We all know what it’s like to fall into a social media wormhole and lose valuable time. While social media is a top recruiting tool, it’s also one of the biggest culprits of wasting time at work. As a recruiter, do you have the tools to avoid the time suck? Here are some tips to stay productive on social media.

2016 will be the Year of the Candidate Experience. With a recovering job market and more Millennials entering the workforce, success will be all about providing a fast, engaging experience for candidates. The hottest technologies will meet these candidates where they are (on their phones, mostly) and give them the connection and ease they expect. Take a look at what’s hot in staffing and recruiting for 2016.

We’ve loved providing valuable content on our site for you this year. Here are our 5 most popular posts of 2015. Happy reading!

Business communication is evolving at the pace of communications technology, in other words, very fast. Here are 5 predictions for business communications next year.

If we were to distill many of the major business trends of 2015 into one word, it would be this: personalization. Virtually every form of interaction a company has with its customers is becoming more personalized, from content targeted toward specific people at specific times, to mobile apps with personalized user experience designs.

If you’re in healthcare or finance, or if you use email for commercial purposes, you know all about regulatory compliance. You also probably have internal systems in place (like call recording and email archiving) so you can keep an eye on how your salespeople and customer service agents are representing your brand.

How many text messages have you received today? Did you read and respond to them instantly? Thought so.

Text messaging is the #1 thing people do with their cell phones. Across all age groups, people send and receive an average of 41.5 texts per day. Younger demographics are pulling this number even higher -- 18-to-29 year-olds average 87.7 texts per day, while teenagers top 100. And unlike for email and phone calls, we are all incapable of ignoring text messages -- 98% of them are read, almost all within 3 minutes of receipt.

We asked 45 staffing professionals how they communicated with prospects and then created  this report to offer insight into strategies that your firm can use to grow faster.

You’re already sending business text messages to reach your target audiences more quickly and effectively. Why not also set up personalized templates? It’s faster for you, and it makes your customers feel like a million bucks.

Here are nine cut-and-paste templates you can use right away. Go ahead and connect!

We talk a lot about text messaging as a new and exciting form of two-way business communication. Indeed, business texting is a great way to schedule appointments, send quick welcome and thank you messages, and just generally keep the lines of communication open between you and your prospects.

But text messages can do more than that. Just like with email and social media, you can use text messages to deliver valuable content.

Every new communication technology comes with its own etiquette challenges, especially when that technology is applied to the business world. Business text messaging is particularly tricky, because while business communications are more formal, text messaging is the ultimate in casual.

Texting is also a very direct line of communication -- you are literally dropping a message right into someone’s pocket! This is what makes texting so effective. But it’s also what can make texting feel intrusive if it isn’t done properly.

You’ve seen all the latest research on smartphone usage. To sum it up, the phones are taking over. So much so that Wired contributor Christina Bonnington recently predicted that within two years, smartphones will replace computers entirely.

You ignore mail, voicemail, and even email. But there’s just something about text messaging you can’t resist. It’s the same for your prospects and customers -- the open rate for text messaging is an extraordinary 98%!

One of our friends, Staffing Robot, is exhibiting at SIA, and we’re excited to see them.

Premier staffing firm accelerates sales and cuts response times using new sales texting platform 

Now you can see just how effective your text messages have been! Using TextUs.Biz Analytics, you can track not only your sent and received texts, but also the response rate of Group Broadcasts!

Sales isn’t easy -- especially today when competitors are around every corner and you are all vying for people’s very, very limited time. Fortunately, many tools are available to help you take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way.

Here are five sales tools you can’t live without.

You know those emails you get that begin: “Hi there, I’m just checking in….” Don’t you hate that?

Newsflash: Your prospects hate it too.

Sales follow-up emails are important:

• 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact.
• But...only 10% of salespeople make more than three contacts.

However, that doesn’t mean they need to be horrible. Here are five guidelines for writing effective, non-annoying sales follow-up emails.

We all make mistakes (we’re human!), but when it comes to your sales team, the wrong mistakes can be costly. Here are five of the worst mistakes salespeople make and how to avoid them.

LinkedIn is an excellent place to prospect for sales -- it gives you an amazing amount of access to details about people’s professional lives and allows you to specifically target your messages to reach exactly the right people at exactly the right time.

But LinkedIn is also a challenge. Every decision maker you send a message to is probably receiving messages from many other salespeople as well, some of whom are probably your competitors. Fortunately for you, many of your competitors are writing terrible LinkedIn messages that immediately land in the trash. This provides an opportunity for you to get ahead by crafting well-written messages that will be read.