Park Place Career has the distinction of being the most popular careers account on all of Twitter. Its 106,000 followers exceeds its nearest competitor, The Walt Disney Company by 27,000 followers. How does the Dallas-area car dealership franchise do it?
#TeamFollowBack
One way to get 106,000 followers? Follow 107,000 people. It may not be “cool” to be following the same number of people that are following you — Justin Bieber’s ratio is 400 to 1 — but I doubt Park Place cares, when it has such a vast talent pool to recruit from. And I imagine many job-seekers take it as a nice compliment that a company they may want to work for is following them.
Handy Hashtags
Park Place isn’t shy about using hashtags. One recent tweet included not only #Jobs, but also #DFWJobs, #DallasJobs, #FortWorthJobs, and #PlanoJobs. So anyone searching for jobs with any of these hashtags has a very good chance of spotting a Park Place tweet. I also think it’s smart to mention not only Dallas and Fort Worth but also “DFW” and the suburb of Plano, to make sure even different search terms bring job-seekers to the same destination. It’s a sort of Twitter version of SEO.
Park Place used a similar strategy for a recent tweet about body shop jobs. The company added #Painter, #Technician, #Prepper, and #Estimator to its link. So the car dealer is doing all it can to be found by people looking for opportunities by location or job title.
Who Needs Variety?
What else does Park Place tweet? Very, very little. Their short and sweet YouTube video, A Rewarding Automotive Career, occasionally gets a mention, as does their video about college internships. But aside from a mention of news or events in the Dallas area, that’s it. The Park Place Twitter is really just a stream of job listings with links and hashtags. But it works. Park Place attracts and retains the type of employees who help give many of its dealerships five-star ratings on review site DealerRater.
Small But Powerful
With such effective tweets, Park Place doesn’t even have to post that often. According to the Social Recruitment Monitor, last week, Park Place’s nine tweets generated 17 retweets and a surprising 48 replies. I also count seven favorites in that time period. For recruiters and HR managers lamenting the time and resources social media can require, here’s proof that a small-scale but well thought-out strategy can be very effective.
Park Place Drives Careers
Park Place’s Twitter is pretty simple: Job listings, hashtags, and an occasional link to other content. It provides a model for any organization to start a no-frills Twitter recruiting campaign. Of course, Park Place has employer branding on its side; the Dallas Morning News has named it one of the Top 100 Places to Work in the Metroplex four years in a row.
Need to improve your employer branding or social recruiting? Brandemix can help.
Jason Ginsburg is Director of Interactive Branding at Brandemix.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jody Ordioni is the author of “The Talent Brand.” In her role as Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Brandemix, she leads the firm in creating brand-aligned talent communications that connect employees to cultures, companies, and business goals. She engages with HR professionals and corporate teams on how to build and promote talent brands, and implement best-practice talent acquisition and engagement strategies across all media and platforms. She has been named a "recruitment thought leader to follow" and her mission is to integrate marketing, human resources, internal communications, and social media to foster a seamless brand experience through the employee lifecycle.
