Thread: Marketing strategies for job boards

Marketing strategies for job boards

Marketing Strategies for Job Boards

Summary
The marketing of a job board is perhaps the single most important element of its success. Without the ability to drive job seeker traffic to the site, it will fail in the long term. Even if employers are willing to pay for postings they wont come back if you fail to bring them enough applicants. So it’s generally best to concentrate on building job seeker traffic when you first launch.

The second most important aspect of your site is web design. It must be professional looking and inspire confidence. Employers need to be confident that their money is being well spent. Job Seekers need confidence of knowing your site is a good resource with real jobs. Good web design can inspire people to use your site. Invest in a good logo and make your job board easy to use and navigate.

When it comes to design and functionality, always strive for simplicity/ease of use. The less barriers you put in front of users the better. For example, don't require employers to register in order to see your pricing. Similarly don't require job seekers to register in order to search jobs. This is a fairly straightforward concept but one many job boards fail to adhere to.

A great looking website can add 10-20% to your bottom line sales because it will inspire recruiters to post jobs. Don’t skimp on it!

TIP: Use a site such as 99designs.com to let graphic designers compete to create a logo for your site. You’ll get plenty of good work to pick from and you set the price. You can get a great design for as little as a few hundred dollars.

In terms of content weighting, SensationalJobs.com devotes approximately 2/3 of the homepage towards job seekers and 1/3 toward employer content. This is a good balance of content to emulate. Make sure your design remains consistent across all pages of your site. Consistency of design is very important for gaining user trust.

Lastly, never launch your job board without jobs. You should back fill your site with listings from providers such as Indeed.com

Marketing Tools
There are many tools to use inside your job board marketing toolbox. Lets take a look at each one and how you can integrate them into your marketing plan. Some are free, but be prepared to spend money to make money. A job board without a marketing budget is a ship without a rudder.

The main goal of job board marketing should be to drive web traffic in the form of job seekers and employers. So your marketing will need to take two different tracks. The tools below will help you get that audience on a daily basis.

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it should be a key element of your marketing plan. Your job board must have plenty of text on the pages with the right keywords targeting your niche, using Alt tags in images and other on page tactics.

Here’s a few resources to learn more about SEO.

seo tips - Google Search

Although there are many aspects of SEO, the big one you should be concentrating on is link building. The amount of sites that link back to yours is the easiest, most effective thing you can do to rank well in the search engines. Click here for more free job board advice.

ONLINE ADVERTISING

Every commercial website needs to advertise in order to get traffic. Job boards are no different. You should be concentrating your ad spend on the following types of sites;
Search engines: Google and Bing (buy keywords) Visit AdWords Small Business Center to learn more about the AdWords.

* Advertising | Facebook
* Job search engines: Indeed, SimplyHired, JuJu, TopUSAJobs (pay per click job seeker traffic)

For most of these sites you can set a daily or monthly budget. Your cheapest option will be the job search engines which will cost around 25 cents per click.

Ning.com is a good source for tapping into various community sites.

The Job Boarders community is a good example of a ning site and one you should join. Check out the profile page for this user, AppDesignJobs.com. Ning profile pages allow you to add all kinds of content including RSS feeds. Take advantage of it. Use it to build links back to your site.

App Design Jobs's Page - Job Boarders

You can even start your own community with the Ning platform. In fact, today’s job boards should really start their own community sections in order to foster more interaction with candidates and employers. A good example of this is a site like Sales Gravy, which is a community site for sales professionals that has jobs in addition to tons of other content.

Building a community around your jobs will make your site more valuable in the long run. It takes time and effort to do this, but the payoff will be worth the effort.

PR
Press Release sites are a great marketing tool for job boards. There are two pay sites worth using as well as a number of free alternatives. The free sites below are great for link building but they wont bring much traffic. Jobtarget provides a number of press release templates to use but you are certainly free to write your own.

eReleases.com (pay)
PRweb.com (pay)
PR.com (free)
PRlog.com (free)
i-Newswire (free)
Job Boarders (pr section of forum) (free)
Secrets of the Job Hunt (forum) (free)
Recruitingblogs.com (pr section of forum) (free)
ERE.net community (free) (create an account and publish as a blog post) (example)

Use these sites to announce the launch of your job board and inform potential seekers and employers about the industry you serve.

LEVERAGING YOUTUBE
Youtube is essentially the second largest search engine next to Google. It has that many users. So its no surprise that many websites have begun to use it as a marketing tool via the channel page that you get as a user. The channel page is a great opportunity to create a branded experience around your job board using video. You can customize it, link back to your website and engage people.

The example above (youtube.com/greenjobs4u) is a great example of how to use Youtube to build your sites brand and get traffic. This site creates videos about green jobs that compliment its green job board. The page contains the same branding cues as their regular site (same logos, colors) and also contains descriptive text and links back to greenjobspider.com.

Whatever market your site serves consider adding video content about jobs in that industry or even just regular career advice.

TIP: for every description of a video you post lead by entering your sites url. This will create a link to your site that every viewer will see. (example below)

Other job board pages on Youtube to check out are;

‪MonsterVideoVault's Channel‬‏ - YouTube
‪CareerBuilder's Channel‬‏ - YouTube
‪jobing's Channel‬‏ - YouTube
‪dicenews's Channel‬‏ - YouTube
‪collegerecruiter's Channel‬‏ - YouTube

LEVERAGE THE JOB SEARCH ENGINES

Job boards of all sizes should consider sending their job feed to the major job aggregators. Not only is this good branding but you’ll be providing value to your clients in the form of additional exposure to their jobs.

Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, JuJu.com and TopUSAJobs.com will all index your job feed and drive traffic back to your jobs. You’ll need to pay them a set amount each month for full exposure but you can control your monthly budget. You are paying to sponsor your jobs at the top of relevant searches but you will also get “organic traffic” in the regular results (just like Google).

For example, if you let Indeed.com index your jobs you can promote the fact that your clients are really getting 2 sites for 1 price. Get indexed by the other sites and its like getting 4 sites for 1. That is terrific value for the money. When your clients go to post a job you should TELL them that their job will be cross-posted. This is a great selling point that adds value to your job board services. You will get more traffic to your site and bring your clients more applicants.

TIP: Use Twitterfeed.com to send your RSS job feed to your twitter account.

If you do start using these channels to market your site be sure to link to them from your homepage.

ARTICLE MARKETING

Blogs and article submission sites are a great way to build backlinks to your sites. Find blogs related to your industry and offer to write a guest post about a subject and they’ll be happy to link back to you. Sites like Ezinearticles.com and GoArticles.com allow anyone to submit articles they write on any subject from A to Z. They are a great way to get your content out and increase your Google ranking.

Many online communites also have the ability to write content whenever you feel the urge. The ERE site which targets the recruiting industry has a “community section” where anyone who joins can add their content.

GET LISTED
There are many places to get your job board listed online from free to pay options. Use these sites to get backlinks.

Jobtarget Oneclick
JobBoardreviews ($5 per month)
IAEWS (must join assoc)
AIRS

SHOW YOUR FACE
If you are running your job board by yourself or with a few employees consider making your people the ‘face of your company’. Be personable. Showcase the people behind your website through your blog with videos and picture.

Take a cue from the CoolWorks.com contact page.