How to Cover All Your Sales Communication Bases

March 8, 2019

As a digital marketer, 99% of my thoughts and recommendations usually focus on digital platforms. That said, it is essential to think through who your audience is and how they prefer receiving communication.

As recruiters, you’re an expert on outbound sales communication. What can you do to get in front of HR professionals that now spend 80% of their day online or your C-Suite network that spends 70% of their day away from their desk in meetings?

A while back, Parqa sponsored two different conferences. I went through this exercise first hand and wanted to share with you the importance of putting together an overall sales and marketing plan that encompasses both online and offline initiatives.

Let’s take a moment to set the stage before a typical conference or trade show. Many times, as a sponsor at an industry-related show, you can get the attendee list in advance. Along with this, you usually receive a post-show list of attendees. These lists are the key to preparing a successful communication plan.

Traditional, Offline, Sales

The offline sales process looks like this: Use the attendee list to determine if there’s anyone that you know attending. From there, you can look at the companies to see if you recognize any of them. Lastly, take a mental note of the companies that you need to get in front of. These companies may have been on your Tier 1 list to get into for years.

Once you have your mental lists and plan of attack, it’s show time! While at the show, have as many meaningful conversations as possible and determine the handful of conversations that are hot leads.

Post-show, back at your office, look at your stack of business cards one by one, adding everyone into your ATS/CRM, connect with everyone on LinkedIn, and start calling people to schedule consultations.

Digital, Online, Marketing

The digital marketing method is slightly different. After removing any competitors from the pre-show attendee list, use that list to create a beautifully designed email template.

Send the message to the entire conference list that you will be there and that they should come and see you at your booth. From there, develop a sequence of emails to send one week prior, the day before, and the day of the conference to ensure you are staying top of mind.

The show floor is the same as before, except this time, focus on sending emails to new contacts within 24 hours of meeting them.

Post–show there is a slight change. This time, using your business cards, put those people into specific email nurturing campaigns to continue working through the marketing funnel, as they have yet to “opt into” the sales funnel. From there, you connect with everyone on LinkedIn, and you continue to wait until someone fills out the form on your site asking for a free consultation.

Bringing Offline and Online Together with Sales and Marketing

Now it’s time to combine the two. As a marketer, it was difficult for me to get into the sales mindset at first, so I can understand the challenge as a recruiter to adopt a marketing mindset.

Before the show, think back to your exact buyer. Start going through the attendee list and pull out all the attendees that you believe would be your ideal client. These people should get all your upfront marketing efforts.

Think about what will help break through the noise in their typical day. Send them a product or a postcard in the mail two weeks before the show – I assure you, snail mail is not dead! From there, pick up the phone and give them a call to personally invite them to the show.

Finally, make sure to send out an email to let them know, in writing, where you will be and when. Can they set up a time with you to meet at the booth? Are you going to be running a contest or special promotion while at the show? Share this information in that email to allow them to engage before the show.

While at the show, set up a page that allows people to give you their information digitally. Automate the step of inputting them into your ATS/CRM when you get back into the office and automatically opts them into getting future marketing communication from you.

Are you hosting a roundtable or speaking at a session? Have an email go out to your targeted list a couple of hours before your session. Remind them while they are making their session decisions to add you to the mix. From a sales perspective, don’t forget to take notes. Whether on their card or in a notebook after each conversation. You’ll want to personalize your post-show approach as much as possible.

Once you get back from the show, categorize your conversations by action item. Send more information, ask if they are ready for a discussion, or reach out and set up a meeting ASAP. Create a communication plan that allows these people to see your name a minimum of seven additional times over the coming months.

Use a mix of calls, LinkedIn, email, and snail mail. Send them blogs you’ve written via LinkedIn Messenger, send them an email with a link to a case study of a recent search you completed, send them one of your promotional products for their desk.

Your leads need to see your brand 10-14 times for them to act. The important part is to bust through the noise to get to them. Remember, you weren’t the only sponsor/speaker/vendor at the conference. It is essential to come up with ways to hit those touchpoints but in the most meaningful way possible.

