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How To Use Content Marketing to Promote Your Job Board

What is content marketing and how can it increase your job board's visibility? Learn how these valuable pieces of content can generate more traffic to your job board!

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Once your job board is live and features tons of exciting vacancies, you’re going to need to think of ways to spread the word to generate traffic to your site. After all, what good is having a job board if no one can find it? Let's discuss ways you can use this low cost, high impact form of marketing to raise awareness of your job board.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is quickly replacing traditional marketing as the most effective and trusted form of brand communication and will be key in raising the awareness of any online business. Especially yours. In short, content marketing is a marketing strategy that involves creating and distributing insightful and valuable content to engage and attract a specific target market.

Consumers have become disenfranchised with disruptive marketing techniques such as cold calls, sales e-mails and pop-up ads. What really works is the considered approach of sharing quality, branded content that is useful and relevant to their lives. The deliverance of ongoing, valuable content builds trust with consumers. Trust that will eventually turn into loyalty, recommendations and ultimately: profit.

Who do I target?

You should be targeting a well researched and thoroughly understood audience. This doesn’t mean writing a blog post about the weather outside your office window and sharing it with everyone on your mailing list. It means meticulously identifying what makes your target audience tick. What will they be interested in? What content will enrich their lives? How can I get them to engage in my brand and ultimately use my services? By clearly defining these parameters before starting a content marketing strategy for your job board, you will see much better results.

With what content?

There are a number of channels you can choose to push content out on. But more important than choosing a platform is ensuring the content is original and high quality. Lets take a software development job board as an example to consider just some of the content channels your job board can use in its content marketing strategy.

1. Blogs

Blogs are the most popular and widely used method of sharing content to engage with customers. And for good reason, it works. For your job board consider sharing short (300-500 word) posts twice a week at consistent times (this helps users and search engines know when to expect new content). For our example you could consider commenting on industry pieces that have featured in the news or writing about emerging markets and technologies. When you have built up a reputation you may be able to ask technical professionals to guest blog and increase your authenticity in the field.

2. Video

Videos are useful as they are more likely to be shared and thus widen your exposure. Create quality video content that is either informational or humorous in nature and it will drive traffic to your site and increase your online profile. In our example a video highlighting the differences in two development languages may be watched by budding developers. Who will then follow through to our site seeking employment.

3. Podcasts

Podcasts are particularly useful for those short on time. They can be listened to at ones leisure, driving to work or on lunch. A good idea would be to discuss interview tips and techniques that can be listened to on ones way to an interview.

4. Infographics

A strong visual medium that you will have seen doing the rounds on LinkedIn, Mashable and other social news sites. Easily digested and great for sharing. Infographics are easy to brand and don’t have to be completely informational, they can be fun too. An informative infographic for our example job board could include a breakdown of the number of software development jobs per state and a salary guide that highlights the fluctuations between them.

The Internet is your playground

There are many more avenues you can explore and once you get started with your content strategy, you’ll come up with lots more interesting and original ways to engage with your target market. Just remember: content first, format second. Poor, unoriginal or dishonest content will cripple your image. Focus on quality, valuable content and the rest will sort itself out.