Advertising open positions on static company websites is no longer enough to attract top talent and raise awareness of employment opportunities. Candidates want to find content when they comb the Internet for employment and professional development opportunities and when they interact with their network. Although content marketing remains a challenge for many recruitment marketers, some simple steps can shift your content strategy into high gear.
If you’re just getting your content strategy off the ground or looking at ways to enhance its performance, here are six considerations for boosting your content:
Divide and Conquer
Original content showcases thought leadership and provides candidates with new perspectives and information they can’t get elsewhere. But creating original content can be time consuming and resource intensive, especially when your employees have other responsibilities. Rather than saddle a single individual with generating all your blog posts, Twitter activity, and other social communications, take a divide-and-conquer approach. Enlist several organization thought leaders to participate and contribute a short post that shares a perspective, observation, or opinion.
Be in the Environment
Whether employees participate in a Habitat for Humanity build or grab a client-branded food product from the company kitchen, every moment has the potential to be a Hollywood moment, as nearly everyone has a camera-equipped mobile device at the ready. Ambient content can provide glimpses into what it’s like to work for your company and help fill the content pipeline. Look at your company with “sharable” eyes. Find video and still shots that can be easily shared and show the culture, the people, and the causes that are important to your organization. Empower employees to share their relevant pictures, videos, and postings by providing conduits for them to do so and assign thematic hashtags to brand the content and make it searchable.
Inspiration
Third-party content — content that comes from other industry sources — can be as valuable as original content. Sharing relevant knowledge others have created can provide a steady stream of interesting and timely content for your audience. Plus, offering analysis of third-party content can deliver further value and demonstrate thought leadership. Sharing industry-relevant information, not just job openings, can make recruiting professionals more interesting.
Possession
Do a content audit to determine what you have already have access to and how it might be repurposed. Look for real assets and items of interest — white papers, published articles, presentations, and other materials — that are likely to be exciting to an external audience. Use this process to identify employees who can contribute content and learn about their areas of interest. Parse out small assignments to them that won’t interrupt their work flow. If you find four individuals willing to contribute, request a blog post every month from each of them, and you’ll be on your way to a steady stream of content.
Structure
Determining the right resources and understanding different types of content can help guide your publishing strategy. Create a 90-day content plan and identify the business need you’d like to support. For example, are you hosting a regional career fair? Hiring for engineers? Opening a new facility? Use this to guide when you’ll include original, third-party, or ambient content. By establishing a framework and letting that guide how you fill the content pipeline you can build a meaningful strategy.
Permission
Some companies still ban employees from participating in social media. But whether it’s over concerns about privacy or productivity, the restriction is shortsighted. Most employees have a mobile device and the desire to communicate. Tell them it’s OK to engage in social media and give them guidance on appropriate social media use. Granting permission encourages collaboration, communication and builds employment brand awareness as employees share information about jobs, opportunities, and the benefits of joining your company.
With content playing a bigger role in communicating with candidates, a well-thought out strategy can make it easier to tell your organization’s stories. Creating interesting content, knowing when and where to deliver it, and understanding how it is shared can ensure that candidates are finding your content and help support a strong social media strategy.