When you, as a business owner, consider content marketing, your main goal is to reel in new clientele, right? Most organizations advertise with that mindset. However, you can also use your marketing and social media skills to draw new talent, fresh minds that can showcase your brand and company culture. You can improve your company by expanding not only your customer base but your top-notch, creative-minded staff.
How Content Marketing & Social Media Work for Recruitment
Content marketing and social media are two of your best means to find potential talent. This generation has become so technologically connected that they’re more likely to find companies they’re interested in working for through sponsored ads and blogs posts, rather than hunting through job sites. When job seekers come across an ad with strong brand marketing, people interested in your field might imagine how they wish to create such content themselves.
7 Steps to Using Content Marketing to Attract Top-Talent
While traditional content marketing is geared toward engaging new customers, you can take a spin on your technique and target new talent. There are several steps you can take to do this. Before you can entice the impressive talent you want, you need to understand what it will take to attract those people.
1. Develop Talent Personas
Just as you’ve created buyer personas for the consumer end of your business, you should develop a talent persona. There are many types of talent seeking jobs, so be sure you’re gathering attention from the right kind of people. You don’t want someone approaching you because a job at your company “looks like fun.” You want talent that is genuinely interested in making your brand succeed, not in making a buck.
2. Create Content Highlighting Your Culture
While advertising to consumers, you focus on your brand, and how your product is better than your competitors. For discovering new talent, focus instead on your business and your company’s culture. What kind of atmosphere would new staff find in the workplace—is it a fun open space or sectioned cubicles? Will they even need to come into the workplace, or can they work from home if it’s more convenient? You can show this via videos, blog posts, podcasts—the more mediums you use, the more opportunities people will have to see your culture. Who knows—maybe you’ll realize you might have to adjust your workplace culture if you want to appeal to your target audience.
3. Optimize Your Content
Make sure before you promote your content and company culture that what is already online is as solid as possible. Once potential talent notices your company, they’ll scroll through what you already have to get a feel for your history. Whatever they could possibly search for needs to be available to make the best impression you can.
4. Create an Amazing Career Website
Once you’ve convinced potential talent that they want to work for you, have a website link available for them to apply! But don’t let the persuasion end there; your website should drive home the responsibilities and benefits of working for your company and with your culture.
5. Make Sure Your Website is Responsive
Provide contact info or an FAQ section that will allow job seekers to find whatever final information necessary to seal the deal. While projecting an open work environment is crucial, your top-notch talent is still on the outside looking in. They need to know that you’re open to a discussion with them.
6. Develop an Online Presence
Online branding and reputation can affect your recruiting process. Maybe you’ve succeeded in providing attractive content, but what about the future? Job seekers will feel more comfortable knowing that you not only have developed quality content, but you will continue to do so as well. A company that keeps watch of online trends and follows natural progression is a company new talent wants to work for. Your online presence should stretch to websites current job seekers gravitate toward Glassdoor, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter; rather than lingering on websites that have become stale and outdated.
7. Promote and Showcase Your Company to Capture Job Seekers’ Attention
Now that you’ve created your content and solidified your brand, your next and final step is to unveil it all through social media. Your HR team would best control your profiles, being the first people your talent will contact through the application process. This will help HR discover the divide between the top-notch and less than stellar options. They can see who’s more communicative and engaging before an application reaches their inbox.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are your best social media hotspots. Through sponsored ads, your posts will appear on newsfeeds of those who have shown to research similar fields, putting your brand right in front of them. All of these sites allow for sharing and forwarding posts, so friends can refer your company to those they feel might fit your culture. For more artsy brands, Instagram and Snapchat are great mediums through which to promote your products.
While advertising to customers helps increase your business’ profit, finding creative talent to improve those posts can develop your company’s potential even more. Expand your outreach to draw in fresh minds to your company through content marketing and social media, and see the kinds of hidden talent you can uncover.
Author Bio
ShaDrena is a budding inbound expert and digital strategist at Yokel Local, an inbound marketing agency that helps businesses implement strategic online methodologies to spearhead their growth. On the side, she’s also a brand stylist; designing, developing and refining brand identities for creative brands, people, and startups.
