A strong online presence is necessary for today's digital age, where the recruitment industry is highly competitive. Content marketing is a powerful tool that can help recruitment businesses to establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry, build brand awareness, and attract top talent.
In this blog, we will delve deeper into what content marketing means in the context of recruitment, why it's crucial for recruitment businesses to invest in it, and how you can maximise your content strategy for 2023.
We will also discuss the 80:20 principle for creating content and provide you with ten effective content distribution strategies to help your recruitment business stand out from the crowd. So, whether you're just getting started with content marketing or looking to take your content strategy to the next level, this blog has got you covered.
Why should recruitment agencies invest in content marketing?
Content marketing provides many benefits for businesses, allowing them to share knowledge, discuss industry trends and engage in conversations. Recruitment agencies should invest in content marketing as it allows them to establish their expertise and position themselves as experts within their sectors, building trust with potential and existing clients and candidates.
Grow your audience
Content marketing effectively increases brand awareness by creating and sharing valuable content that educates and engages potential customers. By creating high-quality content that resonates with your target audience, you can establish your brand as a trusted authority in your industry without the high costs associated with traditional advertising.
Generate client leads
Content marketing is a powerful lead-generation tool. By creating content that speaks to your customer needs, you can attract potential clients to your website and social media channels. Through community-driven content, you can encourage people to sign up to your mailing list, receive frequent updates and connect with your business on a regular basis.
Nurture client leads
Once you have generated leads, content marketing can help you nurture audiences by providing them with valuable content that moves them through the buying process. Educating and engaging potential customers will establish your brand as a thought leader and build trust, leading to more sales.
Improve SEO performance
Content marketing can help improve your keyword rankings by creating and sharing high-quality content optimised for search engines. Creating content that aligns with your target audience's search queries can improve your visibility in search engine results and drive more traffic to your website.
What does content marketing mean in recruitment?
When most people think of content marketing, they automatically think of “blogs”. In reality, content marketing is everything you create and put online for your brand. Here are some examples of content marketing in recruitment:
Job adverts
Creating well-written job descriptions highlighting the company's culture, benefits, and opportunities for career advancement is a great way to attract candidates. Open positions shouldn’t just be shared on job boards, you should be uploading your jobs on your website and careers page.
Case studies
Sharing stories about client experiences working at the company through video, Q&A content and testimonials can help potential clients and candidates build trust with your brand.
Industry insights
Produce data-backed insights such as salary surveys, podcasts with industry experts or opinion pieces from industry leaders that will demonstrate authority with potential customers who are passionate about the industry.
Career development
Creating content that helps customers progress in their careers. Go beyond the usual “CV Tips”, how should they be harnessing AI to progress their career? What tools can you review to help them be more efficient? Meetups, training and mentorship programs builds a deeper connection than a CV writing blog ever could.
Company culture
Show your true self through videos, photos, and social media can help build a community of like-minded individuals. They will buy into your business ethos and better understand what it’s like to work with you. A great example of this in action is, Offended marketing. They are unapologetically themselves on their social media, are true to their brand and accept that not everyone is their customer. But for the people that do like their approach, they will be the go-to.
How to maximise your content strategy for 2023
Content marketing has become an essential aspect of any successful marketing strategy. The ability to create valuable and relevant content can help attract and engage potential customers, build brand awareness, and ultimately drive sales. Effective content must be well-planned and executed as part of your wider strategy. This ensures your content is focused and resonates with your target audience.
Here are some key steps you can take to maximise the impact of your content and achieve marketing goals.
1. Start with your audience
Your different personas might vary by industry, business size, and function; nevertheless, it’s crucial you know exactly who you’re dealing with. Then you can figure out what motivates them, their pain points and what they care about. Ask yourself, Why would they want to hear from you? And where are they online?
A good way to tackle audiences is to look at the Needs Vs Wants for each tier of the audience and then map out the overlaps & differences. With this information, you can figure out your messaging/priorities & targeting.
As a marketer, you should produce content for every stage of the funnel. To do this, consider your audience and what they need at each step of the sales process, map it out and identify the gaps you have. Secondly, think about how you are communicating this, is the language correct and is the information accurate and helpful?
There’s no point in filling a leaky bucket, so start at the bottom and work your way up. Once you’ve narrowed down your audience, and you’ve identified what they need, and where you’re going to find them… it’s time to plan your content.
2. Take a Hub & Spoke approach to content
The Hub & Spoke approach to content is all about focusing your content efforts around a central theme and then interlinking the individual contributions.
The top trends in UK recruitment currently include remote work, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), employer branding, automation and AI, and upskilling and reskilling. Any of these topics can form a hub, and then you plan your content around that.
3. Audit what you already have
Before you create loads of new content and contribute to the white noise on social media and in our inboxes, look at what you already have.
