Content is King: How To Build Your Credibility With Content Marketing

December 7, 2018

As a recruiter, your tenacious, go-getter mindset serves you well. It’s the valuable trait that fuels you when you’re putting in the work to identify the best talent, and when you’re building positive and lasting relationships with clients. When you’re creating and implementing your firm’s content marketing strategies to grow your business, it’s important to tap into that same committed work ethic.

With content marketing, it’s imperative that you remain committed to generating content, patient in evaluating results, and aware of the various, and sometimes unquantifiable, ways that content is affecting your business.

Remaining Patient When Setting Goals in Content Marketing

In most of your business strategies, your goals are created using a simple equation. By doing X, we hope to yield Y. In recruiting, you might purchase an additional LinkedIn recruiting seat for your firm, with the goal that it will increase revenue by a certain number. The time-tested equation makes for an easy ROI analysis upon the completion of your initiative.

In content marketing, that’s not a great way to set goals. Why? Because your content has a broad impact on your company. A single piece of content has the ability to improve your search rankings, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, educate prospects, engage with your audience, create brand awareness, and improve your brand’s reputation. There are simply too many variables to insert into a linear success equation when it comes to evaluating content.

A common pitfall that companies fall into is they get discouraged with their content efforts when they don’t collect quick wins from it. They then drop the ball on content creation, for a while, out of frustration.

I made this mistake when I first started creating content for my recruiting firm. I was so focused on how much traffic our website was generating, and how many leads we were converting, that I was losing sight of the long game. You, of course, should set goals for the various content metrics out there—whether that be rankings, traffic, or conversions. But don’t forget to be patient. If a piece of content doesn’t generate a lead this month, or even over the next few months, that doesn’t mean it won’t eventually. There are so many ways that content can help your brand, that you must avoid rigid evaluations of whether or not it’s working.

Instead, your primary goal should be to create good content regularly. You never know when a piece of content is going to serve as the conversion point for a lead. The life cycle of a piece of content can go for years, which is important to keep in mind when evaluating the metrics of your content.

Staying Committed to Producing Content Across All of Your Channels

In recruiting, your reputation is everything. Candidates measure your reputation when weighing whether to trust you with guiding them toward the next opportunity in their career, and your clients weigh your reputation when deciding whether they can trust you to find them the perfect candidate.

If your firm isn’t producing a steady amount of content, your reputation is in jeopardy. Before a lead picks up the phone and calls your firm or sends you an email, they will read three-to-five pieces of content. As they come across the content they read, they will be evaluating your brand.

Ask yourself this, what does our content say about us? If you only post a blog every couple of months, leads will take notice and question your commitment. If your social posting is inconsistent and unfocused, leads will notice. If you don’t have any long-form content that tackles the important questions and topics of your target audience, your leads will notice. Gaps in the consistency or quality of your content will stain how leads are appraising your firm.

By staying committed and patient, you’ll be able to supply leads with a steady diet of educational content that will both inform them about the solutions to their pain points and to the value of your firm.

Parqa Marketing is a digital marketing agency that works to transform your digital marketing efforts.

closed laptop and phone with earbuds sitting on desk

Is Your Online Brand Aligned with Your Personal Brand?

November 27, 2018

There is no doubt that a recruiter’s reputation plays a significant role in landing a search. There are thousands and thousands of small recruiting firms in the United States that have built their companies one handshake at a time.

Hopefully, as their reputation in a given market grows so does their business. While the need to create a trusted partnership with a potential client will never go away, the market is changing, and recruiters in companies both large and small need to develop their brand online.

Your Personal Brand

Hubspot released a report in May 2018 that stated, “77% of consumers research you and your company online before engaging with your brand”.

Let me give you an example of this in action. Versique, Parqa’s sister company, recently acquired a recruiting firm with a very well-established leader in their market. He had an outstanding company and was doing excellent work for his clients. Several years prior he had placed a CEO in a company, and that CEO called him as he was retiring and was looking for help to fill his replacement.

The experience he had with this recruiter was phenomenal, and the CEO referred him to the Board of Directors. A few weeks later this recruiter received a call from the CEO informing him that the Board of Directors chose to go a different route because they couldn’t find any information about his practice online. At this point, he knew the market was changing, and he had to do something different. He saw what Versique was doing to build online credibility not only to drive net-new leads, but to secure the reputation of its recruiters online; many of which have 15+ years in the industry.

This is a real-life example of how a skilled recruiter, with an excellent reputation and the benefit of a referral, couldn’t close a deal because the Board of Directors could not learn more about him online.

When I hear Parqa’s clients and potential clients say they can’t afford to spend more on digital marketing, or even entertain digital marketing at all, I tell them this story. Can you afford not to land a CEO search that on paper ten years ago would have been a slam dunk?

