Any business facing a truck driver shortage knows that when it comes to truck driver recruiting, word-of-mouth is by far the most effective tool for filling vacancies. But, as the times evolve, Facebook advertising has emerged as a top converter for truck driver recruiting. If you’re not using the platform effectively for truck driver recruiting, you’re missing out on a huge pool of potential drivers.

To recruit and retain a CDL driver, it is important not only to maintain an engaging Facebook page but also to maximize your use of Facebook targeting to develop an effective inbound strategy that will help you combat any truck driver shortage.

Five Secrets to Facebook Success for Driver Recruitment

Follow these five steps to find success with your Facebook truck driver recruiting campaign.

1. Create a content calendar and post regularly.

With a content calendar, you unlock two marketing essentials: targeting and consistency. When you’re ready to plan your content calendar for Facebook, use the platform’s built-in analytics to:

  • Schedule posts for when most of your target audience is online

  • Schedule posts to highlight major business events or news in the trucking industry

  • Create targeted messages that tell your story

A topic-driven content calendar is extremely valuable, especially for businesses that want to post fresh content every day. With a well-designed calendar, you can post regularly, appeal to the right audiences, and boost your truck driver recruiting capabilities with content that answers potential applicants’ top questions. You could even consider incorporating influencer marketing into your strategy.

Don’t forget that a content calendar is only as good as the messages that you deliver. Every Facebook post that you write and schedule should deliver important or interesting information to your audience.

2. Target your posts.

Want to boost your truck driver recruiting capabilities for candidates in a specific area? What if you need to target drivers who have worked with certain companies? Thanks to Facebook, you can control your posts so that only members of your target audience see them.

Targeting your posts can help you to avoid alienating segments of your audience while learning what does—and doesn’t—appeal to the prospective drivers you want to recruit.

3. Provide relevant content to your audience.

The highly competitive driver market means that you need to find and appeal to potential applicants fast. To combat this problem on Facebook, relevance is your best friend. Every time your target audience members refresh their feeds, they’ll see an onslaught of new content—and they’ll skip irrelevant posts instantly.

Facebook provides several suggestions to help you create new, engaging posts:

  • Post timely content (e.g. holiday or special-event posts)

  • Find out which posts work best and check their performance regularly

  • Create different posts with the same goal, but switch the photos and copy, and record the impact

  • Respond quickly to comments on your posts to let fans know that you’re listening to feedback; ideally, respond to comments on the same day

No one likes encountering subpar results or trolls on Facebook but keeping a patient and positive outlook is the best way to keep your edge so that you can continue to produce engaging and relevant truck driver recruiting content.

4. Use both words and images.

Don’t just tell your audience about a new product or job opportunity—show them! A picture is worth a thousand words, and marketers who recognize the value of including images in their Facebook posts are far more likely to get results, whether they are helping to launch a new product or fill a truck driver shortage by generating interest in fresh job postings.

Finding the right combination of words and images is a subtle art, and it may change depending on the audience that you’re engaging. Here are four tips from Facebook that you can use to make your posts more effective in this area:

  • Use high-quality photos that showcase your business or products or lifestyle images of people interacting with them. For truck driver recruiting, imagine what a potential job applicant wants to see regarding company culture, job satisfaction, and benefits.

  • Keep your sentences short and instructive. Get to the point quickly and tell people why they should pay attention to your post. Brand-new job listings are a great hook.

  • If you’re engaging potential clients or customers instead of job applicants, avoid promotional phrases such as “buy now.” These phrases may trigger the Facebook algorithm to bury sales-oriented content that the platform perceives to be less valuable to audiences.

  • Test different photos and messages to see which ones garner the strongest audience response. A truck driver shortage shouldn’t compel you to skip testing and analyzing your Facebook content.

You can use both words and images to promote just about anything on Facebook, including primarily text-based content such as job listings and new blog posts.

5. Review your performance.

Are your truck driver recruiting Facebook posts up to par? Find out by reviewing their performance; otherwise, no matter how well you think that they’re doing based on positive comments, you’ll never know for sure.

Facebook makes it easy for marketers to check their post performance. Start by evaluating the following criteria:

  • Post engagement, such as the number of people who saw your posts plus likes, comments, shares, and other actions

  • People who like your Facebook page paired with their demographic information, including genders, ages, and locations

Examine Facebook’s Page Insights to gain a competitive advantage over other companies using the platform to help with a truck driver shortage. Once you have a firm grasp on the platform’s built-in analytics suite, you’ll be able to quickly find out which of your Facebook posts have hit the mark with your target audience (and which ones haven’t).

Recruit and Engage with Drivers Using the Power of Facebook

If managing Facebook is more than your company can manage alone, it’s time to engage a marketing partner that understands the nuances of truck driver recruiting powered by social media. Let the KJ Team show you how to put Facebook to work to end your truck driver shortage and build loyalty, engagement, and trust from your followers and prospects. Call us at 800.620.9967 or visit our contact page now.