Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

Social Media: Stay in Your Contacts' Peripheral Vision

At our last technology event Lisa Jones talked about recruitment technology, however, what everyone kept coming back to was social media.  So, this time, we’ve booked Lisa two slots to talk ONLY about social media and it’s impact on recruitment businesses.
 
This is something she has written for me in advance of the event....

Did you know that the average human when they focus their eyes only uses 3% of their available field of view?  This means that 97% of their field of view is peripheral - outside of their immediate field of view. 

From a business development and client relationship perspective, this is a real pain when you want to attract attention from busy people who are in your client base.  Using social media is a great way of tapping into your contacts' peripheral vision and keeping in their "mind's eye".

There's a term called "splatter vision" where you look toward the horizon without focussing - this allows you to have a greater handle on what's in front of you. Did you know that the FBI use this skill to spot baddies in crowded areas?

Well, funnily enough, your current and potential contacts do not use splatter vision day to day (unless of course you supply FBI agents - now that would be a USP!).   Your contacts are focussed on their own lives, jobs, emergencies, emails, phone calls, sandwiches, etc...  You are probably nowhere near there 3% focus.

What's the benefit of staying in their peripheral vision? You create a comfort factor; they know who you are, without really engaging, and will feel more comfortable when you contact them.  Better still, they begin to research you as a result of seeing you online.  I had a conference call recently to a client in the states, and one of the attendees remembered my LinkedIn polls - this really helped the call!

So how do you stay in your contacts' field of vision - and without ringing them and emailing them every 5 minutes? Social media is a great way of getting into your contacts' field of vision, without them having to adopt "splatter vision".

Also known as inbound marketing, this concept is all about creating content that gets you found and attracts attention.  There are hundreds of ways to do this using social media, and it is not as time consuming as you may think, and should NOT be restricted to your Marketing department's activities.

Status updates in LinkedIn is a great example. God forbid, I am not referring to recruiters bleeting on about jobs all day long. (I have blogged enough about being a consultant not a job board). A decent status update in any social media platform should give a feel for who you are, what you do, what you read, what events you go to, etc... ie. it should give me, the audience, a really good "feel" for what our relationship could be like.

Guest blogging in your clients' back gardens - what stuff do they read? Trust me, they are not on the edge of their seats waiting for Recruiter Weekly to drop on their doorstep, so think about your contacts and their sector and typical issues.

LinkedIn Polls, Facebook competitions, Twitter updates, Pinterest boards... never before have you had such a great opportunity to market your business.  So, use social media to keep in your contacts' peripheral vision - this will increase your social media profile views and web hits, help you get through more gatekeepers, secure more meetings and then you can get on the good stuff: dazzling your contacts face to face with your expertise.

If you want to chat more with Lisa come along to our event on the 24th May.

What the Google +1 button means for recruitment agencies

Another great guest post today from Michelle Hill of Red Rocket Media:

Following on from my recent article What the Google+ little red box means for recruitment agencies, I thought I’d hone in on one of the other main features of Google+….the +1 button and, in particular, demonstrate how it will dramatically affect how your recruitment agency is found online.

What is the +1 button?

It is similar to the Facebook ‘like’ button but with a huge difference…its impact on Google search results.

How +1s affect search

If one of your candidates, say Emma, +1s an article that your agency has published, this information is immediately fed to the Google search engine so that it can start to build up a picture of what authors Emma likes. Then, when Emma runs future searches, Google presumes that she would prefer to read content from your agency over other content so assigns more priority to your agency’s website in its search results. It will keep your brand in front of Emma’s eyes as much as possible.

Due to Emma +1ing the article, Google presumes that Emma’s friends will also want to know about your article (after all, we usually prefer to read content that our friends have endorsed over more general content on the web). So, when Emma’s friends run searches on Google, it will again prioritise content from your agency in their search results. How amazing to be able to compete in the rankings against all the usual suspects that dominate page one? Suddenly the playing field looks just a tad more level!

More benefits of the +1

The +1 is tied to the destination page on your website where the content is housed. The more +1s your content gets, the higher quality score – and hence search ranking – Google gives you.

Also, the more +1s you get, the more likely people are to click through to read your content. According to Hubspot, websites using the +1 button get 3.5 times more Google+ visits than those that don’t. This is largely due to people being able to see how many +1s an article has before they even click through to read it. Naturally, if there are lots of +1s, then people presume it’s going to be a valuable piece and are more likely to click through. That’s an extremely powerful tool when it comes to driving potential candidates to the content on your website.

A social vote

Think of the +1 button as a social vote – when someone clicks it, they are saying to their social-sphere, “this content is worth reading”.  Then, as more people +1 your content, it begins its journey through the social-sphere, taking your brand with it, creating inbound links and driving new candidates to your website.

New UK Recruiter Discussion Forum

You may have noticed that, with a significant amount of help from Stephen O’Donnell, we've got a new discussion forum on the site.  The reasons for this are twofold; after working with us for nearly 10 years Willco, who ran the old forum, have decided to stop supporting forums as part of their business offering.
Luckily, we were prepared as we've been looking for a way to add registration and more social networking functionality to the forum (as per user requests) for a while.

The result is that we've moved to new provider with the following new features
- Forum posts can be read by anyone but you need to register to post
- Posts can be shared on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a couple of other sites using the links on the far left
- There is no pre-post moderation.  Whatever time of day (or night) you post the comment will go immediately live

What's not changed:
- Rules for posting stay the same
- We'll still be regularly monitoring the forum
- The top 3 posts will be referenced in the newsletter each week

With the addition of a "reporting" feature I'm hoping for a self-policing clientele as well as lots of different opinions and lively debate. 

On the old forum we had over 4000 posts in two years (some of them were spam or libellous mind!).  I'm pretty sure that pre registration will mean slightly less posts - but hopefully more valuable, interesting, worthwhile ones. Give it a go!