At Parqa, we are currently in the middle of our post-show communication plan from our latest two conferences, and we can already tell that the upfront effort in mixing our online, offline, sales and marketing initiatives are paying off. We’d love to help you do the same!

Rank on Google and Bank with Content Marketing

February 18, 2019

I started my first recruiting firm in 2001. In 2006, I hired a marketing agency to do SEO and PPC for us. That was before most people even knew what SEO and PPC stood for. Back then, we were very early adopters in growing our recruiting firm through digital marketing.

When we started paying for ads on Google, we were the only firm in Minnesota doing so. We were the only firm paying to play. Consequently, I was shocked by how quickly we were able to rank #1 on Google. In fact, it led to me becoming obsessed with ranking #1 for every keyword I could possibly think of.

The agency we partnered with must have hated me, as I would lay in bed with my iPad searching for related keywords. If we didn’t show up #1, I would email our agency and ask why. Today, our recruiting firm ranks #1 for over 800 keywords related to recruiting and staffing services. We are crushing our competitors in the rankings.

In the early years, I thought that the only thing that mattered was rankings. I would ask every client that would call our firm, “How did you find us?” and they’d consistently answer, “Google.” Hearing this over and over again would get me as excited as the proverbial kid in a candy store. I couldn’t believe how many calls we were getting because we ranked #1 on Google.

Fast forward to 2019. More and more firms are in the digital game using agencies to increase their online visibility, which has made the process of ranking #1 a more challenging endeavor.

The typical search, such as “executive search firms in Minneapolis,” will have 7-10 competing firms paying to show up on the first page of Google. Try it for yourself. Pretend you’re a prospective client and Google what they would. If you own a finance and accounting firm, search “Finance and Accounting Recruiters.” Do you see your company in the results? Or do you see your competitors?

Last summer, I spoke at NAPS—one of the largest staffing and recruiting conferences in the country. My presentation was titled “Is Your Website Your Best Salesperson,” and I spent most of my allotted hour sharing why the content was king.

Every year our firm will do around 300 placements, with hundreds of companies calling us after finding us on Google. In 2019, my question to ask people when they call us has changed from “How did you find us?” to “Why did you call us?” The search ranking is usually how they found us, but the content on our website that they read is why they called us. Today, 1/3 of our revenue comes from content on our website.

Where your company ranks on Google is still important, but never forget how vital the role your site’s content plays. A high search ranking brings traffic to your website, but the content on your website is what converts the traffic into revenue.

3 Ways to Succeed with Candidate-Focused Marketing

February 12, 2019

Recently, Parqa presented and hosted booths at the Naps and TechServe Alliance annual conferences. It was enlightening for me to hear the pain points of two aligned but very different industries, recruiting versus staffing, and the everyday struggles that digital marketing can help to mitigate.

Most people are aware of the historically low national unemployment rates we are currently seeing. Unemployment this low means the qualified candidate pool is only going to become more limited. What I took away from both conferences was the opportunity for staffing and recruiting firms to look at how they position themselves to candidates through digital marketing to grow revenue.

Right now, some of you are saying, “Clients pay the bills, not the candidates! I would never invest in them!” But wait and hear me out.

In a candidate driven market as we have right now, the candidates pay the bills. It comes down to the application of supply and demand. Even if you make the placement, how much harder did you have to work to find the candidate than five years ago? Wouldn’t it be easier if candidates come to you?

Here are three examples of how digital marketing provides ROI from candidates.

Contingent Search for an Engineering Role

A potential client reaches out to you who have been trying to fill a role internally for a niche engineering role. They’ve not had any luck so far, so they’ve called three to four search firms including you in the hopes that someone had the perfect unicorn candidate waiting.

What happens? No one has the unicorn waiting, other firms don’t put much effort towards it, and another has 50 different contingent roles they have a better chance of filling. Your firm is taking the candidate focused route.

You’ve set up a social media campaign on Linkedin and Facebook and put some budget toward paid advertising. Target the top 20 companies in your region that you know employ the same position. Within ten days you present a panel of three candidates to the client and eventually one of them is placed. You’ve now gained a client for life because you filled a role they couldn’t and went above and beyond your competitors.

