I do love a guest post from Lisa Jones. I’m quite a Twitter fan (I post as me and as @ukrecruiter), but is Lisa right? Is Twitter Stupid?!
Twitter, bless it, has changed shape and scope since being born – its history is pretty compelling (and short!) It even seems that it might not be around for much longer. The terrible stats speak for themselves:
- Only 29.2% of US citizens use it – shockingly poor – I don’t get out of bed for anything less than 50%!
- Tweeters only spend 9:28 minutes per day on it, looking at on average 6 pages per session.
- In 2011 Bullhorn Reach reported that Recruiters were 3 times as likely to receive applications from Twitter than LinkedIn
- It has more users than LinkedIn and people spend more time on it that LinkedIn but the recruitment world is still querying its existence
Twitter Deserves a Bad Rap!
Twitter’s reputation in the recruitment world is littered with ironic statements:
- Why do I want to know what my candidates and clients are thinking?
- Twitter is busier and people are more engaged at the weekend, and I only work Monday to Friday so it’s pointless
- Yes, I use Twitter: I add my job to my job posting software and click the Twitter button
- I’ve heard that if I put an image or a video with a tweet I increase my engagement levels by 2 times – what a pain!
- Even though I have 140 characters, apparently I get higher engagement if I use less than 100 – I can’t get my point across that succinctly
- I have nothing to say – I reserve my opinions and ideas for face to face meetings
- Someone told me that my tweets have a 12x higher chance of being retweeted if I ask for it, and 23x higher if I actually spell out the word “retweet” – I’m too shy to ask for that
- It’s great for posting jobs, but I just don’t seem to get any applications
- I follow everything in a skirt and still can’t get a date
- I haven’t got time to talk to people on Twitter, I’m far too busy advertising jobs and making cold calls…
And the biggest shock of all came recently when Twitter released a new feature – allowing everyone to DM you (if you so wish). I just don’t know how recruiters are going to cope with that level of direct access to them. It creates all sorts of issues around approachability – candidates and clients being able to get in touch secretly with recruiters without connecting could cause a whole world of trouble.
I’m waiting for the second shoe to drop! Twitter can’t go on like this – can it? 😉
A very condensed, interesting and correct analysis of the mighty Twitter, Lisa.
The sad fact of this Social Empiric Media vessel, is that by paying some Tech-Whizz on Fiver, you can gain up to 100,000 followers – many who are not real. This is partly the blame for less time spent searching for the Useful, because, like YouTube, a singular User thirsts and thrives for Subscribers and Followers – pretty much like LinedIn too.
Very interesting statistics, if not perturbing, but very doubtful that Twitter will fall with the billions of dollars of investment they receive and make every year. Thanks you.