The state of blogs in the recruitment industry

You can find all the stats you want on blogs and their impact. Hubspot, Semrush and Ahrefs all have great in-depth reports packed with statistics. But they’re across all industries, and as we know, the recruitment industry is its own special place. 

That’s why I spent my summer researching the state of blogs within the recruitment industry, so I could give you the information that's relevant to you.

So settle down and let’s dig in.

The importance of blogs in recruitment

Talking about blogs is pretty much what I do for a living. I truly believe they’re a great tool to build your reputation, generate leads and show what your agency stands for. 

Blogs should be a mainstay within your marketing strategy. Your website is the only piece of marketing real estate that you own fully. Your social media presence, ads and PPC are all on someone else’s platform. But your blog? That’s all yours.

Prospects engage with an average of 8 pieces of content before they get in touch. If you think about that in relation to candidates and clients, without 8 killer pieces of content you’re missing out on a huge number of leads. 

But your clients and candidates are two very different audiences with different priorities and needs. That means your blog efforts need to be shared between those two areas, with appropriate content and depth to be helpful and engaging. 

The reality is that blogs get a bad rep. They’re glossed over, a nice-to-have and severely underutilised. But don’t let me tell you that, let’s take a look at what’s happening in the industry right now.

What’s the industry doing right now?

I decided the only way to understand what the industry is doing about blogs is to research it myself. So I randomly selected 100 recruitment agencies of all shapes, sizes and industries to get a true cross-industry selection and I set to work crunching the numbers (not my natural strength). Here’s what I uncovered:

Frequency of blogs 

Before we get to the averages, let’s talk generalisations. Firms usually fell into two camps - barely anything or all guns blazing. 29% of recruitment agencies aren’t blogging at all. If they were blogging then they were serious about it, producing multiple blogs a month, and sometimes a week. 

The average was 11 blogs in 6-months and 21 blogs in 12-months, making it roughly 2 per month. That’s not bad going and shows a level of consistency when maintained across a 12-month period.

Length

When you take that frequency in relation to word count, things start to change slightly. On average recruitment agencies blogs were 515 words long. In that grand world of content writing and SEO that’s not that long. In fact, I’m going to be so bold as to say that’s too short. 

Firms aren’t delving into detail on any particular topic, and it makes their blogging efforts seem surface-deep. I understand that you aren’t always going to be able to produce weighty tomes every single time, but there are definitely opportunities for firms who are willing to commit and invest in longer content.

Target audience and intent

For the most part the typical target audiences were quite mixed. You had your usual candidate focused tips and advice blogs, but you also had industry news and a few deep dives. What struck me throughout this process is the number of recruitment agencies using their blog as their central news channel. Staffing updates, away days, changes in management - were all housed with their main blog content. 

While it’s sometimes necessary to share internal updates more widely it’s really important to consider your target audience and whether that’s something they are actually interested in….or if it’s just something you’re using to fill space. 

Standing out from the crowd

Blogs are alive and well within the recruitment industry from my research. There is still plenty of scope though to do it even better. 

While firms are blogging regularly and they’re mixing up their target audience there were plenty of websites I visited where the blogs felt like a tick box. They were there, they existed, but strategically they lacked a defined role. If that sounds familiar, then you’ve got an opportunity to really capitalise on your blog. 

By hand-picking topics that are relevant and interesting to your audience, you can position yourself as a leader in that field. You can show off, demonstrate the breadth of your knowledge and experience and build your reputation. 

If I’m being honest, a 400-word round-up on your latest staff away day isn’t going to do that. 

For those firms serious about their reputation, their clients and their business - there are still plenty of opportunities to be seized by taking your blog more seriously. 

Struggling to dedicate more time to your blogs? That’s where I come in. As a specialist recruitment blog writer, I’ve got the know-how and skill to set to work creating a series of researched, original blogs to propel your agency to meet their goals. Find out about my packages and choose the right one for you.