How to Use Social Media to Recruit Truck Drivers in 2022

Trucking companies are using social media to recruit truck drivers on a daily basis, but just a few of them do it right. In this blog post, we're going to teach you the best practices on how to use social media effectively to recruit truck drivers. Stay tuned!

Effective Social Media Recruiting Starts With a Goal Setting

When it comes to social media recruiting, many businesses make the mistake of thinking that just creating a profile and starting to post is enough. However, in order to be successful, you need to set goals and create a strategy for how you will achieve them. Without a goal, it’s difficult to know what you’re working towards or what success looks like.

Your social media recruiting goals should be aligned with your business goals, and knowing stuff like:

1. What type of truck drivers do you want to recruit,
2. Where do they live, their needs and habits,
3. What type of content do they consume daily,

Will help you craft highly engaging content that will help your advertising efforts.

Learn as much as you can and turn it into a plan stating what you want to achieve.

A simple but strategic plan could sound like this: I want to recruit 20 company truck drivers monthly, 40 miles radius around Chicago. I've screened around the internet and social media accounts and found out they engage the most with ______. They also react greatly to _______. That's the type of content I want to post, and I will post it ___ times a week.

Picking the Best Social Media Network to build effective social media presence and target truck drivers (start with ONE)

There are many social media networks out there, and it can be difficult to know which one to start with. The most important thing is to make sure that you are using a social media platform that your target audience is active on. This will ensure that your ads are seen by the right people and that you’re not wasting your time and money on networks that no one is using.

When it comes to recruiting truck drivers, the best network to use, by far, is Facebook. With over 2 billion active users, hundreds of thousands of trucking industry-related groups it’s the perfect place to tager truck drivers.

Runner ups are: Linkedin, Youtube, and Instagram

Extra tip: Always start with just one social media platform, master it, and then involve the second one if needed. That way, you can focus on getting results and not learning about new social media platforms over and over again.

Organic Posts vs Paid Ads

There are pros and cons to using organic posts and paid ads when recruiting truck drivers. Let's take a look at the pros and cons of each:

Organic Posts: Pros

• They're free, which means you can reach a number of people without spending any money.
• Truck Drivers are more likely to trust organic content since it's not sponsored.
• Posts that receive a lot of engagement will be seen by more people.

Organic Posts: Cons

• It can be difficult to generate a lot of engagement with organic posts.
• Your posts will not reach as truck drivers as paid ads will.

Paid Ads: Pros

• You can target specific demographics, including people who live in certain areas or who work in certain industries.
• Paid ads are seen by more people than organic posts.
• You can track how many people saw your ad and how many clicked on it.

Paid Ads: Cons

• They can be a bit expensive, especially if you want to reach a large audience.
• Some people may be hesitant to click on ads.
• You need to continually invest money in order to keep your ads running (but it pays off at large!).

Start Recruiting on Social Media with organic content and paid ads

Now that you know what social media network to use, what are pros and cons of organic and paid advertisement are, and have set some goals, it’s time to start creating content. The most important thing to remember is that your content needs to be engaging if you want truck drivers to click on it.

Here are a few tips for creating engaging truck driver recruiting content:

1. Make sure your content is relevant to truck drivers.
2. Write catchy headlines that will make people want to read your posts.
3. Use images and videos to break up your text and keep people engaged.
4. Share stories and experiences from real truck drivers.
5. Keep your posts short and to the point.
6. Use hashtags to help people find your content.

Analyze and optimize your Social Media Efforts

Once you have created some content and started to recruit truck drivers on social media, it’s important to analyze and optimize your efforts. This will help you to determine what works and what doesn’t, and help you to make changes that will improve your results.

Here are a few things you should analyze:

• How many people are clicking on your ads?
• How many people are engaging with your content?
• What type of content is getting the most engagement?
• Which social media network is providing the best results?
• How much money are you spending on paid ads?
• What is your CPL (Cost Per Lead)?

Make Changes Based on Your Analysis

Once you have analyzed your social media efforts, it’s time to make changes based on your findings. If you find that a certain type of content is getting more engagement than others, then you should create more of that type of content. If you find that paid ads are providing better results than organic posts (and they certainly do), then you should invest more money in paid ads.

The most important thing is to continually test and analyze your efforts so that you can improve your results. It will help you recruit drivers more efficiently.

Extra tips and tricks for getting new drivers

Make sure your recruiting team is set for success

Before rolling your ads out, you have to be aware of a few things.

If done properly, ads will start getting you leads right away. An average truck driver makes multiple job applications throughout the day. Responding to applications too late can be an ROI destroyer, and also hurt the reputation of your trucking company instead of bringing you new drivers. The same applies to messages and comments.

Your ad copy will affect your lead's quality

Did you know your ad copy can determine the quality of your leads? Saying, for example, we pay 0.60 CPM will cut off the majority of leads that consider this as unacceptable.

Make sure what you saying is true

We've seen a lot of transportation companies literary trying to make things up in their social media posts, just to get the leads. Don't do that. Maybe it can work for a day or two, but the only way to maintain the high reputation of your trucking company and still get to potential drivers is to say the truth, verifiable once they go online checking up on you or getting with your recruiting team on the phone.

Make it easy for truck drivers to apply

Always include a link to your online application form on all of your social media pages.

Keep your social media pages up to date

Regularly update your content and make sure that everything is accurate and up to date.

Build a website

A truck driver seeing you have a website with an online application, will more likely perceive your company as reputable. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly so that visitors can easily access it from their phones.

Conclusion: Go with Facebook it's still unbeatable

Even after enforcing special ad categories, Facebook is still the best social media network for truck driver lead generation. Period.

Using lead gen forms or messenger ads will bring you almost instant results. Try it out for yourself and see how many leads you can get in a day.

Hire a Social Media Agency to recruit drivers more efficiently

Although the vast majority of trucking companies give it a try on their own, truck driver recruiting via social media is not a piece of cake and should be done by a professional Social Media Agency for Trucking Companies. Most of the in-house teams lack either experience or training to get better results. That's why it looks slow, you get higher prices per lead on your job opportunities, miss out on prospective drivers and you quit before succeeding.