With Crete Carrier’s Andy Brabec, who manages the company’s marketing and communications

Location: Lincoln, Neb.

COMPANY EQUIPMENT: a fleet of more than 5,600 trucks, 13,000 trailers and multiple divisions

Number of owner-operators: 225

Crete Connections

Using social media to recruit and retain drivers

Facebook is today’s version of a “Cheers” bar where everyone knows your name and a company driver may have thousands of Internet-based “friends.” Two years ago, Andy Brabec, 27, who manages the marketing and communications for the Crete Carrier family of companies – including Hunt Transportation (flatbed) and Shaffer Trucking (refrigerated) – jumpstarted Crete’s digital marketing reach and created a vibrant community of connected drivers using social media.

Rank your social media tools.

Crete’s Andy Brabec says it’s not unusual for him to answer messages from drivers well into the evening or early morning.

Our Facebook page reaches our highest-priority audience. Drivers and their friends and family congregate there every day. Some come from other Facebook friends and others from the corporate blog (http://www.blog.cretecarrier.com). Next in order of importance – YouTube (youtube.com/cretecarriercorp) and Twitter (twitter.com/cretecarrier).

Truck drivers with Facebook pages. Seriously?

Absolutely! In fact, I would say that over 50 percent of our drivers have Facebook accounts, a number that’s growing by leaps and bounds.

How do you know you are reaching your audience?

When I started two years ago, we had 40 Facebook Page “likes.” As of the end of February, we have nearly 21,259 total “likes” and acquire somewhere between 100 to 200 new “likes” daily. It’s not about the “likes,” though – it’s about the ability to share content with a community, answering questions, responding in a quick manner and listening.

96.2% of company drivers have a Facebook account.

Source: Randall-Reilly Market Intelligence

Most trucking company social media sites post updates about employment benefits, but you seem to start non-Crete conversation.

I start topics with comments about the weather, price of fuel, CSA, health concerns and periodically ask how they like driving for Crete. The content we share on our Facebook site has reached up to 500,000 people in a given week. All it takes is our content to be “liked,” “shared” or “commented” on. Once an individual does one of those three things, that content becomes viral to all their friends, thus reaching several thousands of people in a given week.

Fleet owners say they are fearful of opening their business to negative company comments.