One of our clients recently completed a search just like this. Now all their counterparts are following suit, trying to get jobs sponsored.

HR Consulting Firm Attempting to Attract Contract Talent

You have two consultants who have worked for you in the past. The last time their contract ended you were not able to redeploy them, so they took a role with your competitor. You do your best to set a reminder to follow-up with them in a couple of months, but you’re so busy filling current roles that you lose track of them or make contact only to find out they were extended. How do you stay top of mind with them so that you are not continually trying to keep tabs on them?

Set up a candidate nurturing campaign that targets your past employees allowing you to send them relevant market information, company successes, and upcoming roles. When they begin preparing for their next role they’re reminded to reach out to you for future opportunities. You can then market them and have them placed before their previous contract is completed.

One of our clients had this happen twice in the last two weeks.

Retained Executive Search for CFO

You’ve tapped out your network of CFO’s in the market and begin to source for new talent. You find someone that you like and reach out to them on Linkedin. They are currently employed and likely a very passive candidate. The fact is, you’re probably one of many recruiters reaching out to them on a weekly or monthly basis. Why should they respond to you over the others?

They go to your Linkedin company page, your personal Linkedin page, and your Company’s website and see that you are a boutique firm that specializes in executive level finance positions. Even if they aren’t interested in that job description, your profiles showed them that you are a credible recruiter. They reach out to get to know you and your firm better and to keep an eye out for future endeavors because you gained instant trust and credibility.

Sounds like a stretch, right? Well, it works – I’m proof of it because that is how I became employed by Parqa and Versique.

It’s easy to tie your ROI metrics to a call-in that closes or to a networking event you sponsored. In the end, growing revenue and profitability is about how efficiently you get the client, get the candidate, and close the deal. They’re not mutually exclusive in the process of recruiting or staffing. One hundred leads with no qualified candidates = zero revenue and zero ROI on those 100 leads. It’s simple math.

The Importance of Building Trust With Your Audience

January 15, 2019

Trust is the glue that binds us together. It’s the foundation on which human interaction is built. Without trust, we would be stuck relying on ourselves for survival–I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be able to survive on my own. For most people, everyday interactions, like texting a friend, or buying something at the store, are modern-day miracles.

“Brands are all about trust. That trust is built in drops and lost in buckets”

– Kevin Plank, Under Amour CEO

There is a great essay called I, Pencil, and I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already. It’s a testament to the sheer depth and breadth of our modern global economy. It essentially states that there isn’t one person on earth who knows how to make a pencil, yet most of us can walk down the street and buy a pack of them for a couple of bucks.

It’s trust that facilitates these transactions between otherwise complete strangers. It’s trust that helps us make decisions on who to surround ourselves with every day. But trust can’t be bought, it must be earned over a lifetime.

It’s interesting to think about trust in 2018—during the ’90s, when the internet first came out, skeptics thought it would be too difficult for consumers to trust businesses on the internet with their information and credit cards. But it didn’t take long for a man named Pierre Omidyar to come along and flip the script on the naysayers.

Pierre created a website called AuctionWeb, a site “dedicated to bringing together buyers and sellers in an honest and open marketplace.” AuctionWeb started off as a side project for Pierre, but by 1997 there were over 2 million auctions and counting on the platform. Pierre soon had the brilliant insight to institute a rating system for buyers and sellers to rate each other, which was a signal of how trustworthy one was on the platform.

Today, AuctionWeb, now called eBay, is one of the largest marketplaces in the world with over 175 million buyers and 1 billion products listed. By implementing a rating system, eBay became the trusted third party that allowed buyers and sellers from all around the world to seamlessly transact for goods and services. The rating system is still the gold standard of trust today and can be found on popular apps like Airbnb, Uber, Yelp, Amazon, just to name a few.

Trust is the Foundation Upon Which Progress is Built

As trust becomes ever more important in the digital age, businesses must spend more and more time investing in building trust in their brand and their business. Recruiters can take a page from the eBay story, and build trust into their business strategy.

While getting referrals, recommendations, and testimonials is a great way to convince your leads to work with you, it’s even more important to build trust throughout the entirety of the buyer’s journey. In the second part of this blog, I’ll list a few ways that recruiters can build trust with their audiences and become the gold standard of service for their market.

