Category: Marketing

When it comes to recruitment, having a strong personal brand is one of the best ways to gain credibility and build your network of candidates. Despite that, it’s often difficult to get consultants to put time in their personal brands or the marketing campaigns of the wider company. Here are our tips for getting more consultants into personal branding:

Set goals

Are you looking to grow your network? Increase engagement? Boost brand awareness? Establish clear targets before you start so you can demonstrate to the people involved that your efforts have been successful afterwards.

Plan out the project

Write out exactly what you need from people before you start. Approaching colleagues with a fully-developed idea of what you need from them is far more likely to end in success than pitching a vague idea that sounds like a lot of mental work for them.

Get people involved

Start by finding the influencers in your company. Who’s already posting on LinkedIn? Who’s up for doing new things? These people are ideal for testing your strategy, and when people see their colleagues succeed, they’ll want in.

Start small

When someone is used to saying yes to small favours, they’re more inclined to agree to bigger ones down the line. Start by asking people to be in a picture of the office to go on LinkedIn. Move to suggesting them starring in a video for the company’s page. This will boost their ego and set you up for a win. 

Be open to their ideas

If the aim is to get people excited about building their own online presence, encouraging their input is a great way to build confidence. 

Keep them updated

Get enthusiastic consent from people before you post anything that they’re in. Let them know when it goes live and where it is too, as that’ll encourage them to interact with and take pride in the content they helped produce. Be sure to share its progress and celebrate your wins together!

Offer support 

Being online comes with a host of challenges. It’s easy to get sucked into vanity metrics or succumb to the taunts of online trolls, so offering support to people who are venturing online is an essential part of encouraging your consultants to utilise their personal brand. This can be as simple as showing up for them if they’re having a hard time.

Say thank you

Once you’ve gotten people involved, it’s important to show your appreciation for their time and effort. Shout about who’s helped you and share the wins that your consultants have as a result of their personal branding work. 

Translate your success

Once you’ve got your trendsetters creating, posting and sharing great content, it’s time to get everyone else involved. Ask your first consultants to act as advocates for personal branding amongst their colleagues. You can use those metrics from the beginning to show people the impact an online presence can create, or you can let your wins speak for themselves. People don’t want to be left behind. 

Still need some help getting started? Reach out to see how we can help you build your own marketing strategy and promote your personal branding strategy. 

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: building an engaged community is the holy grail of recruitment marketing. 

If you want to meet inspired professionals on their forum, the chances are you’re doing a lot of work on Linkedin. To set you up for success, we’ve put together the best advice for growing your audience and building a community in 2023. 

Plan for the Long-Term

As any writer will tell you, you should always start with a plan. Before you set up your strategy for the year ahead, it’s worth researching what your network is talking about and how they perceive you or your company. 

From there, you can create a roadmap and figure out where you want to end up. Do you want people to be more engaged with your content? Do you want a better ROI for your business? Do you want to up your follower count? 

Make a plan that outlines your goals and consistently work towards them. 

When it comes down to your content it’s important that you communicate your company’s mission. That gives people a reason to listen to you and tune into what you have to say. Your mission should be the reason that you’re doing what you’re doing, whether it’s to solve a problem or make people’s lives easier. 

Keep to that message. Consistency builds trust, so give it time and allow your audience to grow naturally. Engaging relevant people with genuine content will give you far better ROI than just shouting your ideas at everyone through boosted ads. 

Optimise Your Pages 

Having great content is useless if nobody can find you. Optimise your page to be searchable by using keywords in blurbs, and complete all the fields on your page. 

Utilise showcase pages to talk about projects or sectors that you have within the business. This will help you build niche-targeted communities who are laser-focused on your message. 

Keep your branding consistent across your page, and consider providing your employees with a branded format to use on their personal accounts. This gives you a cohesive brand feel and boosts the community feel online. 

Create Great Content 

People want to buy from people. Utilising your personal narrative in your marketing will help people resonate with your brand, making you approachable and personable. 

Use simple words that are easy to digest when you’re writing. People on Linkedin are looking to connect with people, not read academic jargon, so make sure that your voice, including hints of your dialect, is present in your writing. 

Create content across a variety of media. Use visual and video content to grab people’s attention, and utilise polls to boost interactions with your audience. Don’t be scared of long text posts. They can provide more value to your audience by giving depth to your topics, thereby providing valuable insights.  

While your personal story is important, not everything should be about you. Try to follow the 4-1-1 rule, which gives your audience four pieces of news or relevant topics from your field, then one personal update and one piece of content from or about someone else in the community. You can put a personal spin on each of these, but you shouldn’t be the focus all the time. 

