10 tips and tools to take care of your digital reputation.
Online reputation poses a double challenge for temporary and permanent staffing agencies and requires a rigorous strategy to be mastered. After a first article on the issues of the subject, it is now time for a practical approach.
It is inevitable: start talking about digital reputation for a company, such as a temporary or permanent staffing agency, and you quickly find yourself talking about the risks and pitfalls that lie in wait for them when they receive a negative opinion or a vindictive comment.
Why associate e-reputation with a concept of danger? Because while the benefits of a controlled, long-term digital reputation are great, the damage associated with a bad buzz can manifest itself much faster and turn out to be much more resounding. To use an image that I like: like a ship facing the waves of the ocean, the e-reputation is more solid if you take the time to build it well but is not immune to a bad wave that would destroy it in one click.
Fortunately, there are strategies to apply as well as many tools to effectively manage your digital reputation. Here are a few, applicable to staffing agencies.
What practices to adopt? 4 tips for temporary or permanent staffing agencies.
1. Perform an active watch.
Before building your boat, it is best to know in which waters it will be sailing. Therefore, to start establishing a winning e-reputation strategy, it is important to know the level at which your staffing agency is located. In other words, do a full search of everything that is said about it on the Internet. As with SEO (the position of your staffing agency’s website in search engines), it is important to select the keywords you want to survey, without limiting yourself to the name of your agency alone: a disgruntled candidate could talk about you without naming you. Think for example of the industry of your clients, or the main locations of your missions.
My advice: do not fall asleep on the day before! The inventory of the digital reputation of your temporary or permanent staffing agency is an exercise that must be regular to always be able to adjust your strategy under the best conditions. Specialized tools can help you quickly find the latest publications mentioning your agency.
2. Communication: Grasp the nettle
Do not wait for people to talk about you to express yourself! Establish a content publication strategy that highlights your staffing agency, your corporate culture, and the lines of communication that you see fit to promote. Also observe your environment: on which social media platforms do your customers find themselves? Your candidates?
Creating quality content also strongly influences your SEO – again – and allows you to put your staffing agency site at the top of some searches, giving it authority status. This is even more important when working in a competitive industry, such as staffing agencies specializing in the healthcare sector.
My advice: For a temporary and permanent staffing agency, Facebook and LinkedIn seem essential prerequisites (link in French). But other digital platforms should grab your attention, such as Google My Business , a must for any business that wants to be online today. If you have not already done so, claim your listing on Google my business so that you can complete your business profile and improve your positioning. In addition, we can also think of Glassdoor, a site that collects reviews from employees – former and current – of a company and quickly allows a visitor to form a review, which is not always objective.
3. Encourage clients and candidates to give a review…
In contact with the clients of your staffing agency as well as with the candidates who carry out the assignments, you are in the best position to gather each other’s opinions. For example, ask for opinions after each end of the mission.
In 2020, in North America, more than 2 in 3 consumers left a review for a local business. Even more interesting: BrightLocal shows that of the 73% of consumers who were asked by the company itself to leave a review, more than 70% wrote one.
My advice: Go for a specialized solution that allows you to practice a funnel strategy for writing reviews. This software facilitates the drafting of the opinion by the candidate and / or the client and above all allows the agency to filter the comments made: positive opinions are published, while negative opinions can give rise to a call to obtain Additional Information. However, you should be careful with the cost of such tools, which can quickly go up very high. The Pro version of GatherUp remains affordable, as does Ovation, a theme from Thrive, which has the advantage of being integrated into your agency’s WordPress.
4. … and respond to comments.
The same study from BrightLocal reveals that it is important for your staffing agency to respond to the opinions left by your clients or candidates and that without too much delay: 61% of people who left a review in 2020 expect a response within the first 3 days. It also means responding to negative reviews, whether they come from a dissatisfied customer or an unhappy candidate. Specialists in human resources, temporary and permanent staffing agencies are well placed to exercise diplomacy when the time comes to calm a situation.
