Associations

Principles of Job Board Marketing

The following items are a list of suggested tactics and approaches to marketing an online job board – particularly ones in the early stages before you’ve had a chance to build a base of employers and candidates.

Not all the elements below are a fit for every association, and there are likely some new ideas unique to your organization. The purpose of this document is to give some guidance on developing an easy-to-implement program of your own.

Do a few things well.

In many ways, that “easy-to-implement” part is the key to a successful job board. Your primary responsibility is running the marketing for the entire association. That means that core elements like membership, events and publications are a far higher priority than the job board.

Realistically, you won’t have the time to implement everything on this list, or everything you can think of to drive job board growth. That’s okay. Do a few things well. As you grow, you’ll have the resources to add more elements. Even if you only do a little bit to market your job board, as long as you do it consistently you’ll see results.

Balanced Equation

Keep in mind that a job board must have organic balance to grow. Candidates come in expecting to see jobs worth pursuing. Employers post jobs expecting a flow of plausible job candidates. You can’t have one without the other. Even though revenue comes from the Employer side, without healthy Candidate traffic you have no inventory to sell.

Your marketing must focus on developing both sides of that equation.

Passive Marketing

In most cases, the marketing for a job board is passive. You can’t predict when an Employer or Candidate is looking. You’ll know, of course, if someone creates a new profile or logs in, but that still depends on the Employer or Candidate acting first.

Look for ways to stay in front of Candidates and Employers without being intrusive. Stay on their radar, and when they need your job board’s services they will come.

Email newsletters are an excellent tool for this, but the newsletter has to have useful content that someone would want to read. Don’t send them that same “resume writing skills” article published on about 18,000 other websites. It’s cheap and easy to copy it into a newsletter and blast it out to your list. As a result, your members and prospects have now experienced a low quality, slapped together piece of spam with your logo on it. That does not engender loyalty.

Take the time to write a short article specific to your field. It can go beyond the standard resume/interview/dress-for-success garbage that fills most job board newsletters as long as the article topic has a plausible connection to careers. Write well. Look for opportunities to modify the articles you’re already writing for your blog and give them a career twist for the newsletter. Be efficient, but most important of all, keep a strong quality focus.

Existing Collateral

You already have several existing platforms to communicate with members ranging from your website to print publications, member newsletters, events and social media. All of these items should be leveraged for your job board marketing.

A few principles:

• Automate – The two leading job board platforms, Boxwood and JobTarget, both have strong RSS feed systems. Create an RSS feed box somewhere in the sidebar of your website. If you want to get fancy, coordinate the RSS feed with the type of content in that section of the site. Always have a low-key display of specific jobs on the pages of your site. People join associations for networking and career advancement – meet that need.

• Specific Jobs, not House Ads – The path of least resistance, particularly for print publications and email newsletters, is to simply develop a graphical house ad about your job board and run it when you have unsold inventory. This is better than nothing, of course, but let’s face it, no one cares that you have a job board. Your members respond to the specific title and company in a job listing. They’ll click to investigate a Director of Operations position at ACME Inc., but will completely ignore a generic house ad talking about your job board. Display three or four specific jobs rather than just an ad.

Care

I know, that’s all soft and fuzzy. But let’s consider for a moment the typical experience of an HR manager.

This person likely has about 20 open positions sitting on her desk. She’s likely not familiar with the details of many of the jobs, she only has the utterly boring job description. Ideally, an HR manager will post a job on one of the mass market job boards, then try to find a niche job board. Mass market produces volume (100 applications, maybe 1 worth pursuing). Niche produces quality (15 applications, but 4 worth pursuing).

She posts her job listings, sets the paperwork aside and hopes for the best for the next 30-60 days while the job ads run.

In 99% of cases, as long as the credit card she used to buy the listings checks out, the job board considers its work to be done. Thanks for the cash, best of luck with the search.

Be different. Take a few minutes to review your open job listings and, if one isn’t producing enough applicants, give it some extra love in your next newsletter. More importantly, tell the HR manager that you’re doing it. When the listing is done, send a survey to see if you produced good results (and find a way to make good if you didn’t).

I guarantee that of all the job boards that HR manager interacts with, you were the only one who gave a damn about whether she found the right candidate. She’ll come back.