What the Google+ little red box means for recruitment agencies

Another great guest post today from Michelle Hill of Red Rocket Media on the subject of blogging:

Those of you who already have a Google+ profile will be fully aware of the little red box, top right, alerting you to the number of notifications awaiting your attention.  Whilst it’s only small in size, it may as well take up half the screen and flash constantly in front of your eyes as it is simply impossible to ignore.

This little red box is one of the main reasons recruitment agencies need an active Google+ profile and in this post, I’ll explain why.
 
Google+ is not a social network
Before we explore the power of the little red box, it’s important to understand what Google+ is. Whilst most people consider it just another social network - hence the constant comparisons to Facebook - the essence of Google+ actually lies elsewhere. To quote Vic Gundotra, head of Google+, it is a “social blanket that envelopes the entire Google experience”.

Google+ is the next phase of Google
Much more than a social network, Google+ is changing the way the internet works. It is a platform which essentially identifies what content a person likes by looking at what they share, what they comment on and what they +1. It then feeds this information back to the Google search engine so that when that person performs a search at a later date, Google can prioritise content from their preferred authors, offering a much more personalised search experience.

So where does the red box come in?
Imagine Google+ as the top layer which sits above all of the Google products - maps, images, gmail, news, Picasa etc.  If you’ve got a Google+ account and are using any of these products, the number of notifications for your attention is displayed in the red box as below:

This means that your clients and candidates are constantly being drawn into the epicentre that is Google+. Once they are there, Google+ tracks what they comment on, what they +1, what they share etc. It then sends these social signals to Google which gets to know which brands/authors your clients and candidates prefer. Then, when they run a search on Google at a later date, Google gives preference to those brands/authors in its search results.

You must have social signals
If your recruitment agency isn’t publishing the right kind of content on Google+ (ie high quality, original content which people will +1 and share), then there are no social signals being sent Google’s way. It, therefore, isn’t aware of your website when deciding which ones to return it its search results.

Ignore it at your peril
Google+ isn’t just another social network, it’s actually changing the way that the internet works.  It is gaining momentum by the day, with or without you. In the words of Vic Gundotra: “We have started the social engines at Google and we’re about to step on the gas”.

Tracking your LinkedIn Network

Here are two lovely little tools for recruiters which Simon Lewis suggested I check out and blog about.  Once you've built your large and relevant LinkedIn network (which of course includes clients, previous clients, candidates, possible candidates, etc) you'll want to know when one of them changes jobs and becomes a potential new client or influencer. OR when an “obstacle decision-maker” quits!

Firstly check out Job Change Notifier.  It's exceptionally straight forward and does exactly what it says.  You go to the website and log in with your LinkedIn details, enter the email address you want notifications sent to and then choose which LinkedIn connections you'd like to track (I selected all of mine).

They monitor the people you choose and email you when any of them change jobs. Handily your tracking's are 100% anonymous.

The other tool you can use for this part is of the Bullhorn reach toolkit; Radar

Again it's simple to use.  You go Bullhorn Reach, choose the Radar product and create a free account.  You link your LinkedIn account (and Facebook if you wish) and immediately you can view "movements" in your network.  With Radar you aren't just shown job title changes but also people who have added lots of new recommendations and/or made profile updates.   You do have to visit the Bullhorn site to see what's happened since you last logged on - but it is displayed all one one easy to read page.

I think these are great tools which recruiters should ALL be using!

How the latest Google update will affect recruitment agencies

This handy little article has been written for us by Michelle Hill of Red Rocket Media.

Over the last 18 months, Google has introduced three major updates to the way it returns search results, known as Caffeine, Panda and, just last week, Search, Plus Your World. Each one has thrown the importance of content into the limelight.

*Caffeine*
Launched in summer 2010, this enabled Google to display results more quickly after they were published. Prior to the update, the main content layer was updated every couple of weeks which meant there was a delay between Google indexing your content and when they actually made it available to searchers. Towards the end of 2011, they launched a further update which enabled them to determine when to give you more up to date results eg. for events  or hot topics. It was now able to identify the different types of searches and the level of freshness each one required. This affected 1 billion searches!
Results: recruitment agencies that publish fresh content win.

*Panda*
In Autumn 2011, the Panda update was introduced to penalise websites with low quality/thin or duplicated content. Websites known as ‘content scrapers’ which scour the internet for vacancies and post them on their own site, were consequently demoted in the search results. It also used artificial intelligence to identify the quality of a website by analysing how long visitors spend on your site, which pages they visit, how many adverts there are etc. Any deemed to be low quality were likewise given less priority in the search results.
Result: recruitment agencies that publish high quality, original content win.

*Search, Plus Your World*
This latest update took place last week and introduced a social element to search results. Now, when you search, Google will take your social-sphere (the main source being Google+) into consideration so say you search for a hotel in Manchester, if any of your social connections have written a review about it, they would be given priority in your search results. The thinking behind this, according to Nielson, is that whilst 42% of people trust search results, 90% trust recommendations from friends.
So how can recruitment agencies benefit from this?
Let’s say you publish an article called “5 Killer Interview Tips”. You share it with your ‘candidates’ circle on Google+. Sarah (one of the people in that circle) thinks it’s a great article and shares it with her ‘friends’ circle. Elizabeth (one of Sarah’s friends) sees it in her stream but doesn’t necessarily read it as she isn’t looking for a job at the moment.
A few months later, Elizabeth decides she is going to look for a new job and searches on Google for ‘interview tips’. Due to the previous social connection with Sarah, your article will be prioritised in her search results. Elizabeth clicks through to read the article and whilst she’s on your website, does a vacancy search. She finds one, submits her CV and voila you’ve connected with a candidate that previously may never have come across your website. Of course, the vital element here is that people want to share the content you produce. If it’s not shareable, it will fall on deaf ears at the first circle.
Result: recruitment agencies that publish highly shareable content win

Content wins every time
In every update, content has been the clear winner. Put simply, recruitment agencies that publish regular, high quality, original, shareable content are more likely to be returned in Google search results than those that don’t.

