5 Steps to Grow Your Association’s Career Center with Social Media

Social media can not only help to attract more job seekers and employers but also to engage your existing members and promote your association’s value. The challenge is building an attractive profile with consistently engaging content to ultimately lead followers back to become users of your career center.

This blog post will lead you through 5 steps to leverage social media to grow your association’s career center.

1. Choose the right platform

When it comes to social media, it's generally advisable to start with one platform, master it, and then expand to others as you build your skills. For associations and non-profits, the two most promising platforms are likely LinkedIn and Facebook:

• LinkedIn is ideal for professional audiences, with a significant portion of users aged between 25-34 and a strong representation from those aged 35-54. LinkedIn users are actively seeking job opportunities and career-related information, making it an excellent place to promote your career center.
• Facebook remains a powerful platform for reaching a wide demographic. A great feature to tap into for your association might be Facebook groups, where members connect, share experiences, and discuss career-related content.

Depending on your audience, you might also consider platforms like X (formerly Twitter), is great for leveraging current events and trends, or TikTok, which appeals to the younger Gen Z crowd. Alternatively, you could also explore newer platforms like Threads or Blue Sky that may have less saturation than mainstream channels.

2. Optimize your profile

Your social media profile acts as a landing page for your association, or your association’s career center. It needs to convey what job seekers and prospective members can expect from you and why they should follow your association. Here are 4 key elements to include on your profile:

• High-quality images: Use a high-resolution profile photo (likely your logo) and an eye-catching banner image that represents your association’s brand.
• Clear summary: Write a concise tagline that outlines the type of content you share. Set expectations to attract the job seekers and potential members you want while disqualifying those who may not find value in your offerings.
• Social proof: Highlight impressive outcomes from your career center. This could include statistics such as the number of applicants who landed jobs through your board or notable companies that have posted openings with you.
• Call-to-action: The primary goal of your social media profile is to drive traffic to your career center (or maybe your association's website). Include a clear link so visitors can easily access.

💡 Tip: Turn off the “Jobs” tab on LinkedIn

Since your aim is promoting the use of your job board, you don’t want job seekers applying on LinkedIn. Instead, prominently link to your career center as your main call-to-action.

3. Create relevant content

After you’ve gotten the basics right, it’s time to focus on the heart of every social media account: the content. To excel in your content creation, you have to deeply understand the needs and interests of your members and potential job seekers.

Your mission should be becoming the #1 source of information, insights, and resources for your target audience of job seekers. For example, if your audience is comprised of medical industry professionals, you want to be the go to profile for all things medical industry careers and industry news.

Here are some effective ideas how to generate engaging content around your association’s industry and niche:

a. Select 2-3 topics to post about

To get started, concentrate on 2-3 core content themes related to your niche. These themes will serve as the foundation for all the content you produce. To promote your association's career center on social media, consider the following themes:

• Job and industry news: Share information about job roles, salary ranges, industry trends, and remote work opportunities specific to your field. This not only informs job seekers but also positions your association as an authority in the industry.
• Career advancement resources: Provide resources tailored to your audience's needs, such as tips on crafting CVs, optimizing LinkedIn profiles, preparing for interviews, and navigating career transitions.
• Networking opportunities: Offer guidance on effective networking strategies, including how to connect with recruiters, personal branding tips, and the importance of building a professional portfolio. This is a great opportunity to plug any upcoming career fairs or events your association might run.

b. Follow news around your content themes

Once you have defined your main content topics, you need to actually create posts around these themes. One way to get started is by staying up to date with posts around your niche and engaging with those posts. Answer questions and comment/repost with you opinion.

Depending on the platform, you can either follow niche specific hashtags (such as #AInews), get notifications via Google Alerts/Trends, or use advanced search features with common search operators (available on LinkedIn) to find news.

💡 Tip: Saved search on LinkedIn

With your list of relevant topics you’d like to stay up to date with, you can access a curated timeline on LinkedIn with posts around these specific topics

This is how to configure a saved search:

1. Start a search on LinkedIn
2. On the results page, go to “All filters” and select relevant filters such as "Date posted", "Content type" or "Author industry"
3. Click “Show results” and bookmark the URL to go back to get your news

Note: Whenever you update your filter, a different URL is created which needs to be saved again to access.

c. Utilize non-original content

Instead of constantly coming up with new posts, you can always share curated content and repurpose information from other marketing channels of your association (think: newsletter, blog, or events).