If you’re working to build trust with your clients and candidates, Parqa is here to help strengthen your digital brand as a trusted recruiter.

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

Indeed Updates 2019: What Recruiting Firms Need to Know

December 11, 2018

Do You Use Indeed?

As a recruiting firm leader, you likely use job boards to attract additional candidates for your searches. For example, Indeed has historically offered three ways to post jobs – job scraping, budget-based job slots, and one-off job sponsorships.

Job Scraping – By connecting your recruiting website to Indeed, the platform can automatically and organically scrape your jobs for free. This results in ALL your jobs getting pushed to Indeed. Up to this point, this is the typical method recruiting firms to use to get their jobs on Indeed.

Budget-Based Job Slots – When you have a contract with Indeed for a set budget per month, they allow you to post a certain number of jobs at a time. These jobs will be highlighted within the job search platform, to allow you to rise to the top of related searches.

One-Off Job Sponsorships – A One-off job sponsorship allows you to put money behind a certain job ad hoc. This allows you to get a little more juice for a specific job you need to get noticed as you see fit.

These are clearly useful tools for any recruiter, but what if your ability to post jobs to Indeed (for free) went away?

Indeed is Moving to a Pay-To-Play Model

Beginning in 2019, Indeed will be removing the organic Job Scraping option from your website. Hold the phone. That’s a big deal! On top of that, the move is specific to recruiting firms.

Client brands (such as Target, Best Buy, General Mills, etc.) will be able to continue having their job sites scraped for free. But recruiting firms’ jobs will no longer have this option. Why is that?

Indeed received feedback (lots of feedback) from candidates using their platform that many of the jobs they applied for weren’t real jobs. Whether your recruiting firm uses this method or not, you’ve probably heard of profile job descriptions. This is a tactic some recruiting/staffing firms use when they need to establish a pipeline of candidates. For example, if an IT staffing firm consistently needs to fill Project Manager or Business Analyst roles, they may create a generic job description and post it on their site – resulting in pipeline-driven job descriptions living on Indeed.

While this may be a solution for staffing firms to keep a constant flow of candidates, it creates a poor user experience for candidates who think they are applying for a real, open job. When it comes to any platform, whether it’s Google or Indeed, they are keen on making sure their users have a good experience, and don’t choose their competitors to fulfill their searching needs.

By removing the ability for recruiting firms to post jobs for free on their platform, we believe Indeed anticipates a greater number of their jobs becoming only real jobs (they are banking on recruiting firms not wanting to pay for pipeline job postings), thus providing a better candidate experience and maintaining their standing as a top source for job seekers.

What Does This Mean for Recruiting Companies?

In early 2019, if you’re using Indeed to scrape your jobs organically you’re going to have to get creative. You may already be “paying to play” on Indeed, and if so, that will become your only method for getting jobs on the platform. For those not paying to play…well, either you’ll no longer have representation on Indeed, or you’re going to have to start budgeting another line item.

This change affects all recruiting firms a little differently – depending on how often you post positions on Indeed. If you only post some, it may not hurt you. For others, it can make things difficult.

What Does This Mean for You? Here’s Your Next Step

What’s next? It’s time to start evaluating. As a digital marketing agency supporting the recruiting industry, one of the first steps we recommend is looking at your analytics. If you set Indeed to push applicants from the Indeed job posting directly to your website’s job URL to apply, look at your analytics to see how much traffic is coming in. Look to see where that traffic is segmented. If you have different practice area sections, which ones are getting the most traffic? And if your Indeed jobs are set up to have candidates apply directly on Indeed, the next step is just as vital.

Most importantly, analyze your placement source. Out of 20 roles placed, where did your candidates come from? If none came from Indeed, look back further. You may decide it’s not the best use of your budget. What if you find that 17 of 20 placements had a candidate that came from Indeed? Then it’s going to be quite important to allocate budget to Indeed’s pay-to-play model.

There isn’t a perfect science to predicting when platforms will change, but there is a surefire way to consistently evaluate your payoff from those platforms. You already track your placements. Are you also taking the time regularly to evaluate your company’s placements to ensure you’re investing in the sources producing success? If not, you may be leaving money on the table.