There are two critical components of digital marketing that every recruiter and company HAVE to focus on at bare minimum in 2019.

30 Minute How-To Guide: Check out this webinar to learn how you can build your brand on LinkedIn ➢

1.Visibility

Visibility comes in many forms, but by definition is the “state of being able to be seen.” Some examples of building online visibility are:

Making your website optimized for search engines to rank higher in organic searches.
Writing content that targets your core audience and provides them with the information they find reputable and relevant.
Generating leads by advertising with Pay Per Click campaigns.

2. Brand

Once potential clients can find you online, they are able to assess your credibility instantly. Your online brand must match the brand you present to a client face-to-face. This can and will be a little different for every recruiter based on your style and your niche in the market. Someone that recruits for C-suite executives in the banking industry are going to have a very different brand than someone recruiting mid-level managers for marketing agencies. Here are a few examples of how you can enhance your brand online:

Build out your LinkedIn page to show relevant work experience, testimonials, and a professional picture.
Make sure your website is creatively designed to intrigue your target audience. An accounting and finance recruiting company will probably want to have a lot of data-driven content, while a recruiting agency specializing in demand generation may wish to have a lot of bold colors and interactive design
Build practice area pages on your website so that people can drill down to a specific vertical that you specialize in and understand better why you are the best choice.
Have a very professional flow to your website so you look organized and professional. Make sure your website’s brand ties to the flow of your social media outlets.

Alright, now you’re a master of aligning your personal brand with your online brand, right? Still have some work to do? Give us a call. Parqa specializes in providing recruiters with digital marketing services that enable firms to compete in today’s digital business landscape.

Watch Parqa’s Free 30-Minute Webinar: Growing Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn For Recruiters. LinkedIn is the go-to social network for recruiters, it’s never been more important to make sure your personal brand stands out online. Learn how to grow your business, and gain traction on LinkedIn, in this 30-Minute How-To Guide for Recruiters.

woman designing a website on dual monitors

5 Key Steps to Build Your Professional Brand on LinkedIn

September 5, 2018

With 106 million unique visits to LinkedIn each month, it’s more important than ever to optimize your profile and learn how to build your personal brand organically. While Versique, a $17M executive search and consulting firm I launched in 2013, has over 20K followers on LinkedIn and has been awarded as one of the top 25 recruiting company pages, today I want to focus on the valuable real estate of individual profiles.

Not only does an optimized profile showcase your personal skills well, it also boosts the company image as all their employees use their profiles in the best way possible. Spend time today completing these five best practices to rank higher in search engines, grow your network and ultimately drive valuable leads and revenue to your company.

First Things First: Optimize Your Profile

It’s incredibly important for people viewing your profile to see the following in place to fully understand who you are, what you do, and how to contact you if they decide to network with you. In order to accomplish this, you’ll need to carve out 30 – 60 minutes to complete our quick and easy profile optimization checklist.

Do I have a professional quality, current and industry specific profile and banner image?
Are my image headers and visuals branded?
Does my job title and summary communicate my area of focus and expertise?
Is my bio and summary written in active voice, in first person and specific to key insights about me?
Is my entire profile, including headlines, SEO optimized with a keyword density of 3% or greater to rank me atop of LinkedIn, Google and Bing?

Once you’ve completed the checklist and fixed any errors you found, it’s time to build your network so that more people can view your optimized profile and see what you have to offer.

30 Minute How-To Guide: Check out this webinar to learn how you can build your brand on LinkedIn ➢

Targeted Connections vs LinkedIn Open Networker

It doesn’t take long, while scrolling through your connection requests, to find someone with LION next to their name. This stands for LinkedIn Open Networker. So, what’s the deal with that? Is it best to open your network to anyone who wants to connect? Or to be selective?

The answer comes down to deciding why you want to network. If your purpose is to connect with the most people possible – connect. But, if you want to optimize your profile, generate quality leads, and nurture a healthy network – it’s time to decline. Use the following checklist to decide if those requesting to connect with you and those you’ll request to connect with are what’s best for your goals.

Are they located in an area, city, state, country, that you work or recruit in?
Is their profile optimized – showing they are serious about how they used LinkedIn?
Is their job title relevant to you in some way?
Have they sent you an InMail that makes it clear they intend to sell you on something the moment you accept?
Are they actively publishing and interacting with their network – which would indicate they’ll likely be an active part of yours as well?

All these qualities show that they are someone who will help spread your posts through likes, comments, and shares as well as help build your SSI score through connecting with the right people.

After you have a fully optimized profile and a thriving network, it’s time to post and publish. Get the word out to your targeted connections that you are a thought leader and have valuable insights in your related field.

