In this ever-digital age, content marketing has become more and more popular. With platforms such as TikTok having astronomical growth, companies that can produce relevant content on current and viral platforms are much more likely to succeed.
Content marketing is essential for businesses looking to generate leads and increase engagement. This guide will explain the benefits of a successful content marketing strategy, with tips on what you can do to enhance and develop your recruitment firm’s content marketing.
- Know your audience
- Establish your KPIs
- Set your mission and establish your goals
- Access your current position
- Create a content calendar
- Identify and allocate resources
- Figure out the best content channels for your firm
- Distribute and market
- Measure your results
1. Blog posts
Blogging is one of the most popular types of content marketing for recruitment businesses as it enables you to demonstrate your knowledge of the sectors you specialise in, provide thought leadership and offer advice to candidates, clients and potential new hires.
Blog posts can be incredibly effective when authored, or ghost-written, by different employees in your recruitment agency, from the CEO to the heads of divisions or marketing managers. This enables you to present a diverse range of insights and opinions from across the business.
2. Infographics
Infographics are a fantastic way to illustrate detailed information and statistics in a visually engaging yet easily digestible format for readers.
3. Podcasts
Podcast consumption witnessed a huge increase in 2020 with 9.4 million weekly listeners in the UK – an uptick of 45% over the previous 12 months. And because of this, many recruitment firms and suppliers are now producing podcasts to capitalise on this growing demand for audio content.
Podcasts help to humanise brands and give them a voice that job seekers and end-hirers can relate to. They also provide you with a unique opportunity to present your take on the latest industry trends, offer advice and share insights into your company culture – which can be extremely beneficial for employer of choice messaging when hiring internally.
4. Video
These have more often than not take the form of talking head videos, where an individual talks directly to the camera of their smartphone or laptop. These are incredibly effective outlets for recruitment professionals to get yourselves in front of your audiences on social media. While they may lack the polish that a professionally filmed video possesses, the rawness adds to the authenticity and you can style with company branding and add captions either in app or via speech-to-text software.
5. CV and interview guidance
This can be an excellent way for recruitment firms to share some tips and tricks whilst also adding value to a candidate’s journey with your firm. Make sure you showcase you specialist knowledge, i.e. if you can create CV and interview guidance that is specific to your industry this will generate engagement from the right people - show readers what is unique to your sector, how interviews may differ and what candidates can expect.
Recruitment marketing checklist
Whether you already have an established content strategy in place or if you're only just starting to consider making a strategy, revisiting this should always be at the forefront of your company’s mind. Things change, we've seen that only too much over the past few years, and your strategy needs to change with the times.
AND least we forget - great content isn't just something you write and forget about, it is constantly changing and evolving so that it's up-to-date, innovative, and engaging for your prospects and customers.
To decide how to establish a successful content marketing strategy, it is first important to understand what a content strategy is...
A content strategy is a calculated plan of how your recruitment consultancy intends to use content (whether it be audio, visual or written) to achieve your business' goals.
Before you can bring your strategy ‘to market’ as it were, you must know exactly what your business goals are. THEN you need to establish your marketing goals. And AFTER THAT you set a goal for each piece of content.
- Do you want to increase engagement from prospects?
- Take your target audience through each stage of the marketing funnel?
- Keep customers engaged? Or perhaps re-engage past customers?
Say your goal is to increase brand awareness - you could implement a strategy that focuses on SEO, whether this is SEO centred blog content or pillar content pages such as this one. Content that has a clear goal in mind can increase your website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive leads to your business.
According to the latest research from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 63% of businesses do not have a content marketing strategy, and 64% say that learning how to build a content marketing strategy is one of their greatest educational needs. Those firms that do have a plan for their content marketing find that their marketing efforts are far more successful.
When developing a content marketing strategy, it is important to answer these questions:
Who do you want to read your content?
- What publications do they read?
- What social media sites are they on?
- What associations or professional bodies are they members of?
- What is their current job role and how senior are they?
- What are their goals?
- What are their biggest challenges?
- How do they spend their free time?
(useful resources on this over on our blog)
Just as your business might have more than one type of customer or consumer, your content strategy can cater to more than one type of user. This can be achieved by using a variety of content types, e.g., videos, blogs, infographics, social posts, and white papers, via different channels. This will help you to deliver content tailored to each audience strand you are trying to attract.
Just remember the age old adage:
"You can't be all things to all people"
It is important to understand that your competitors in the recruitment industry will likely be producing the same sort of content and have a similar service offering to you, so your audience or potential customers need to know what makes you different.
