Article: Matt Alder on creating an effective talent acquisition content marketing plan

Talent Acquisition

Matt Alder on creating an effective talent acquisition content marketing plan

Matt Alder talks about the essentials of Content Marketing in HR to attract and retain exceptional talent.
Matt Alder on creating an effective talent acquisition content marketing plan

Author of the book "Exceptional Talent", Matt Alder addressed the topic of content marketing in HR and its benefits at the annual People Matters Talent Acquisition League. Recruitment is inextricably intertwined with marketing, and Matt Adler explains the steps, plan, and toolkit required to create an effective talent acquisition content marketing plan for your organization. What employee engagement, company image, and recruitment opportunities have in common is that they can all be addressed through creative HR content marketing.

The few steps that according to Matt Alder are essential for Content Marketing in HR are explained and listed below. 

Grab their attention 

The most important thing is understanding the motivation of your target audience, and realizing that your target audience can be entirely different from you. As a company, to grasp the attention of your target audience, you need to know what makes you stand out in their eyes. The first step in understanding your audience is to build an emotional connection with them.  Creating an emotional appeal for your target audience indeed helps in grasping their attention. It is all about them, and not about the company and how well off they may or may not be. Engaging your audience on an emotional level is key. 

Persuasion 

Next comes persuasion, and storytelling is one of the main aspects that help in urging people to come and work for your organization. Today, there is a lot of importance being given to technology and machines. People who recruit are very good at persuading on a one to one basis because that is what they do. According to Matt Alder, where the issue lies, and where we need to develop as an industry is persuading at scale. He speaks about using technology to tell human stories that persuade people.

Explore content formats 

Recruitment marketing anywhere in the world is a very text-based discipline whether it is a job posting or a job description. But, we live in a visual world, where it's all about pictures, videos and audio, and although the text is important, visual forms of media help get complicated ideas across. Matt Alder says how he is personally fascinated by how visual stories can be put up on sites like Instagram, and companies that use Instagram as a medium to recruit, are actually succeeding at it.

YouTube can also be used as a medium of persuasion. Some statistics suggest that One Billion hours of YouTube videos are watched globally every day. When it comes to audio, it is useful because people can listen to it anywhere, in many situations. Hence, visual media plays a very important role in persuading your audience. So, it is imperative to have an exciting job description that will attract potential employees. 

What will also help is telling employee stories, using hashtags so that potential candidates will be motivated to check out that open position in your company. This will help you present a transparent and authentic view of your organization which will help potential employees understand better what it is like to work there and gives them an insider’s view of the organization.

Conversion 

Now that you have persuaded employees, it’s time to convert them to come onboard. Content sourcing is also an integral aspect of content marketing in HR. As a company, you can also send out interesting stories and articles about your company or your field. This may not be done to get employees immediately, but this could help you get employees later on in the future. To obtain content, you can curate it from multiple sites on the internet which possibly already have a whole lot of information on the field you want to focus on. You could also use content already available on your site and merely utilize it in a different way which will attract the attention of your target audience. Alternatively, of course, you could create your own content.  

To conclude, let’s sum it up in Matt’s words “I love technology, I think it is brilliant. The places it can take us to are absolutely fascinating.  But, when it comes to recruitment, I think perhaps we overly focus on technology, when we should be looking at the art of recruitment, the art of persuasion, the art of storytelling”.

What is most essential is, to put up a visual that is attractive and creative, but also gives all the essential details needed. This will help you excite those potential employees and pull in that new talent. So you can attract, persuade and convert talent with content marketing and don’t forget to explore content formats for the same. 

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Topics: Talent Acquisition, #TAL2018

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