The military services face an increasingly constrained recruiting environment. Recruiting, always a tough job, must contend with the reduction of physically, morally, and mentally qualified candidates; tight competition from the jobs market; and the lack of a compelling national crisis drawing people to serve. Recruiters in this environment must be creative. They must use every possible method of reaching, inspiring, and preparing candidates. Social media is a uniquely effective tool to that end.
Over the past 18 months, our Marine Corps Officer Selection Team in the Pacific Northwest’s Facebook and Instagram accounts garnered close to 100 million views, hundreds of thousands of post shares, and tens of thousands of comments. All this was accomplished with accounts totaling a mere 3,500 followers, and with a setup costing $160—far less than traditional marketing campaigns. The social media drive functioned alongside standard Marine Corps recruiting duties.
While several recruiters across all branches have built strong social media presences, the recruiting force still does not use social media to its full power. Just as the services strive to contest adversaries across all warfare domains, recruiters must extend their reach into every available communication channel: physical presence, phone calls, text and email messaging—and, crucially, social media.
Marine Corps Officer Selection Officer (OSO) duty encompasses three core areas: prospecting (engaging with the populace to screen potential applicants); processing (guiding applicants through the accession process); and pool management (preparing candidates for Officer Candidate School [OCS] and beyond). Social media made us significantly more effective in prospecting and pool management.
Enhancing Pool Management
Social media helped us accomplish three things with respect to pool management. First, we use social media platforms to interact with candidates after they commit to the goal of becoming a Marine Corps officer. College students live in a digital world saturated with distractions and competing career opportunities. It is easy for applicants to lose sight of goals amid the stream of constant information. Maintaining frequent and meaningful contact with new applicants is critical, but the constraints of time, geography—our office is responsible for an area of more than 27,500 square miles—and competing responsibilities make individual outreach difficult. Social media allows us to connect with candidates efficiently and effectively. A short Instagram video about Marine Corps history, acronyms, or tips for success connects us with most of our candidates simultaneously, and it takes about 30 minutes to create.
These interactions are rarely one-directional; candidates regularly engage with our content through comments or direct messages. While correlation is hard to prove, candidate-pool attrition has fallen while engagement with our social media has climbed. Online interactions of course cannot replace a phone call or in-person visit. But the increased ability to manage interaction with the pool of candidates is especially useful for stations with large and distributed areas of operation.
The second way we use social media for pool management is to answer a common question we receive: “How can I best prepare for Officer Candidate School?” We answer that question by using Instagram Highlights—a feature that groups posts within topics for easy access (see figure 1)—to create a living document of useful resources:
- Workouts: OCS-style exercises with demonstration videos, particularly helpful for candidates in rural areas far from our Seattle office
- Reading Material: Both OCS and non-OCS reading recommendations
- Leadership Lessons: Short clips breaking down leadership principles and decision frameworks
- Interviews: First-hand accounts from successful candidates and newly commissioned lieutenants
- Marine Corps Acronyms: Videos explaining common terminology to help acclimate candidates to Marine Corps culture.
Finally, we use social media to personalize our service in the eyes of our candidates. Not every post directly relates to Marine Corps topics or OCS preparation. We regularly mix in our own interests and hobbies or post trending memes that are popular with our target audience. This shows military members can maintain fulfilling personal lives while serving, and it helps dispel any stigma that service members are one-dimensional.
Strengthening Prospecting
Social media enhances our applicant prospecting in two significant ways. First, it allows us to broadcast our message widely to our target population, creating touchpoints with potential future applicants. Second, it complements our other prospecting activities by building legitimacy and providing additional information.
Over the course of 18 months, our prospecting efforts on social media directly yielded 20 contacts, nine interviews, and one contract. These statistics make no account of indirect contacts. Countless individuals mention watching our content on Instagram after receiving an email, seeing us on campus, or getting a text message.
In corporate marketing, the rule of seven—the theory that a customer needs to see an ad seven times before purchasing—has changed as the American consumer has become inundated with advertisements. It now may as well be the rule of 10, 13, or 15—the average American sees or hears between 4,000 and 10,000 advertisements per day, largely on social media. And this media blitz works. Over two-thirds of Generation Z say they were influenced to purchase a product after seeing a social media advertisement. Recruiting works similarly, and our social media presence creates new opportunities to connect with potential applicants.
Social media has made our traditional prospecting methods more effective. Every email we send includes a link to an Instagram reel related to the specific program we are targeting, delivering information in the short-form video format our audience prefers. In addition, we direct those we text or call to our Instagram page if they are skeptical of the legitimacy of the text campaign—our target audience is more likely to trust social media than a random text or phone call. Finally, at in-person events such as career fairs, we include QR codes that direct individuals to our Instagram account, often incentivizing follows with promotional items. While some may unfollow later, those who remain connected will receive regular exposure to our content.
Getting Started: A Guide for Recruiters
The most common objections we hear from other officer selection teams with respect to building a social media presence are: “I don’t see the immediate benefit for my mission,” or, “I don’t know where to start, and even if I did, I don’t have enough time to build worthwhile content.”
The first argument is solely focused on prospecting, while overlooking social media’s impact on pool management. The second stems from misconceptions about the difficulty of building a social media presence—an understanding gap that persists because there is still no formal social media training for Marine Corps OSOs.
Building a social media presence requires two things: content development, which is simpler than it seems, and discipline. Start small—there is no need for elaborate setups or in-depth video editing. Film at least one thing daily: a candidate workout, a Marine Corps fact, or a candidate-contracting ceremony. Creating themes for each day can help in coming up with consistent ideas for content. We have truth-bomb Tuesday, workout Wednesday, and leadership trait Thursday. Once proficient, an OST low on time can film a video in 30 seconds, craft a caption in a minute, and upload the content in another minute. All told, it takes a minimum of roughly two and a half minutes per day to maintain a presence. We recommend that recruiters new to social media focus initially on pool-management content and consider any early prospecting gains as a bonus.
A rough understanding is needed of how social media algorithms work. There are sweet spots for content and posting frequency. After 30 days of consistent posting, algorithms begin boosting content to users who do not follow your account. Remaining disciplined to post daily, regardless of video quality, will trigger this algorithmic boost, and prospecting results will follow.
Anyone Can Do This
According to a broad range of studies, 60 percent of Generation Z (ages 13-28) spend four or more hours on social media every day. Even more striking, only 4 percent report using it for less than an hour daily. Over the last 18 months, with minimal time investment and at virtually no cost, social media has enhanced our office’s candidate pool management and prospecting efforts.
The barrier to entry is low: a smartphone, two to three minutes daily, and a commitment to consistency are all a recruiter needs. Begin with simple content focused on supporting your current candidates; the prospecting benefits will follow naturally as algorithms recognize your regular posting cadence. Once you develop a rhythm, learn to improve audio, scripting, cinematographic, and editing skills—in that order. Creative backgrounds and presentations used while maintaining the dignity associated with Marine Corps culture will further boost your efforts.
It can be difficult for older, more tradition-bound recruiters to buy into the usefulness of social media. However, recruiting the next generation of naval officers in an increasingly competitive environment means using every available communication channel. By meeting potential candidates where they already spend their time, the Marine Corps positions itself for continued recruiting success.
