Blogging. The word conjures up memories of the platforms like Blogspot and LiveJournal. While these sites are still in existence and used relatively regularly, they just don’t have the “cool” reputation of competing platforms like Tumblr, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and of course, the mother of all social media --- Facebook. In the age of social media, blogging just seems…old…doesn’t it? It isn’t! Stay tuned and we will tell you why your recruitment strategy should include blogging.
Organic Traffic
Our recruitment marketing blog for Harger Howe is one of the largest driving forces behind our website’s traffic. Of course we still run the occasional pay-per-click ad to promote an offer or the agency itself, but most of our leads (companies who might be seeking recruitment marketing services) come through call-to-actions placed on our blogs.
Blogging gives your audience a much easier way to find you via questions (searches in Google, Bing etc) that they want answered. This is in sharp contrast to assuming that they should already having to know about your company (which just doesn’t happen that frequently).
Since we started blogging more regularly as a part of our inbound marketing strategy, our organic search has increased significantly. To put that in perspective here are some month over month organic search numbers from June 2015 to present (these numbers represent new organic searches month over month in a year's time):
- June 2015 - June 2016: +101
- July 2015 - July 2016: +55
- August 2015 - August 2016: +110
- September 2015 - September 2016: No increase or decrease
- October 2015 - October 2016: +66
- November 2015 - November 2016: +201
- December 2015 - December 2016: +190
- January 2016 - January 2017: +365
- February 2016 - February 2017: +483
Think of Your Blog as a Bank
You’ve heard of earned interest in a bank account right? Well blogs generate a sort of interest too. According to Hubspot, “1 in 10 blog posts are compounding, meaning organic search increases their traffic over time.” And furthermore, “Compounding blog posts make up 10% of all blog posts and generate 38% of overall traffic.” Basically that means that just by having historical blog posts live on your site you are going to continue to generate more organic search traffic with no additional effort.
The Unique Factor
The fact is that in order to have an optimal social strategy your shareable content needs to be unique to you. If you are writing blogs and creating premium content on a regular basis sharing on multiple networks becomes easier. Simply sharing someone else’s’ content isn’t’ enough to separate you from your competitors.
A Few Tips to Get Started
Have we convinced you? Great! Here are some tips to get your started:
- According to Hubspot, “43% of people admit to skimming blog posts.” That means you should include bullets, headers, empty space and pictures to get your point across visually.
- When crafting your titles, try to include 6-13 words. Hubspot Research noted, “Titles with 6-13 words attract the highest and most consistent amount of traffic.”
- Start thinking about your ideal candidates - what questions do they have? Center your blogging around keyword searches that those candidates would look for. For instance, if someone was writing a blog to attract our agency, it might be called This Week’s New Social Media Tips utilizing the keywords of New Social Media Tips.
- Find out what makes your organization special and generate topic ideas around it. People want to know about you – let them!
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Blogging is a key aspect to a comprehensive inbound recruitment marketing strategy. If you have questions about instituting a holistic way of reaching candidates reach out to our President.
