Here at TrackerRMS, we blog regularly and share our posts on our social accounts and in our newsletter. Why is that? Because we know content marketing provides a high return on investment and brings us leads and clients for years to come.
As we create blog posts that share our knowledge and experience for recruiters and agency owners to learn from, their trust in us increases. When they need recruiting software, we’ve already built credibility with them — and credibility can lead to improved odds of winning their business.
It works for us, and it can work for you, too. Consider these eye-opening stats:
- Compared to outbound marketing efforts like traditional advertising, content marketing produces more than three times as many leads and costs 62 percent less, Content Marketing Institute reports.
- Businesses that blog get 67 percent more leads than businesses that don’t, according to the State of Inbound 2018 report from HubSpot.
- Most of your competitors are already blogging. Research by MarketingProfs shows 86 percent of B2C marketers and 91 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing in their overall strategy.
Here’s more insight into why your recruiting agency should have a blog and update it regularly, and tips for creating or enhancing a blog.
Why your recruiting agency should blog regularly
Blogging regularly helps get your agency get discovered in search results. With every new piece of high-quality content you add to your website, that content gets indexed by Google and other search engines. Your site builds authority. Great content gets shared organically by consumers. Your reach increases, and you can capture more leads.
Your agency should always focus on both quantity and quality. Frequently posting low-quality content will just hurt your brand and credibility. Blogging at least once a week will give your brand a new piece of content to share on social media and ensure that your blog is fresh and up-to-date.
If you can increase this number with more high-quality content, you can reap better rewards. When answering the question of how often a business should blog, online marketing expert Neil Patel found doubling his blogging frequency to twice a week more than doubled his website traffic.
The key is to aim for the most impact with each blog. Even if you don’t have time to blog more than once a week, you can update old blogs with new research or thoughts to increase the value of your evergreen content.
Get started: How to launch a blog
If your recruiting agency doesn’t have a blog yet, start by talking to your web developer about their recommendations. Hosting your blog within your website provides the benefits of added pageviews and website traffic. Visitors can easily navigate to contact pages or learn more about your agency, all in the same site.
There are many free blogging platforms out there (WordPress is one) that enable businesses to add a blog to a website. You could also use a more comprehensive marketing tool like HubSpot to build a business blog and gain access to lead nurturing software that integrates with your blog. With HubSpot, you can see which leads are viewing which blogs, so you can tailor your marketing to them.
Regardless of which blog platform you use, make sure you have analytics tied to your blog. Google Analytics is a free platform that shows you where users are coming from, how much time they’re spending on every blog page, and how much of your blog they’re engaging with. Use content marketing analytics to understand what your most popular content is and how people are finding your content. That will help you to save time when you’re thinking of blog ideas that will bring you the most return on investment.
Enhance your agency’s blog
Once you have a blog, here are some ways to make it a destination visitors want to return to over and over again.
Add social sharing buttons
Extend your blog reach by making it shareable. With a few clicks, visitors can instantly share your content with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social channels.
Add a commenting system
In an analysis of his content marketing blog Quick Sprout, Patel found that comments drove 16 percent of his blog traffic. Besides potentially bringing more traffic to your site, comments provide these benefits:
- Commenters will return to the blog to continue the discussion.
- Your agency can deepen relationships with readers by responding to comments.
- You gain market research benefits with unique insights into leads and customers.
Most blogging platforms enable businesses to avoid spam by approving comments before they’re published.
Insert images & video
Photos and videos will make your blog more engaging. They break up the content, so it’s easier to consume and scan. Photos that are tagged can appear in Google image search, which links back to your website. Users who watch videos spend more time on your page.
Add at least two to three photos per post, and insert YouTube video links or raw files where they’re applicable.
Add a call to action
Keep blog visitors engaged with your brand by adding a relevant call to action to every post. You don’t want them to just read your content and leave. Here are some ideas:
- Suggest further reading for blog posts on related topics.
- Ask the consumer to join a discussion about the blog on a social media channel.
- Include a blog subscription box.
- Offer a free consultation on a piece of content that is geared toward warm leads.
To get a clearer picture of what’s working for your blog, check your analytics. Delve into your top 10 posts, and examine the content, the media used and the call to action. You can use similar techniques to optimize future posts.
More blogging best practices
As you dive deeper into the world of blogging, use these tactics for a better return on investment.
Share your blog
Post your blog on social media channels. Link to it in email marketing. Send it to your internal team, so they can share it, too. You might even share certain blogs through paid advertising campaigns to create traffic momentum. Especially in the beginning, you’ll want to build readership by grabbing attention for your blog on your owned channels.
Use a content calendar
Stay organized with your publishing schedule by using a content calendar. Just like they help traditional publishers, content calendars give your team a plan, so you know what’s in the pipeline and what has already been created. You can align your content calendar with upcoming marketing initiatives, holidays, customer feedback and more.
Be open to ideas
Great blog content helps, not sells. While you may wish to include periodic news about your company in your blog, focus blog ideation on how to provide solutions to leads and customers. To this end:
- Ask your customer service team what questions they’re most frequently asked.
- Evaluate the most common pain points your clients and candidates encounter, and create content that helps them.
- Create a company-wide repository for ideas, so you can involve your entire staff in brainstorming.
Creating a blog with a strategy to help your leads and customers can be instrumental in growing your agency and retaining your clients. Share your content thoughtfully, use customer and employee feedback to shape your blog, and aim for high-quality and value in everything you produce.
TrackerRMS: Software for forward-thinking recruiting agencies
Blogging regularly establishes you as a leader in the field, and you can further set yourself up for success with the industry’s leading recruiting software, TrackerRMS. TrackerRMS combines cloud-based recruitment, applicant tracking and CRM software with a high level of support to increase productivity, build better relationships and make smarter decisions. Learn more about the TrackerRMS solution. Request a demo today.