This is often the most difficult element to implement of all the suggestions in this document. It takes time and you have a direct mail piece due out this afternoon. Book a standing appointment with yourself each week. Spend an hour, or half an hour, focused on service. It pays off.

Job Boarding is a Team Sport

I know, Job Board is not a verb.

It is, however, extremely difficult to build a viable job board alone. Large associations can do it to some extent simply because a large membership can sustain sufficient volume. Even large associations benefit greatly by teaming up. For a concrete example, take a look at a case study about some of my work with the American Marketing Association.

Your Candidates want to see a list of attractive jobs. Your Employers want a stream of attractive Candidates. Neither particularly cares where these items come from.

If you can team up with other associations, you can share Candidates and Employers and support each other. Together, you and your (I know) bitter enemies can each present a strong, viable job board resource to your member Candidates and Employers.

Both Boxwood and JobTarget do an excellent job of developing these networks. In many cases the networks can even include some revenue share benefits. That way a trade association with a large Employer base can source candidates from an individual membership association, and vice versa. Both sides make money.

Be careful to make sure that your data is secure. Many of the mass market job boards will bring attractive sounding offers for partnerships or even free use of their platform for your site. They’re actually after your member list. That list is your most valuable asset, so protect it.

By implementing the ideas above on a consistent basis, you’ll see steady growth and progress in your job board results. When you grow to the point where the elements above start taking up too much time, give Little Wolf a call, we can help.

Stop insisting that everything works.

The video below shares the insights of Tim Harford at The Undercover Economist. He’s spent several years studying failure  and apparently has a book coming out on the subject in the near future.

Failure is the key to success – or, more to the point, understanding failure is the key to success.

Organizations cannot accomplish new things without a willingness to court failure. Not all new ideas will work. From my experience, most ideas will rumble along with just enough success to justify keeping it going, but not enough to be truly considered  a success. The ideas that are a flop are almost a relief, because at least then you can pull the plug with no regrets.

Professional associations are often stuck in a rut because they don’t have an appetite for failure. That’s one reason why they tend to approach social media with such fear. It could be a fantastic tool to build a relationship with members and prospects, but no one has really figured out how to make that work yet.

Instead, associations either ignore it (because without the support of professional associations social media will collapse, right?) or they take such tentative steps that nothing concrete is accomplished.

Take the risk.

I’ve been doing a lot of work in the past year to introduce online video as a marketing tool.

Video is a compelling, easily digested form of content that is rapidly becoming the dominant messaging medium on the Internet. We’re not just talking about Diet Coke and Mentos fountains on YouTube. Businesses use them to showcase products or present thought-leadership pieces.

Individuals use them to discuss anything from politics to car repair or cooking techniques.

Video killed the radio star

Ultimately, the Internet is a visual medium. The written word is a powerful thing, but when given a choice between reading a white paper or watching a video – most users will go for the video.

I decided to practice what I preach so I put together what is intended to be the first in a running video series of “Two Minute Teachings.” These will be short, one-topic videos that cover specific marketing topics, ideas and observations. I’ll record some, and I’d like to bring some other voices into the mix as well.

Businesses should avoid the swamp that is YouTube. I posted this on a video player platform called VP Factory that I’ve been quite impressed with. At the moment this in on the free platform, but I’ll likely switch to the paid packages in the near future. It offers quite a bit of customization and analytics.

Let me know what you think.

Would it surprise you to learn that association job board candidate lists can be comprised of 70% to 80% nonmembers?

Allright buddy, I'm going to need to see a receipt for that membership.

I know what you’re thinking … those people will never join. They’re just using us to find a job and we’ll never hear from them again.

That’s probably true. The majority of those job candidates will never join your organization.

Of course, the majority of the people who take advantage of your “one time only” discount to the next conference won’t join either. The majority of people who received a complimentary copy of your trade publication won’t join. The majority who went through your certification program won’t join.

Here’s the difference. In all those other programs, the lead generation program cost you money, and those “never join” prospects are a drain on your resources.

For an association job board, the candidates are your inventory. Even if those people never join your organization, never attend and event and never subscribe to a single publication, their applications to jobs on your job board are what allows you to enjoy the non-dues revenue profits.