What is your company's main asset? Maybe you’re an extremely established recruitment agency with high profile directors who are frequently quoted in the press. Or perhaps you specialise in a niche sector and have collected insights from discussions with your clients and candidates? It could be that you carry out an annual survey full of data and statistics you can share?
Once you nail down what it is that makes you worth listening to / reading, you can use this in your content.
Consumers and customers only want content that is specifically targeted to them. Which is why the best way to get your audience to engage with your content is to solve a problem for them. Educating your readers and helping them address their problems builds trust and demonstrates your expertise.
In short, you need to put your content where your audience is. Whilst it is tempting to launch a TikTok page due to the massive growth its had in the last few years, you need to find out whether your audience are on there first. You don't want to waste your time creating content marketing ideas that won’t reach your target audience.
When you know what platforms to use, then you can hone in on producing content forms that are suitable for these. If your audience is predominantly active on Instagram and TikTok you know to focus on shorter form content and quick burst videos that capture attention quickly. If your audience spends more time on YouTube consuming long-form video content, then that's what you need to be producing.
You've done your research, you know which forms of content you need to be using and where to post them - now you need a content creation and delivery plan.
In a small team, this may be easier as you are likely one of, if not the sole decision-maker when it comes to content. On the other hand, if your recruitment agency is on a larger scale, you may need to collaborate with several content teams to configure an effective process of publication.
This is where the right tools come into play - from visual collaboration tools you can use to build out your content calendar such as Asana, Trello, Google Sheets etc. to content scheduling tools like Hootsuite, Later and Sprout Social.
A few of our recent blog posts on content marketing
Why content marketing is key for talent acquisition teams
Despite economic challenges, the job market remains competitive and employers are facing ongoing and entrenched skills shortages, meaning that every...
Why outsourcing content production to AI platforms isn’t a good idea
As a leading PR and marcomms specialist, it’s fair to say that we read and review a lot of content. That’s understating it, and our thirst for...
The End of SEO as We Know It
SEO isn't just about Google anymore. And honestly, it hasn't been for a while. When AI can sum up your carefully crafted content in seconds and serve...
Chapter 3: The importance of content marketing for recruitment
- Using content marketing to boost recruitment efforts
- A guide to building a content marketing strategy for recruiters
In our ever-digital world, content needs to be at the heart of every firm’s recruitment marketing strategy. When utilised correctly it enables your business to generate brand awareness, build relationships with candidates and clients, and bring your overall marketing costs down.
A vital part of a recruiter’s marketing strategy is to make sure your talent pool is stocked with the best quality candidates and that your company is an attractive place to work. Therefore, your recruitment and marketing need to work together.
Using content marketing to boost recruitment efforts
Recruiters want to attract the best and the brightest candidates and content marketing is the way to achieve this. Data from Small Business trends states that over 91% of businesses use content marketing for both lead-generating and recruitment efforts. By using content correctly and sharing it correctly you can pull in the right people to take your recruitment business to the next level.
1. Describe your ideal candidate
You can’t expect to attract the best candidate if you don’t know who that is. You need to know important details about your target audience.
Ask yourself and your fellow recruitment consultants what kind of candidates do you want to attract?
How would you professionally describe them?
Make a checklist that includes demographic information, background, personality attributes, qualifications, career goals and objections. By doing this you’ve collected vital information about your candidates that can help identify your candidate persona.
2. Create a candidate journey map
A candidate journey map is a visual representation of a candidate’s journey when applying for a position with you. It needs to include all the touchpoints candidates will have with your recruitment consultancy from first becoming aware of your brand, to applying, right through to being placed as a candidate and eventually working with you as a hiring manager on the client side.
By creating a candidate journey map you can identify the best type of content that works at every stage of your candidate journey and how to showcase your employer's brand across different channels.
3. Build your content calendar
Creating a content calendar is essential when it comes to having a successful content marketing strategy. This can be a digital or written plan of the exact dates you intend to publish your content and share it with your audience. Consistently sharing content will improve the relationship your audience has with you and increase your credibility.
Recruitment blogging checklist
At its core, content is created to educate and spread information. Whether your content is in the form of blogs, whitepapers or website content etc., the content you create should always offer information that helps your desired audience or informs their decision.
Recruitment content marketing can be used to help manage expectations around job openings and to get a candidate up to speed quickly. When used correctly, it is one of the most beneficial tools for recruiting new hires and getting your business’s name out there.