Jim Stroud Show

Jim Stroud is a “Searchologist” (someone adept at online research) and a thoroughly nice chap.

He's recently started Season 2 of the Jim Stroud Show which is a video series focused on social recruiting. He produces a new video each week and they are certainly entertaining (and informative). Topics have included Twitter, Google Plus, Linkedin, Google, Facebook, Instagram and Mobile Recruiting. Some of his video's have had over 1000 views.

As well as being useful to keep you up to date on social recruiting issues they are a great example of what you can do with video.  Check them out!

NORAs 2011 Finalists Announced

The finalists for the National Online Recruitment Awards have been announced.  There were 526 websites nominated and these have been whittled down to just 5-8 in each award category.   That gives me (and the other judges) 60 sites to look and report back on before the awards evening on the 2nd November.

Social Media Infographics

I'm collecting together some information for our upcoming Directors Only Social Media event on 20th October.  I find that, especially with social media, stats can be so overwhelming and change so fast.  Sometimes it's a lot easier just to glance through a graphic representation of the information. 

One of our speakers, Andy Headworth, has very kindly gathered four relevant infographics around social media.  No doubt he'll pick the pertinent facts out for the event - but in the meantime here they are:

The Social Media Report from Nielsen
To Tweet or not to Tweet
The ROI of Social Media by @mdgadvertising
Twitter Facts and Figures from Touch Agency

As I (or Andy!) collects more information I'll be sharing some of it here.  However, to really understand how to use social media successfully in your recruitment business you'll have to attend our event!

Is LinkedIn playing hard to get?

I've just had a conversation with a recruiter who has noticed a strange thing happening with LinkedIn.  I'll explain the situation and see what you think (I've changed a few of the details just in case!).

She posted a job on the site for a Director of Mobile Strategy.  She duly went through the response but when LinkedIn offered her the option of paying extra to "unlock matching profiles" she declined.   A few days later she did a search on LinkedIn to back up the ad response... and lo and behold she could not find ANYONE in a strategy role within a mobile organisation.  She is confident that she got better results when searching before she posted the advert.

Is it possible that LinkedIn are excluding those "matching profiles" from her searches?

Has anyone else noticed anything like this?  Is she being paranoid or is a known issue with LinkedIn?

Feedback greatly appreciated!

The CV is DEAD: Long Live LinkedIn?

This is a guest post from Lisa Jones of Barclay Jones

Well, the Apply With LinkedIn button has finally gone live… what’s going to be the impact?  If you are a recruiter (agency or corporate), how will this affect you?  How will it improve your business process and bottom line? Does this mark the end of the CV?

I am a massive fan of LinkedIn, and their new function Apply With LinkedIn is the reason I get giddy… 

As LinkedIn states in its blog about the new feature, it has a vision of the professional web – they want to integrate LinkedIn into the www and into your processes (be you a candidate or a recruiter).  This new feature basically allows candidates to apply for roles using their LinkedIn account (which invariably is probably more up to date and more accessible than their CV).

LinkedIn states: “We are going to make it easy for you to submit your profile for any job application on the web with one simple click.”

What does this mean for the humble CV? All that training we have had over the years to get it down to one or two pages, whether we should mention our references or interests?  How will this affect the recruitment process; will your systems benefit from this new feature?  Only if you are not a CV addict…

Want to watch the official 1minute video?

If you are a recruiter / or simply a company that advertises it’s own roles, this new feature could make a massive difference to how candidates apply to you, and speed up the application process, make you more accessible, probably reduce the cost of hire etc…

Something to think about is that this feature, coupled with CRM that can take PDF documents as CVs and create records via clever CV parsing software, could really make a difference to your business.  So, don’t forget Resume Builder or the lovely PDF button at the bottom of your candidate’s blue box.  These features will really speed up your recruitment process, and this is critical in an extremely saturated and competitive market.

What do you think?  Are you going to use this new feature? And, is the CV dead?

Creating your own (vanity) URL shortener

This is a guest post written for us by James Mayes.

There's been a little more noise recently around the use of vanity URL shorteners.  I've had one for some time, mostly because there were some scare stories a while back about the security of the pages hiding behind these links. I figure if the link is tweeted by James Mayes, and contains the domain jmay.es - it's pretty clear I did it intentionally and am responsible for anything behind it.  Noticing a recent rise in interest, I offered to write up a very loose guide for Louise....

1. Start with http://domai.nr/  - enter the name of your business, your personal name, your blog, etc. It will then come up with suggestions of possible short domains you might like. It'll indicate beside each suggestion (with a green square) whether that domain might be available.  Domai.nr will help you purchase these domains if you wish - I guess affiliate marketing for domain registrars is their revenue model.

2. Buy your domain.  You can use the domai.nr recommendation above, or any number of other domain registration services. Three noticeable differences between domain registration services at this point: (a) it's a price-competitive market (b) the ease of use of the domain management tool and (c) the level of customer service available if you need help. Like anything, you get what you pay for.  I'm very happy with the provider I currently use, but I'm not about to pitch them on someone else's blog - so come ask me on Twitter if you're stumped for ideas.

3. Obtain a http://bitly.com/ account.  Bit.ly are one of the main url shortener services out there and are well-respected. They've had the capability to support personal short URL's for a while now, but only on private beta accounts (yes, I was lucky). Now though, it's open to all, as part of their regular free account. Create/sign in to an account, go to Settings, then down to Custom Short Domain. From here, bit.ly will talk you through the detail of verifying ownership of your main site (ownership validation).  Once done, you can use you the new shortener for both your own site, but also for any other links you wish to share.