Is $20,000 In Billings Worth It?

For every recruiting firm using Indeed, this is the perfect time to evaluate what’s working. After all, if you’re a search firm making $20,000 in billings from just one placement, it’s worth your time to stop and see how you should pivot to continue your company’s success. Billings look different for every type of agency – from staffing to engaged search – but if you’re currently making money on what was once free (i.e., Indeed’s job scraping function), it’s time to evaluate your return on investment and how you want to keep that revenue stream alive!

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.

How to Generate Quality Blog Topics as a Recruiter

November 28, 2018

Now more than ever, blogging is the key to successful content marketing. Neglecting to post blogs can hurt your brand and your business’s chance of being seen. As a recruiter, consistently generating fresh blog content brings potential clients and candidates to your site. The main challenge is while you’re busy making placements, it’s hard to find time to brainstorm intriguing topic ideas, let alone write quality blogs. After reading this blog, you will have the skills and tools you need to master the process of generating excellent blog topics, even on a tight schedule.

Identify Your Target Audience

Start by nailing down your target audience – Who will be reading your blog? Knowing your buyer personas is extremely helpful for this step. Think about who they are and what they’re interested in. Potential clients and candidates will find your blog one day, and it’s important to make sure they’ll find engaging and useful content.

Industry Trends – What are People Buzzin’ About?

Are you aware of the latest trends in your industry? Do you keep up with the latest news? What is your network buzzin’ about?

Staying on top of the answers to these questions will help you tap into fresh topic ideas for your next blog. For example, a big trend in the recruiting industry right now is the positive impact artificial intelligence is having on the recruiting industry. Writing about methods and predictions related to AI would be a great topic for a potential blog in the future.

There are several resources you can use to determine the latest industry trends such as online articles, magazines, social media, podcasts, television, etc.

These first two steps are essential for a strong start and continued success in writing engaging blogs.

Topic Generation Tool

There’s going to come a time when your brain stops working, and you cannot think of any great topics to write about. Luckily, using a topic generator tool allows you to quickly and efficiently come up with topic ideas. Once you have finalized your target audience and researched industry trends, insert specific keywords into the topic generator tool you’re using.

Topic generators can help boost your SEO ranking, which plays a large role in growing your brand awareness and your business. Without a stream of fresh content, your SEO ranking will sink along with your social media presence.

Not all topic generator tools are built the same, but all have the same end goal of providing you with a variety of ideas. Below is a list of tools I recommend using to generate quality blog topics.

Don’t be Afraid to Reach Out for Help

If after all that, you’re still truly stumped, don’t hesitate to ask your fellow co-workers, family, and friends for suggestions. Asking others for ideas is especially helpful, as you never know what their unique views can bring to the table. Word of mouth travels fast, and someone may have heard about a topic in the industry that could spark an idea for your next awesome blog.

While writing blogs can be a challenging process, coming up with good topics can save a lot of headaches. If you’re having a difficult time growing your brand and are interested in expanding your blog content, partner with us today.

To learn more about how content marketing can grow your business, check out our recent webinar recording.

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.

How to Create the Right Blog Image

November 13, 2018

When you’re scrolling through social media, what catches your eye the most? For me personally, it’s the images. Striking, exciting, adventurous photos catch my eye – no matter what the topic is. In fact, a post that includes an image has a 650% higher engagement rate than a post that’s made up of only text. So clearly, it’s crucial to include images – but how?

Make it Appealing

Stock photos can be boring – we’ve all seen the two coworkers shaking hands, a group of people chatting & pointing at a computer, or fake doctors wearing stethoscopes around their necks with their arms crossed. They’ve been used hundreds of times and won’t necessarily catch the attention of a social media scroller. Instead of using basic stock images from anywhere on the internet, I recommend using websites such as Unsplash or Pixabay. On these sites, you can find stunning, high-quality images for free – and if you want to give a shout-out to the photographer, their information is included! But these images can be used free of charge with no worries of penalties or copyright infringement.

