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Before we start, there are a couple of things that will be useful for this whole process.
[First, remember this is a direct transcription for your benefit, so excuse any rogue typos.]
I did mention them last week, but I’m going to mention them again, just in case you haven’t grabbed them. If you’ve not downloaded the latest Recruitment Marketing Checklist, then do that because as you are moving forward towards the end of the year, I’m sure many of you are thinking about your strategy for 2023 already.
You do need to know where you are. If you haven’t got a copy of the checklist, or if you’ve downloaded it before, go back and print it off again and fill out the 30 questions. At least you have a sporting chance of knowing where you are versus where you want to be.
That’s number one. Number two – social media. We’re going to be talking about content in a second, but social media is pivotal for your brand awareness, particularly at this point in time, because of what’s happened over the past couple of years. You can download another of our reports. It’s going to help you, and they’re all complimentary. Just go along to www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/smm. If you’ve not downloaded the audit checklist, that’s, again, www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/mcl.
The Many Benefits of Content Marketing
Let’s talk about content marketing and its many benefits for you as a recruitment and staffing company. Today, I’ve highlighted 10 specific ways that utilizing content marketing will help you and your recruitment brand. Let’s start with number one.
1. Content Marketing Improves Brand Awareness
Number one is that content marketing is the most cost-effective way to improve your brand awareness. Now, content comes in many forms. It can be distributed in different ways, which we’re going to come on to. As a first premise, always remember that in today’s marketplace, one of the fantastic benefits of using content is that as an SME business or as a micro-business, you can compete in ways that don’t cost you an awful lot of money. You can get your brand out and in front of candidates and clients – your ideal candidates, your ideal clients – in a very easy way.
Now, you can outsource the writing of content. We have provided writing services in the past, and we provide them for our Superfast Circle members. Just imagine that this is something that anyone can teach themselves to do. A lot of people say, “Oh, I can’t write”. You might be surprised how good you could be at writing if you follow a specific process. We train people to write content in such a way that you could position yourself in front of your market and in a way that makes a huge impact on you and your brand.
2. Content Marketing Gives You Greater Exposure
The second thing about content marketing is that it gives you more ways for people to find you.
There are multiple ways that you can use content for people to find you.
One is through Social Media, and the other is by optimising content for the search engines.
So, social media – LinkedIn and, depending on what sectors you’re in, on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can post updates and information about developing a career and recruiting. You can write up to 1300 characters on LinkedIn and even more on Facebook and Instagram. Here is an example from a recent LinkedIn post of mine.
Another way is to optimize your website for the search engines, so you appear for the people searching for you. If you are writing a regular piece of content on your website, each time you post, that is another page on your website. Another page where people can find you and a signal to Google you are an authority in the sector.
A couple of years ago, we had an event in the Lake District for our Superfast Circle members. One of the members was lamenting that his website didn’t appear as he wanted it to on Google.
When was the last time you Googled your website? Just look at how many links appear for your website? Are there multiple links? Are you struggling to find it? One of the ways to change that is to have additional pages on your website, so additional content. This particular client of ours at the time hadn’t got any blog content at all. He had what I would class as a very ‘thin website’. It just had a few basic pages, and he had his jobs page.
Google wasn’t seeing him as an authority brand in his particular sector, and that was quite easy to rectify. He started to produce more content, and lo and behold, his website appeared. If you have more content on your website, it will be much easier for people to search and find you.
I don’t know about you, but if I go and Google a supplier by name of any description and I can’t find them on the first page, or I can’t find multiple links for them, I can’t find a Google places a piece of content around them, I’m always a bit sceptical – are they the real deal? That is one thing about content; it will increase traffic to your authority website and will help in your positioning.
3. Content Comes in Many Forms
Content can be created in multiple ways. It can be reused, and it’s really easy to do. Some of the technology around recording, videoing, and writing has become available in the last few years, making marketing easier. The next podcast that I will be recording is about my lessons from recording over 300 podcasts over the last eight years and how easy it’s become relative to when I first started recording The Recruitment Marketing and Sales Podcast.
Think about all the multimedia you can now use, from podcasting to video to live streaming.
The good news is there are so many ways that you can use content. It doesn’t have to be in the written word. You could record something and have it transcribed. There are multiple ways to use content that will also impact how people consume you and your brand. Some people prefer to listen. Listener numbers on all the podcasting platforms are increasing exponentially now. You’ve got all these different ways that you can use content to your advantage.
4. Content Creates Connection
Creating content using many different modalities creates a connection with you. Content allows you to connect, and as you connect with people, they get to know you, and people, as we all know, want to work with people they know, like, and trust before they hand over money. People can get a sense of you, who you are and your personality because we all have so much choice in today’s market.
Some people probably won’t work with Sharon and I. We might not be their cup of tea. There are other people where I’m certain we are their cup of tea. They get to know that through the content we write, through the videos we create, and through the podcasts we record. That is available to you. It’s an easy way for you to start attracting your tribe through the things that you do and say.
