Be your own PR and win business with a recruitment blog
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Blogging for business: How Recruiters can win business with their blog (Recruitment Directors Quarterly Summit, 7th May 2015)
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Be your own PR and win business with a recruitment blog
- 1. Be your own PR and how to win business as a direct result of your recruitment blog
- 2. PAUL MACKENZIE-CUMMINS Director, ClearlyPR PR, Editorial and Content for Recruiters, Job Boards and Industry Suppliers
- 3. ①What’s the point in having a blog? ②What constitutes a blog that people really like? ③What content generates new business leads? ④How do you promote your blog? ⑤How do you measure the success of your blog?
- 4. ①What’s the point in having a blog?
- 5. TO ENTERTAIN TO SELLTO TELL TO LISTEN TO UNDERSTAND TO HELP
- 6. ②What constitutes a blog that people really like?
- 7. Pillar 1: Information What happened?
- 8. Pillar 2: Analysis What does it mean to your audience?
- 9. Pillar 3: Helpful How can I help?
- 10. Pillar 4: Timely Why now?
- 11. Be valuable
- 12. ③What content generates new business leads?
- 13. Focus your message on your audience Get it right… or get it wrong
- 14. 1. Find the right topics to talk about - Look at what you can talk authoritatively on - Trending stories (Google News, Buzz Sumo) - If you’re still struggling…think about where you are today
- 15. 2. Repurpose existing content into your blog - White papers, videos, e-books - Event attendances, webinars participated in - Annual reports, company presentations
- 16. 3. Think like a publisher - Make your content ‘marketable’ - Keywords - Marketing analytics
- 17. 4. Will your content pass the 10 second test? Clear and obvious headlines work best
- 18. ① Why older workers are vital for the UK’s jobs market ① The Imitation Game of recruitment marketing: Why recruitment business owners are getting their marketing wrong ① Why Private Banking must get more digital (or risk losing out to their competitors)
- 19. 5. Don’t go on too much… “This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read”
- 20. 6. Make your landing page effective Keep it easy, keep it quick
- 21. 600 views, 70 likes LinkedIn 193 views - website 120 views in March alone 132 views, 4 likes – LinkedIn 108 views - website
- 22. ④How do you promote your blog
- 24. ‘SOCIAL SHOPPING’/YOUN G FEMALES (2M UK USERS) REAL-TIME NEWS CONSUMPTION (15M UK USERS) BRAND FOCUSED (31M UK USERS) WHITE COLLAR NETWORKING/IND USTRY NEWS (10M UK USERS) BRAND- LED/MALES/ABOV E AVERAGE SALARY (12.6M UK USERS – 3.9M ACTIVE) 90% UNDER 35/VISUAL ENGAGEMENT (300M USERS WORLDWIDE – BIGGER THAN TWITTER)
- 25. Email signature LinkedIn company page Company newsletter
- 26. ⑤How do you know its working, how do you measure your blog’s success?
- 27. TO ENTERTAINTO HELP Pv Page views Nm New members Dg Demographic Nv New visitors Le Leads Ri Requests for info Br Bounce rate Sa Sales Sh Shares En Engagement Uv Unique visitors Do Downloads 1 4 2 3 8 7 6 5 9 12 11 10
- 28. Has it worked for us?
- 29. The result for us? Our only form of promotion is our blog, LinkedIn blog, and Twitter activity - Website traffic: No. Page Views up from 3,422 (Feb-Oct ‘14) to 12,565 (Oct ‘14-Apr ‘15) = 267% increase in traffic No. Unique visitors up from 971 (Feb-Oct ‘14) to 3,319 (Oct ‘14-Apr ‘15) = 242% increase in unique users - 3 current clients a direct result of our blog, 1 new business lead this week alone - Employer branding - recent recruitment drive: We saved ££’s on agency fees (sorry!!)
- 30. Looking to raise your online branding? The choice is… @ClearlyPR www.clearlypr.co.uk
Editor's Notes
- This session will look at how your blog can complement your existing promotional activity and help improve your agency’s bottom line.
- Who am I to stand here and talk to you about this subject?
- Avoid cliches such as thought leader, leading authority, the go-to person, or personal branding – don’t aim to achieve these things, they will come by default, providing you get the basics right.
- This one is very easy and can be summed up as follows…
- Like all social media – your blog seeks to tell your audience what is happening in their sector. To sell you as a thought leader, a specialist. To listen to your audience and engage in a sharing of information. To understand their pain points and to help them by providing solutions or at least adding to the debate. To inject a personality into your brand. That’s all there is to it…but to be able to do this and do this in a way that gets results, you need to recognsie the four key strands of what makes a good blog.