Understand the Psychology of Your Audience 

It’s easy for social media to convince you to measure success through engagement metrics. It’s important to remember that interactions on Linkedin aren’t always about your content but your message. Someone could find your point really interesting, but not want to align themselves with your message as it’s off-brand for them. Keep posting on-message content and see what happens. 

Always offer value to the reader. People want to be informed or entertained, so think about what matters most to them and offer it in your content. Are you sharing content that helps people feel connected? Are you offering solutions to common problems in your sector? Are you building a network of like-minded people? Build content that speaks to people’s needs. 

Don’t be scared to share your personal or company values in your posts. Advocating for social responsibility, diversity and inclusion will make people feel included and seen. People respond to what matters to them, so telling them what you care about is likely to make them feel included when it’s a shared value or experience. 

Performance Tips

1. Experiment with different content and see what works for you and your audience
2. Post 1-2 times per day. If that’s not achievable, post consistently 
3. Ask questions and invite feedback to get people engaged 
4. Use links in your posts, these get around 45% more engagement 
5. Focus on user experience while creating content as it boosts conversion rates
6. Communities are about people, so Linkedin promotes people’s posts over company posts. Where possible, share your content from personal pages.

Create a Community Feel

If you see people commenting on your posts, reward them for interacting with you and make them feel like valued members of your community. Find champions within your community and raise them up. 

Utilise your team members and encourage employee engagement. This will help spread the reach of your content and get your immediate network invested in sharing your message. 

Healthy communities are an ecosystem. The content you create will bring people in who will then have conversations about what matters to them. That will form qualitative research, which will inform the content you create in the future, which will bring more people in. This is what we call consumer generated content.

It doesn’t have to be professional, but building genuine relationships is essential to a healthy community. 

If you’d like to know more about building your personal brand and audience on Linkedin, reach out to see how we can help!

If you read our previous blog ‘Revolutionise Your Social Marketing Strategy With Video’, you’ll already know the best practices for making and posting videos on Linkedin. 

You might be wondering ‘But how do I make them?’ 

Don’t worry, we’re here to help! 

We’ve put together technical tips and a step-by-step checklist that will help you independently nail your video content. 

Step 1 – Script Your Video

While it’s tempting to include a branded introduction for your videos, ask yourself if your audience will want that. If you only include necessary content people are more likely to stay engaged during your videos. Try to include graphics or logos to promote your brand instead of creating an intro that isn’t providing value to your audience. 

Write a script for everything you want to include in your video and rehearse it before you start recording. Make your content concise and helpful to keep people’s attention. 

Don’t use phrases like ‘that’s how you land your next job’ until the end of your videos. Doing this will tell people that you’ve already given them what they came for, so they’ll start looking for something else to watch. Avoiding those phrases will allow you to  promote your own services or further content while you have a viewer’s attention. 

Wrap up your videos with a simple and clear call to action, and articulate what the benefits of following it are. Invitations like ‘get in touch to find your next opportunity’ let viewers know exactly what you’re offering. 

Step 2 – Record Your Content

So you’ve planned out your content, you’ve got a script and you know how you’re going to grab attention. What’s next? 

When you’re recording your videos there are some things you can do that will enhance your video’s performance. 

Make sure your videos are still engaging with the sound off, as that’s how they initially play on LinkedIn. Your content needs to be visually appealing, so make sure that your speaker has dynamic body language, leans towards the camera and uses gestures to create an engaging video. 

Change up your backgrounds too, even if it’s just filming from varied angles to keep it interesting. It’s also worth considering investing in visual assets that you can have in the background of your videos, such as your brand’s logo, some plants or an interesting piece of decor. 

Set up your recording studio somewhere that has good natural lighting and isn’t too noisy so that you can get clear video and audio. Even making small adjustments like facing a window can make a lot of difference to your content. 

Most of all, remember to have fun with it!

Step 3 – Edit Your Clips

Once you’ve recorded your masterpiece, there are some things that you can fine-tune during editing to make sure that your videos really stand out. 

When you’re editing your audio it’s important to consider how engaging it is. Can you clearly hear the speaker, and is their voice dynamic and engaging? If it’s sounding a little flat it can be helpful to include background music to provide an immersive experience. Be careful not to overwhelm viewers with too much stimulation though – if you’ve hosted a lively conversation with lots of different voices it could be overwhelming to have music playing as well, so consider how best to support the content that you have. 

Consider the pacing of the video, and whether you can cut out any unnecessary pauses, stammers or repetitions. Keeping your content streamlined is essential to keeping your viewers engaged. 

