By now, I’m sure you’re aware of how important creating content is for your business. If you don’t, here’s a quick post from us explaining why your firm needs to have a blog.
In essence though, content is vital for allowing your client base and potential customers to find out more about your brand and to really know what you’re all about. It’s also important for ensuring your site is Search Engine Optimised and appearing at the top of Google. Writing about the stuff you know and are experts on will give your company more credibility and position your people as thought leaders in the industry. This, of course, does wonders for attracting business. Here’s how you can turn content into clients.
As I touched on above, writing about the latest topics impacting your industry and providing readers with valuable and insightful content will ensure that your firm is recognised as an established expert. However, by going beyond simply posting blogs on your business’ website, and reaching out to publications in your field for feature opportunities, you’ll also ensure that you’re getting seen by more people – including your target audience. Having by-lined pieces on the websites and magazines that your client base reads will give your firm third-party credibility and will build your brand’s presence. Essentially, it’s another form of networking - you’re making sure that you’re in the right places and being seen by the key people in your sector.
Recruiters are often unaware of how much information they have at hand, when really, they have access to a wealth of data that is of interest to journalists. It’s important to utilise this knowledge and put it in the public domain. Not only can this be insightful for those in your sector, but it can also turn out to be extremely useful for potential customers. Showing that you know your stuff and have information at hand can help distinguish your company from competitors and turn your content into clients.
If you’re wondering what you can comment on, skills shortages and salary changes in the sectors you hire for can be a great place to start. You can also give your expert opinion on the latest news impacting your industry. Recruitment firms can also put findings from their own whitepapers or studies into press releases to maximise coverage.
Remember, whatever you are putting in the public domain should always add value. The recruitment industry is extremely competitive, so, to ensure that you stand out and turn your content into clients, you should always aim to teach your readers something or offer them a new perspective. You can do this by having a definitive opinion and then backing up your arguments with statistics, facts and real-life examples.
Content creation and business development go hand-in-hand and is arguably one of the easiest ways of seeing a direct return on investment. Often, PR is spoken about as a cost rather than an investment to firms, and can sometimes be misunderstood as a vanity project as opposed to something that feeds into business development and delivers leads. But actually, if used properly it will deliver ROI.
For example, following a conversation with one of our clients, a specialist energy recruitment consultant, we found out that there were acute skills shortages for ‘process safety engineers’, a role which was both critical to the running of a successful energy extraction project and in high demand.
After this conversation, we drafted a feature on behalf of a consultant at the company for one of the specialist publications in the oil sector on why it is important to find more talent for this role.
After the article was published, we received a call from the consultant who reported that by sharing the coverage, the business had fee opportunities of £100,000 - providing a true return on their PR investment.