5. Content Creates Omnipresence
One of the advantages of utilising content marketing for you and your brand is that it creates omnipresence. The famous marketeer, Jay Abraham, came up with the original quote around omnipresence related to marketing.
His thoughts are that we can be everywhere because we now have access to multimedia as an SME business. Content that you create can be shared across multiple channels. A lot of people say, “Oh, well, you need to put something different on Twitter. You need to put something different on YouTube, something different on Facebook”. To be honest, you don’t need to do that. You can share your content across multiple channels.
I think one of the things about this — and remember, email as well, we’re not even touching email a lot in this particular podcast, but of course, email is your content for making a connection with people. Just think about it, over the last couple of years, social media has gone through the roof with the number of people present on different channels because people were craving connection. I think there’s now something like 3.4 billion members on Facebook. Something like 2.6 billion people on YouTube.
Even LinkedIn is now up to just shy of 800 million members. You can see the difference that would make – if you are on all of these channels – some of your clients will be on these channels too. You can see how being present in front of people and the opportunity that could bring you; the way you do that is fundamentally through utilising content.
6. Content Builds Authority For Your Brand
Number six links to what we were just talking about when it comes to omnipresence. That is around building your authority brand for your market. You don’t need to be the authority on recruitment, but you need to be an authority in recruitment in your specific sector. Of course, that’s easier to do because your tribe is much smaller, but you can do that by using all these multiple channels. If you’ve ever had that experience where you watch an advert on the TV, and then you see it again, and then suddenly you’re opening a magazine, and that advert is there again. Or you go and look up their website, and suddenly you get re-targeted, and that person appears to be everywhere.
Our primitive brains then think, oh, well, if that person’s in all these different places, then maybe they’re okay. You can link to how our human psyche works when you start to build your authority. Of course, you can do this with the content that you create. You could write a blog post that then gets made into multiple images that you share. It’s recorded as a podcast; it’s recorded as a video. There are so many things you could do that help build your authority and opportunity in the market.
7. Content Plays Into The Buyers’ Cycle
Coming on to number seven now, we have talked so many times about the buyers’ cycle, about how people move from the awareness that they have a problem, through to wanting that problem solved, to identifying a supplier recruiting partner they can work with.
One of the things that content can do for you ahead of time is answer the questions in your clients’ and your candidates’ minds. I am certain most, if not all, of you will have a client and candidate pathway mapped out. Then, when they start to work with you, what’s the journey they take? There are lots of questions going on in people’s minds.
Now, imagine you are building your authority. One of the ways you build your authority is by answering all those questions going on in people’s minds. You know what it’s like; you have something pop up. The first thing you do, you jump onto Google, and you Google it, or because you are connected to somebody on LinkedIn, you just happen to see that piece of content. Our brains can do really good things for us; it searches out where all these things are, which helps. You can answer questions ahead of time for your people through the content that you create.
8. Content Warms Up Your Contacts
Number eight is it warms people up to working with you. We’ve touched on this briefly a little bit earlier on in this podcast. People get to know you as an individual, and then, if you are the type of person they resonate with, your content is warming them up even more as they’re moving down the buyers’ cycle to start working with you. There are lots of different ways that you can do that in the content that you write.
9. Content Can Be Used To Answer Objections
The next thing is the elephant in the room – people have objections. People have objections to working with you. It’s not the right time; it’s too time-intensive, you charge too much as a recruitment company, anyone can do it now, all these things that go on. You can create content that answers people’s objections. Imagine somebody is in your funnel. Maybe they’re on your email list; they’re a candidate considering whether they work with your recruiting company or not; you can answer a lot of their objections even before you get on the phone and speak to them.
It’s probably more likely that people, once they’ve read some of the content you’re sharing, will then take a call from you or maybe sit down and have a chat about their future career. All that can happen because you’re answering their objections.
10. Case Studies Can Be Used As Content
The final one I want to talk about that people don’t always consider is content can be used in the form of a case study, or it can be used in the form of a testimonial. We share testimonials as memes (visual graphics) on LinkedIn, Facebook, and in all these places that we hang out.
We also have written testimonials all over our website. Would that make a difference because people search for things like that? Think about your content there. It is a great convincer as people are moving down the buyers’ cycle and consider working with you because people don’t want to make a mistake. If they can go and read one of your client case studies or candidate case studies or testimonials, that will make a difference for them.
So there you have just 10 of the many benefits of using content marketing for you and your recruitment organisation. Get to work on these and get some of them moving before the end of the year; you will be amazed at the difference it will make with your connection and the rapport with candidates and clients and how many you can convert.
How We Can Help
We have many clients on track for their best year ever because they implement what we teach and utilize the content and campaigns we give them. If you want a quick chat to see if we can work for you, book your call and demonstration here.
Thanks,
Denise