While you’re editing it’s time to insert any visuals such as slides, graphics or logos to your video. Consider adding gifs that encourage people to like or share your video, as well as helpful section headers and subtitles that further communicate your message. It’s also important to ensure that you’ve properly adjusted your colour levels to reflect the tone of your content or brand, and apply this to all of your videos to create consistency. 

Step 4 – Nail Video Copy

Before you upload your videos, think carefully about how you can engage your audience before they even see your video. 

Crafting a great title is almost as important as having a good video. When writing your title, it’s important to reflect what you’re actually offering in your content. Don’t use clickbait as people will leave if they don’t get what they came for, and you’ll have wasted an opportunity to engage with potential clients and community members.  

Referencing your audience in your title can also be a good idea. People are more likely to watch something they immediately know will be relevant to them, so try using titles like this: 

• “5 Ways Videos Will Transform Your Recruitment Company’s Marketing Strategy”
• “Why Podcasts are the Future of Recruitment Marketing”
• “How Recruiters Can Nail Personal Branding”

Another consideration is using closed captions. Failing to use them will exclude those with accessibility needs and limit your engagement. Not only that, videos automatically play with sound off on LinkedIn, so having subtitles can give people an idea of what you’re talking about before they turn the sound on, making you more likely to get people interested in what you’re saying. 

Like titles, headlines are also essential to drawing people into your videos, so think carefully about what you’re going to write to go alongside your video. Make sure you’re giving people a reason to consume your content in the first sentence of your post, so that they’re interested before they’ve even clicked ‘…see more’. 

Do keyword research and tag your videos with relevant terms that will help them find the right audience on LinkedIn. You can include these in both your post and captions to boost their reach. Around 90% of people will read captions at least some of the time, so don’t miss out on this resource. 

Step 5 – Share Your Masterpiece

Now that you’ve grasped the basics, you’re all set to go out and create high-performing video content!

For recruitment companies and consultants, building a community of engaged talent on platforms like LinkedIn creates an invaluable resource. 

If you’re looking to level up your social media marketing game, the perfect way to engage your audience is through video. According to LinkedIn, videos are 5 times more likely to start a conversation amongst users than other forms of content, which prompts the platform’s algorithm to promote your pieces to a wider audience. 

Video marketing can grow your brand up to 49 times faster than text or picture posts, so it’s a fantastic opportunity to grow your audience. 

Sound exciting? 

Read on for our tips for how to make and use videos in a marketing campaign!

Plan Your Content 

Be conscious of the length of videos that you’re making and where you plan to share it. People on socials want to scroll through bite-sized pieces, so consider how you’ll put your message into a short, consumable clip. If you’re tackling big topics, break them down into smaller bits that you can turn into a video series. 

Add Value

Always add value to your audience. Is what you’re talking about relevant? Is it providing insights or information? Posting high-impact marketing videos that boost your brand awareness should be done far less frequently than sharing value-adding brand consideration videos to your channel. 

Script It

Scripting your video can help you keep out any unwanted waffle. Avoid complicated language as this will also alienate people who aren’t in your area and make it inaccessible to a lot of viewers. Rehearse your scripts so you come across as confident and knowledgeable. Keep your content concise, speak clearly and avoid repeating yourself. 

Get Viewers Hooked

Start your videos with a hook that tells viewers what you’re offering them. LinkedIn says that interest drops from 65% to 45% after around 10 seconds of view time, so be clear about why they should watch your content. 

Pace Yourself

Be mindful of your pacing. If you speak so fast that people can’t understand you then you’ll lose your audience, but you also don’t want people to get bored if you’re taking too long to offer them something of value. Find the sweet spot somewhere in the middle to keep your viewers switched on. 

Build a Niche

Consistently posting content in your niche will help you build a reputation and attract a community of like-minded people. Posting directly to groups that your target market is in will help you reach the right people quickly. Once you’ve established yourself as a thought leader in their field, your audience is more likely to come directly to you. 

Be Inclusive 

If you’re regularly producing videos, make sure your cast reflects the people you’re trying to appeal to. Whether you’re inviting diverse guests, stitching videos with people from different backgrounds or including a variety of people from your company, having representation can help make your community inviting to a wider audience. 

Post Regularly

Just one or two videos won’t make an impact. It’s important to have a long-term plan and stick to it if you want to build your following and provide meaningful content to your audience. You don’t have to post every day, but deciding on a schedule and sticking to it is really important if you want to build trust within a community. 

Engage Your Audience

Once your videos are out there, connect with your audience by asking them questions and replying to their comments. It’s helpful to use a call to action such as ‘tell me what you think in the comments’ or ‘if you want to hear more, contact me on xyz’. Even inviting people to share their perspective is a valuable tool. People will come back to your page if you’ve made them feel like part of your network or community.

