by Tony Burke
An Interview With Kieran Hinphey, Director of Reach Personnel International, with head office based in Co. Wicklow.
Reach is the preferred specialist recruitment consultancy for top performing candidates and companies committed to recruiting and developing top tier professionals. Their expertise ensures they understand client’s needs and strategic issues.
Kieran, how did you become so involved with using the internet and digital marketing as a form of exposure for your business?
It feels kind of necessary these days to be online in some form. Honestly, how much involved as a business you need to be is still quite daunting. With our specialty being in recruitment, LinkedIn was obvious to start with, and a website for contact info and referrals, but since then, I see merit in growing the social platforms even bigger, and focusing on our news section on our website will be the main aim to increase heading toward 2016.
Nearly everything you are involved with, ends up on your website blog. Are you addicted to Blogging?
Yes and No. Definitely more and more. As I see visitors and engagement on my site increase, I obviously want to maintain, nurture and grow that element of communication. Sometimes, I am dealing with clients in different time zones, and am blessed to deal with many clients with cultural and religious differences, so I try to keep on top of that out of respect to the many great people I meet through my business.
So, how important do you think online social engagement is for your brand?
A Lot to be fair, but with what I do for a living, it’s hard to expect too much. I know people are generally shy when it comes to leaving comments, or likes on Facebook or whatever. It is far easier to get interaction from my blog because it is a controlled environment. And I get to be the moderator, so enjoy that side of things. I see most engagement through email remarketing and use Skype a lot as a portal to speed up communication and make myself available there as priority to being always on Facebook.
How often do you update your blog and your social media?
4 or 5 times a month on the blog maybe. I am on LinkedIn every day.
We know you invested a lot of time at the end of 2014 streamlining your brand’s online presence, turning your website into a central hub. How has this benefited your workflow?
For sure, now I can post everything that comes to mind on one location, and share it to the appropriate social channel. This saves me a lot of time thinking about what may be suitable for different sites, and allows my team and I to focus on creating quality content. What I mean by that is creating something that I fell will make someone’s day that little bit better for reading our blog.
Finally, what advice would you give to companies about starting to think about investing in digital marketing?
Do it all, split test the social market and see what works. The reality is everyone is online these days in some form or another, and you had better believe before they decide to do business with you, they are googling you to find out what they need to know.
