How to Create Clickable Content in Employment Branding

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Employment branding is one of the most talked about strategies in recruiting right now and there is a focus on creating content that is clickable and contagious. While this is a great focus to have, we’ve got to remember that employment branding is about far more than just a high click rate. Employment branding is an overall strategy, not a tactic. One of the tactics that support your strategy may be creating content that you hope will spread like wild fire, but employment branding is all encompassing and goes beyond the content.

No matter what type of tactics you use, clicks are not the end goal. The end goal is getting highly qualified people who fit settled at your company. There are three ways employment branding helps us achieve this:

It assists in acquiring high-quality applications. – By being transparent, consistent and highlighting the benefits of working with the company as well as the ins and outs of the job, you’ll see higher-quality applicants. This means someone who has the skill level you’re looking for and fits with the company culture. Remember that it’s not all about skill, or even culture fit. A CEB study found that candidates who fit the company culture are 12% more likely to be a quality hire, but those who fit with the people they work with are 30% more likely to be a quality hire.

    It helps to convert candidates into applicants that join our talent network. – Your company’s talent network is a place that can help convert candidates, get them connected and move them from a mindset of uncertainty to knowing they’re headed in the right direction. Employment branding helps get them there.

     It enhances the brand, which you’ll benefit from for years to come. – One of the most valuable aspects of employment branding is the ability to help shape your reputation and in turn the public’s perception of you as an employer.

Where clickable content comes in

If these three aspects of employment branding propel us forward to reach the end goal of a successful, satisfied workforce, then where does clickable content come in? Clickable content is used throughout an employment branding campaign to reach targeted and specific candidates that we might otherwise not reach or convert from our existing efforts. The goal here isn’t for everything we produce to go viral. We don’t need or even want that every time. Instead of simply thinking clickable content, think clickable content with a purpose.

Clickable content with a purpose isn’t about quantity, it’s about quality. Quality content will yield quality hires. Think about these three essentials for creating quality clickable content:

Information that people want and need

      Stop selling your company and start providing content that your candidates need, want and are looking for. The type of content you produce will be determined by your target candidates.

Language that grabs people

    Quality content is a must, but you’ve got to convince people to click on that link before they can experience the value of it. Use headlines that are exciting, relevant to your target candidates and are inclusive – think we instead of me.

   

      Be in the right places

    The most shareable content in the world isn’t going to be shared or clicked if it’s hidden. Use your social networks, company blog, personal connections, LinkedIn groups, employees who are your brand ambassadors, industry-specific message boards and any other channel that has been proven to work for you to promote it. It’s not going to share itself, so get out there and do it.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

5 Ways to Repurpose Your Employment Branding Content

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Content is a major part of any employment branding campaign, and a lot of time and effort goes into creating content that people want, need and are looking for. Since we work hard to produce quality content, we definitely want to make the most of it and get the most bang for our buck, so to speak. Repurposing content is an excellent way to achieve this. It allows you to recycle previously used content and share it in a new way. It’s not just a great way to get the most out of your efforts but it also creates real added value. If the content was relevant and popular six months ago, chances are that people will still find it relevant today. Present it in a new way and you just might reach an audience you weren’t able to the first time around.

Take a look at these five ways you can repurpose your employment branding content:

Use Video

It’s 2015 and video absolutely should be part of your content strategy. You can repurpose almost any other medium, such as a blog or webinar, and create a short 90-second video that hits the highlights. This can stand alone, but it also provides you with video that you can embed in a blog or elsewhere later on. Feature other resources in your video by directing people to a downloadable resource, landing page or blog.

Get visual

People are much more likely to stop and look at an image than they are to spend 10 minutes reading your content. Take advantage of our visual nature by choosing your best, most popular interactive content and creating a visual image for sharing on Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest. Be sure and use a bit.ly link to drive candidates to a specific page when you share it so you can see your social return.

Create a slidedeck on Slideshare

Slideshare slidedecks combine the best of a blog and webinar. They’re easy to digest, you can read at your own pace and on your own time, but they’re also more interesting than paragraph after paragraph of content. Turn your existing content into a slidedeck and you’ll be able embed it in blogs and on your recruiters’ individual LinkedIn pages. As a bonus, you’ll also be driving different traffic from a new audience. Pro tip: use Slideshare’s pro version to monitor analytics and landing page information.

Write a blog

It’s great to have a blog post that’s groundbreaking, but not every post is or needs to be. You also need human interest stories that candidates can connect with, so take a popular series of quotes, a Q&A or an employee story, and publish it on your blog. You can also repurpose infographics, videos and webinars into blogs. With each new medium you use, you’re likely to reach a new candidate audience.

Blend your content

You know by now that you can turn a blog into an infographic and a webinar into a video, but have you thought about taking bits and pieces from various content and blending it together? Consider finding two topics you’ve created content about that are aligned and playing off of that to create something new. You can also do a compilation, such as “10 things we learned this year” or “15 best kept secrets of…” and use several different resources to pull together something fresh, new and consistent with your employment brand.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

How Content Can Elevate Your Recruitment Strategy - Part One

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

In case you haven’t noticed lately, content is king. In marketing, in entertainment, and in recruiting, content is what people are looking for. Even if you’ve never considered what marketers are using, all you need to do to see evidence of this is consider the many online channels you use on a day-to-day basis. From Twitter to Facebook to blogs you follow to videos you watch to pictures that make you stop and look, content is everywhere!

If you’re not using content to reach candidates, you’re missing out on a massive opportunity that goes beyond paid advertising. Content can elevate your strategy in a way that dollars just can’t.

What content does for recruiting

Content marketing in recruiting is powerful. It’s a form of digital storytelling that helps people identify with what you’re saying, find themselves somewhere in the story and picture themselves at your company. It’s funny that even in our information age, companies are still holding back on sharing with candidates during the hiring process. Companies who are doing it right are experiencing the benefit of information sharing and storytelling through content marketing. In part two of this series, I’ll talk more about a couple of companies whose lead you should follow when it comes to content, but for now I’ll just say that they are leveraging content to build relationships, tell engaging and memorable stories and educate candidates. In turn, they’re seeing better hires and fewer unqualified applicants for open positions.

Is all content created equal?

Many people hear content and think only of blogs, but as I mentioned above, there are numerous and diverse content creation and promotion opportunities. I do actually believe that a blog on your careers page is the best place to start because it’s simple, provides you with content to push out through social channels and allows you to talk about anything you want, at whatever length you want.

However, it’s not just blogs that can tell stories. Video offers both traditional and new storytelling opportunities. You can use a scripted video, provide a live stream, or anything in between. Beyond blogs and videos, there are numerous other channels. Infographics, microblogs like Twitter, photo-sharing apps like Instagram and the newer channels that are new on the market or have yet to even be released provide (or will soon provide) an almost endless number of ways to produce content.

Making it happen

Content doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does require strategy. To develop your strategy, start with some research to discover what types of content drive the highest quality candidates and where candidates are interacting so you can improve your reach. It’s so important to understand the job candidate audience you want to reach before you build any content for recruiting and hiring.

A good strategy will outline the type of content you’ll produce, the frequency and the ways you’ll distribute and promote content. Good content just doesn’t happen. It takes research, time and a great deal of trial and error. You’ll probably make a lot of mistakes, but you’ll also find that it gives you greater reach and more in-depth communication than you can get anywhere else.

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.