When Jay Conrad Levinson first published Guerrilla Marketing in 1983, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was a mere 7 years old, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even born. So what does this book have to do with recruitment marketing via social media? In a word: everything.

Guerrilla Marketing separates tactics and approaches for large Fortune 500-type companies from those of small businesses for two main reasons. First, small businesses are more agile and generally have less red tape when making decisions. Second, small businesses have to make do with shoestring budgets.

For small businesses, the size of your company may determine how many resources you have. And chances are you’re working with a budget that’s smaller than a typical consumer marketing budget. Even so, Levinson encourages marketers to embrace this situation as it forces them to think outside of the box and stretch a budget as far as it will go. Social media is a great way to stretch those recruitment marketing dollars because it allows you to find and target job seekers who are interested in your employment opportunities for a relatively low cost.

In his book, Levinson shares “Sixteen Monumental Secrets of Guerrilla Marketing,” which serve as key tactics for small business marketing professionals. Our favorite three below are designed to showcase how you can apply his strategies to your social media recruitment efforts:

Think of it as an investment

While social media marketing is generally a cost-efficient strategy, don’t confuse this with free. Depending on your goals and overall strategy, you may want to consider hiring an emerging media specialist or consultant to help start your efforts in the right direction, purchasing advertising to help gain fans or followers, developing an app to further connect with candidates, or any number of other paid solutions.

Commit to your strategy

Once you’ve developed your strategy, stick to it. Growing a thriving online community can take months, if not years, before it can reach critical mass. If you don’t see an immediate surge in applicants through your community, be patient. Just like traditional advertising, social media is used primarily as a branding tool, so the results in increased brand awareness and connectivity with potential and current employees will grow steadily over the coming months, not in one immediate tidal wave.

Keep in mind, however, commitment should not be blind. Consider having quarterly checkpoints to evaluate your strategy, and adjust it as needed.

Commit to keeping your efforts consistent

Levinson stresses consistent advertising. If your budget only allows for 50 ads a year, spread the ads throughout the year instead of running all of them in a single push. Similarly, keep updates and engagement on social sites consistent. This way, you begin to create a familiarity with your audience. Often times, social media accounts will lay dormant until a company is running a promotion or needs to get the word out about a hard-to-fill job. But keeping a consistent stream of content is essential to a thriving social media community.

These are just a few tactics to consider for your social media strategy. How else can guerrilla marketing help your employment marketing?

Not too terribly long ago, life was a lot harder. People spent hours growing, finding and hunting their food, only to spend equal amounts of time cooking and preserving it so they wouldn’t starve in the winter. But as technology progressed, it brought along a couple of the more noteworthy inventions in recent history: the refrigerator and the microwave. Now, with the pop of a box and the push of a button, people can eat food that is grown anywhere, anytime, whenever they want.

And even more recently, something else amazing happened. While it seemed that the possibilities were endless, people started to realize that they didn’t need to be. Instead of wanting processed foods that are grown, frozen, shipped and eaten out of season, our culture has taken a step back and has begun to embrace fresh, locally grown foods.

Believe it or not, creating content on the web isn’t that much different. Providing a regular diet of fresh, organic content is the best way for you to stay engaged with your employees as well as active and passive job seekers, and grow your company’s social media presence. Because most interaction takes place on users’ News Feeds or timelines instead of a profile or page, posting new content is often the only way to stay connected with your online community on a regular basis. In fact, Facebook users are 40 to 150 times more likely to consume content via their News Feeds rather than visit actual pages. Fresh content also simply lets users know, “Hey – We’re here!” since a page with stale content or a stream of RSS-fed items doesn’t assure users that it’s a community where they’re likely to find new, useful information or have their questions answered.

Aside from keeping your company top of mind for job seekers, fresh content can truly differentiate one brand from another, separating you from your competition. Say, for instance, that you’re a relatively small lifestyle clothing company and you keep losing your target talent to your talent competitors – three more established clothing companies that also have a focus on lifestyle. When you obtain your target talent and hire them, 90 percent of individuals to remain loyal employees for at least five years. Meanwhile, your talent competitors experience consistently high turnovers every other month. Instead of simply bashing your competitors by announcing that they have much higher turnover rates or that their former employees are now a part of your team, take a different approach. Use social media to invite your current employees to share what they love most about working for your company. Interview individuals who have been with your team for years, highlighting their growth and career paths at the company. You could also take a flip cam to various retail locations to conduct store spotlight, featuring both employees and shoppers. It’s through these types of content and more that you can use social media to share your company story, allowing you to increase brand awareness, brand influence and your recruitment reach as well as build relationships with those in your community.

As a whole, to be successful in recruiting on social media, companies must produce engaging content that earns attention, creates trust, establishes credibility and authority, and, above all, converts fans/followers into people who take action. Sticking to the fresh food analogy, here are some ways to make the most of the content you’re producing.

Organic is *Usually* Better

Most people would agree that foods left to develop in their natural environments provide the most nutrients. The same is true of content. While third-party tools can be useful to cue up a large chunk of posts, studies show that using such devices can reduce engagement on Facebook by 88 percent. Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to determine what appears in any given person’s News Feed; it is based on overall interaction, the type of content, and when it is posted. The algorithm does not prioritize content posted through third-party APIs, thus lessening such posts’ exposure.

