Recruitment Marketing needs a lot of content, and even the best writers among us have run into the dreaded writer’s block. It’s that feeling when you know you’ve got to create content and employee stories that draw in candidates, but the inspiration or creativity just isn’t sparking. To be honest, as someone who writes for a living, I encounter writer’s block on a weekly basis!
There are many ways to combat the block and get the creative juices flowing. An easy strategy for getting over this slump is to use the Recruitment Marketing content and employee stories you already have in a new way! Repurposing your content assets into new formats and storylines helps you breathe new life into your recruiting content and can help shine a different light on what your company offers as an employer.
Here are a few other reasons why you should consider making repurposing a permanent part of your Recruitment Marketing content strategy:
- It gives your high-performing content another chance: If you had an employee stories video that garnered exceptional engagement and interest, you can turn it into a blog post, social post or graphic that will continue to bring in results.
- It stretches your effort – and budget! – further: By repurposing content, you get a better return on investment from your initial efforts when you created the content. It also allows you to expand on a certain topic in more depth or through another angle.
- It helps your message stick with candidates: The more chances a candidate sees your message, the more likely it will stick with them. Repurposed content gets your message and your company in front of talent again and keeps you top of mind as an employer.
There are a variety of ways you can repurpose Recruitment Marketing content and reshape it to capture candidate interest on the recruiting channels you use. It just takes a bit of creativity to get it started. Below are three easy tactics you can use to jumpstart your repurposing process:
- Go with a different format: A few examples include turning a video into a still images used on your careers site, or creating graphics for use on social media featuring employee quotes from the video.
- Break it down: Taking longer pieces of content, like your employee story videos, and cutting them into shorter snippets gives you new, attention-grabbing pieces for social media.
- Tap into your teams: Look at the content your company’s teams are producing, and see if you can repurpose what they’re already creating to showcase your employer brand. Examples include blog posts, press releases, customer case studies, etc.
But seeing is believing! Here are 3 real-world examples of companies that have successfully repurposed content to provide a boost to their Recruitment Marketing strategy:
Sodexo
Food services and facilities management company Sodexo conducted employee interviews all the way back in 2015 – and they created additional content assets that are still used today! The initial goal of the company’s employee interview project was to bring the diversity and unique personalities of their workforce to the forefront. When they started their project, they quickly realized there was a vast amount of material they could use in more ways than one.
Sodexo first created a collection of videos that featured employee interviews about what it’s like to work at the company and how these employees are making an impact. These videos are each accompanied by a blog post featured on their careers blog site. From those videos, the team developed static content to be used over time, helping to give these assets a longer shelf life. For interviews not featured in video format, Sodexo created written assets along with employee quote cards on the blog. Perhaps most surprisingly – and innovatively – Sodexo used these employee interviews to create an interactive quiz that assigns certain “personas” based on participants’ answers. These persona profiles are real Sodexo employees that feature their video interview and details about their employment experience with the company.
Sodexo used these employee interviews to create an interactive quiz that assigns certain “personas” based on participants’ answers.
Dell
Computer giant Dell was launching a rotational programs project and needed to create content that helped support several key messages about what it’s like to work for the company, including Impactful Projects, Program Camaraderie and Access to Leadership. When the team began working on developing these projects, they realized they were able to take one content asset and turn it into several different pieces that helped spread their message across many platforms.
One example is for the Access to Leadership message. The starting content asset was a 90-second compilation video featuring several Dell employees talking about how they have had the chance to meet and even present to the company’s leadership. From there, the team broke the video out into smaller, 30-second snippets. These shorter videos are effective at capturing candidate interest and are ideal for sharing in email or on social media. The team at Dell went a step further and turned one of the videos into an Instagram post that featured the dialogue in a unique and attention-grabbing way.
This Instagram post by Dell Technologies featured the dialogue from an employee video in a unique and attention-grabbing way.
Sonoco
Global packaging solutions provider Sonoco developed 3 separate videos as part of their initiative to help candidates learn more about the company and the opportunities they provide. The videos were a compilation of many different interviews with employees across a variety of departments. While the videos provided a lot of great content that Sonoco used across several platforms, the team also decided to repurpose the content into a different format to further help candidates.
The Sonoco team took the transcripts from the employee interviews they conducted, along with employee photos taken when the videos were being produced, and turned them into written Q&A formats on the company’s careers site. These interviews help candidates learn what each employee does at the company, why they decided to accept their position and what they like most about the culture.
Sonoco took the transcripts from the employee interviews they conducted, along with employee photos taken when the videos were being produced, and turned them into written Q&A formats on the company’s careers site.
I hope these real-world examples will help spark some creativity that will help you launch a repurposing plan as part of your content strategy! A lot of time and effort goes into creating compelling content that resonates with candidates and helps strengthen your employer brand. With repurposing, you can get the most out of your efforts and arm yourself with a variety of content that will continue to capture candidate interest.