Thread: Marketing 101

Marketing 101

I thought I would share some ideas for marketing a jobroller site. A lot of this can be used for any site, but since I use jobroller…

Some of what I shared is right here

But let me elaborate on a very important item:

1) Marketing Plan. The marketing plan is a simple way to organize your thoughts and make you think HOW you are going to achieve success. On a larger scale, marketing plans are the crux of any business plan. In the scenario of jobroller, it makes you seriously think about who, what, when, where, how. (I don’t think any of them include a SWOT analysis but that may help too) But since, most folks are starting small a marketing plan will suffice. Here are some simple examples:

1) Sample Marketing Plan | MoreBusiness.com
2) http://college.cengage.com/business/...e_mkt_plan.pdf
3) Microsoft office website has a ton to choose from
4) Nonprofit Marketing Plan Template | Nonprofit Marketing | Getting Attention
5) http://www.small-biz-marketing-tips....ngtemplate.pdf

There are tons of marketing plans out there. DO NOT buy any software or any book that explains marketing plans. There is a ton of information on the net about it. I found that after spending 3 mins. The key to a marketing plan is making you think about what you want to do and how you are going to do it. If you are not willing to do this – you will not be successful.

Keep in mind; it does not have to be 100 pages. But a simple start might be 2 pages; and you update as you discover new things. If you think you are going to open a website and people are going to flock just because you put it up…this isn’t 1994 anymore. And as I said a sentence ago, your plan will change as you learn more about the field and your site.

Myself personally, I have created 30-50 page business plans and 1-2 page marketing plans, but this is probably the single biggest tool that is overlooked.

Iin the thread posted above, luukratief posted a great list of marketing items:

“SEO, Social media usage, Mouth to mouth, E-mailing (alot!) ,deals with clubs in the specialism you aim your jobboard on.”

I am going to touch on all of them, but first the one he forgot and a lot of folks seem to want to get rid of on jobroller: The Blog.

Almost every custom site I have visited has the blog off. Why? That is a massive tool for free marketing. Granted, it is my opinion it could be more ”aesthetically pleasing”, but this is a tool that will help you have people work for you for FREE. Let me start by showing an email I sent out to people a few weeks ago:

“Please help us to become the best employment portal for those in the therapy field.
TherapyWork's audience will consist of employers(generally outpatient clinics, hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, home health agencies, etc) and therapists looking for work (Physical Therapists, Physical Therapy Assistants, Occupational Therapists, Occupational Therapy Assistants, Speech Language Pathologists, etc.)
We are looking for professionals, therapists, employers to share items that they feel others in the community will appreciate: news, opinions (no politics please), jobs, experience in the field, feel good stories, and more.
We plan on going live somewhere between June 6 and June 20. If you think you have something to contribute, would like more information on posting your company's jobs, looking for work and/or would like to submit a resume or would like to ask a question not listed, simply respond and I will reply within 24 hours.
Thank you for your time.”

This is the exact email I sent out. Do you understand where I am going with it? Couple subtle sales points:

1)You are asking people that are knowledgeable in your field to contribute. The more people that contribute, the more your site will be known.

2)You are asking people that make hiring decisions to contribute other things aside from jobs. Depending on your niche, HR people are inundated with calls from staffing companies. They may not initially be ready to post a job, but there’s a better chance they would be willing to share their expertise. Anyone any good in sales will tell you that people LOVE to talk about their business. For better or worse they love to. Utilize this.

3)Writers have followers. Sooner or later if you get an expert in your field (or self-proclaimed expert) to post on your site that could leads to more visits to it.

4)Have you followed yahoo news section? In myopinion it has dropped dramatically on quality of stories it posts out but it pulls from sites all over, NOT JUST BIG ONES. I have seen the most asinine stories coming from someone’s personal blog on backpacking. How would YOU feel if one of your posts made it to the front of Yahoo?

Then there are just the nice human beings also who send you responses like this:

Hi Joel,
Can you write up a 200 word description of the site with additional information, like how the site will be organized, how people will interact, and what kinds of information will be included (will it be just a forum? A chatroom? Will the site have news and events on the main page?)
Hopefully I can give you some press.
Stephen

On to luukratief’s thoughts:

SEO-
SEO is massive it is what gets your site noticed autonomously. Unfortunately, it is my belief that 75% of the tools, ideas and companies that sell or tell you how to increase SEO are full of sh_t. The problem with working on SEO is that there are so many different things you can try and/or accomplish you can spend more time on it then on your actual site and that is no good.

So we’re on the same page, definition of SEO here

To me, SEO encompasses anything that will help me get my site more hits. I think most people agree with that. To simplify your SEO work, I believe you need to do and/or use 4 things:

1. Emails (a ton of em)
2. Twitter
3. LinkedIn
4. Select wordpress plugins that I will list

Importance is in this order.

Emails: You are projecting your site directly to your customers, this is INVALUABLE. Despite spam laws, it is my belief, and while I am not a lawyer as of this you cannot hold be liable for anything, As long as you give them an option to opt-out in your email you should be fine. Again let me say, with emails you are focusing on your clients directly.

Twitter: When I first started my site and before I tore it down, 20% of my hits came from twitter. Twitter requires work. You need to grow your follower list of people that can use your service and people in the field. You can do that by posting your jobs to your twitter account (people interest search certain key words and it comes up), manually follow people and hope some in turn follow you back or find some softwares out there that automate the process of following people. (not sure legality of those softwares but it’s debatable). Also there are tons of plugins or sites that will autopost your jobs to your twitter account. I used to use plugins until I found twitterfeed. Very simple to set up, free and I am a believer of having a site do the work instead of taxing your own server with a plugin. By doing this you begin to automate your seo work, which in turn allows you to focus on other things.

LinkedIn: it is blowing up as the place to be to find a job. This takes more work than twitter, but the idea is the same. Additionally there are plugins that will autopost to your linkedin account. The difference with this is that no one can see it unless they are following you (I think). If anyone wants to add info in regards to LinkedIn, please do. I use it but don’t think it is as capable as twitter in regards to getting your name out.

Twitter and LinkedIn also work to raise your ranking in search engines.

Wordpress Plugins: God I love wordpress it turned a person like me who hasn’t programmed since the Vic-20 and turned me into a semi-superstar.
• WordPress SEO. I am still playing around with this, but the customizable section makes it the only seo plugin that can read our jobs in the xml sitemaps. Priceless.
• XML sitemap plugins. See above
• Linkedin and twitter auto post plugins

There are tons others you can use I am sure, but from an SEO automated perspective, those are the most important. Special Note: There are tons of other plugins that will autopost (supposedly) to TONS of social medial just as long as you have them linked on site, use them as the social media posting, choice, etc. I have tried them and IMHO they are a waste. Why? Because unless you take the same time with each and every social network (ie plurk, etc) it will be a colossal waste of time. Some of them don’t need the care and attention others do. At one point I was autoposting to 15-20 social networks (including twitter, facebook, linkedin) and I can honestly say I never saw a spike in site hits. I suppose some folks may argue this.

Let me close by saying I have no allegiances to any links or any items I have posted in this. Use my information like wine: at your own risk.

I will post more later.

mrHAT

P.S. Wasn't sure where to post this.