How Digital Engagement Turns Joblessness Into An Opportunity For Growth
A CASE STUDY IN ORGANIC DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT
COVID-19 has truly changed the majority of American’s lives. Small businesses are losing clients, funds are restricted, and stay-at-home orders have closed all non-essential offices. Economies are in a spiral, and job mobility and opportunities are limited. So, to be laid off from his position at the Lafayette Education Foundation put Evan Daniels in a difficult position. He needs to find a job as quickly as possible, during a time when most employers are not hiring.
Luckily, with a background in content creation and digital marketing, Evan pulled together a creative, yet unorthodox approach to building awareness around his current employment status, but more importantly, his resume. In this case study, we will explore the strategies implemented over a 24-hour period across multiple platforms and their effectiveness to Evan’s goal of finding a job.
THE GOAL: RESUME VIEWERSHIP
Finding employment is not something that typically happens immediately, or within a day of applying. Knowing this, Evan made his goal an increase in resume views (link clicks) through video engagement.
IMPLEMENTATION: CONTENT CREATION AND ANALYTICS
With growing national unemployment, Evan knew that whatever he did to build engagement would need to be created as soon as possible. The timing of the content would be key. On the day he was let go from his previous employer, he began strategizing.
The strategy didn't need to be complicated, but rather so simple that it would be easy to implement and manage. And with limited resources, this concept would need to be implemented at no financial cost.
The first step was the resume.
Quickly updating his resume, Evan exported it as a PDF and uploaded it to Google Drive. The benefit of Google Drive was the sharing capability it gave him. With a link, Evan could send a link of his resume to any potential employer or, as his strategy would soon reveal, any person in his social network.
Having a sharing link would be great, but to truly measure the effectiveness of his campaign, Evan would need a link that measured data analytics. Also, if the sharing link could be shortened to something more appealing than random numbers and letters, its effectiveness could be increased.
Evan created a Bit.ly link (bit.ly/evandaniels) that would link to the google link. This Bit.ly would be the only link that Evan would share with others. With Bit.ly’s data tracking, it would log anyone who clicked on his resume, allowing him to see a total link count, as well as spikes in engagement.
Once the link was created, Evan needed a creative way to share the link with his social networks. He needed a simple, yet novel idea for content. With a background in video creation, he knew that a short video would be the most engaging medium, and would be something he could create easily. That same day (all on the day he was notified of his unemployment), he put together a video of himself going through a short job interview. Evan needed to use the very thing that led to his lay-off to his advantage: capitalizing on the stay-at-home order that limited personal interaction. In this case, commenting on the limitations of not being able to have a perspective employee come to a hiring manager for a formal interview.
This video would be effective in three ways:
- The creative approach would encourage general engagement
- The video would communicate general information about Evan’s strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations to those who were hiring.
- The lighthearted nature of the content would be to encourage sharing and distribution
Once the video was created, waited to post the video. The content release needed to be timed properly. Releasing a video on the exact same day he was laid on, a mere few hours later would come across in a negative way. It needed to appear to take more time to create a response than it did. The next day, around mid-morning Evan posted it directly to LinkedIn. An hour later, he posted it to Facebook. As he posted it, Evan also reached out to influencers he was connected with on both platforms to encourage sharing and increase reach.
THE RESULT: HIGH ENGAGEMENT AND CTR’s
Evan already has a sizable Facebook network that he has engaged with for years. So, video engagement was not a surprise. However, the next 24-hours of engagement would be more successful than anticipated. At the end of this time period, Facebook counted close to 2200. Likes also showed a high engagement of close to 200 reactions.
Sharing is vital for this organic post to be successful. The more shares the post gets, the more likely a potential employer is to click on Evan’s resume. Sharing slowly increased throughout the period, capping at just over 100 shares in 24 hours. This put the sharing rate at 59%.
LinkedIn is a very different platform with posts having a much longer lifecycle than Facebook. Both posts were shared within an hour of each other, but the results differ drastically. Views got up to almost 900 in 24 hours, but the growth rate is fairly linear, as compared to Facebook. 40 people liked the video, and 22 people shared it. This puts LinkedIn’s share rate close to Facebook’s: 55%.
An important thing to measure with LinkedIn is also Profile views. Evan doesn’t post as consistently on LinkedIn, so profile views are low. Starting to chart data, we can safely assume that any profile views Evan receives is due to his video content. By the end of the 24-hour period, Evan’s profile was viewed 32 times.
Bit.ly
While social media engagement provides relevant data, in this case, it does not show our goal. While there were over 3,000 views across platforms (including a direct Vimeo link), Bit.ly shows a total of 320 link clicks within 24 hours. This gives us a rate of 10.35%. Speaking that all of this engagement is organic, it is extremely competitive with the CTR’s for many online advertisers., which according to Wordstream, have an average CTR of .9% across industries.
CONCLUSION:
In 24 hours, Evan created a simple, yet effective social media campaign to increase his resume views. Not only did his video increase engagement on his profile, but it also led to an extremely successful engagement with his resume. By the end of this 24-hour period, Evan had a total of 3090 views, with nearly a third coming from LinkedIn. Over 10% of the views led to clicks and views on Evan’s resume.
While this conversion rate is great, it still leaves the question: did this campaign actually help Evan find a job, an opportunity, or even generate a lead? Even during a massive cross-industry hiring freeze, Evan was contacted by several companies, potential clients, and nonprofit organizations. With new clients reaching out for fast, creative talent, he has proven his effectiveness and ability to respond quickly in the face of drastic change.