In other words, on that job board that you’ve been grumbling about you’re not only meeting what is probably your members’ core need – career enhancement – you’re building your member prospect list and getting paid to do it.

Non-dues revenue is critically important to professional associations.

Yes, your association job board should be making you money.

That’s true as a general rule, but it is critical today. The past two years have been a difficult period for the professional association. It’s not uncommon for some of these organizations to have lost 20% to 30% of the membership in a year.

Laid off workers dropped their memberships. Cost cutting companies stopped paying for those that were left.

It was – and still is – a disturbing period for executives at these organizations.

This was after several years of eroding membership because many people assumed that social media could replace the professional association membership – for free. (It can’t, but that’s another post.)

Short version, professional associations need some time and resources to retool and re-define the business. The worst time to try and do that is when revenue has a severe downturn.

When run properly, job boards are a fantastic tool to drive both non-dues revenue and provide a tangible member service.

The key phrase there is “when run properly.”

Job boards are not typically seen as a core offering. As a result, it has about third- or fourth-level priority for the marketing team and tends to just … sit there.

I just posted a new presentation on how to market an association job board.

Enjoy!

Almost 10 years ago, the American Marketing Association faced a dilemma similar to that faced by many professional associations.

Hey you! DMA! What are you up do down there?

Non-dues revenue had the potential to provide a cushion against variations in the organizations core offerings, but the online job board was stubbornly refusing to cooperate.

It did generate money. It could even be argued that it generated a significant volume of money – just not quite enough to provide that cushion.

The answer turned out to be teaming up with rivals.

I got my eye on you AMA!

Many associations faced this exact dilemma, and through the leadership of their common job board technology vendor – Boxwood – AMA led in the creation of the Marketing Careers Network.

The Network allowed a group of rival associations to maintain individual branding and databases, but still share resources and drive each other’s online job boards to amazing levels of success.

Read the details in a new Case Study – Winning Job Board Glory.

I’m putting together a pair of presentations for Roosevelt University to help alumni navigate the world of social media. This one is a bit of an evolution of the presentation I gave a few weeks back for Catalyzing Collaboration in two ways:

1. Focus on Job Seeking
2. Build a questionnaire follow-up

Iteration 1 of this idea is going to be more low tech. I imagine there’s a module for polling that lets you build a questionnaire. I’ll simply have that send me an email and I’ll produce a short assessment by hand. Longer-term, maybe I can automate it.

Obviously, the idea is for this to serve as a lead generator. I provide useful information and ask for permission to add the recipient to a newsletter list. I’ve counseled several clients to do something similar. It’s about time I did one for myself.

The details aren’t yet worked out, but the presentation will be on August 4 (downtown campus) and August 5 (Schaumburg campus).

Note - View the recording of the Social Media for Job Search and Career Needs presentation.

How many membership organizations or university alumni programs could claim the following problem statement?

• Our Alumni/Members should be better connected to support the organization and each other’s businesses.
• Our organization overall needs a more effective outreach effort to existing and prospective members

Well yes. Those things should happen. Got some spare budget?

Concept

Let’s say you’re due for a redesign on your website.

Well, okay not you. Your website rocks. Because of you. That other guy though. He needs to redesign the website.

Pieces are already there, it's a question of assembling the structure

In our new website, we’re going to build one that can support an online community and user-generated content. The core of this site should be a searchable online directory of member businesses.

We essentially have three elements in play on the website to address the needs outlined above:

1. The user-generated content (with some quality controls, obviously) creates interactivity and engagement among the alumni/members. This satisfies a business networking need and allows contributors a platform to establish expertise and thought leadership.
2. This content over time creates a deeper footprint online (i.e. Google) and establishes a valuable business-oriented resource. An expanded footprint means more prospects, and a better served alumni/membership base.
3. The online directory provides a useful resources for all participants – a directory of relevant service providers and vendors – that a more tangible, easy-to-understand entry point than “thought leadership articles”. It also generates an ongoing revenue stream as companies will pay to list in the directory.

So, to accomplish all this awesomeness we require a website with a content management system so it can grow without requiring continued investment in programmers and development.