Quality over Quantity: Don’t Just Post to Post

LinkedIn is unique in that the vast majority of its users are incredibly busy people. They aren’t scrolling through their feed to keep up with the latest gossip or trending tweet. So, if your strategy is to post multiple times per day for the sake of posting, you’ll turn your network off very quickly.

Instead, qualify each post with these questions:

Is it valuable to my network?
Is it insightful in some way?
Does it praise or affirm someone else?
If it’s company related, does it showcase the company in an excellent way without selling anything?
If it’s personal, is it still professional?
Is it important industry related news?

If your posts pass the qualifying questions, the next thing you need to consider are the best times to publish. In general, I recommend Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between 7-8am, 12-1pm, or 5-6pm. By tracking your analytics – identifying who is interacting with you at what times – you can create your own windows of times that help you reach your target.

Set a Goal: It’s Time to Use LinkedIn Publisher

When used well, LinkedIn Publisher is invaluable to your personal profile and company page. Set a goal of publishing one blog each month and do everything you can to stick to that goal.

A recent poll showed that 82% of LinkedIn users feel more positive about a company after reading custom content through LinkedIn Publisher and 3-5 pieces of content on average are reviewed before engaging with a recruiter. If you’re not using this free tool – you’re missing massive opportunities.

I know you may be thinking, it’s not as easy as it sounds to sit down to a blank document and create content that your network wants to read. I get it – it’s daunting. That’s why I’ve created a reference list for you. Simply choose a topic and begin to write.

Share Hiring Trends. Distribute industry articles, blogs and insight though your own account.
Drive Traffic to your postings. Write about a topic that will bring leads to a landing page associated directly to you and your firm’s brand.
Piggy back off trending news. If your industry has a breaking news story published throughout the internet, write an article giving your unique perspective on the matter.
Easy how-to’s. Use your expertise to teach someone else how to do it.
Create a list. Lists are great for readers to easily scan your article and pull out valuable nuggets in a short amount of time.

Once you’ve published your article, be sure to use tracking and analytics to know who’s watching and reading it.

Know Where You Rank and Why it Matters

Are you familiar with the term SSI score? Surprisingly, most LinkedIn users aren’t. Your LinkedIn Social Selling Index or score is simply how you rank within your industry and network. The score itself is out of 100 points and breaks down into 4, 25-point pillars.

Establishing your professional brand.
1. How well you publish valuable and industry relevant posts as well as how well your profile is optimized for your professional brand.
Finding the right people.
1. Are you connecting with a strong, like-minded network or are you a LION?
Engaging with key insights.
1. How well are you nurturing your network? Likes, comments and shares?
Building relationships.
1. Are you engaging with people when they have a birthday or work anniversary? Are you involved in what your connections are doing on a daily basis?

Each one of these four pillars are incredibly important factors in building your personal brand and credibility. As you increase your score within each faction, your percentage ranking within your industry and network will go up as well. The ultimate goal is to become the top 1% in your Network, top 1% in your industry and maintain a score in the high 90’s. When you’ve accomplished that – you know you’ve completed all prior 4 points. You have an optimized profile. You’re connecting with the right people. You’re publishing professional and branded content. And you’re nurturing your network.
It does take some doing – but anything worth doing is worth doing well. Right?

Growing Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn for Recruiters

August 14, 2018

About the Webinar

Parqa’s Founder, Tony Sorensen shares exactly how he and Versique Search & Consulting went from 0 to 20,000+ followers on LinkedIn, and how you can too. This is a can’t-miss webinar for staffing firm owners and recruiters, both new and experienced!

In the webinar, we’ll discuss:

How employer branding impacts your ability to attract top talent
A simple trick to make your bio jump off the page
How to position your firm and build your brand’s story

Presenter:

Tony Sorensen

CEO & OWNER, PARQA

Tony Sorensen is the founding visionary of Parqa. As a 20-year veteran and thought leader in the staffing/consulting and executive search industries Tony is an industry expert on a national level.

Tony is energized by the opportunity to pour his knowledge and expertise back into the industry, to help other staffing & recruiting firms find success through proven marketing strategies and tactics by traveling the country speaking at national conferences (i.e. NAPS National Conference, ASA (American Staffing Association), The Pinnacle Society, NYSA (New York Staffing Association), TechServe Alliance, etc. & regularly contributing to well-known industry publications (i.e. EMInfo, the Star Tribune, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, and several others.

How To Build Your Brand Through Digital Marketing

March 7, 2018

The word branding gets thrown around a lot in the business world, but what does it actually mean in the age of digital marketing? The goal of branding is to help your company establish its position in the marketplace for the long-term. It’s the way you give meaning to your products and services by creating a uniqueness in your clients (and potential clients’) minds. Branding is strategic—whereas marketing is tactical. Marketing contributes to your brand but the truth is, your brand is bigger than any one particular marketing or sales effort.