My advice: opt for formal answers but not formatted. Adopt a general response template for each type of dissatisfaction, which you then personalize according to the specific situation of the client or candidate. This model can have an invariable construction: start by apologizing; express your desire to improve the situation; move the rest of the conversation to a private bubble by inviting the other party to contact you offline.
What tools are best suited to temporary or permanent staffing agencies?
E-reputation tools monitor what is being said about your staffing agency on the Internet for you. While not all are created equal, most of them offer similar functionality and so it is especially in the small details that the big differences lie. Here I offer you a selection of free or paid tools which, in my opinion, are adapted to the realities of a temporary or permanent staffing agency.
Keep in mind, however, that a tool is only effective when used properly: having the best food processor on the market at home is not enough to make you a real cordon bleu. Therefore the results analysis must still be done regularly and give rise to actions in line with your business strategy.
Which free tools to choose to monitor your staffing agency’s digital reputation?
Google Alerts
If it is certainly the most famous tool, it is because it belongs to that category of tools which one can hardly do without. Fast and reliable, Google Alerts offers the advantage of being easily configured. Enter the subject on which you want to monitor and receive an email as soon as a mention is made including these keywords.
Good to know: you can configure as many alerts as you want.
Its negative point: Google Alerts’ “ear” does not hear what is whispered about your staffing agency on social networks or in discussion forums.
Social Mention
Sleek style but an impressive engine hidden under its hood: Social Mention is the Lexus of online reputation monitoring tools. Above all, it is a great complement to Google Alerts, but it also allows you to monitor different channels. After entering the keywords in the search bar, a comprehensive dashboard allows you to narrow down the results.
Good to know: among the information given about a search, Social Mention offers a positioning of the general sentiment associated with the keywords entered: positive, negative or neutral. A great way to quickly find out what is being said about you.
Its negative point: the display of the results of a query can seem confusing at first, and like any good tool, requires the user to take the time to learn how to use it properly for it to be effective.
Talkwalkers Alerts
Because diversity is important, and for those who find that the web giants are already taking too much space in their daily lives, Talkwalkers Alerts is arguably the best alternative to Google Alerts. Completely free, it offers more advanced search features than most similar free solutions and that makes it a strong competitor.
Good to know: To refine a query, Talkwalkers Alerts takes Boolean operators into account and allows you to apply filters to the search results.
Its negative point: although free, the tool still requires the user to create an account to display the results of a search. But with regular use, this setback is quickly forgotten!
Are there some paid solutions adapted to staffing agencies ?
While free monitoring tools can already effectively monitor the reputation of your temporary or permanent staffing agency, they also know their limits. In instance social media monitoring is often not supported in free solutions, although this is a key sector for employment agencies. That is why it can be worth investing in a good tool, if it is used to its full potential.
Mention
Mention is presented as a comprehensive tool, which not only ensures monitoring, but also has a powerful statistical analysis section, which allows, for example, to compare its agency to competitors according to several criteria. This allows you to know the market trends to adjust your strategy. Another advantage is the possibility of configuring the reception of alerts in real time, even for social networks. This makes Mention an even more robust solution than Google Alerts, if you decide to pay for it.
Hootsuite
When it comes to social media monitoring, Hootsuite is one of the favorite contenders. A dashboard allows you to manage your presence on major social networks, including LinkedIn – which makes it an important asset for temporary and permanent staffing agencies. Without replacing a real content publishing strategy, Hootsuite still provides real-time insight into your agency’s reputation on social media.
Netvibes
A complete solution for monitoring the reputation of its staffing agency, Netvibes‘ major interest is also to offer the possibility of monitoring that of its competitors, both in the news and on social networks. So, if your strategy focuses on positioning your agency in relation to others, Netvibes brings interesting added value, in addition to offering in-depth analysis results integrated into a user-friendly dashboard.
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