In today’s information-saturated universe, it can feel like the content you’re developing quickly becomes just another drop in the bucket. Content creation increasingly has become a challenging balance of science (search engine optimization, paid social strategy and blended distribution tactics) and art (tailored topics that resonate with audiences, unique messages that differentiate and storytelling at its best).
But as a recruitment marketer, you also know the importance of differentiating your business from the rest of the pack and showing (not telling) the unique attributes of your employer brand and culture. Doing so improves the quality of your candidate pool and helps paint an accurate picture of the opportunities available to today’s top talent.
This is why you spend countless hours developing a content activation strategy that supports your employer value proposition, investing in audience segmentation research to understand the motivations and barriers of your target audiences and determining the right messages that convey proof points and authentic ideas. You craft career site content, develop social calendars and disseminate email campaigns. You pour over analytics to gauge the overall performance of your approach. And you think of ways to keep the story fresh each month.
So how do you get the most out of your content creation efforts? It’s time to rethink your approach to content development and distribution to maximize your time and resources, and support your overall recruitment goals. Here are four tips to maximize your content creation.
- REFINE your content to be authentic and to resonate in the first place.
The key to developing successful content is ensuring it can be found as you create it. That means thinking about what kind of content will appeal to potential readers and ensuring that search engines find it. In essence, you are making sure content appeals to humans and robots, or rather is interesting and discoverable.
Start by identifying what will interest your target audience. This may be as simple as answering the questions candidates often ask about the role and about the company. Look to Glassdoor and Indeed reviews, or even to the questions asked on social media. Then provide answers in an easy-to-digest way. Complimentary visuals, video or interactive components help encourage engagement and catch the interest of humans.
Then do a little research to figure out how candidates may be searching on the particular topic. Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner is a great tool to identify key phrases that will be popular enough to be discovered. The longer the phrase, the more tailored it will be and the easier it will be to potentially appear higher in search results.
Once you’ve chosen your keyphrase, integrate it several times in the page title, subheads, paragraphs and meta data. Doing so will appeal to robots.
Remember, any content you create should ultimately support overall goals and echo your brand message.
- RESHARE content across your primary channels for maximum exposure.
Neil Patel of Quick Sprout says, “Most of your ROI is going to come from your content promotion.” What he means by this is that it’s not as simple as building content and waiting for your audience to come to you: you have to promote your content, and with the increasing challenges of organic social promotion, you have to share your content often.
In this sense, you’re accommodating two masters again: channel algorithms and audience behaviors. Recent channel algorithm changes continue to dictate content consumption. For example, Facebook page posts are only viewed by 2% to 3% of people who like the page. And the average post will reach 75% of its readers within two hours. The average lifespan of a tweet is between 15 and 20 minutes.
Audiences also impact whether content is consumed, not only by how they engage on each social media channel but also the expectations they have for the kind of content they want to see. This is where social media trends help to guide how we disseminate our quality content.
To make the most of every piece of content, it needs to be distributed multiple times through as many channels as possible to reach the majority of our audience (including brand new audiences!), reiterate key ideas to foster message retention and maximize the resources you dedicate to this work.
- Start by promoting each piece of content several times across all major channels.
- Create multiple social media posts for each piece of content, slightly altering the way you word your content to draw in different audiences.
- Reshare top-performing messages that have proven to be of interest to your core audience.
- Revitalize older, evergreen content that hasn’t been shared for a while.
- Determine all the opportunities for each piece of content and REPURPOSE it.
Repurposing content into different formats is one of content marketing’s unsung heroes. Countless marketers understand the worth of the concept, yet few integrate the practice into their overall approach. In fact, according to Social Media Today, only 25% of ideas are repurposed again. Add the fact that different audiences consume content types differently, and you’re leaving a lot on the table.
For example, 60% of Millennials prefer watching videos over reading newsletters, but 50% of millennials will read a marketing email if it contains a video. Simply converting your content into a quick 30-second snippet could improve the reach and digestion of your message.
To get started, take inventory of your content library. Then:
- Maximize asset usage. Identify every possible use and distribution channel for each asset (image, video, etc.).
- Imagine content in different formats. Testimonials, infographics, slideshows, etc.
- Break content apart. Larger pieces of content can turn into bite-sized shareable content.
- Build content together. Likewise, bite-sized content can be pulled together to create more comprehensive content.
- REFRESH content to keep it optimized and relevant.
Last, yet certainly not least, refreshing your evergreen, existing content periodically to ensure it remains relevant, strategically aligned and on brand can breathe new life into what you already have on hand.
At least annually, take stock of your career site content, image library, videos, testimonials and other assets. Evaluate each for the following:
- Is the information still relevant? Is the information highlighted still accurate? Have any changes occurred since it was first developed that could make it more on point?
- Does the content support a strategic goal? Does the subject matter and theme ladder up to a defined recruitment need?
- Does the asset target and interest a priority audience group?
- Is the content geared toward active candidates, passive candidates or the general audience?
Once reviewed, decide whether the piece is still shareable, warrants an update or should be retired.
Following the 4 Rs – refine, reshare, repurpose and refresh – can keep your content development operation running smoothly and efficiently, provide plenty of content to disseminate each month and allow resources to focus efforts where they are needed the most.
- Five Ways to Brand Yourself as a Candidate’s Employer of Choice - August 6, 2019
- Experts Weigh in on What’s to Come in 2019 - February 25, 2019
- The Importance of Employer Brand: AT&T’s Story - October 24, 2018
- Top Takeaways From #HRTechConf - September 21, 2018
- 4 Tips to Maximize Your Content Creation - July 10, 2018
- 5 Recruitment Marketing Trends You Should Know in 2018 and What to Do About Them - June 14, 2018
- 2018 Social Media Channel Statistics You Should Know - June 5, 2018
- 2018 Social Media Trends That Matter - May 14, 2018
- Pretty on Paper vs. Bottom-Line Profit: Vanity Metrics and Actionable Metrics Aren’t Equal, So What Numbers Go on the Report? - March 6, 2018
- All Aboard for Onboarding - February 21, 2018
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