The question is no longer:
“Should we be doing digital marketing?” but rather, “how much should we be spending in order to achieve year over year growth?”

Impactful branding relies on continuity, consistency, and investment. Lack of investment and inconsistency in brand development will allow your competitors to steal market share from you. If you want to grow your company, it’s imperative that you make long-term branding a part of your focus. And it’s equally imperative in today’s world that you use digital marketing to do so. Here are four ways you can build your brand with digital marketing.

4 Ways To Build Your Brand With Digital Marketing

1. Content:

Potential clients and candidates first go online to qualify your firm’s credibility before they do anything else. So what kind of a brand story does your content tell? Everything you write and produce tells a story about who you are as a company, whether it’s the copy on your landing page or a blog that you wrote.

1. - Do you sound credible?
  - Are you giving advice that is valued in the industry you serve?
  - Are you telling people things they may not already know, which ultimately adds value to their lives?
  - Do you have case studies to validate your process?

These are all essential questions to ask yourself that will contribute to your authenticity and credibility in creating industry-leading content for your brand.

2. Social Media:

Social media is a platform and ever-evolving landscape that uses content to build your brand, reputation, and credibility in the marketplace. So do you have a solid social media strategy to share your brand with potential clients and candidates? Posting insightful blogs, salary guides and best practices to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter will keep you top-of-mind for clients and candidates seeking talent or new positions. If you build an informative, reputable, and credible brand on social media you are much more likely to be the first call when an opportunity presents itself.

3. Website:

Your website is the foundation of your brand. Having a website that is outdated and underwhelming is like walking into a potential client meeting in sweatpants and a t-shirt. Your website is the face of your company these days, so what kind of shape is it in? The quality of your website will often be the deciding factor in whether or not a potential client will commit to the next step with you. While content and social media will lead people to your website, you can still write the best blog in the world and lose out on a potential client who gets turned off by a website that’s outdated or hard to navigate.

“Having a website that is outdated and underwhelming is like walking into a potential client meeting in sweatpants and a t-shirt.”
– Jared Hummel | VP, Finance

4. SEO/PPC:

SEO and PPC are the back-end of building your brand. They’re the aspects of building your brand that aren’t always tangible to the novice eye and are usually handled by experts. This can sometimes create confusion for small business owners and scare them away from fully jumping into the digital marketing space. If you don’t understand something, it’s easy to not want to do it! But SEO and PPC are what help search engines like Google not only find you but allow you to rank at the top of the search results page. This is crucial in building your brand as a credible expert in whatever topic a potential client searches. Imagine yourself searching for an attorney on Google to represent you in a business case that could have great financial implications. When you type in best business attorneys, the first ones that come up in the search results garner instant credibility. The message is “we specialize in this, we’re the experts” and they’ll likely be the first ones you call or click on. It’s no different for recruiting; if you don’t show up in the search results until the second page, you probably aren’t getting the call.

How Branding Through Digital Marketing Will Pay Off

As the Vice President of Finance for Parqa and their sister Company, Versique Search & Consulting, it is easy to assume that my mentality is all about immediate ROI on any money spent on marketing—measuring all our financial metrics down to the penny to make sure we know what we’re getting. While it’s true that it is always important to know your numbers, when it comes to branding your company there are many non-immediate financial implications to creating a great brand and the metrics used to identify if your brand is growing don’t always pay off in an immediate financial ROI. There is a familiar phrase “if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound.” In an ever-changing digital marketing landscape are you being seen and heard?

As a passionate entrepreneur myself, I have spent the last 8 years helping small business owners realize their dream of growing their revenue, gross margin and net income. I understand that the role of a financial leader or business owner in a company is more then just looking at the next month’s income statement. It is imperative to be looking a year or two down the road and prepare for growth in order to achieve growth. The pay-off may not happen overnight, but if you don’t start making digital marketing a part of your branding efforts, you won’t see a pay-off at all. Two quotes that I try to live by are:

“If you’re not growing, you’re dying” and “Insanity: to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.”

While cold calling and individual reputation will always be a part of our business, if you aren’t investing in digital marketing and branding today I can guarantee you that your future growth will face a significant uphill battle as more and more people look to the internet to build trust and verify reputation.

Our CEO, Tony Sorensen just attended a staffing conference in Dallas where the common theme was not “should we be doing digital marketing?” but rather, “how much should we be spending in order to achieve year over year growth?” It’s time to leverage digital marketing to grow your brand, gain credibility, and yes, eventually see that return on investment.

Branding