So why do it? As I explained above, there's a trust/ownership element to it. More than that though, if you choose the domain right, and other people then share or retweet it further, it can help your brand to spread.  Finally, the bit.ly analytics are pretty good. I can see not only how many times MY link has been clicked, but also how many times bit.ly has directed other traffic to that destination. By using the Chrome plug-in from bit.ly, I'm also notified by a pop-up if a link I shared starts trending - and of course, I can set thresholds on that so I can adjust sensitivity accordingly.

So, costs? Domai.nr is free, as is bit.ly - the only cost I've experienced in the last 6 months is in registering the actual domain.  You should note here that some countries are getting very commercial around the values of short domain names.  Mine was an early one, and thus (I think!) cost me about $20 - but a friend of mine checked out a short URL for his company name, and was quoted well over $2,000!  Those values are largely driven by the country you're registering in - so if it seems expensive, get creative with your name/brand. If you need to know which country the domain belongs to, just Google the final couple of letters.

Finally - there are other ways. I know a couple of proud geeks who've enjoyed writing their own code for a personal domain shortener, rather than using bit.ly - feel free.  I use the method above because it requires nothing more than a cut n paste of HMTL code for the ownership validation described in step 3. The only limitation I've found is that I can't redirect the home page too. My short-links work fine, but if you try visit jmay.es as a home page, you'll get bit.ly - still I owe them a bit of publicity, it's not like they charge me ;-)

According to his Twitter profile James is a .... Dad. Gadget-fan. Adrenalin junkie. Outdoors beats indoors. Recruitment industry. Head of Client Solutions for BraveNewTalent. Curate @SocRecFeed & @HRBlogFeed

Recruitment Technology Showcase Event - come along!

Thought I ought to post a bit of information about our brand new event.  Here is the press release.  If you are a decision maker within a recruitment agency/consultancy then this is THE event for you!!

RECRUITMENT TECHNOLOGY – WHAT’S THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT?

Find out at our Recruitment Technology Showcase Event

Technology in recruitment is constantly evolving making it difficult to keep up with offerings which may really add value to your business.  

This brand new event run by the Recruiters Network (www.recruitmentnetworking.co.uk)  has been designed specifically with this issue in mind. Recruitment and resourcing professionals will be able to gain insight into a range of technology offerings from ten very different suppliers.  And there will be also two guest speakers:

* Gary Watson, CEO of Investigo (and ex MD of Michael Page) will share his thoughts on how technology in the recruitment industry has evolved  over the past three decades
* Lis Astall, former Country MD at Accenture will talk about her experiences of  recruitment technology

The event will take place on 26th May 2011 from 2.30pm to 6pm at a convenient City location close to London Bridge.

This event, designed specifically for decision makers, will showcase offerings from:
·         Bullhorn
·         Broadbean
·         ETZ Timesheet Solutions
·         Actonomy
·         Kamanchi
·         Dialogue
·         MyResourcer.com
·         Saber
·         Innovate CV
·         ISV Group

Each supplier will have a strict five minute slot in which to showcase the benefits of their product or service – long enough for you to get a good idea of the relevance to your business – short enough to hold your attention.  You’ll also have time to network both with the suppliers – and each other - throughout the event.

This is a networking event JUST for recruitment and resourcing professionals – both agency and in-house.  Unfortunately supplier organisations are not able to register to attend. You can find out more about the event at http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/networking/26may.htm and if you want to come along to the event you will need to email louise@ukrecruiter.co.uk to get access to the sign up page or call her on 07724 197830.   We may ask you to confirm you are a decision maker within your organisation. 

This event only costs £15 to attend, and  due to venue restrictions there are only a limited number of places so act now to secure your place.

TweetJobs’ Social Media starter pack

Tweetjobs advertise with us in the newsletter (although that’s not why I’m writing this!).  I was talking with Richard over there the other day and I said how I think for many recruiters the problem with Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn is not having the time to keep thinking about what they should be doing to make it work. They (we!) engage in a bit of activity – posting jobs, putting up interesting content, adding videos, etc..... then nothing!   What you really need in the early days is someone telling you what to do and when. 

That’s when Richard mentioned their “social media starter pack”.  This is a paid for service before you get too excited – but it’s still worth a look. 

What you get is:
-12 months unlimited job posting to your Twitter account and their industry, location and job specific accounts
- Advice on how to grow your followers on Twitter and look after the admin
- Jobs aggregated to a facebook fan page and linkedin group
- Design of a facebook fan page and 12 months hosting
- Their 7 steps to establishing a social media presence document
- 3 months support to help you set up you campaign and advise on how to get the most out of social media

The cost is £800 + VAT.  If you want more information I think you need to email Richard.

How to get the most out of keywords in a blog post

This is a guest post, very kindly written for us by Daniel Kidd.

Have you ever written a great blog post that didn’t get the traffic it deserves? Although content is the most important feature of any post, you need to make sure you focus on the correct keywords.

I’m going to show you in a few simple steps how to do this.

Keyword Research

Working for an SEO Agency, I get a lot of clients who tell me what keywords to rank them for. I then do some research and find out that there aren’t any searches for them.

Keyword research is important because you might write a fantastic blog post, get lots of incoming links, but because you haven’t done your research, you rank for a term that has no searches. Although you’re getting a lot of readers through other sites linking to the post, the power of the search engines isn’t utilised.

For keyword research, there are some great tools available to help.

For beginners, use the Google Keyword Tool. It’s easy to use, free and the information is quite accurate. It allows you to enter more than one search term and shows the amount of searches (local and global) the term gets. It also shows how much competition there is for the keyword on Google Adwords. Although SEO doesn’t include Google Adwords, it gives you a guide on how many people you’re competing against.

Long tail/short tail keywords

A short tail keyword is more generic than a long tail. It will have more searches and will be more difficult to rank for. You can use your long tail keywords with the short tail ones to get the best results.

If you’re writing a blog post about England football, and you’re targeting 3 long tail keywords:
• England Football Team 2011
• England Football Team
• England Football

If you optimise for these keywords correctly, not only will you rank for the two easier long tail keywords, but the term ‘England Football’ will also rank.

