Content needs to be at the heart of every recruitment firm’s marketing strategy. When produced and utilised correctly it enables your business to generate brand awareness, build relationships with candidates and clients and bring your marketing costs down.
This blog post outlines:
- What content marketing is
- Why recruitment agencies need to be using it
- Seven types of content marketing that you should implement into your strategy
What is content marketing?
Content marketing in recruitment is a strategic approach focused on creating and distributing content that is valuable, consistent and relevant to your audience in order to attract, engage and retain candidates and clients.
Instead of simply posting about jobs you are hiring for or the services you offer, you are producing content that educates or adds real value to prospects to help them solve any issues or pain points they may be experiencing.
By producing and sharing valuable, informative, and engaging content, you can position yourselves as experts in your field and build a relationship with your target audience.
The key is to create content that is high-quality, relevant, and adds value to the target audience. By doing so, you can increase brand awareness, build a loyal audience, and ultimately drive business growth.
The importance of content marketing for recruitment agencies
Recruitment firms needs to use a variety of methods and channels if they are to reach prospective candidates and clients with the right content at the right time, from email marketing through to social media.
It is essential that you create personas of your ideal audiences so that you have a clear understanding of their wants, needs and the pain points that they are experiencing, alongside the channels they use to seek out information. This will enable you to produce and share compelling content that resonates with them and saves you time, money and resources as a result.
You can then use these personas to provide you with insights on topics of interest that you can use for your content marketing.
Here are seven types of content that you can use to enhance your recruitment marketing activities and acquire new candidates and clients.
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 and clients.
Blog posts can be incredibly effective when authored, or ghost-written, by different employees in your company, from the CEO to the heads of division or marketing manager. This enables you to present a diverse range of insights and opinions from across the business.
However, it is incredibly important that you produce (and update) blogs on a regular basis – ideally no less than once a week. This will keep visitors returning to the blog section of your website and is also beneficial for search engine optimisation (SEO) purposes as the more frequently you update your site with fresh content the more frequently search engines will stop by to crawl it.
On the subject of SEO, it is important to point out that to rank highly on Google you should produce long-form blogs. Here at BlueSky, we define long-form ‘as a blog or article that has a minimum word count of 800 – 1,000 words’. Producing blogs that are of optimal length and add value to your target audience are two of the ranking factors that Google’s algorithm looks for when assessing content to display on the search engine.
2. Infographics
Infographics are a fantastic way to illustrate detailed information and statistics in a visually engaging format that is easy for readers to digest - and with the human brain able process visuals 60,000 times faster than text it is easy to see why.
While long-form content is important for SEO, not everyone has the time to read a detailed blog post, nor do they want to. Therefore using an infographic can be an effective way of reaching people with the right content. This could be posted separately on social media or added to a blog post as a way to provide additional context. Combining content formats together can drive engagement and provide more ways for your audience to consume your content.
3. Podcasts
According to data from MIDAS (RAJAR’s audio survey), podcast consumption has witnessed a huge increase with 10.5 million weekly listeners in the UK. And because of this, many recruitment firms and suppliers are now producing their own podcasts to capitalise on this growing demand and cover their respective niches.
Podcasts help to humanise brands and give them a voice that candidates and end-hirers can relate to. They also help businesses by providing them with a unique opportunity to present their take on the latest industry trends, offer advice and share insights into their company culture – which can be extremely beneficial for employer of choice messaging when hiring internally.
4. Video
Video is another form of content marketing that has seen exponential growth in the recruitment industry over the last few years.
When it comes to video, there is a common misconception that there needs to be a big budget available to either invest in the right equipment and software, or to hire a specialist production company. However, that doesn’t need to be the case.
Talking head videos, where an individual talks directly to the camera of their smartphone or laptop, are an extremely effective and popular method for recruitment professionals to get themselves in front of their 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 brand the videos up and add subtitles by using speech-to-text software such as Zubtitle.
5. Webinars
Webinars and online events allow you to share valuable information with candidates or clients, and interact with them in real-time.
They are typically used to provide educational content such as best practices, industry trends, and career advice, and they can be a powerful tool for building brand awareness, demonstrating expertise, and generating leads. They can also be used as gated content to collect contact information from attendees, and repurposed after the live event as on-demand videos.
6. Social media
With over 4.76 billion social media users worldwide, social media is a great opportunity to reach a wider audience and engage with your potential candidates and clients.
There are so many options when it comes to social media channels, and depending on which industry you're recruiting in will depend on which ones you should focus on (this is where your personas come in). Your goals for each social platform will then help you define the kind of content you should be posting, whether that be:
- Industry news
- Advice for job seekers
- Success stories from your clients
- Tips from your blog posts
- Talking head videos
- Webinar snippets
To mention just a few examples.
However, posting isn't the only way to establish your firm as a thought leader in the industry.. Social media is, and should be, a two-way conversation, so it's important to not only engage with your followers by responding to comments, answering questions, and thanking them for their support, but also to actively comment on posts from industry influencers and make yourself part of the conversation.
7. E-books
As long-form pieces of content E-books (or eBooks if you prefer), whitepapers and reports give you the opportunity to really go into depth on a topic and show just how much of an expert you are.
They can be used to provide insights on industry trends, best practices, and career development, among other topics.
They can also be gated and used as lead magnets, where readers must provide their contact information to be able to download them - which is great for tracking.
These are just a few of the many different content marketing ideas that recruitment firms can implement to boost their candidate and client acquisition activities.
Are you ready to take your recruitment agency's content marketing to the next level? Then it's time to work with BlueSky PR. Our team of expert content marketers can help you create compelling content that engages your target audience and drives results.
From blog posts and social media updates to case studies and whitepapers, we have the experience and knowledge to create content that resonates with your audience and positions your agency as a thought leader in your industry. And with our strategic approach, we'll help you get the most out of your content marketing efforts, whether you're looking to boost your brand awareness, generate leads, or drive conversions.
So, if you want to attract more clients, candidates, and top talent to your recruitment agency, contact us today to learn more about how we can help. Let's work together to achieve your content marketing goals and take your business to new heights.
Originally published in November 2020, updated February 2023.
