driver Solution

To create a strong social presence, you need to interact, respond, and communicate with users. Today, nearly one in four people around the world use social media. Social media connects people in ways that traditional forms of communication such as emails and phone calls can’t, from accessing highly engaged potential drivers to instantly contacting a business without traditional barriers and formalities.

Building relationships with others on social media needs to go deeper than responding to comments and sharing posts. Instead, to truly connect with prospective drivers, you’ll need to reach out to them and build a relationship. Pay attention to what your target users and competitors are posting; learn from the posts and strategies that excite, surprise, and engage; and always offer a meaningful thought in response to a post or conversation—never a transparent attempt to fill a driver vacancy.

Once you establish great connections on one platform, try finding those users on another platform, and use that platform’s unique qualities to strengthen the conversation. By focusing on interpersonal communication, you’ll build a strong network of followers, fans, and friends while increasing your reach and establishing yourself as a thought leader.

4. Writing Well

A social post is short-lived, but its impact doesn’t have to be. To make your posts as engaging as possible, you must understand your company’s preferred vocabulary, your brand voice, and field-specific language. You also need to understand how to translate that brand voice so that it sings on each social platform.

Social outlets have differing post guidelines, so the kinds of posts that create a driver solution on Facebook won’t necessarily translate into success on LinkedIn. Keep in mind that core audiences differ between social media platforms, too. On Facebook, it’s easier to target truck drivers and employees to create followers and fans. In addition to its potential for filling a driver vacancy, LinkedIn is more likely to help with increasing your sales by giving you the means to target new and existing professional connections.

5. Thinking Visually

Social media is primarily image- and video-based. Instagram is one of the world’s most successful platforms with over 150 million users under the age of 35.

To keep up with this visual trend, you need to communicate your brand not just through words but through relevant and appealing visual content. Compiling high-quality images and videos that enhance your copy is a must. Your team should have a working knowledge of photo editing to ensure that all the images that emerge on social are the best possible representations of your brand. When you’re trying to fill a driver vacancy, the right image could make the difference between an application and a scroll.

6. Tracking Data

For true ROI, you need a driver solution that’s built on data—not subjective impressions. To understand the impact of your social media activity, tracking, and reporting are essential. With tools including Google Analytics and True Social Metrics, you can use data to understand your strengths, plan for future threats, and predict the trajectory of your social media impact.

Get Help Filling a Truck Driver Vacancy through Social

Social media is a constantly-changing landscape, and companies that maintain a social presence must constantly work to remain up to date on best practices and new trends in the field. By combining effective strategies and consistent habits into a social media marketing plan, you can unlock strong results whether you need to increase driver applications, fill an immediate driver vacancy, improve retention of your current drivers, or boost sales.

 

Need help developing a social media driver solution? Contact KJ Media at 800.620.9967 or through our contact page.