Leveraging Blogs to Boost Your Recruitment Agency's Online Presence
I bet you a chocolate fudge cake that when you think of boosting your agency's online presence your first thought is social media. Am I right?
For many of us, social media is our go-to. It’s quick, it’s cheap, it’s instant. I’m not denying the benefits of social media. But I’m asking you to consider whether it’s the best long-term strategy. For me, it’s not.
Blogs are an under-utilised but incredibly powerful way to boost your recruitment agency’s online presence and build your brand. They provide the opportunity to explore topics that matter to your agency on a platform that you own and control while still being able to capitalise on other audiences. If you want to focus on one method to boost your agency’s online presence, it has to be blogs.
Why are blogs powerful?
Something you should know about me is that I love statistics about as much as I love words. So to show you the power of blogs I’m going to dive in with some numbers.
Companies with blogs have 67% more leads every month than those without
70% of people would rather learn about a company from blogs than adverts
We’re so used to being sold to 24/7 that even on social media we’re cautious. We treat every post with suspicion and if we think we’re being sold to, then we’re off. But when we land on blogs it’s because we’re looking for information and when we find it, we’re going to remember who was helpful and in our brains, they’ll be tagged as an expert.
That’s why blogs are so incredible. They give you space, time and the opportunity to build a rapport, to show who you are and what you stand for without your competitor shouting over you.
They provide an opportunity for you to be helpful, to demonstrate your expertise and not in a flashy sales way. But in a meaningful way, a way that cultivates relationships and establishes your field authority.
If you aren’t blogging, you’re giving your competitor an easy in to outshine you.
Blogs vs social media
For many of us, social media has become our go-to outreach marketing activity. Publishing a post feels like job done, we can move on to the next job. The trouble is a social media post’s shelf life is around 2 hours on a good day. So all of our outreach is hoping that our target audience is online and being shown our content in that 2-hour window. When you put it like that it doesn’t sound like a sensible way to go.
Compare that to a blog. Its average shelf life is 2 years. That’s 2 years of traffic, 2 years of leads, 2 years of engagement. Suddenly putting all of your eggs in a social media basket isn’t that appealing.
That’s not to say it’s one or the other. Blogs can generate your social media content for you so you benefit from both the immediate and the long-term.
Long-term growth
Deciding to prioritise blogs feels like a risky move. It feels almost like you’re stepping back, but the reality is that you’re looking at the bigger picture. Creating, and sticking to, a blog strategy is all about the long game. It’s about spending longer on your content creation but also re-examining your distribution strategy. That’s because a great blog can be broken down into multiple social media posts, vlogs, webinar topics, podcast episodes, you name it.
While it may feel that you’re creating less to start with, you aren’t. What you’re doing is streamlining your content creation so that all the individual parts tie together. There’s a common narrative thread running across all of your platforms. It’s that thread that will boost your agency’s online presence. On average someone engages with 7 different touch points before they talk to you. If each of those touch points is saying slightly different things or talking about completely different topics that becomes confusing for that individual and they’re less likely to make the next move.
When your blogs create a strong connection between every single piece of content suddenly you’ve got a robust online presence with clarity around your values, your approach and your agency. That’s a much more impactful presence to have.
Embedding blogs in your marketing strategy
Leveraging the power of blogs all starts with including them in your strategy. Blogs are often seen as too much effort which means they fall by the wayside. To avoid that they need to be planned and resourced properly.
Decide what frequency you’re able to commit to - weekly is best but if you can only do fortnightly or monthly then start there.
Then give one person responsibility for bringing them to life - that might mean they write them or they manage a freelancer.
Devise topics that support the business objectives - decide in advance what you’re going to write about and when, this can flex if needed but it provides a framework.
Create a distribution list - there’s nothing worse than spending time on a blog only for it to gather dust. Establish what happens after you hit publish and follow it each time.
Review what works and what doesn’t - learn what your audience enjoys, what they engage with and do more of that.
You aren’t going to revolutionise your blogging efforts overnight, you won’t see results tomorrow, but if you’re committed to the cause and keep going then when you track your web traffic, the pages they land on and, in time, your conversions then you’ll be able to see how blogs can boost your recruitment agency’s online presence.
Of course that might all seem like too much when combined with your current workload and that’s where I come in. I work with ambitious recruitment agencies to create high-quality (non-AI) blogs that are targeted to their dream clients. Want to know more? Find out about my Leads Launchpad offer.