Try to use a mixture of long tail and short tail keywords and try to overlap them so both of them rank.

How many keywords to use

There are no rules about this, but I would stick to around 2-3 long tail keywords in a blog post. Try to overlap them with more generic terms. This way, you can concentrate on getting the post to look as natural as possible without keyword stuffing, which search engines don’t like.

Title

A title of a blog post is what grabs the attention of readers. It’s important to make sure you have a title that makes people carry on reading. It’s also important to include a keyword in the title, as Google takes it into account when ranking a page. Because of these two factors, you have to find a balance between a great heading and proper use of keywords.

Tip – When writing the title of a blog post, try not to use the same word twice

Headings

Google also looks at heading tags when they rank a page. Try to use a keyword in there while sticking to the title rule.

Images

Not many people include this when they talk about keyword optimisation, but I do. Here is why. Have a look at this page. Paella is used in the title, the heading and the body. It’s also used in the image title. The result of this fine keyword optimisation? Search for paella on Google, and you’ll find the image on the first page. This was done by accident, and it doesn’t happen all the time but it shows what good keyword optimisation can do.

Body

The body is where the most mistakes are made. There are a lot of so called SEO experts out there who tell you to use your keywords but don’t explain how often.

This began with the beginning of the search engine. People would use a keyword 50 times in a 200 word blog post and still rank. The internet has evolved, and so has the search engine (particularly Google), and you are more likely to be penalised for this behaviour now.

The term ‘keyword density’ is used a lot. It explains how often a keyword should be used in a page or blog post. Personally, I wouldn’t stick to this. I just write a blog post naturally, and when I’m done, I have a look to see how many keywords I’ve used. I try to have a couple at the start of the post, and spread them out for the rest. I don’t stick to any rules but they’re usually around 4% of a post.

Search engines don’t like keyword stuffing because it is an attempt to artificially manipulate the search rankings. It’s important to use keywords in the blog post, but not at the expense of the content.

Remember that a blog post is written for people to read and not to rank on search engines. That’s why in the SEO industry, there is a massive emphasis on content. Finding a balance between keywords and content can have a big effect on the amount of people who see your blog post, so make sure you’re using them correctly.

Daniel Kidd is a SEO/Link Builder at Organic Development.  He's also on Twitter

Recruitment Trends Report 2011

  This is a free download from Broadbean (via their Facebook page).  

The Recruitment Trends report has analysed, in a lot of detail, what really happened in online recruitment during 2010. It includes reporting on the key trends in vacancy volumes, application volumes, as well as salary levels across a wide range of industry sectors.

 

If you connect with their Facebook page you'll also get access to additional, mostly statistical, information on an on going basis.

UK Recruiter Plus on Facebook – our case study

For a while I’ve thought we were a bit behind the times for not having a Facebook page.  However, I didn’t want to put something shoddy together myself, get only 3 connections and look even more rubbish than by not having one at all.

Then serendipity struck and I spoke with Steve Evans at NetNatives.  NetNatvies help recruitment firms to make proper use of social media and are sponsoring our Directors networking event on the 3rd February.  I had something of a brainwave and managed to persuade Steve that helping me create a Facebook page for us would also help to showcase their skills in creating similar pages for recruitment firms.

I thought it might be useful to share some of the things I’ve learnt during the process which would be relevant to recruiters looking to create their own Facebook page.

What we did

Firstly we decided to create the page for UK Recruiter Plus rather than UK Recruiter. The main reason for this is that we don’t sell anything to recruiters via UK Recruiter so it would be more difficult to ascertain value and benefits from the page.  UK Recruiter Plus is our subscription based training ground for recruiters and it’s a lot of easier to see how connections could impact revenue.

The first thing to do with projects like this is to set out your objectives.   In our case this was to create a means of attracting more clients to purchase UK Recruiter Plus

The Page

I love the Facebook page we’ve got.  It’s got information about UK Recruiter Plus, It’s got a clear call to action and a benefit for people to “like” it.

With Facebook pages the key is to get people to hit the “like” button.  Once they do that all your Facebook posts appear in their content stream and you can communicate with your audience.

Getting visitor and “likes”

So having got our lovely new Facebook page we needed to send some serious traffic over there and get some connections

The key things we did were:

a) I told everyone I knew on Facebook about the page and asked them to take a look
b) I wrote about it on Twitter and have been mentioning it every 3 or 4 days (with a slightly different angle each time).
c) NetNatives helped us run some adverts on Facebook. These were put in front of all the “recruiters” on Facebook (which is around 112,000 people). 
d) I posted a message to our LinkedIn group and put a status update on my own LinkedIn account
e) I’ve added the Facebook page to my signature file
f) I’m blogging about it!

Basically I’ve tried to get it into “conversation” at every opportunity!

Converting those “likes’” to customers

We’re giving everyone who likes the Facebook page access to 3 articles from UK Recruiters Plus.  I think this is key in getting them to like in the first place and then converting them to a customer.  Having an incentive to hit that button has got to be key in any Facebook campaign.

Once we have the connections I’m keeping in touch by posting useful information (about events, recruitment articles, etc) and also, once a month, we are giving away a free ticket to one of our networking events.  This is actually a benefit of membership to UK Recruiter Plus too.

The results (so far!)

We are less than 2 weeks in.  We have over 80 connections and at least 4 sales of UK Recruiter Plus I can directly attribute to the Facebook page.  UK Recruiter Plus is a low cost product (£40 + VAT), however, for a recruiter – placing just one candidate or getting just one vacancy would cover the cost (assuming you pay someone else to do it).  You can of course do it yourself. 

If you are a recruiter with a Facebook page you are especially proud of please leave a link in the comments.

Why is SEO so Important for the Recruitment Industry?

Daniel Kidd (who I met on Twitter) is a SEO/Link Builder for Organic Development. 

He offered to write a bit of a SEO overview blog post for me. So here it is:

Have you ever wondered why Monster and Totaljobs (Jobs boards) rank so highly on Google?

