Facebook Canvas is changing the way brands advertise and interact with their customers. Compared to the traditional way of promoting on Facebook, which is posting an ad with an embedded external link, Facebook Canvas streamlines the process making it easier for both the advertiser and the public. Instead of waiting for an external link to load, Facebook Canvas instantly loads the page, and is mobile-optimized to make viewing easier. What makes Canvas ads load fast is that it acts as a social microsite. It was built for mobile devices, which means that the ads use readily available resources on the smartphone for easier loading.
While this setup is beneficial for product advertisers, Facebook Canvas’ features can also work well for job recruiters. This is because recruiters work just like advertisers, but instead of a product, what is being promoted is a job opening.
Facebook Canvas is showing a lot of promise despite its infancy. Digital marketing company Ayima states that brands that use Facebook Canvas have a higher user engagement, with as high as a 42% increase in page clicks. For recruiters, an increase in page clicks means a faster turnover of potential applicants.
What makes Facebook Canvas effective for recruitment is that the tool hands over the creative rights of a job ad to the brand owner while offering a post-click, full-screen mobile experience. The tool offers a lot of room for fluidity, and makes storytelling easier and more coherent through a fully customizable digital window. Once the ad is built, it can then be easily shared to the public.
In addition to giving recruiters the freedom to create their own ads through Canvas, the tool also allows people to create videos that can be easily embedded. Recruiters are well aware that video has become an essential part of the digital marketing recruitment framework. It’s easy to conclude that videos can give job ads more value in the recruitment market. Carefully crafted job postings through Canvas aren’t just job ads with words; they’re ads that can effectively sell a career, opportunity, culture, lifestyle and future.
Canvas allows recruiters to tell the story of their company using a mix of full-screen images and panoramic video options that can encourage potential applicants to explore opportunities within the firm. As previously said, it is specifically optimized for mobile, tapping into the demographic of tech-savvy millennials and Generation Z. Canvas allows the public to easily swipe across and navigate through job postings. It is much harder get a message across using a 600-word job description. With pictures, videos, and interactive pages, like in this example, a job ad becomes more attractive to the potential applicants of these generations.
Canvas is more effective than sponsored Facebook posts because it allows advertisers to target a specific demographic using persuasive visuals while introducing a company’s vision and mission. Recruiters take advantage of Canvas’ rich media content in order to get a higher engagement from applicants. Higher engagement increases the chances of that the ad will also benefit from word-of-mouth because people could potentially be talking about the company and ad both online and offline.
Canvas is also a great way to recycle and reuse existing ads too. Marketers don’t need to start from scratch every time they make an ad because re-purposing and editing existing content using the tool is easy. For example, if a job recruiter wants to post different ads but showcase the same company mission and vision, Canvas can easily reorganize content.
Facebook Canvas could be the future of job recruitment. Only time will tell if traditional job posting sites will adapt to the new format.