When creating content for Facebook, it’s important to keep two other nutritional strategies in mind as well: variety does a body good, and watch your portion size. Recent studies show that status-only updates receive 94 percent higher engagement. But that doesn’t mean it’s all you should post. After all, Facebook users have the option to personalize their News Feed settings, so using a variety of content – such as links, photos, and videos – can help ensure you’re reaching the largest possible audience. Similarly, don’t gorge yourself, and keep updates concise and to the point – posts with 88 characters or less receive 66 percent more engagement, according to Social Media Today.

It should be noted that other social networking sites, like Twitter, don’t rank posts the same way as Facebook. Therefore, using tools like HootSuite or TweetDeck will enable you to schedule posts at different times of the day without severely impacting engagement.

Consistency is Key

Not eating all day and then binging on two pieces of chocolate cake at night is a great way to whack your metabolism right off track. Meanwhile, a consistent diet with a normal calorie intake is key to staying healthy.

Instead of pouring a week’s worth of content onto your account at once, space out posts to maintain a consistent level of engagement. It’s recommended to post 0.5 times per day, meaning most accounts should post 3 to 4 times per week.­ In addition, post around noon local time, and on Wednesdays and Saturdays to get the highest levels of engagement.

Content has a shelf life

We’ve all been there. You’re starving, you go to the fridge, and all that’s there is an iffy box of week-old leftovers. In today’s world, as new numbers and studies are readily available online, stats have a short shelf life. While it’s tempting to schedule posts months in advance with a third-party API tool, content should be recent and relevant to current trends and events. Make sure out-of-date content is pushed out of sight on your social pages by updating them regularly.

It’s All About the Experience

One of my favorite nutrition books, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, argues that the experience of eating is equally as important as the food itself. Relaxing with a glass red wine and enjoying good company are ultimately better for your health than eating on the run or in your car. Social media should strive to create a similar experience and engage fans in two-way conversation – not just shove content down their throats. After all, 80 percent of active and passive job seekers say they will not follow a company on social media if posts are irrelevant, uninvited or solely self-serving.  Asking questions, listening to your fans, and answering their questions are some ways to create a strong community online.

At the end of the day, each community is different. Finding just the right recipe often takes trial and error, so don’t be afraid to experiment identify and your target talent and create content specifically for them. What types of engaging content have you used on your accounts lately?

As anyone who has found themselves knees-deep in a friend’s tagged photos can tell you, social media sites can be addicting. So it’s no surprise that this newer medium scares the pants off of many companies, causing them to block sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at the office.

In fact, according to a 2010 survey by OpenDNS, Facebook was blocked by 23 percent of the provider’s business users, making it the most blocked website last year, beating out Playboy and Limewire.

This trend comes in stark contrast with the 2011’s projected $3.08 billion in social media advertising revenue from companies screaming, “I want to play, too!” And it’s making me think something here is amiss.

When stripped down, isn’t business simply all about communicating? Advertising the features of your latest product, talking to potential employees about job opportunities, fostering relationships with clients and vendors – it’s no wonder social media is the new forefront; it enables this communication to take place in a much more organic way. But companies need to harness its power internally just as much as they have begun to embrace it externally.

Is your company still weary of unblocking social media channels at the office? Consider the following:

• Is social media really a time suck? Whether they’re visiting the kitchen 20 times, online shopping, or heading outside for a few smokes, employees will find one way or another to take a break from work. And they should – numerous studies have shown that short breaks actually improve productivity and allow workers to better focus on the task at hand. Employees who are able to use break time in a reasonable way (read: the ones you keep around) will be happier for their ability to connect with their friends at work.
• Social media connects employees. The way people consume and share information is changing. Would your company ever dream of blocking informational sites like eMarketer or SHRM? Unlikely. Social networks have surpassed email as the number one online activity, and people are using the sites to learn about relevant information. Think your employees are just using Twitter to upload pictures of their latest meal? Think again. When used with a purpose, tools like Twitter lists can help to curate relevant industry content, allowing your employees to share updates with coworkers, and, overall, make your workforce smarter and more connected within the industry. 
• Help brand advocates show their love.  Where are your employees gaining momentum right now? What excites them? What articles are they reading?  While social media is often “owned” by a company’s Human Resources, Corporate Communications or Marketing department, the involvement should not end there. Many brand advocates are employees, and while many companies ask employees to wait until they get home to interact with the company’s social media sites, a much stronger connection can be felt when employees are able to jump into these accounts while at work and in a business-minded mode.
• Fuel your social media launch. Imagine you’ve spent the last several months collaborating on the design, content and strategy of your brand’s new social media site. But in an email announcing the site to employees, you note that they must wait until they get home to join and interact because the site is blocked at the office. What awaits your employees after they leave? Kids, appointments, social engagements – any number of things can get in the way of them joining the site and, therefore, your newly launched page may only attract a handful of employees.

On the flip side, I’ve run several campaigns with large and small companies that do not block social media sites at the office. By promoting their new page through mediums like internal emails and their intranet – along with some extra encouragement via contests – pages can gain hundreds of fans within just a few weeks of launching. Now, these pages have strong fan bases as well as a wealth of testimonials that are coming from the employees – not from an official corporate voice.

If you’re still hesitant about allowing your employees to dive into social media at work, creating a defined social media policy can help ease the fears of naysayers. This will give employees the confidence and freedom to know that what they are talking about is approved and encouraged; it will also help give you piece of mind that your employees are using social media at the office to discuss appropriate issues.

Do you think the benefits of allowing employees to access social media sites outweigh the costs? Let me know your thoughts!