Whilst jumping on the bandwagon and creating content on trending topics may work to get engagement, it will only work towards your companies goals if it is relevant to your audience. So, step one should always be to start thinking about content that demonstrates your recruitment expertise or and content that will increase brand awareness. Creating planned and strategic content is almost always better than spontaneous content - this is where your content marketing strategy will come into play.
If you’re unsure of where to start with content creation, blog content is nearly always the best option. Create content that demonstrates and promotes your company's mission statement, culture, product or basic values and practices. This sort of content not only creates engagement from your team but also shows potential candidates and prospects what it’s actually like within the office walls, the people behind the business and what your company is all about.
This is where recruiters and marketing can really work together to come up with topics and areas within your industry that potential candidate are confused about or that clients have the most questions about.
Social media is not only an excellent platform for recruiting and searching for new talent, it can also be used for brand building, talent attraction and lead generation. When the whole team are utilising social media correctly, taking a combined approach to sharing different forms of content (videos, infographics, carousels, polls, etc) and engaging with others, not only will this create engagement but it will increase the credibility of your brand and consultants.
Social media is also the platform where arguably you can take the most ‘risks’ with the content you are creating. It’s a great way to let your recruitment agency’s personality shine.
Whether it be be physical collateral you take to events or PDF collateral available to download via your website, give your audience something they can takeaway. Reports, eBooks and whitepapers are fantastic longer form content types to show potential clients your expertise.
Better yet, you can track downloads via your website and create a follow up strategy.
Tracking in recruitment is always tricky. You have to ask the right questions to see the full picture and understand your true ROI. A candidate could be following you on Twitter, which could be their first point of contact, then read an article on your blog, then see your comment in Global Recruiter, before applying to an ad on a job board, but the source for the fee is only tracked as the job board. Content marketing strategies are designed to demonstrate your standing as an expert within the market and to encourage your targets to engage with your company – but it may take seeing your brand on multiple occasions, on multiple platforms, to achieve a conversion. Tracking only the last point before contact doesn’t give you the full story and provides an inaccurate representation of the performance of your engagement channels. This can be rectified by asking more questions of placed candidates – and new clients - (as well as monitoring followers and click throughs where possible) did they follow you on Twitter? Did they like your Facebook page?
Recruitment marketers rarely jump to take the credit for sales that they deserve – if in fact they have been able to track and prove their success. They are often too busy supporting people within the business that they forget their own goals such as demonstrating the value they add to the business by highlighting (on the CRM) the number of candidates they have delivered into the talent pool. Pinpointing where someone first encountered your recruitment brand will allow you to collect more meaningful data on engagement strategies.
And don’t forget to count the engagement that lead to a warm lead, which was nurtured over time to finally result in a sale. Or the collateral that was used for business development. These also count towards your content marketing successes.
Whatever content strategy you employ, you need to understand that it will take a real investment of time before you begin to see any measurable return. You need to build a following, by creating content and testing it before you know what does and doesn’t work for your market. Aiming your messages at the right audience is important, as is setting objectives and goals – ask yourself what are you looking to achieve? Candidate attraction? Client acquisition? Increased brand awareness? The key to success is to look at each of your distribution channels and strategically segment your audiences. That way your content will be hitting the correct targets and you will be measuring your success in regards to specific engagement goal.
In summary, when it comes to measuring the success of your content marketing: set objectives. have a plan, include consultants, use your content, and track everything.
BlueSky PR
BlueSky is a true specialist in recruitment marketing and has a deep understanding of the issues relating to the talent agenda across a number of specialist sectors. Our team is responsive, agile and proactive and you can expect results quickly – often within the first few weeks of working together. We also understand that return on investment is key which is why our monthly reporting shows you just that.
Whether you are a head of recruitment marketing that needs help with delivery, a marketing professional looking for strategic advice or a business owner who doesn’t know where to start, BlueSky has the resources, expertise and experience to help recruitment firms of all sizes. Whatever your budget we will have a programme to suit.
But don’t just take our word for it – read our case studies and testimonials – we think you’ll be impressed
Our core services
Our services are tailored to meet the specific needs and budget of recruitment agencies.
What our clients say
Marisa Kacary, Managing Director - Brand, Marketing & Communications
“BlueSky has been a long term partner to AMS and has provided an invaluable and responsive service throughout the pandemic in particular. They have been agile and thoughtful, and acted as an extension of our team.”
