Need content for your job board? Here are my ideas for what to write and where to get it. To read this article become a premium member.
When I started CareerCloud.com I began blogging for it 6 months ahead of launch. The site is about social recruiting so I wrote posts 5 days per week that talked about recruiting/job hunting through social media.
Whatever niche your job board is in its key that you create content your users want to read. That means you have 2 audiences employers and job seekers. Write content for both. If you want to know what to write for job seekers, read what the other top career blogs are doing and mimic them. A site like CareerRealism is a good one. For recruiters sites like Blogging4jobs and Undercover Recruiter are good examples.
Some basics first.
- Make lots of lists like ‘5 ways to boost your resume‘. People love lists as they are easily scannable.
- Use pictures. Get job related images from sites like shutterstock, or if you have time, make your own. Every blog post should have an image.
- Make your writing concise and break it up into chunks. For example I like to keep my paragraphs to 3 sentences or less.
- Craft good attention getting headlines. (Google how to do that!)
- Create a consistent schedule that you and/or your writers can stick to. In other words dont burn yourself out.
Where to get your content.
- Pay for it. Hire interns. Hire career coaches, they always want to write and may will for free in exchange for exposure. Expect to pay any where from $5 – $30 for an article. Fiverr may be a good place to get cheap content quickly (but beware the quality of it)
- HARO – Stands for Help A Reporter Out. This site has a massive list of experts who will answer your query about any topic you can think of. I have used it many times in the past to get experts to comment on various job search and recruiting topics. For instance I got 2 dozen responses to a question about you ‘you hate about linkedin’. This is the resulting post I made. Its gotten hundreds of views.
- Your users. Ask them if they want to contribute.
- Yourself. Are you an expert in your field? Write about your industry whenever possible.
Types of content.
- Anything about resumes. Give advice. Get visual show resume examples. Most people dont know how to write a good resume that gets results. This is a topic that never gets old.
- Q&A’s – I like to do email Q&A posts with industry experts and then publish them word for word as a blog post. All you have to do is come up with the questions. They do the rest!
- For job seekers – Interview tips, job board advice, networking advice, online job search tactics, how to get a job in X industry, typical salaries for X industry, what recruiters dont want you to know, etc
- For employers – how to write better job postings, twitter recruiting tips, facebook recruiting tips, social recruiting tips, how to source candidates, etc. This post on 13 Free Sites to Source Tech Talent was popular recently. I wrote it in 45 minutes.
- Video hangouts with career coaches. Or an audio podcast. I’ve been doing CareerCloud Radio for over 6 years. Today it gets over 1500 downloads per day.
