Making Apprenticeships deliver for you

By now you will have received the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) Week information, heard all about what’s happening and been advised to “get involved”.

The good news is that Apprenticeship Week is the time when nationally everyone is made (slightly more) aware of apprenticeships through NAS efforts. So what can your College do to climb on the bandwagon and actually get some tangible results…?

Whether it’s promoting your opportunities to employers or potential apprentices on social media, here are our Top Tips from Net Natives…

• LinkedIn. If you’re not already using them, search LinkedIn Groups for businesses in your local area, join their groups and post information about the benefits of apprenticeships

Top Tip 1: Post out your apprenticeship opportunities to your LinkedIn Alumni Group (group of ex students). If you haven’t created one yet, now is as good a time to start as any.

There are plenty of apprenticeships groups on LinkedIn; join in the conversation there

• You probably are already, but quickly check that you are following the relevant local businesses and the right local “influencers” (key local people who have plenty of followers). Talk @ them and tell them what you have planned and what opportunities you have

Top Tip 1: For retweets of your apprenticeship posts on Twitter Write content that is likely to be Re-tweeted. Retweets help your messages reach a much wider audience.

Top Tip 2: Find out the # for local business events and breakfast meetings and hijack it to promote the apprenticeships. As long as you do it in a fun and informative way, they will appreciate the extra information (after all, you are trying to do good things…)

• Facebook. Set out specific periods for promoted vacancies and advertise them as an event. You can advertise your job of the week or specific apprenticeship courses you want to promote and direct users to your main website. By highlighting these “events” on your page, you will increase traffic to your site and the number of enquiries you receive.

Top Tip 1. Talk to big brands who are in your area on their main Facebook site (post links back to the site). As before, if your reasons are to educate and inform, you won’t be seen to be spamming

Top Tip 2: Make it fun… ask your fans: who would you most like to work for? What would be your ideal job? What would your business card look like?

• Google. Make sure you bid on the right terms (at the moment only NAS are bidding on “Apprenticeships”). Be careful to bid correctly and don’t use negative words in your advert copy.

So what are your ideas? How are you going to make apprenticeships deliver this March?

Steve Evans is founder of Net Natives, the social media marketing and facebook advertising agency