Lewis Richards, Founder
“During these unprecedented times, BlueSky PR has provided us with the support needed to raise our profile within the sectors we work in and also strengthened our business development. We have used the high-quality blog content to re-engage existing prospects via our monthly newsletter, while the strong organic search results combined with social media activity have enabled us to generate engage with candidates and clients.”
Alexa Bradbury, Global Marketing Director
“We’ve been working with the BlueSky team to support our global PR programme on a project and retained basis for over five years now. The team is very proactive, knows the talent management arena inside out and really understands our business and its objectives. And all this means that they consistently achieve fantastic media coverage for us. I’d have no hesitation in recommending them to anyone seeking PR and marcomms support.”
Ed Martin, Marketing Director EMEA
“The BlueSky PR team became a real partner for Sterling EMEA as soon as we engaged them for media relations support. Not only were they able to secure us fantastic coverage in leading publications, but they also produced brilliant content on our behalf. They were able to take the knowledge and information from the team and turn it into engaging copy that really raised our profile as a thought leader in background screening. Having a partner that proactively suggested new ideas and flagged news for us to comment on really helped grow Sterling’s profile. I would highly recommend them.”
Julia O’Connor, General Manager
“BlueSky PR has dramatically increased the visibility and engagement across our social media channels enabling us to reach new audiences and keep our divisions front of mind for existing candidates and clients.”
Graham Palfery-Smith, Chairman
“BlueSky PR has been an integral part of the 6CATS team for a number of years and their support growing our social media presence has been hugely valuable. Being able to trust the team with our online communication and provide the guidance we need to benefit from paid social media campaigns has certainly had a positive impact on our brand.”
Rob Quirk, Head of Marketing
“
I recently attended BlueSky’s PR workshop and couldn’t recommend it enough. Tracey is a genuine expert and leader in her field and is happy to share that expertise taking you through all elements of the PR journey. From PR’s role in driving awareness and brand value, through to the creation of press releases, distribution, networking with relevant journalists and publications, crisis management and the all-important strategy and ROI, no stone is left unturned.
What I found especially useful was the relevance to recruitment and our business. Much of the content was tailored to Harnham with practical examples that we could immediately implement and gain quick results alongside more longer term goals. 5 stars!”
Tim Connolly, Founding Partner
“
Tracey is quite simply one of the most impressive individuals I’ve met in the communications and recruitment industries over the last 20 years.
Despite having an incredible wealth of knowledge and being so well connected, she is incredibly unassuming, modest and down to earth in her approach which makes working with her always a pleasure. She is incredibly generous, constantly giving tonnes of additional value above and beyond the normal boundaries of supplier and client relationship.
Tracey’s a joy to work with. She’s artfully consultative in a way that engages and elicits the best out of any dialogue, providing clarity of approach in a strategic and consultative manner but one which never loses sight of creating clear and attainable commercial objectives.
She is that rare gem: a creative and commercial force who gets it and has that focus to help us get it too.”
Richard Lowe, Managing Director
“We used BlueSky to establish a market presence using social media aimed at our target markets. The BlueSky team are experts at their work and operate in very close and effective co-operation with our team. Strongly recommended.”
Michael Johnson Ellis, Managing Director
“I’ve known Tracey for almost 5 years now and have witnessed first-hand the sheer brilliance of her established network as not only an ex-Recruiter but as one of the industry’s best connected PR professionals within our space. Tracey and Carly Smith at BlueSkyPR have helped Healthier Recruitment raise its profile and have strengthened our business development as a result of the excellent PR that Tracey and Carly Smith have secured. Can’t recommend enough. Thank you BlueSky team.”
Paul Payne, Managing Director and Co-Founder
“Being featured on one of the busiest news segments in UK TV is obviously great news for us and allows our skills and expertise to reach a potentially enormous audience. We were hugely impressed at the speed with which it came together. We were contacted on a Sunday night and were interviewed on the Monday afternoon which involved having a full camera and recording team come to Southampton from London to film the segment. Without BlueSky this wouldn’t have happened and we’re very grateful for their help.”
Michael Johnson-Ellis, Director of Business Development
“BlueSky PR managed to unlock the knowledge that we had inside the business and share it with a national audience of key stakeholders. The profile of our CEO, Nick Simpson, has increased exponentially since we began working together and the coverage we have achieved together has no doubt assisted our wider business objectives.”
