Coach Mike, we are setting up a monthly newsletter to keep better contact with our existing candidates. What do you see as some key elements in a newsletter that we could include that keeps readers engaged/interested? Tyrone, Tokyo, Japan.
Coach Mike: First of all, remove the word “newsletter”. The word “newsletter” is a turn off. It was sexy in the ‘90’s and maybe early 2000’s. The newsletter and connotation is “We are going to be informing you about us” and, bluntly, most people do not care about you. There are people I love to follow and I do not really care what’s going on in their company, but the reason I stay on their list is for information because they provide great, free information.
How do you keep them engaged and interested? There are a few different ways. One way to keep candidates interested is to have articles on career progression, leadership management. I know all your candidates might not be leaders or managers but many probably aspire to be. Also, how to advance in their careers would be of interest to your candidate pool. You could have tips on interviewing, resume writing, making a great impression, dress for success, etc.
You can also have links to tools like Survey Monkey. It is free up to 100 responses and it is not that expensive after that. You could have polls and publish results of your surveys. If you do any polling in email offer the participant the results by saying: “Hey, take part in the survey. We’ll send you the results. For all those who participate, we’ll send you a copy of the results.” Surveys that ask questions like “what are your three biggest fears in your career?” Or, you could have multiple choice questions with pre-determined answers. The term you used, which triggered that for me, Tyrone, was engaged. What’s going to keep them engaged?
Another thing you can do is what we do with our recruiting firm owner “done for you” marketing clients is that we send out three emails a month to either clients or candidates. In addition to that we do a free teleseminar or webinar on the state of hiring in the “X,Y,Z industry”. You can do a half-hour interview or verbal report. You can have somebody interview you for half an hour where it positions you as the subject matter expert in your recruiting niche. You can then record that interview on services like “FreeConferenceCall.com”. There are a few of the free conference services that also allow you to record calls and then you can publish the MP3 and/or make it a free download on your website.
This allows you to send out an email to your list that states “Hey, you know what? Next Wednesday at 12:00, I will be interviewed on the topic of the 3 biggest mistakes people make in advancing their careers and how to avoid them forever.” Because you are one of the people on our membership list, we are thrilled to invite you to attend at no cost. Come to the call and get some ideas. Then, I would promote that a couple of times before the call. “Hey, reminder: That free call is tomorrow.”
In summary, send out great value added content two to three times a month minimum with a 300-500 word article. That is all you need. Conduct a survey once in a while. Conduct an expert interview once in a while. When you send 3 emails a month, they probably see/read one of them. This is a fantastic way to stay in front of both clients and candidates between the calls to them. So, this doesn’t mean you stop calling people, but it is just a fantastic way to stay in touch with people in between phone calls.
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