Blogs are a fantastic medium for your recruitment firm to demonstrate its industry and sector expertise, drive website traffic and generate those all-important leads.
However, many firms are failing to see any ROI on them. Here are four common blogging mistakes that recruitment marketers make and how to rectify them.
- Your blog posts aren’t aligned with your recruitment firm’s goals
Too often recruitment companies, particularly small firms, get into the habit of producing quickly written blog posts so that they have some form of fresh content to show off to website visitors. However, these often lack a clear purpose or detail.
It is important that, when it comes to producing blog content, you align it with your business’s goals and address specific questions that your ideal prospects are seeking answers for. For example, if your agency’s specialism is oil and gas recruitment and the sector is experiencing a skills shortage, why don’t you write a blog post which looks at the causes and the measures that businesses can put in place to address this?
- You don’t use data to back up the claims made in your blog posts
One of the most common ways that recruitment agencies lose credibility from their content marketing is by making claims which do not reference any sources, or simply fail to use any data at all. Let’s say you were writing a blog post on jobs growth in the financial sector and had to use one of the two sentences below, which one would you use?
- ‘Growth in demand for finance professionals has significantly increased in the Midlands and this has led to…’
- ‘Growth in demand for finance professionals has significantly increased by 35% year-on-year, according to the latest data from APSCo, and this has led to…’
- The second without a doubt. This is because statements which use data to support them are far more credible and compelling than vague sounding sentences which could, quite frankly, be made up. Therefore, you should always try and use data to support your claims and make sure that they are from trusted sources such as the Office for National Statistics, trade bodies and independent studies.
- You write blog posts which have a short lifespan
Whilst piggybacking on the latest news or hot topic can provide your recruitment firm with an opportunity to demonstrate its knowledge on a particular topic, it is vital that this doesn’t form the basis of all of your content.
You should ensure that your blog contains a mixture of posts which focus on evergreen content as well as the latest news and insights. Evergreen content doesn’t go out of date and revolves around a topic that’s relevant to its audience regardless of the current news cycle or time of the year, such as hiring advice and interview tips.
By utilising this mixed approach, you will be able to be join the conversation on current news stories impacting the sectors you work in and have a wealth of content that your audiences will be searching for on a regular basis.
- Your blog post topics are too broad
When recruitment marketers start writing blogs for the first time, they tend to focus on topics such as:
- “How to Write a Great CV”
- “How to Source the Perfect Candidate”
However, these topics are far too broad and whilst they may attract a large number of website visitors they are likely to be of little value to your business. Instead, you should move away from this catch-all approach and adopt a much more targeted one which hones in on specific attributes that audiences possess. For example:
- “How to Write a Graduate Marketing CV”
- “How to Source the Ideal Finance Director”
Whilst the audiences that these blogs attract will be smaller, they will also be far more likely to convert into leads.
By addressing and/or avoiding these mistakes your recruitment firm will produce content that resonates with your target audiences helping to drive website traffic and generate new business.