Julian Moore, Head of Marketing
“We knew that the unique data we generated would be of interest to the communications industry, but the challenge for us was how to develop a media partnership that would get the VMA brand name and the report in front of our key senior-comms audience. Not only were BlueSky PR able to secure an exclusive agreement with one of our top targets, but they did so without the need for any advertorial costs.”
Michael Bennett, Director
“Since we’ve started working with BlueSky I’ve been consistently impressed by the team’s deep knowledge of the recruitment and talent management sectors as well as their strong networks in the UK media. BlueSky has secured us great coverage in a range of media and on various platforms and channels for all of our UK brands. They can work on an almost entirely self-sufficient basis and are very good at being proactive and spotting PR opportunities when they arise. They’ve also proved themselves to be adaptable and very easy to deal with meaning that any issues are resolved almost immediately.”
Women in Technology
“BlueSky worked hard to effectively raise Women in Technology’s profile by generating positive coverage in national media & sector specific press. BlueSky understands its client’s needs and are able to accurately present core messages through every available channel. They not only generated quality content, they also successfully managed award nominations, online media & press relations. As a result our brand was elevated which, in turn, strengthened my own position as an expert within my field.”
David Press, Director
“Through effective blogging, social media and a first class service, BlueSky has given our business the profile it needs in a competitive and changing market. What started as a discretionary spend is now an essential part of our budget and business strategy as we continue to grow the business. We have been very impressed with the creativity and more importantly quality of the PR BlueSky produce for us each month.”
Gill Bell, HR Director
“We’ve been working with the team at BlueSky PR for over two years. As a business our aim was to build our brand and gain more exposure within our client industry press. BlueSky has provided fantastic support in helping us develop a year-long plan with various deliverables to ensure we achieve our goal. They have succeeded in securing some really diverse press coverage, both traditional and online, as well as establishing a great social networking presence. The icing on the cake is their in-depth knowledge of the recruitment market, which speeds up the whole process. They are a pleasure to work with!”
Tony Goodwin, CEO
“It took me 10 years to find a PR and marketing company that really understood what I was trying to achieve with the survey I wanted to do. Well done everyone involved and special thanks to the team at BlueSky.”
Catherine Cook, Marketing Manager
“At a&dc we are seen as leaders in the field of behavioural assessment and development, and our clients look to us for the latest thinking and research. In order to really portray ourselves as thought leaders , we feel that PR is absolutely critical. And since we began working with BlueSky in September 2012 we have come to rely on PR. We are now able to seek out opportunities within industry and national press, both in digital and in print, reaching a much wider audience.”
Adrian Kinnersley, MD
“The team at BlueSky have generated an impressive amount of coverage for Twenty but it doesn’t stop there. They have a refreshing approach when it comes to PR and understand that it covers so much more than just the media. They have been instrumental in developing copy for our website; for our employer branding messages and for our social media channels. Regular visitors to the office, and popular with the whole team, BlueSky is more than just a supplier; they are a key strategic advisor.”
Our work
Check out our case studies to see the results of our work and better understand the benefits of PR and content marketing.
The £100,000 article – process safety engineer
Media coverage that resulted in upwards of £100,000 in fees for Rethink Energy.
Boosting brand recognition across the UK
BlueSky PR is a long-standing PR partner of The Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) and this campaign represents just one strand of ongoing activity.
Using SEO to enhance thought leadership
We worked with White Recruitment to produce thought leadership content and search engine optimised blogs to engage each of their audiences.
Award-winning: ‘Best Company for Customer Service’
The 6CATS International team wanted to maximise awareness of an award nomination amongst their core audience of recruitment and contracting professionals and increase the number of online votes submitted, we helped them to achieve this and they won!
Rewriting the rules of healthcare recruitment
Healthier Recruitment engaged BlueSky PR to help with their mission to challenge the long-held perception that permanent recruitment isn’t possible in the health sector.
Improving prospects for disabled jobseekers
BlueSky PR was chosen by RIDI Award media sponsor, Guidant Group, which is part of Impellam, to implement and manage a PR campaign to raise awareness of the awards and encourage entries.
Partner with BlueSky PR to take your business to the next level
If you're looking for a trusted partner to help you reach your target audience and improve your search engine rankings, look no further than BlueSky PR.
.png "skyline")
years
Our team of experts have been working with some of the world's most prestigious brands, as well as smaller businesses looking to grow their footprint in the market for over 19 years. We offer a range of services, including traditional media relations, reputation management, content creation, and crisis communications.
