Are Recruitment Blogs Worth The Cost?

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<h2>Key Takeaways</h2>
<ul>
<li>Recruitment blogs can effectively enhance employer branding and attract both active and passive candidates.</li>
<li>Consistent, high-quality content creation is crucial for success.</li>
<li>Use SEO best practices to maximise the impact of your recruitment blogging efforts.</li>
</ul>
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Recruitment blogs are online articles specifically designed to attract active and passive jobseekers. They can be displayed on a company website, showcasing the work environment, ethos, and core values; to enhance an employer’s brand rather than focusing on filling a specific vacancy. They often attract passive applicants who find content while searching for related topics and help jobseekers decide if they align with an organisation.

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Before You Read Any Further...!

If you want to create a recruitment blog, your existing company website must have sufficient traffic, meeting these criteria:

• Organic traffic: Your website should have at least 1000 unique visitors per month.
• Domain rating: Your website should have an Ahrefs.com domain rating of 20+.

If your website is not yet functioning at this level, use alternative Applicant Attraction Channels until it is.

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Advantages of Using Recruitment Blogs

• Enhancing employer brand and culture: Blogs allow companies to effectively showcase their work environment, ethos, and core values, helping job seekers decide if they align with the organisation’s values and goals creating a more meaningful connection with prospective employees.
• Transparency in the recruitment process: Blogs can demystify the recruitment process by outlining the steps involved, the skills and qualities sought, and offering application tips. 
• Attracting passive jobseekers: Regular blogging keeps the company’s recruitment efforts in the public eye, nurturing interest from passive candidates. This means that when these individuals are ready to make a career move, the business is already on their radar.
• Long-term search engine optimisation (SEO) benefits: Regularly updated and professionally written blogs can improve a company’s overall search engine rankings, making it more visible to jobseekers and customers.

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Disadvantages of Using Recruitment Blogs

• High cost: Overall, most recruitment blogs cost a minimum of £5,000 per year, potentially more if involving SEO agencies.
• High risk of failure: If not done correctly, the time and money spent creating recruitment blogs may not yield the desired visibility or engagement.
• Resource-intensive: Creating and maintaining a quality blog requires significant time, money, and input. This includes creating consistent content, managing SEO, and possibly hiring professional writers and SEO experts, which is both costly and time-consuming.
• Slow return on investment: Unlike direct recruitment methods, blogs typically do not yield immediate results. Building a readership and seeing the impact on recruitment can take considerable time, making it a long-term investment rather than a quick solution.
• Difficult to measure effectiveness: It’s challenging to measure the direct impact of a recruitment blog on hiring. The journey from reading a blog post to applying for a job involves so many steps and touchpoints that a candidate might not even realise that the blog drew them to the business! Moreover, Google Analytics (aka GA4) now only shows last-touch-point data, making it more difficult to see a candidate’s journey.
• Potential for outdated or irrelevant content: Keeping the blog content current and relevant requires regular updates. Outdated content fails to attract readers and can negatively impact the employer’s brand.
• Dependence on SEO and algorithm changes: A blog’s visibility relies heavily on search engine algorithms, which are subject to change. Companies must continuously adapt their SEO strategies to these changes, which can be complex and require specific expertise.
• Limited reach to specific demographics: Blogs are more likely to attract white-collar professionals or individuals who regularly engage with online content. This means they may not be as effective in reaching other jobseekers, such as blue-collar workers or those who are less active online.
• Risk of negative comments or spam: Allowing comments on blog posts can lead to spam or negative comments, harming the company’s image if not correctly managed. Monitoring and moderating comments require additional resources and can be a potential risk area.
• Technical and creative challenges: Successfully running a blog requires technical know-how (like SEO and web management) and creative capabilities to produce engaging and relevant content. This can be challenging for some companies, especially smaller ones with limited resources.

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How to Create a Blog for Recruitment

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Step 1: Choose a platform

If your company doesn’t have a website content management platform, I often recommend creating one using WordPress. Producing an overall aesthetic that reflects the organisation’s identity is relatively easy, and there are lots of affordable freelancers who can help. 

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Step 2: Host it correctly

For SEO purposes, never host it on a subdomain (eg. blog.acme.com) but instead in a folder (eg. acme.com/blog). If a company website already has a blog section, simply create a category called “Recruitment”.

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Step 3: Content Iideas

Announce the initiative and involve employees in building a content strategy by brainstorming, such as:

• Showcase company culture and values.
• Demonstrate thought leadership and industry expertise.
• Feature employee engagement and testimonials.
• Provide educational content relevant to your industry.
• Offer transparency about the recruitment process.
• Ad hoc blogs can be helpful during recruitment drives or job fairs.

Remember, the purpose of writing a recruitment blog isn’t just to write content; it’s to recruit employees! 

Before you create any content, it’s vital that you do research to ensure there is search demand for the topics you plan to write about. If jobseekers aren’t searching for topics you want to write a blog about, there is no point writing an article. I use Ahrefs.com and LowFruits.com for my analysis.

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Step 4: Content creation

Creating a recruitment blog requires consistent and regular publishing. An initial quantity of at least 10 articles (ideally 50) is recommended to establish topical authority. Regular updates are needed to keep the blog fresh and engaging. Ideally, publish at least one article per month, with weekly content yielding better results. 

With lots of ideas, start diarising them into a content calendar.

If employees are not motivated to write regularly, consider outsourcing to freelance writers, which can cost around £40 per article, adding up to £480 per year for monthly articles. Ensure the content reflects expertise, authority, and trust.

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Step 5: SEO best practices

When publishing the blog, you need to consider search engine optimisation.

• Use actual search terms in titles and headings.
• Employ SEO tools like Neuronwriter (which can cost up to £200 per month) to understand ranking factors, such as minimum word count and keyword density.
• Index the blog using Google Search Console.
• Share links to the content on social media, to drive traffic to your website. (Don’t use AI to write blogs!)

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Step 6: Consider including visual content

Include images and videos to enhance engagement. Our research found the most helpful content for jobseekers is a picture of the work environment. Avoid using AI-generated images; smartphones are fine and you can apply filters.

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Step 7: Call to action

Include an email address and a telephone number at the end of every article to make it easy for jobseekers to reach out. 

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Step 8: Comments and engagement

Don’t enable comments to prevent spam. Focus on sharing content on social media to generate traffic and signals to Google. 

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Step 9: Content audits

• Conduct a blog audit every three months. Using Google Search Console, identify how many pages are indexed and which pages are getting traffic. 
• Update content every six months to ensure your content looks fresh in the eyes of visitors (and Google).

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Writing recruitment blogs isn’t something you finish; it requires consistent and regular publishing, and you have to decide whether it’s really worth having to implement these 9 steps.

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Additional Resources

• Talent Acquisition Book; The Secrets of Great Recruitment: How to Recruit Great Employes.
• Downloadable PDF guide; Are Recruitment Blogs Worth It? Understanding the Real Return on Investment
• Article; Using Recruitment Blogs: Creating Content That Jobseekers Can't Ignore
• Article; Advantages & Disadvantages of Using Recruitment Blogs.