A good way to do this is to go back through the content on your site, social or YouTube and make a list. We call it ‘closing the loop’, and what this means is; ensuring you are maximising each and every bit of content. For example, say you’ve hosted a webinar. Maximising this piece of content would include:
- List the webinar as an event but don’t stop there!
- Upload the recording to YouTube
- Add a summary blog with the key takeaways and embed the recording
- Strip the audio off it and upload it as a podcast
- Add the slides as a gated download
- Go back and link them all together
- Edit the original event and add a link to the recording and a link to download the slides
Voila, organic MQLs for sales.
Whenever you launch new content, tell your SEO team. In most cases, they can provide tips for search optimisation to ensure your content is visible online. This demonstrates to Google that you know what you’re talking about and could be the go-to resource for a topic. Your SEO team can optimise the spokes for long-tail keywords.
4. Use the 4Es of content
“People buy on emotion and justify with logic”. Most purchase decisions are made subconsciously. At every stage, from auditing through to planning and even as a final sense check before you hit publish, you need to evaluate the piece against the 4Es of content to ensure it has a clear purpose. Your content should fall into one of the below categories:
- Educational content builds trust
- Entertaining content builds connection
- Engaging content builds communities
- Enlightening/Empowering content builds tribes
There isn’t a formula for success with this, many make the mistake of thinking this depends on your brand and the platform the content is intended for, but that’s not the case. The 4Es are all about your audience; what do they want to feel? what is going to help them? After connecting with a piece of your content, if the user has to Google to learn more, you’ve missed an opportunity. They should leave the interaction feeling they can take action or positive steps to further their career or do a better job because of it.
80:20 principle for creating content
When it comes to creating and distributing content, we recommend following the 20% Creation, 80% Distribution model. This model refers to the theory that 20% of your time should be spent on the creation of your content, while 80% should be utilised for promotion and distribution.
Every spoke deserves its own individual promotion. Don’t assume that everyone consumes content the same way you do. Repackaging & repurposing content ensures efficiency in squeezing maximum value out of what we create.
Remember: Listen, Watch, Read, Download & save for later.
Not only will you reach and engages way more customers, but if you went back and took this approach, you’d probably have enough content to do a full year's content calendar.
Finally, think about the distribution when you’re planning your content. There are opportunities on every single channel. Identify your strengths and draw your circle of confidence. Find the things that your team are great at and lean into them. Recruiters are naturally good speakers and usually flourish on camera, so get them to do snippet videos or do an informal style interview with a client discussing hot topics in the industry. If they’re not comfortable on camera, try a podcast!
Own the space and master the channels you and your team are comfortable with, then branch out and try new things, but not at the sacrifice of something that is already working. Don’t dismiss Facebook & Twitter; your audience is still there. Just because they aren't doing business on those channels does not mean there’s no opportunity.
10 content distribution methods for recruitment
It’s easy to say 80% distribution, but the reality is most recruitment marketing managers share it on LinkedIn and maybe send out an email to share it with the database. So if that is you, you’re not alone. To try and help you get outside the box, here are 10 distribution ideas for your next piece of content.
1. Look for common themes across your audience. Then look for Twitter threads & Facebook pages around those themes.
2. 1.8billion people use Facebook groups. But they aren’t there to be sold to. Follow the 4Es and build a community. They will become fans and want to buy from you.
3. Look for Graveyard pages… find pages that are no longer engaging. Message the page, can you take it over?
4. Remix podcast interviews into gifs & video content
5. If you add imagery in blog posts, share the images and then link to the blog.
6. Take your old blog posts and put them into LinkedIn articles. Tweak the headline, update the content so it’s still relevant and off you go.
7. Reddit & Quora… look for your communities. Look at start-ups. Google likes Quora and ranks results in the search engine. Redditers do love links. Sort by top posts and find what they need.
8. There are Slack Communities for everyone; #devchat has over 14K developers helping each other learn & grow and #people for Human Resources. Owllabs has pulled together a list of the best 36 slack communities.
9. Medium is an opportunity, not a threat. It doesn't replace your blog. Think of it as a guest blogging strategy, upload a summary piece and key elements and then link back to your blog to learn more.
10. When you launch a new piece of content such as a video, podcast or download. Find all the relevant blog articles on the same topic and embed them in there with a summary and CTA.
Do you feel empowered? Do you feel like you can take some of these ideas and run with them? That’s the 4Es at play (you see what we did there).
Why should recruitment invest in content marketing
By investing in content marketing, your recruitment business can attract top talent, build brand awareness, and establish itself as a sector leader. Take away these tips to build a content strategy that aligns with your business objectives. Utilising the 80:20 principle to maximise the content, you can create a unique calendar backed up with effective content distribution.
If you're a marketing manager looking to improve your recruitment marketing strategies, our team is here to support you. At Venn, we specialise in helping recruitment businesses like yours to create and implement successful marketing strategies that drive results. We would love to hear from you, so please do not hesitate to contact us today to discuss your requirements. Let’s make things happen.