Unemployment is over 2.5 million in Britain. Half of the British population are connected to the internet, so it’s no surprise that millions of people are using search engines to look for jobs. It’s vital that recruitment companies are using search engine optimisation (SEO).

Because jobs boards rank so highly, it costs recruitment companies a fortune to advertise on them. Using good SEO, it’s possible to outrank these sites, save money and find someone their dream job. Like killing 3 birds with 1 stone!

300000 Hits a Month

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using the Google Keyword Tool, I have searched for the key phrase ‘Jobs in Manchester’. This image shows that in 1 month, there are over 300000 searches for this key phrase. When you search for something on Google, you’ll almost always click on the site ranked first. That’s 300000 hits a month!

Five Benefits of SEO
- Rank higher on search engines, therefore increasing traffic.
- Save money by not having to advertise on expensive jobs boards.
- Find work for more people, increasing your reputation as a recruiter.
- Gain an advantage over your competitors.
- Get paid to advertise other websites on yours.

Start Optimising Today

If you haven’t been using SEO, don’t worry. There are plenty of SEO Agencies (like Daniel's!) that can help you climb up the search engines. If you’d like to learn the basics, there are plenty of free articles, forums and ebooks designed to help you. This is a helpful article describing the basics of SEO.

With high unemployment and the power of the internet, SEO is a great opportunity for recruiters to maximise traffic. With more online recruiters emerging, and more jobs being advertised online, it’s essential that you don’t get left behind.

If you'd like to write a guest blog post for me just get in touch.

SEO is Dead… Long Live Inbound Marketing

We've got a guest blog post today from Lisa Jones....

I have been mulling over this concept for a while, and then came across an article about it which discusses the fact that SEO is dead and we should be considering a move to a more joined-up approach to our online marketing. 

So is SEO dead?  Should we be spending our cash on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and PPC (Pay Per Click?) to drive traffic to our site?  And if we do have a budget for SEO, do we really “get” what our SEO partner is doing for us?  I have met 2 clients recently who once we had investigated what their SEO budget was being spent on, decided to suspend their contract and review their strategy.

So, are you a recruiter who feels that being on page 1 of Google is critical to your marketing strategy?  Are you sure that your clients and candidates really search Google for recruitment companies?  Perhaps you are in the school of thought that subscribes to the idea that clients looking to buy already know about you and simply want to build their confidence in your approach by researching you online and seeing what you have to say about your approach and your sector experience.  In any event, maybe you should be reviewing your strategy to your online marketing.  Let me introduce the new kid on the block SMO – Social Media Optimisation.

The recent news stories of Marks and Spencer using the term ”Interflora” in its adwords campaigns re-ignited the debate of whether paid-for web traffic is an appropriate (or ethical) approach to online marketing.  Note the image below that Interflora ranks 3rd, after Marks and Spencer and Asda’s paid for ads when searching for Interflora in Google.  Thoughts?

 
I know that a colleague of mine has found out recently that a competitor of hers is using her company name to generate traffic to his own website.  This is not good!

There is no doubt that optimising your site to attract traffic is a must.  Ensuring that your content, your titles and menus have key words etc…. is just the beginning. It’s fair to say that many SEO companies offer an invaluable service, and that PPC campaigns can and do help generate business. But what else could you be doing to drive traffic back to your web?

Social Media has really leveled out the playing field for many recruitment companies during the recession and many case studies point to the use of it to generate web traffic. (Small but powerful example: you make a comment on LinkedIn, someone likes it, reviews your profile and clicks onto your website…)  The term “personalized discovery” is now being used by experts to describe how everyday users use the web to educate themselves before buying.

Ask yourself, what are you doing before buying?  Maybe you even started to think about buying before going to Google, and discovered a product via your Facebook page (maybe your friends commented on it and that drove you to start researching it.)  Maybe you spotted a discussion stream in one of your LinkedIn groups that led you to go to someone’s website to check out their offering…

The concept of inbound marketing -  helping yourself to get found by people already in the buyer’s market – is not a new one, but it is one that social media nests very nicely with.  Many recruitment companies are now using LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogging, Twitter to add value to their brands, engage with their customers and drive traffic back to their website.  You will even find that if you comment on Blogs, you website traffic will increase (subtle!)

In any event, remember that the content on your site IS KING!  News, blogs, Twitter feeds etc… all add to the growing need of consumers for knowledge before they buy.  Your website is probably one of the most valuable assets you have, so invest in it wisely.  Your time creating content may be just as good as an investment as your marketing budget.

Lisa Jones is a Virtual IT Director with Barclay Jones – IT Strategy, a technology consultancy delivering impartial, strategic and practical advice to business leaders. She works with growing recruitment companies advising them on the most effective use of technology, web and social media to improve their business processes and bottom line.

Follow Lisa on Twitter, her blog and connect via LinkedIn.

If you want to write a guest post for the blog  let me know. 

Dropbox - Dan's freebie of the year

We've got a guest blog post today from Dan Atkinson....

Once in a while something comes along that makes so much sense and you wonder why it's taken so long.  To add to my list of personal favourites (suitcases on wheels, those little folding  bag clips from Lakeland) I'm now adding Dropbox.

Dropbox is an incredibly simple idea executed beautifully.  It's a free Web based service that creates a virtual 'drive' on your computers in which you can store your documents.  And I'm loving it why?

- Because it will also replicate the same files on all the other machines I've installed  the Dropbox software on (and that goes for Mac, PC and Linux). No more saving stuff on USB sticks and running the risk of losing them. It's all there on my home and office machines.  It's also securely stored online too so anywhere I've got internet access I can access my work safely and securely.
- Because I can also access files I hold in Dropbox on my iPhone - no  matter when a Client calls I can always retrieve  information for them.
- Because  you can get up to 8gb of workable space free of charge, which is more than enough for most people if all your saving is Word and Excel documents (although you can upload and share photos etc too).
- And finally, because I can share designated  files with other users.  My attitude as a researcher is that I'm a co-consultant with whomsoever is fronting the work; I'm loving that that I can give my customers 24-7 access to work in progress to review and collaborate on.

