But for recruiters who are already busy with travel, recruitment events, interview scheduling and candidate evaluations, adding a social media recruiting strategy to the mix can seem like a daunting task. Coming up with the right messages, replying to comments, and building an audience takes precious time. But when used effectively, social media can empower recruiters to build their employer brand, identify new candidates to keep talent pipelines filled, and improve hiring processes overall.

Here’s what recruiters can do to chart a course for successful social media recruiting:

Top tips for social media recruiting:

• Develop a purpose-driven social media recruiting strategy
• Use platforms that automatically schedule your posts
• Borrow content (with permission) if you don’t have time to create your own
• Highlight your employer brand to build your reputation
• Empower employees to share social content and job postings on your behalf

Build a long-term strategy

One of the secrets to using social media effectively is to post with purpose. Sharing business news, career opportunities, or entertaining links is great, but if there’s no unifying purpose behind the content, there’s no way to objectively measure the impact of your social media presence.

Whether you’re starting from scratch or refocusing existing efforts, make time to develop a long-term vision for social media recruitment. This doesn’t need to be a time-consuming chore: simply sketch out a few goals. Do you want to use social media to source passive candidates? Promote your employer brand? Earn employee referrals? Naming the “why” behind your efforts will help make your social media strategy a success.

Once you have a goal in mind, identify key metrics you’d like to hit, like increasing engagement, job applicants, or members of a talent community. With specific objectives in mind, using social media will change from a seemingly-endless task to a focused, powerful tool for engaging the right audience.

Schedule your social posts

Organizations with a strong online presence often post multiple times a day across multiple social media platforms. Frequent communication is key to building an audience, but finding time every single day share content and engage followers can overwhelm a dedicated social media manager, let alone a recruiter juggling dozens of other tasks.

There are lots of free tools to manage and measure your social recruiting initiatives. Scheduling and automatically posting social media content turns audience engagement into a manageable mission. Rather than creating manual posts every day, auto-scheduled social media posts automatically publish to your social channels on a schedule you set.

Keep your social media presence active by scheduling content to publish in advance. Set aside one day a month to draft posts, gather links, and coordinate content around key themes or seasonality.

Borrow content from industry experts

If you’re low on content to post on social media, there’s nothing wrong with borrowing (with permission, of course). Engaging industry influencers and thought leaders on social media platforms can be a great way to maintain an active online presence without having to create original content. Share links from well-regarded blogs, or comment on trending conversations from your company’s account.

Your followers are more likely to engage with content that’s already proven to be popular, and your industry peers will appreciate the share! Just don’t forget to give credit where credit is due — always tag the original content creator whenever you’re re-sharing a post on your company social media profiles.

Turn your employees into social media gurus

Let’s face it. Now might not be the right time for your company to launch a social media recruiting strategy. And that’s okay! Your organization can still build a social presence, even if you’re not posting from a corporate account.

If you don’t have time to execute a dedicated social media marketing  strategy, invite employees to share work-related content on their own. Whether it’s an article written for the company blog or links to open positions (incentivized through your employee referrals program), current employees are powerful ambassadors for sharing authentic content.

Provide regular updates with new content, as well as sample captions that employees can copy and paste onto their social media accounts. Even a few engaged team members can be the kick-start you need to  build a social media strategy.