Hudson's IT division in the US have launched a blog. The first step into the blogosphere for them.
Nothing new there then. There's a stack of recruiters out there that are now using blogs to put a "human" face on their communications. You can see their blog here. Also worth a click on their Head of Interactive's blog - he talks about some of the thought process behind it.
With the volume of recruitment blogs out there now (not to mention all of those firms who are considering this at the moment) its going to start getting tricky to differentiate your firm's blog with the next. If it starts to look like there is a set template for a recruitment consultancy blog then it kind of defeats the purpose of blogging doesn't it?
To avoid any confusion, let's discount personal recruitment blogs (like this one) - if you are interested in more of these, have a click on http://www.recruitingblogs.com/ . No for this let's only consider firms adding a blog to their online strategy.
In my view, there's a list of "must haves" -
- Conversational tone
- Contributions from multiple bloggers, not just the MD or CEO. Come on, if people wanted to read a CEO's view they could just pick up the annual report... Some of the best posts are from consultants. Hardly surprising really, they're far more likely to be net genners than MDs and CEOs. Check out the post on the birth of spam. Nice post from Dennis - click here for his bio
- Strict no BS or spin. People can see right thru this.
- Topical content. Check out BLT's blog - they are blogging on everything from the economy, Boris Johnson, The Apprentice to the latest tax jobs.
- Speaking of content, keep it coming. A recruiter's blog should be updated a bare minimum of once a week.
If you get that far you're nearly there... Next decision is how much you actually "sell" on your blog. Hudson and BLT are two good examples. Have a look through both sites, you can see they have a different approach to this.
BLTOG is clearly BLT's blog. There is consistency in how that site is branded with their own site, also there are a stack of links etc - including links to search their jobs/ About us etc- all the classics you'd expect from a recruiter site. Hudson IT take a different approach. Its branded "IT Hire Wire - the real story, from the real pros" This hits the mark from a make it real perspective. What's interesting here is that you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the homepage before you see "Brought to you by Hudson IT."
I like both of these blogs, both represent their firms well and have good content. No doubt they already have some nice readership stats. I am intrigued as to just how different the branding approach is from each of their sites.
Which one would you go for?
Thursday, 24 July 2008
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2 comments:
Thanks for having a look at our new blog. Your insight and analysis of the strategic decisions we had to make around the project were spot on.
It's helpful to hear your opinion on CEO/MD blogging. We often wondered whether getting our CEO to write would be of interest. As it is, Tim Bosse (the EVP of the IT practice), and Rick Gray (our Global SVP of Marketing) are the most senior people providing content. While they aren't 'net genners' they are doing a good job of keeping it real.
The consultants (victims) who volunteered (they had no idea what they were getting into) have had a good run with this so far. Time will tell whether we can convince them long term that blogging is a productive and valuable use of their time. And whether we can get more consultants on board to contribute. I'm very optimistic that we will succeed.
It's great to hear you comment on the different branding approach we've taken versus others out there. Our goal with having such a light branding touch is the following:
-maintain independence so that candidates feel they can interact without being 'sold' and our consultants feel more free to write from the heart
-provide a different brand experience than our corporate look; one that is more candidate-centric.
-see what it means to our overall 'web footprint' to have a different URL than our corporate one.
Please do keep reading, and if you'd like to ping me a few months from now, I'd be happy to share what we've learned.
-Kris
Kris
Thank you for your comment. You've raised some interesting points.
Re getting buy in internally over the medium to long term - I ran a project in my last role raising the profile of online for a large recruiter. Having a Director to spearhead intitially worked well. What I found though is that the more junior members of the team "bought" the concept when they considered their use of the web in their personal life and compared it to how its used in business. The amount of consultants with social media profile, their own blog etc was quite staggering. This made it "real" for the guys. Pretty quickly the consultants were outselling their more senior colleagues on web sales. Suffice to say they loved that! Wonder if this could be applicable to blogging? If your guys feel ownership of the blog, its a win/win ( I like those.. )
Secondly, I think that recruitment companies having a blog is likely to very quickly become the "norm." It'll be interesting to see how the branding on your blog fares relative to others. Thank you for your offer to send some details through in a couple of months. It'd be great to see what sort of traffic you pick up to your main site.
Final point (that probably should have been in the main post...) Given the current economic uncertainties both here in the UK and in the US, I think that blogs can be used as part of an online CRM programme. If you consider the volume of candidates that'll be looking for a new role if we do go into a full scale recession, the number of apps will clearly rise. For any recruitment firm looking to come out the other side in a stronger position, giving a good quality service to these people (arguably especially to those that the firm is not able to place)will be key. What's going to be important to them will be advice, clarity, transparency - all the sorts of things a top consultant will discuss on the phone with one of these candidates. This time round the blog could present another platform to give advice like that to a wider audience. Don't get me wrong - I don't believe it should replace the call (and consultants shouldn't be pointing candidates to the blog instead of giving them advice when asked) but its just an extra string to the bow.
Thanks Kris, I look forward to hearing how it goes.
Alex
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