User Generated Content

Quality and consistency is the key here. We need to find a few leaders who understand the vision, and are willing to take a leadership role because of the benefits it will bring them professionally. They will be volunteers, but their reward for all the work required will be to develop a fantastic business network and reputation. There are such leaders in any group. They will identify themselves.

Really.

You can’t pick them. You can try to recruit them, but you’ll be surprised by the ones who run with it. However, they are already there in your base. Somewhere.

Outreach

Your alumni or your members have practical needs, and little time to meet them. If you can produce tightly targeted, relevant, high-quality content, then your members will use it. The smart ones will also contribute to it.

For example, if I run a T-shirt shop and I write a short article explaining how you can take that T-shirt idea and make some money from it, then I am by definition the reader’s go-to resource to make it happen and I didn’t need to sell myself at all. My ideas made the sale.

As long as we have a review process for contributed articles to maintain the quality, everything else falls into place (included an enhanced image for the brand).

Online Directory

This will be a Yahoo!-style directory. That means that listors are NOT buying an ad. This is an online directory that offers a high-quality inbound link to the listor’s website. If it generates leads as well that’s a nice side benefit, but the main goal is that link.

Listors pay a recurring annual fee (say $100 or $200) for consideration – not a listing, just the possibility for a listing. This allows you to control the quality. Quality is critical.

That goes beyond just barring certain inappropriate listing types. It makes an enforceable requirement that the listing be well written, clear and descriptive. No junk. No freebies. The value for this directory is that we vigorously enforce quality guidelines so that it means something to be included. That means slower initial growth, but far greater long-term value. It also means recurring revenue.

Resources Needed

1. Website with a Content Management System

• Login and user profiles
• Content approval system (editors)
• Content options such as blogs, video embed, articles, etc.
• Searchable online directory
• Ecommerce enabled

The End Result

1. An activated alumni/membership base, useful in your recruiting, fundraising and growth.
2. Enhanced brand position to support everything else you do.

Generate recurring revenue so you can build this community you need without having to go begging to the CFO.

Everyone says social media offers unprecedented opportunities for companies and organizations to connect with customers, constituents and members.

Everyone said the same thing about blogs five years ago. Some organizations achieved impressive results with blogs such as new customers and engaged members. Most did not.

Why?

Recruit champions, let them lead

The potential strength of social media (and blogs) is also its weakness. Social media is, first and foremost, a social activity. That means you need people who are passionate and committed to making a social media strategy work.

It’s not about websites. It’s not about technology. It’s not about content. It’s not even really about strategy. It’s about people.

Professional associations need to find a few champions, offer them a bit of guidance and encouragement, and turn those champions loose to engage the outside world.

Passion and creativity drive success in the social media world. To the extent that membership associations need a social media strategy, it’s a strategy to identify, train and nurture a core of champions – whether employees or volunteers.

Can Twitter put butts in seats at an event without having to market through email?

That’s a vital question for many organizations as email’s effectiveness continues to dwindle. To be sure, email is still important and there is nothing on the horizon to replace it, but it’s nowhere near as effective as it once was. People are shifting communications to venues where they have more control – mobile text, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I’ve run several informal programs over Twitter in the past year that worked well to accomplish some limited marketing goals. Today, I’m launching a more formal Twitter-based campaign at www.twengaged.com.

The campaign will drive registration to a Chicago AMA resume writing workshop that we’re hosting in partnership with Lynn Hazan – midwest marketing recruiter extraordinaire.

The idea is to get an organization’s membership based enaged through a fun promotion. Engaged + Twitte r= Twengaged.

The pilot campaign is with the Chicago AMA, and if it works it can be run for any number of organizations.

With this one, people will Tweet their resume’s Objective Statement  - the one-sentence summary at the start of a resume – with a designated set of hashtags. Participants can then vote (thumbs up / thumbs down) and the top vote getters get the glory of a leader board position.

At the end of the promotion, a team of judges will decide on a winner - who receives a free ticket to the Chicago AMA resume writing workshop on July 28.

The idea is to leverage the viral nature of Twitter with the self-interest of participants. If I post my objective statement, I want two things:

1. As many people as possible should see my Objective Statement, which will help me find job opportunities.
2. I want to win the free ticket.

Therefore, participants have every incentive to spread the word about the promotion and we should enjoy viral growth in a short period of time.

Very exciting!