Blogging in recruitment is relatively new. And that’s why we still don’t see too many innovations in this area. The fact is recruiters are pretty much set in their ways, and in my experience it’s tough to find one who wants to be the first to try anything new. That’s just crazy.

However, I’m willing to be proven wrong about all this. So here’s how I see local recruiting blogs working - and for any recruiters who want to work with me on this, the benefits to your business could be huge.

But probably only if you get in there first.

A local recruiting blog would offer a top-level, expert view of local recruitment issues, local opportunities, tips, points of view, news, advice, insights, and other inside info. Just use your imagination here. The kind of stuff that as an active local employer or local jobseeker, you’d be damn well interested in. You could even pimp some of your current vacancies in your posts - to give them even more exposure to potential candidates.

Then, you build up a constantly growing archive of that kind of material, and I’ll bet my boots that in time, you’ll do exceptionally well in any search for ‘jobs in newcastle’, or ‘recruitment in newcastle’, or ‘job opportunites in newcastle’, or ‘recruitment agency newcastle’, or ‘recruiters in newcastle’, etc, etc, etc.

Also, you’ll be giving other people with websites (locally or otherwise) fresh, new, and regular content to link to - and links are where the real search engine juice comes from. Think about it - there’s a limit to how many times someone will link to a static website (and that limit is usually once - if at all).

Anyway, the upshot of it all is that your search engine performance will be much, much better than any static website could ever achieve.

It’s sticky, too, in that the kind of stuff you’d write about would probably interest local employers and employees whether they were actively looking for vacancies or candidates or not. And if they do continue to follow your blog, which recruitment agency do you think they’d turn to first whenever they come back onto the market? Yep, the one that’s been talking to (or ‘with’) them all along - you.

Plus, not only will you be pulling in more targeted search engine traffic, you’ll be giving them what they’ve always visited your site for in the first place (local vacancies and access to local candidates), together with an invaluable online ‘magazine’ that they can interact with and discuss with you, and that positions you or your agency as a trusted, respected, memorable, and expert voice in local recruiting.

However, the only caveat is that if you want to be the loudest voice in your area or your industry, you damn well need to be one of the first.