If you’ve read all of that and still don’t quite know where to start, drop us an email and one of our team will be more than happy to talk through some ideas with you!

As we finish up for the first full year of Search Stack I thought it would be fun and interesting to share some of our predictions on what could really work in the Recruitment/B2B marketing landscape in 2022.

I’ve made these predictions purely through assumptions and observations on what looks like is working from individuals and companies already implementing and succeeding with them now.

So there’s no big market survey, no data, it’s all speculative so take it all with a pinch of salt!

Authenticity is the new buzzword.

And rightly so, with an increasingly diverse, complex, and switched-on audience, the old ways of one message for everyone just won’t work.

Smart companies are investing time into researching and understanding their target market and creating specific campaigns that speak directly to them. We need to get personal to break through the noise.

Try doing a bit of in-depth client research at the beginning of the year.

TikTok is becoming more appreciative of informative content.

The video-based social platform is stepping out of its Wild West days, and creators are finding a lot of success creating informative, fun, and value-adding content. With user adoption growing every week, it may be the right time to experiment.

There’s a growing trend of creators giving advice, tips, and guidance; rather than the usual dancing and meme content. If you can piggyback on the fun, trends but also good solid advice on the platform then you may be onto a winner.

Email is big – but not how you remember.

Newsletters are seeing an increase, they’re becoming niche and seriously value-driven. The companies that put a face to their newsletter and consistently turn up with an email packed with great content are catching attention.

Scrap the cold automation and lifeless company updates. It’s 2022 no one cares.

You need to use your platform to aggregate great content from your industry niche, or share value-adding content (not links to your blogs) pack it with easily digestible value-adding content.

Modern marketers need to put trust into creating relationships with their audience. Rather than forcing the action with a CTA. Which leads to my next point…

Stop gating content, trust in dark social brand advocacy.

With privacy being the next big topic of discussion and big tech ruining the trust of their users, what hope do you stand? Emails and contact details are becoming more precious. And, content in exchange for personal information is not a fair trade anymore.

Marketers need to phase out that distrust and step away from those email-driven KPMs, because much of your success will now be down to the intangible dark social.

Companies that back their content so much that they’re confident giving it away without the need for email addresses are going to bank favor, trust and advocacy with their audience. We just need to be smarter about how we earn their time.

Branding is more important than ever.

The noise out there is crazy. You’re competing with millions of companies and individuals for a small slice of attention. And one of the best ways to stand out is to have a strong, solid brand.

Spending time with a branding consultant will help you unlock messaging and visual identity which talks directly to your audience, rather than bore them by saying why you’re so great.

If you need more convincing begin by reading the starting a story brand book in the new year.

NFTS are going to be huge in communities.

Wow what can I say about NFTs, flash in the pan, genius, stupid, overpriced, fad, future of everything; many opinions for the non-fungible-token. But you cannot argue their stratospheric rise in 2021.

What really is interesting though is their ‘token’ aspect, many people don’t realise that these NFTs can have real-world benefits attracted to owning one; like the bored ape yacht club VIP parties, or Gary Vee NFT Vee Con tokens.

And what really excites us about this is DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) the blockchain and these tokens now allow us to create exclusive communities with perks, value, and most excitingly a democratic say to the future and development of that community.

I think recruiters are in a super interesting position with this and if they can build a DAO community for their niche then they could be trailblazing the future.

Personal brands are the #1 channel for businesses.

The reach personal brands are getting across all social platforms is unbelievable, views, engagements & leads you’d hope to dream of from other sources.

People really do buy from people. And, when you consistently show up day after day to provide value, engage with your target audience, and build a personal brand you will stand head and shoulders above any competitor that is relying on regular social.

If you’ve not taken the time to grow your personal brand then 2022 needs to be the time to do it.

Niche podcasts are killing it.

We’ve been helping multiple recruitment clients build and grow their podcasts in 2021, it’s been super interesting watching them grow and flourish and the niche audience they develop over time.

We always advocate for the power of podcasts, for the business development aspect, the stretching of content, the personal brand benefits. But one of the most powerful things coming out of these niche podcasts is communities that are growing around them.

Stretching content is more relevant than ever.

It’s obvious that time constraints are one of the biggest barriers to creating content and marketing. So it really defies sense when we see so many companies just not stretching their content.

We have so many different mediums and platforms that people engage with, but we pigeonhole that one great idea into something like a blog, post it, then abandon it.

If you’re not already utilising content stretching to share your content across various platforms then you’re wasting your time and not getting the most out of your content.