Recruiters should embrace the three Cs of community, content and conversation when forming a corporate social networking strategy, according to Paul Harrison, managing partner at engagement practice Carve Consulting.

Speaking at ‘Social Media in Recruitment’, an event organised by online recruitment marketing consultancy Web Based Recruitment, Harrison said that successfully implementing the three Cs made the difference in terms of successfully adopting social network platforms.

Harrison’s rules for adopting a successful corporate social networking strategy are:

• Work out why you are here, what you are going to do and what you are going to say.
• Listen to online conversation and be transparent. Have open conversations between clients and customers. Understand the nature of conversations and identify the important people in those conversations.
• Work out your objectives, position your brand, work out a strategy for attracting clients and outplacement. Talk to the market and think about client care and relationship management.
• Choose the social networking platform for your business.
• Work out your plan of action
• Build a team where everyone buys into your strategy.
• Give your people the tools, so don’t block them from social networking sites.
• Choose a tone of voice indicative of your brand.
• Have offensive and defensive strategies, offensive could be around targeting candidates, while defensive could deal with how you counter negative comments.
• Integrate into other social networking sites to increase exposure.
• Measure how engaged your audience is.
• Experiment as no-one knows what the future holds, so be honest and transparent.