Working with recruiters on a daily basis gives me the opportunity to still be involved in the day to day world, without having to do the job myself.

There’s a lot of peacocking in recruitment; who has the highest deal value, billings, number of contractors out etc. We’ve all done it.

Something I’ve noticed over the years is recruiters looking to spark conversation and boost engagement to drive traffic to their LinkedIn profile.

The idea behind this is great, but if it’s another form of making yourself look ‘better’ than other recruiters then you should probably go back to the drawing board and start again.

The first question I ask anyone who is looking to produce content is the following:

What are you trying to achieve with your content?

What is the emotional response you’re looking to evoke?

What is your call to action?

The reason I ask this is because the response I usually get is “well, I don’t know, I want my online presence to look good and have a strong brand”.

This is a great starting point, but you need to be more specific.

Unfortunately, your clients don’t care about how many likes you get on a post, especially if it’s a picture of your toast and a ‘hot job’ that you want to share with your network.

These kinds of posts may gather you 100s of likes with people saying “wow, love your toast mate” – but I highly doubt it’s going to get a like from Mr Client who has a CEO role you’d like to retain.

Your likes will probably be other recruiters – a large chunk of them who work in your company.

The idea of posting content isn’t about the amount of likes you get, especially at the beginning. It’s the value that you are sharing with each post and ensuring that you have thought about what you’re trying to achieve with it.

If it gains 10 likes from key people you want to impress, that’s way more valuable than 100.

From those 10 likes they have automatically exposed you to their networks, which I can guarantee will be filled with the types of people you want to impress and win business from.

Having a strong online presence and likes and follows is something that you achieve gradually, so you need to start with attracting the correct audience.

Start thinking of your content as a business development tool. It gives you so much more to talk about with a client when you get them on the phone.

They’d much rather hear about an article that you read which would directly impact them.

They’d much rather hear that you actively share monthly e-shots with industry related news.

They’d much rather hear that you can add value because everything you share is well researched and to a high standard.

Just like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter – you shouldn’t be measuring yourself by the quantity of your engagements. Measure yourself by the quality of your engagements.