Blogs

Last week there was a great webinar from the folks at LinkedIn about how content marketing can and should be used in the staffing industry. The presenter, Anna Wright, was an IT recruiter who now works for LinkedIn. She shared some of the best practices that working for staffing and recruiting firms that are looking to generate new clients and attract higher caliber candidates. Here’s a recap of the recommendations:

How staffing firms can use LinkedIn for Content Marketing

1. Know your audience.
   Are you trying to reach clients or candidates? What job titles? What are there interests? What are the best channels for communicating with this audience? The more clearly you define the people you want to reach, the easier it becomes to create relevant content.
2. Plan your topics.
   Content marketing only works when people pay attention to your content. So it has to be interesting! Consider topics like: How to choose a staffing firm, 5 Questions to ask a recruiter, 7 Common hiring mistakes, or 10 HR articles you must read.
3. Create a calendar.
   Plan a monthly calendar with the dates for your blog posts, emails, webinars and other content marketing efforts. Ensure you’re consistently sending out content.
4. Get the message out (on LinkedIn).
   LinkedIn has 225 million members…and 2 new members each second! You can reach every Fortune 500 company on LinkedIn.
   
   Here’s LinkedIn’s advice for using LinkedIn:
• Outreach – company updates, employee status updates, targeted advertising, sponsored updates, Slideshare content ads.
• Engagement – employee branding ads, company page, career hub.
• Conversation – sponsored groups, custom groups, group partnerships.

Free ways to use LinkedIn

• Company status updates. You can target updates to specific subsets of your followers by company size, industry, job function, seniority and geography.
• Employee status updates. Leverage your team’s networks to share your content with their connections.
• Group discussions, promotions and jobs. You can share your content and links back to your website on any group you join.
• Rich media on your company page and employee profiles. You can include videos, PDFs, Slideshare and other documents.
• Creating custom groups.You can setup a group around anything…any industry, job discipline or interest. Build your own private talent community or industry networking group.
• Direct messaging first level contacts.One-to-one promotion is the strongest way to share content and nurture relationships, and LinkedIn messaging gets a 35% open rate.

Targeted advertising on LinkedIn

• Targeted ads. You can target by company name, company size, industry, job function, seniority and geography.
• Targeted InMails. Direct message 2,500 people at a time by title, years of experience, company name, education and keywords.
• Employee branding ads.
• Creating a career hub. This is a unique page dedicated to promoting the careers and content your firm offers.
• Group sponsorship. Creating a promotion for a specific group that will appear in the right sidebar for relevant potential members.

A few final bits of advice

• Content is king…if it’s relevant!
• The role of content is to build trust.
• The goal of content is to engage and convert.
• Your brand (value + personality) must be clearly defined.
• Your content must fit your brand…and your audience.
• Content is the starting point for creating discussion.
• Great content sells…without selling. It educates.
• Social media is ONE channel for distributing content and creating engagement.