- What happened This style of blog post shares the news
- What it means This style of blog takes the news story and discusses the implications of what it means
- This is ‘information marketing’ - it provides answers to a question, need or concern of your audience. It is the How-to format which borders on the role of consulting (even customer service)
- Why now To be truly helpful your blog posts need to appeal to the right people at the right time. E.g. Job boards have long been guilty of recycling dated careers advice that was relevant in buoyant times, wouldn’t job seekers have preferred advice that directly addressed the issues they face during recession? Wouldn’t it be good if you were facing a commonly shared problem and suddenly a solution appeared in your inbox? Ultimately…
- It’s a matter of producing content that adds value to your audience – are you telling them what they already know, or are you providing them with more than they expected to get?
- Content that works and gets results is content that directly addresses the needs – the pain points – of your target audience…you wouldn’t run a recruitment ad for a graduate role in the FT, would you?! What problems do your clients, peers, candidates, people face daily? What are their biggest concerns, needs and interests? How can you help them?
- If you have been blogging, check your site’s marketing analytics to to what are the most popular blog articles you have published. If you haven’t got access to analytics or haven’t previously blogged, look in the public domain (Google News, Buzz Sumo) for trending and newsworthy industry stories - piggyback on this and add your own take, expertise and commentary. Think about where you are today and why you are here – to learn and share your experiences as recruitment business leaders with your peers. It’s the same with your blog.
- Constantly coming up with new blog ideas can be rather demanding at times. So, why not look at what you already have. You may already have a lot of content already that you are not maximising - white papers, videos, ebooks, webinars. Video: if more than 3 minutes long, unlikely to be watched – write about it. Survey/white paper: take one or two of your findings and focus on that specific area as a post - a single survey can potentially create 3 or 4 different blog posts. Webinar: use commonly asked questions from a webinar you ran or attended and write about it. Webinars look at key pain points, take just 1 or 2 points and focus on these in a post. Presentations/Annual Reports: share key elements from company presentations or annual report. Write about the highlight over the last 12 months or planned investment for the business (e.g. ATS, cloud-based system)
- Of course, having a great idea for a character (Harry Potter) or topic is one thing, but for it to reach outside the confines of your four walls it also needs to be found. Your blog is a marketing tool so you need to optimise your content for search engines to find you which in turn, could convert your visitors into leads very quickly. Identify what keywords bring the most traffic to your website and embed these in your blog posts.
- Much like you will take just a few seconds to determine if a CV should go into the ‘Maybe’ or ‘Not on this occasion’ pile, the title of your blog post must also ‘sell’ itself to your audience…
- Is it clear by the headline what the post is about? Will it pass the ‘blink’ test? As for the content itself, keep to the point – let each paragraph represent a single point, make it flow by ensuring each each point flows naturally into the next. Remember, you’re telling a story. Most of all…
- …avoid turning your blog into an online version of War & Peace. If your post is too long, your readers may make the call over whether to continue reading the whole post or not. We’ve tried long posts, short posts and posts somewhere in the middle - if writing about a complex issue, a short post will not necessarily do justice to the topic. Conversely, don’t write a long post for the sake of filling the page - as Churchill said, “This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read”
- You want your blog to help build your prospects list, make it easy for visitors to engage with you. Include a Landing Page – a form that allows you to capture your visitors information through a lead form. For speed, stick to just an email address. To better qualify your new leads, create a data capture pop-up form keep it to name, company, email address (this will also give you the web address), job role, and even add a question: “Recent recruitment challenge…[blank box]” – you now have a need and an ice breaker/conversation piece.
- By the way Yes, we DO practice what we preach. We run our own blog and we blog on LinkedIn Publisher. The focus has and will always be on Quality of leads over Quantity – I’m against the trend of buying followers and likes and cannot see the value in driving thousands to your website unless all those visitors are potential customers – its akin to a recruiter like Hays filling Wembley Stadium with 80,000 business people where only a fraction have any responsibility or say in hiring decisions.
- Social media is of course the primary method of promoting your new blog posts, but make sure you use the right outlet…
- Not all social media will be right for your post, so ensure you understand where your audience is and how they wish to receive information. Of course, there are other methods of promotion too…
- Email contacts Update in your email signature LinkedIn company pages and relevant groups Monthly newsletter Remember to include a call-to-action (CTA) in your blog e.g. “Do you struggle to balance the day-to-day responsibilities of running your business with your blogging or other PR activity? We may be able to help you, contact us now.” (hyperlink the ‘contact us’) e.g. Join our LinkedIn group for the latest news from our company and your sector (hyperlink LinkedIn)
- The Periodic Table of PR measurement.
- Most PR’s are great at telling clients what they should do, with promises of the “amazing” results they are sure to derive by taking their advice. Few, however, share their own experiences of successful blogging – largely because many of pretty poor at doing it themselves. So how has blogging benefitted our business?...
- Reed, University of South Wales, Jo