A practical guide on recruiting community members using social media platforms.

By: Narek Khachatryan, Product Designer

Community recruitment is a critical first step in building the right audience to gain the right insights. With more and more community engagement and conversations about brands happening on social media, it is essential to recognize these social interactions as opportunities to talk with your most outspoken brand advocates and champions on their turf.

We’ve identified some practical methods for recruiting members for your Fuel Cycle community using social media platforms. The tactics are unique to the culture and style of each respective social media platform. With a multi-channel recruitment effort and the tactics outlined below, you can expect a more diverse community that will, in turn, better help your research objectives. Fortunately, with a mobile responsive platform like Fuel Cycle, the experience and transition from social media to your private community are frictionless for both community members and your organization.


Simplify Your Screener

Before you begin a recruitment campaign, we recommend a few quick tips to ensure you get the highest rate of recruitment regarding quantity and quality:

  • Keep your screener short and sweet. Asking fewer questions ensures a higher completion rate.
  • Be critical about the questions you include. If it’s not a true screener question, consider omitting it. You can always ask those questions afterward with Quick Polls and Login Polls.
  • Consider your social media recruitment channels when screening—ensure you are recruiting to an audience that is likely to be a good match. For example, Snapchat is typically skewed to a younger demographic so if you’re screening for older participants it may not be a channel worth pursuing.

Facebook

  • A great method is to add a Learn More button to your Facebook Page linking to the recruitment link. Simply make sure you’re logged in with an authorized account that has access.
  • Another great tactic is to promote fun and inspirational posts and add a small recruitment note at the end, such as, “Interested in fun ways to contribute to our future products? Apply to join our private community,” to direct them to your recruitment screener.

Twitter

  • Create clever recruitment tweets and promote it to your followers with a Website Visit Campaign
  • Encourage community managers to identify potential community members and invite them with DM’s (direct messages) and recruitment links.

Instagram

  • Design beautiful rich media posts and promote them with a Learn More link to the recruitment link.
  • Encourage community managers to identify potential community members and invite them with DM’s and recruitment links.
  • Instagram doesn’t allow links in captions, so make sure to add recruitment links to your bio and direct users there (e.g. “Click the link in our bio and apply to join our community”)

Snapchat: Ads

Snap Ads are a great way to recruit a younger demographic as its generally skewed to younger users. One way to execute recruitment is to produce an inspiration recruitment video and promote it with Snap Publisher, where they can swipe to be taken to the recruitment screener natively within Snapchat.


Snapchat: Snapcode

You can take advantage of Snap Code, as well. A Snap Code is essentially a QR code that Snapchat uses as either a Follow button or for link direction. You can print it or post it online, and users can snap it with their mobile devices and get directed to your recruitment screener.

You can try it for yourself by snapping the image below with your own device. You’ll be directed to fuelcycle.com.


Youtube

Organic Recruitment

If your company already has a YouTube channel, the best way to recruit on there is to produce and publish compelling recruitment videos to share to your subscribers. Moreover, video publishing is a great way to share what your company is working on. People most likely to discover your content are likely already searching your brand name or something related to it.


TrueView Discovery Ad

Create promotional recruitment videos and promote them with TrueView in-stream and TrueView Discovery by YouTube.

YouTube Advertising is managed through Google AdWords. With AdWords, you can create companion banners, or in-stream ads, to display on your videos or any other based on audience, demographic, or more.


TrueView Overlay Ads

Add Call-to-Action overlays that display during playback. A viewer can click it to be directed to the recruitment screener. With AdWords-backed video advertising, you can control who you target with the same level of detail you can expect from Google Search AdWords.


Watch Your Cadence

An important part of a successful social media recruitment campaign is knowing how to manage your cadence and to not over exhaust your audience. People have a low affinity for seeing repetitive messaging.


Read the Platform Guidelines

Each platform has its own rules, requirements, and guidelines. Read through them to avoid accidentally abusing any of the services or having your ads or posts taken down.


Need Help Setting Up a Recruitment Campaign?

Learn how to create a recruitment campaign with custom screener links for each recruitment channel by visiting the Fuel Cycle Knowledge Base or reach out to your Customer Success Manager.