You get the first 2GB of storage for free.  For every person you sign up you get an extra 250mb up to the maximum free allocation of 8GB. There's also premium services that can give you up to 100GB of space.   I'm going to shamelessly plug my free space allocation and ask you to sign up here. 

Dan Atkinson is a Director of research firm Accite Ltd.  He is also a bit of a technology junkie (first going online in 1995 and being one of the first 250,000 people worldwide to join LinkedIn). 

If you want to write a guest post for me just drop me a note.
 
 
 

Research from the Internet Advertising Bureau

If you advertise online this is research that you ought to take a  look at.  I'm not just talking about web banner advertising but also if you advertise your jobs on your own site, on a job board, or anywhere else. 

The IAB’s recently put together a PowerPoint presentation entitled "Customer Conversion Journey Research" – the full version is only available to members but you can download the key findings here. 

The results show the relative effectiveness of different online activities including display advertising, sponsored search, affiliate marketing, natural search and email marketing.  The findings also highlight the average number of times users making purchases on these sites are exposed to each activity, which elements are most effective in converting visitors to customers and the optimum number of display exposures.

Yes, it's most relevant to travel companies (the sector in which the research was conducted) but the lessons can also be applied to recruitment advertising and job listings.  The idea being that people that apply for jobs online are exposed to lots of online marketing messages – emails, display ads, job listings, job aggregators, search results (both natural and paid for) that influence what they do at different stages of the process.

Also covered are issues around assessing display advertising and the need to move beyond the click thru metric to understand the true impact of online display activity.  So, just because your banner didn't get the 500 clicks per day you were hoping for - it doesn't mean that your message isn't being received loud and clear. 

In very simple terms it shows that online advertising can be compared to television or radio (or paper) advertising - where just because someone doesn't act immediately it doesn't mean that they your advertisement isn’t building an awareness (and opinion) of your brand - which is bound to affect them further down the line.

So, pop over to the site and download the PowerPoint!

DVDs for Recruitment Sourcing Techniques

I have a couple of really great DVDs for sourcers (more commonly called researchers in the UK).  They are Social Media Sourcing 101 and Boolean Strings for the Web.  I've had them for about two months and have meant to blog about them for ages.  However, two things have stopped me a) my DVD drive doesn't seem to work on my PC and b) I'm not a sourcer. 

However, I've finally got around to watching them on the laptop in the office and even without being a sourcer I can tell you they are really good training materials.

They have been put together by Irina Shamaeva of Brain Gain Recruiting.  Irina is based in the US (and yes, they are a bit Americanised but don't let that worry you) and has been a recruiter herself for a very long time.

The Boolean DVDs (which is available via her website)  includes a couple of webinars and some articles on the subject.  Basically the idea is that once you've viewed the DVD you'll be able to construct superb search strings to help find those difficult to source candidates.

The Social Media Sourcing DVD is again a webinar with "bonus" material.  The webinars covers how to search for candidates on all the social media sites (LinkedIN, facebook, etc plus how to make contact with them and/or "advertise" jobs to them.

Irinia has also done a Twitter sourcing DVD - but I've not seen this one. The two DVDs I've seen are just over $100 each.  They are probably as valuable as spending a day on a training course, as the material is very focussed, with the added benefit of being able to revisit the material as and when you need to.

What I'd also say is that I met Irina at the recruitment unconference she was speaking at.  If you do get the chance to see her in action (she may come over for a future unconference event) it's worth making the effort to do so.

Top 25 Most Influential Online Recruiters

I had wanted to mention how cool it was to be listed in the Top 25 Most Influential Online Recruiters.  The first point is that I'm not actually a recruiter - mind you looking through the list it seems only 50% of those on it are actually working recruiters.
 
In order to understand how the list was created you really ought to read the blog post.  However, it's basically looking at reach (traffic), relevance and resonance (the number of mentions, inbound links, etc).
 
One of the reasons I'm so pleased to be on the list is that only 25% of the "influencers" are based outside the US and that only 30% are women.  I think I'm the only woman on the list who is not US based. 
 
What I wanted to do when I found out I was on the list is work out how I get from number 10 up to number one (well, actually I'm not that ambitious - so really I just wanted to see what I could learn from the people above me). So here they are:

• I will NEVER be number one.  Jason Buss has over 42,000 followers on Twitter and 1,580 friends on Facebook. His LinkedIn group has over 12,000 members. Maybe I could get our LinkedIn group membership that high but I can't imagine a time when I'd be able to invest the time to increase the Twitter and Facebook figures to his level.
• I won't be number two (Bill Vick) either. Bill uses eight different points of contact and has 3 blogs. I have enough trouble finding the time to write this blog!
• In order to be number three (Thomas Shaw) I'm going to have a work a lot harder at getting people to re-tweet me (he has 5,600 follows on Twitter and 3,857 mentions vs my 157!).
• Blimey, I've no chance of being number four (Jessica Lee) as she writes under 3 twitter profiles (with between 3,748 and 1,125 followers) as well as having a lot more blog visitors. This is one busy woman!#
• Unless I write a book (or review them?) I'm not going to be number five. Marc Cenedella has a reviewer rank of 97,917 on Amazon. Marc also has a lot more twitter followers than me (6,445)
• I COULD be number six. Bill "beat" me with more Twitter followers. He also has a YouTube channel. But if I'm being harsh he demonstrates how time sensitive this list is. I've been on Twitter for two years longer than you Bill but not as active in the past few months!
• Like Bill number seven (Peggy McKee) makes user of YouTube (2,493 views on her channel) and has more followers. There is another lesson to be learnt there.
• At number eight Michael Long is also using YouTube and has 14,546 followers on Twitter. Again - I have no real aspiration for nearly 15k followers!
• Number nine (Paul Debettignies) demonstrates what I need to do to up my influence...

