Learn how publishing houses on LinkedIn stack up to best practices for attracting new hires.
Let’s say you’re looking to hire a new assistant editor at your publishing company. What’s the best way to get word out to potential candidates about the job opening? Many companies use LinkedIn posts to inform their network that they are hiring. But what should hiring posts on LinkedIn about publishing jobs look like?
Content strategies for LinkedIn posts
I decided to investigate the current trends in how publishing companies write hiring posts on LinkedIn and how well they are using the strategies recommended online by social media marketers.
These social media strategies (recommended by Michelle Charello in Essentials of Social Media Marketing and by Hootsuite and Recruiting Social) include using hashtags, tagging people and businesses, asking questions, using a call-to-action statement, writing posts that are 150 characters or less, and including a link (preferably embedded in the post). For posts about jobs in particular, Hootsuite also recommends naming your audience.
Strategies currently used in the publishing industry
To investigate how publishing companies are writing their hiring posts, I categorized the content in 34 LinkedIn job posts from various publishing companies into 15 different content strategies.
These are the LinkedIn company pages I collected the posts from and the number of posts I took from each:
- HarperCollins (5)
- Penguin Random House (5)
- Hachette Book Group (4)
- Scholastic (1)
- Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (1)
- Workman Publishing (3)
- Usborne Publishing (4)
- Sterling Publishing (1)
- Octopus Publishing Group (3)
- Hachette UK (5)
- Simon & Schuster UK (2)
For the larger publishing companies, I chose five posts randomly; for the smaller publishing companies, I analyzed all of the available job posts. I then calculated what percentage of the posts used each strategy to see what LinkedIn content strategies are prevalent in the publishing industry. The strategies used in the posts that are also one of the recommended strategies I listed earlier are in bold.
| Most Used | Used Somewhat | Least Used | |||
| Including a link | 97% | Using exclamation points | 44% | Writing posts 150 characters or less | 21% |
| Naming the specific team that is hiring | 79% | Using hashtags | 44% | Asking questions | 12% |
| Using a call-to-action statement | 65% | Naming the audience | 35% | Using emojis | 9% |
| Listing the job duties | 35% | Including a diversity statement | 6% | ||
| Using adjectives to entice job seekers | 32% | Tagging people and businesses | 3% | ||
Both links and call-to-action statements are LinkedIn strategies recommended by social media marketers, so publishing companies are doing well on these points.
However, some other recommended strategies include tagging people and businesses, asking questions, and writing posts that are 150 characters or fewer. Less than a fourth of the posts used these strategies. And only 35% of the posts named their audience—a strategy recommended specifically for posts about jobs.
So, there is still a long way to go for many publishing companies on LinkedIn.
Why does this matter?
When posting content on LinkedIn, it’s important for companies to see what their competitors are doing. But publishing companies should also be using more of the recommended LinkedIn strategies. Companies should write short LinkedIn posts that name their audience and use call-to-action links and statements to communicate with job seekers effectively.
Remember, that potential assistant editor you’re looking for will be more likely to apply if your hiring posts on LinkedIn are engaging and professional.
If you want to learn more about how to effectively use LinkedIn for your company, check out the blog posts by Hootsuite and Recruiting Social.