• Live Q&A sessions. Host live sessions where job seekers can ask questions about job searching and career development. This interactive approach can help increase engagement on your profile.
• Screenshot a great review, comment or DM from your audience. Tag them for better reach and a possible connection.
• Repurpose content from other platforms.
• Shoutout a recent win. For example, a metric from your job board that supports your niche authority or a success story from a job seeker.
• Curate news in your niche. You can create a list of interesting industry resources from the past week/month, share salary statistics, or highlight the top 3 career newsletters in your niche.

d. Post content for all stages in the marketing funnel

The marketing funnel represents the journey your members and job seekers follow as they engage with your association's online presence. It guides them from initial awareness of your resources to the decision to apply for a job through your platform or signup as a member.

In order to speak to all your followers, you must create content that educates your audience no matter at what stage of this funnel they are at. This means you should cover everything—from simple introductory content in your field to expert-takes on current events.

4. Build community & grow

Social media is most effective when used as a two-way communication channel. And building an engaged community on your social channels requires more than just posting great content, namely regular interaction with your followers.

a. Be consistent

The importance of consistency is hardly a secret anymore, but nevertheless the baseline for growth on almost all platforms.

For your profile to become an authority in your field, you need to post and engage consistently. Be reliable and do what you say you're going to do; that’s the best way to build trust.

If you are using Niceboard, you can set up automatic social media posts for all new jobs that are posted on your board via Zapier. Here’s how to do it.

Beyond consistent content, you should also maintain consistency in the topics you write about. To give this an edge, you want to develop a unique perspective about topics in your niche. What’s your stance on industry trends, hiring practices, or career development?

b. Interact with your audience

We often forget: social media is all about being social. So focus 80% of your time on building genuine connections, asking questions, and adding value on others' posts. You can also repost and curate content while inserting your unique point of view to relevant topics.

Get started like this: Find 20-30 accounts in your niche that are successful and interact with their content for 30min/day. This will help you make connections to other players in your industry, hence exposing your profile to their follower base (who would likely enjoy your content as well).

Another idea to increase participation on your profile is organizing contests that encourage engagement from followers. For example, you could run a “Best Resume” contest where participants submit their resumes for feedback from industry professionals within your association.

c. Get discovered with hashtags

Gone are the days of spamming up to 30 vaguely related hashtags in your posts. Try using 1-3 relevant ones, ideally incorporated in the content itself, such as:

• #[your industry]jobs, e.g. #UXdesignjobs
• #[your industry]careers, e.g. #artcareers
• #[skills/role]jobs, e.g. #architectjobs
• #[skills/role]careers, e.g. #architecturaldesignercareers

Hashtags can also be used to promote engagement, for example by inviting members to share their experiences related to job searching or professional development using a specific hashtag associated with your association.

d. Monitor analytics

Keep your end goal in mind when choosing the metrics to monitor. If your aim is to drive more qualified job seeker traffic to your job board, you might focus on profile visits or profile link clicks instead of follower count.

• Engagement metrics: Most social media platforms have build-in analytical tools to track engagement metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and click-through rates on posts. You want to focus your attention on those related to your career center and career resources.
• Traffic sources: Use tools like Google Analytics to determine how much traffic is coming from social media channels to your career center. Identify which platform is driving the most visitors so you can focus efforts accordingly, and adjust if needed.

5. Utilize paid advertising

While organic reach is essential and usually more sustainable, paid advertising on social media can significantly boost visibility for your career center. This can be especially useful if you are starting from 0 and want to grow quickly; and if you have some budget available for social media.

Targeted ads to drive traffic should be your first step. Use the build-in ad platform of your main social media presence to create targeted campaigns aimed at specific demographics relevant to your association. You can usually target based on location, industry, job title, or interests. Let your best-performing organic content lead the way in your ads.

If your traffic ads are successful, you can consider retargeting campaigns. Implement retargeting ads to reach users who have previously visited your website but did not take action. This strategy keeps your career center top-of-mind for potential applicants and your association’s ad spend low.

And there you have it—5 steps to promote your association’s career center through social media: from getting your platform and profile right, creating compelling content, utilizing paid advertising, to building an engaged community through regular interaction.