I need to increase my the number of "link backs" on blog posts (by making them more relevant and interesting).  I need to work to increase the number of people who follow me on Twitter (by making my posts more interesting and relevant).  I need to get more Facebook friends (probably by being more interesting and writing relevant status updates).  I should get some videos on YouTube (which of course need to be interesting and relevant).

Really it's obvious - to be more influential you need a good sized audience and you need to share interesting and relevant stuff with them.
 
I'm aiming for at least number 4 next year!

"Pushing" vacancies to jobseekers

Stephen O'Donnell has written a blog post today looking at some the things he sees in the future of recruiting.  I had a bit of trouble with the first part as I hadn't watched the new TV series he was talking about.

However, he does talk about some potential developments I agree with.  The one I wanted to comment on was "Imagine every mention of an employer online, when hovered over, offered the option to “View all vacancies available with this employer”?  Well, I've seen this done already, albeit within a software platform.  It's a development that Innovantage made sometime last year.  I'm not sure if they have it in their current offering but the way it worked was as you browse the web and hover over company names it brought up a side bar with information on those indexed in their database.   One of those bits of information was a list of current vacancies.

This is an application created for other recruiters (vacancy sourcing and business development) rather than jobseekers but it's just one step from what Stephen is talking about.

The main limitation to this is that many many recruitment adverts (run by agencies) don't contain the company name.  If a company is advertising "blind" they'll never be found by that method.  I guess if the technology was created for jobseekers and took off then more companies may see the benefit of running named adverts.

Another feature I'd like to see is a steal from Amazon's "wish list" where candidates could create a list of companies (as they browse the internet) that they want to be informed when they are recruiting.  So, as soon as an advert goes up for x company the jobseeker gets an email notification.

Recruiter Poll - Reminder

Just a reminder that we have teamed up with Voyager to create a short survey about a few aspects of the recruitment industry.
 
We want to find out how professionals within our industry find their next role, use LinkedIn, if and how you network and your attitude to personal development and training.  We plan to use the results to support some blog posts here in the future (so please help me out by completing the survey!).

You don’t have to be a Voyager customer to take part, just click here.

I'm going to start writing about the results in the next couple of weeks.

 

Have you started to Twitter?

Back in April I wrote about why Twitter is good for recruiters.  I keep meaning to write an update on some recruitment specific applications.  So whilst that continues to sit on my "to do" list I wasted 15 minutes earlier trying to find "famous" people on Twitter:

 http://twitter.com/stephenfry

http://twitter.com/willcarling

http://twitter.com/JohnCleese

http://twitter.com/bobbyllew

http://twitter.com/Jeremy_Clarkson

http://twitter.com/richardbranson

No recruitment application at all - but a good example of how difficult it can be to get back into work mode after nearly two week's sitting around watching The Great Escape.

Hopefully, more relevant blogging tomorrow!

Recruiter's Digital Edition

I'm surprised that I can't find anyone else who has commented on this. 

At the start of the month I received an email with information of how I could "breeze through the latest issue" of Recruiter on my screen. 

Here's how it works: -
1. Click on the bottom corner to turn pages
2. Click on the page to enlarge articles
3. Click on web addresses to link directly to other websites

It certainly looks slick and it's easy to turn pages/zoom etc.  However, I found it annoying to have to keep zooming in and then out again as I read a story and then browsed for the next one I wanted to read.  I get that they wanted to keep the look of the printed publication but it's just not user friendly enough for me. 

Anyone else got any thoughts?

More on selling twitter names

On Monday I mentioned an article in PR week about companies being "brand-jacked" on Twitter.

Fliss, my eagle eyed proofer, spotted this follow up article:

Following last week's article in which Cow PR advised us to register our Twitter IDs to prevent us from being 'brand-jacked', Rainier PR discovered that Cow had not actually registered its own ID.

So, I had a little giggle and then realised that whilst I use louisetriance as my twitter "name" I'd left ukrecruiter completely unattended for anyone to pinch.  Doh!

Re-selling Twitter names

I remember years ago stories about how large corporates were "held to ransom" to buy their domain names because, believing the internet to be a fad, they didn't buy their "corporate" domain.  Is the same thing going to happen with Twitter?

According to an article on PR Week:

"Seven out of ten FTSE 100 companies are at risk of being 'brand-jacked' because they have left their ID unclaimed on blogging platform Twitter.

UK PROs have been warned to reserve these names after reports in the US last weekend revealed someone had set up a fake account for Exxon Mobil.

According to research by Cow PR, 69 Twitter names related to FTSE 100 firms are unregistered. Brand names including Domino's Pizza, Dulux Paints and Littlewoods are also on sale for £20 online."

It's not quite the 6 figure numbers being quoted for domain names, but might make some geek in a back bedroom (is that an outdated stereotype?!) a few quid.

Bluearrow, Odgers or Jobserve are still available if anyone wants to try making £60!

Who to watch on Twitter

I mentioned Twitter a while back. I'm still using it - but not as much as some others in the UK recruitment market. Matt Jessop sent me an email with a superb suggestion for a blog post:

"A quick idea for you in the same vain as your top 10 people to connect to on LinkedIn, how about your 10 people to follow on Twitter?"

So, these are 10 of the people I follow on Twitter and who I get value from (all UK based and recruitment related)

http://twitter.com/mattalder
http://twitter.com/petergold99
http://twitter.com/andyheadworth
http://twitter.com/matt_jessop (who modestly asked not to be included - but hey, I'm in charge here)
http://twitter.com/CarveConsulting
http://twitter.com/skyemma
http://twitter.com/alcartwright
http://twitter.com/stopps
http://twitter.com/skyhelene
http://twitter.com/recruitmentnick

Not are all massively prolific tweeters (but then who am I to talk!)