Jobinablog

A corporate blog should now be part of your marketing strategy

Has your business been putting off looking at writing a blog? Have you seriously considered looking at writing one? Well if you need some good reasons why, Jennifer Slegg -  a search engine marketing consultant -  has written this very good article explaining why you should be writing a corporate blog. It is all about being another strand of online marketing.

If you have been sitting on the fence for a while, read this and it will explain why you need to do it!!

59% of people on the internet view one video a week - are you using them on your site?

Video is now becoming a very key part of the online world, as shown by a recent survey by Universal McCann, where 59% of people watch at least one video online per week. Obviously there are the huge video sites like YouTube and similar concepts that have followed their trail. But it is the way that companies are more increasingly using video as a recruiting tool, that should be noticed. The video's may not even be a direct campaign of recruitment, more of an information tool, but they keep people on your website longer.

So is your company using video to attract / entice / inform people about your company? If not then you should be seriously considering the approach. Here is a great post about how a company went through the whole process of producing and publishing their recruitment video.

So you want to write a blog? 10 Tips to help you

We all go on about blogs, and certainly here on Jobinablog it is our focus. So now you have decided you want to write a blog at your company, where do you go for some basic advice? Well fortunately a blog consultant called Mark White wrote some excellent advice on a recent post. So here are his 10 tips for writing a blog:

1. Write posts on topics which interest your readers
I know that we come back to content time and time again, but it really is so key that I’m afraid it’s worth repeating once more here. Write things that your readers will find useful, relevant and interesting! You already do? Great - then concentrate on the rest of this post and the other two in the series because they’ll support what you’re doing every step of the way. If you’re still looking for help then, when you’ve finished here, may I suggest checking out Brian Clark at Copyblogger - recommended. Seriously.

2. Consider the layout of your posts
Try not to have great swaths of text which create an often impenetrable barrier between your readers and the ideas you wish to communicate. Make sure that you break it up, have areas of white space and use subheadings to highlight your points - where appropriate, use bullet points as well and generally make sure that the layout supports your content rather than hides it.

Why you need to use a blog

If you still don't believe in the power of blogs then have a look at these latest figures, recently released by Comscore.

The Top 20 UK Blogging Sites had 33.2 million visitors in February

The Worlds Top 20 UK Blogging Sites had 822.9 million visitors in February.

So for all you sceptics out there, now is the time to start blogging!! After all it is what everyone else is doing!!!

10 Rules of Business Blogging

Read a great post from SEO 2.0 today which I though I would share. What he is saying is good and people who are considering writing a business blog should take heed. Here are his 10 rules of business blogging:

1. Use your real name
If you want anybody to take you seriously you have to use your real name for your blog.

2. Disclose what company you are working for and what exactly you do there
Do not blog under false pretenses, disclose from the start who you are, whom you work for or who pays you, why you blog, what your exact position is, it’s a big difference whether you’re from the PR department or you’re the CEO.

Jobinablog.com - a new breed of career site.

So Jobinablog - what is it then apart from a catchy name? It has been designed to target SME companies to help them recruit staff directly through their own website. Using blog functionality and flexibility, Jobinablog can become a fully branded career site or jobs pages that fits seamlessly into an existing website. It is a very simple but effective way of being able to recruit staff in an exciting way.

Download jobinablog_how_it_works.ppt  (you will need sound). This a easy to watch/listen presentation that will show you exactly how Jobinablog works. Alternatively, here is the presentation in a video format.

So if a company is fed up and disillusioned with recruiting via third parties such as recruitment agencies, Jobinablog will give them a very cost effective method of  direct recruitment, that becomes a key part of a recruitment strategy. And because it is in a blog format it is very good for search engine optimisation (SEO) and naturally high search engine rankings which is great for a company and their marketing budget! More importantly, candidates now want to see exciting career pages, they want to take a 'good look' at a company before they even send a CV, so having an appealing career site is now becoming an essential part of any companies recruitment strategy. Take a look at a Jobinablog client example, and how it works.

Why should a business have a Blog?

If you don't already get it, then you need to understand that companies should be using blogs for business. Better Business Blogging  explains below why a business blog can be very beneficial. As we have mentioned elsewhere , business blogs are also very cost effective. Blogs help to differentiate and personalise your company, and by using it to promote your services, products or jobs, you will build a level of trust and value into your business. Also, companies both large and small can use blogs as a marketing tool, and it gives a range of benefits to companies of different sizes.

So what are the benefits of a business blog?  They are:

So why is Google so important to your recruiting strategy?

To be able to let Google recruit staff for your business, you obviously need to have your jobs online in the first place, but that's a different story. You then you need to understand that most people find things on the internet by using search engines - they are inherently lazy and just won't put the url's in!! Ten years ago Google had no users, today it has over three quarters of the UK search traffic (see below). People will use a search engine to find your products, services or your jobs.

Therefore,it stands to reason that with so much market share in the UK, you have to make sure that you have made sure you are doing everything you can, to make the Google spiders like your website. So how do you do that?

Blogs will change your business

Many people have asked me about Jobinablog.com and asked why I have used the blog format for the product. There are of course many reasons but for business they have become an essential tool to talk to your public, whether they be job seekers or customers. Back in May 2005, BusinessWeek wrote an article, 'Blogs will change your business', and in it there is an interesting paragraph:

“Go ahead and belly ache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they are simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they are going to shake up just about every business – including yours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barrelling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They are pre-requisite.”

They got it spot on didn't they?