Adding value to the recruitment process: blogging for CWJobs
CW Jobs is a long-established source of IT vacancies in the UK but in 2008, under pressure from competitors, it felt it needed to reinforce its leading position.
The desired brand positioning was at the heart of the IT industry. CWJobs wanted to be seen as the place to go for IT jobs, and therefore needed to position itself as the IT specialist. Yet it was reluctant to embark on a conventional outbound marketing campaign to do it.
IT job seekers were, they felt, resistant to conventional marketing and highly cynical. CWJobs also felt it was important to use social media techniques, since the IT community were the most likely to be using these networks.
A blog is born
The answer was to blog, but they knew that they needed a diverse range of bloggers who could provide valuable content both on the subject of IT recruitment issues and on wider IT issues. A team was selected, both for their knowledge and, more cycnically, their established audience – the idea being that they would bring their audience with them to the CWJobs site.
The blog team included:
- Nick Dettmar – Managing Director of IT recruitment specialists Computer People, a frequent commenter on the IT industry in the media, including The Financial Times, Computing and Computer Weekly
- Johanna Rothman – Consultant, speaker and author on issues of project management, risk management, and people management. Publisher of The Pragmatic Manager, a monthly email newsletter and podcast, and already the author of two blogs: Managing Product Development and Hiring Technical People.
- Tim Anderson – freelance journalist who specialises in programming and Internet development topics. Has columns in Personal Computer World and IT Week, and also contributes regularly to Guardian Technology and The Register. He writes from time to time for other periodicals including Developer Network Journal Online, and Hardcopy.
- Danny Bradbury – a freelance technology journalist with 20 years’ experience, who has written extensively for the Guardian, the Independent, and the Financial Times.
Base One agreed to manage the writers, planning content and generally reminding them of deadlines, as well as taking responsibility for measurement.
The Objectives
There were two key objectives: to communicate with the IT audience, and to drive traffic to the CWJobs website.
The first objective is achieved when IT jobseekers visit the blog to gain information from respected bloggers, giving an expert and personable “voice” to the CWJobs brand. At the same time, the blog drives increased traffic to the main CWJobs website, both via links to the main site and through selected vacancies that are featured beside each blog post.
Traffic
Traffic has grown substantially since the blog launch in late 2008. In November 2009, the traffic reached a record high of 5,000 visits. ITJoBlog also has a twitter account with over 3,000 followers, and an automated email function that sends blog posts to users that have registered on the site.
The table and graph below demonstrates the traffic trend for ITJOBBLOG.
ITJOBLOG is going through re-branding together with a new strategy to bring more targeted traffic to CWJObs.