Adding Accents

Programs such as Canva or Lunapic have excellent programs that can help you edit photos. From filters to shapes & lines, these programs help create an eye-grabbing image for websites & social media. The best part – you definitely don’t need to be a designer to use them! These programs are free to use and have a very simple user experience.

When adding accents though, don’t overdo it. A few simple lines or shapes, and 1-2 fonts are all you need to make an image pop. Also, be sure to use high contrast to your benefit. Overlaying a darker filter over an image opens the door to use light text – and vice versa.

Brand Consistency

Once you start determining the style of images that match your brand & feel correctly, stick with it! By no means do they need to be boring templates every time you create one. But there should be some sort of brand consistency. Accent colors should correlate with your logo, prominence of your logo should be consistent & overall feel of the photos should match. When a person sees your images week after week, your brand should resonate with them.

Sizing is Key

I’ve seen so many images on the internet where the words are falling off the pages, and the image is cut in an odd spot, or there’s extra white space. I find there’s nothing more off-putting to the naked eye than an image that isn’t correctly sized. Be sure to research what size is needed before publishing – and then check yet again once live! For example, Facebook has a different size requirement than Instagram, and yet another size is used for every website on WordPress. Just be sure to double check your work so you aren’t kicking yourself after it’s been live for 3 days.

As you can see, adding an eye-catching image to your blog can make an impactful difference to the engagement of your blog posts.

Are you having issues coming up with images to match your brand? Talk to the Parqa team today to help make your content with imagery speak directly to your audience!

Case Study: Creating a Social Media Strategy

October 31, 2018

This case study represents the organic growth we saw from a client when implementing a custom social media strategy. Before partnering with Parqa Marketing, the company had occasionally been active on social media but lacked consistency and a true social strategy to measure their efforts. Our partnership included writing two custom blogs a month, social media management, and monthly reporting.

Case Study Breakdown

The Challenge: A national recruiting firm with 10 different specialized practice areas wanted to build a social media presence to increase brand awareness and stand out in a crowded market.

Our goal: To develop a social media and content strategy that would attract and engage new and existing audiences while building credibility, showcasing thought leadership and focusing in on their expertise.

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1. Background Research

Before we started to build a strategy for the future, we had to look at what had been done in the past by conducting an audit. An audit informs us which profiles needed to be optimized, what strategies have been executed in the past, and what the client’s competitors were doing from a strategic standpoint. After analyzing this information, we were able to start developing the strategy outline.

2. Building the Strategy Outline

When beginning our research to develop the strategy, we had to start off by determining a few basics of any social media strategy. This included answering the who, what, when, where and why.

Who: Define the target audience
What: Determine what KPIs will be measured
When: Discover optimal posting days/time for our audience
Where: Choosing the correct social media platforms / where is your target audience
Why: Set the correct goals that align with the overall business objectives

These are questions that will help you build and define your strategy.

3. Understanding Your Target Audience

We broke our audience down into three different markets: clients, candidates, and brand advocates.

More importantly than identifying these markets was to discover what’s important to them. What images and content attract them? What are their pain points? What are they looking for on social media channels?

4. Testing the Content

Creating and testing content is a big part of having a successful social media strategy, it’s a process that you should continuously be fine-tuning. Understanding your audience is vital when developing a social media strategy that will resonate with the audience.

Throughout testing and research, we found that employee advocacy was a large part of the client’s brand. Their employees loved engaging with content that promoted the brand, what it stands for and shares what they do.

5. The Solution

Parqa devised a social media strategy that aligned with the client’s overall marketing goals. The strategy targeted their already active audience while also bringing creative ideas into the mix that would generate interest of new audiences.

To increase our client’s online presence, we knew we had created content that our audience would be interested in. We broke down the client’s target audiences into three main groups: candidates, clients, and employee advocates. This way we had an audience of brand advocates but also had a strategy to reach those who may not know about the brand and what they do.

The Result

137% Engagement Increased
545% Increase in Website Traffic from Social Media
100% Increase in LinkedIn Followers

Conclusion

Businesses are using social media in different ways, posting to post is merely a short activity to keep your brand presence alive, but when you implement and strategy, you can use social media to reach goals.

Digital Marketing