What does it take to be a Top 25 Most Socially Engaged Agency?

Author: Hayley Killengrey.

Yes that’s right, Trust in Soda have been recognized by LinkedIn as being in the top 25 most Socially Engaged recruitment agencies in Europe. This is an achievement that we are hugely proud of and quite rightly so! Understanding and connecting with our audience is something we are extremely passion about. We wanted to share some insights into how we have got there and why it matters.

1. We create our own content. Each consultant here is encouraged to unlock their creative minds. We write blogs that are relevant to our industry and captivating to our audience, ensuring the content is both informative and consultative. As well as blogging we regularly create Hot Job Alerts, keeping our network up to date with the latest roles on the market. The important thing here is continuity and to make your posts visually engaging, informative, and regular. As soon as role comes in we’re pushing that immediately to our network.
2. We post regularly. To be socially engaged you need to be as active as possible, so be sure to post daily but make your content varied and always be thinking of what is hot in the market that your audience might like to read about. We have a dedicated Marketing Manager who stays on top of all our Social media. Our very own Lucy Neal keeps all our social channels up to date including Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Meetup and of course our Website. We’re also active in various slack channels.
3. Respond promptly. Whether it’s a tweet, an email, a comment on Meetup, questions about our events, it is really important to respond to quickly and efficiently to your network. Let them know that you care. We have rolled our satisfaction surveys too which we send out to our clients and candidates to provide feedback on our service. We absolutely love getting feedback as it helps us to improve and be the best we can be.
4. We organise our own offline events. Some of you will have attended Soda Social, for those of you that haven’t, it is a popular networking event we organise that brings together some of the brightest digital technology enthusiasts to socialise and share their knowledge. This is another platform we use to keep our audience socially engaged, we have held Meetups on Machine Learning, How to Design at Scale, UX Trends, How to not suck at Devops, and many more. You can find more details on Soda Social here: www.soda-social.com
5. Interview Guest Speakers. We share knowledge and insight from some of the best digital professionals in the market. We have published interviews with Creative Directors, Service Design Leads from some of the coolest brands and creative agencies out there.
6. Invest into Corporate social responsibility (CSR). Soda are wholly committed to the pursuit of ensuring diversity and inclusion, and it is paramount in everything that we do. Soda are a member of the corporate covenant and we support Ex-Military Careers, the social enterprise offering employment and training courses to help bridge the gap from the military to civilian life. If you are a former member of the Armed forces, Trust in Soda will do its utmost to help you find the right way to build a successful career. Each consultant will give up 1-5 hours a week helping with CV advice and interview preparation. In addition, Trust in Soda also do a lot of charity work, from completing charity bike rides, Tough Mudder, Bear Grylls survival race and next year a bunch of us will be climbing Mount Killamangiro to raise money for The Mad Foundation.
7. Attend tech conferences. Not only to do we organise our own events, but we also invest into other tech conferences. Trust in Soda have been the only agency to attend and sponsor Agile.Delivery two years in a row now which is a one-day conference in London aiming to bring together the software community from developer to CIO. We are also attending the Web Summit in Lisbon this year. This gives us the opportunity to connect with our audience, expand our knowledge, stay up to date with latest trends, and connect with a network of professionals across the globe.
8. Focus on PR. Our consultants have worked with other businesses in order to share their recruitment knowledge and experience. Sam Taylor has featured in the Recruiter International Magazine discussing the benefits of going digital for employees, clients and candidates. Hayley Killengrey has also featured in Dice Tech News discussing the hottest tech skills in 2017.
9. Run Competitions. We like to have fun and encourage our network to interact and get involved in certain debates and competitions. We run competitions to engage our audience and have given away top range headphones, tickets to festivals, football matches, the theatre, numerous bottles of champagne and more.
10. Pod casts. This is something we have just started to do and we will be releasing over first podcast in the coming weeks. We see very few agencies getting involved in podcast marketing, yet ironically, according to Forbes, “podcasts are what customers have been gravitating towards and asking for over the past few years.” This will allow us to relate to our audience in a more meaningful way, not only is it a great medium to be authentic, but it helps us to show personality and express our passion towards various topics.