It can be a lot of hard work to produce and maintain an effective company blog so today we’re looking at how to get more HR clients from your company blog.

How To Get More HR Clients From Your Company Blog

Read on for quick tips and ideas from people currently working in Human Resources companies on how to best use your company blog for client acquisition.

If you have a blog marketing tip to share, I’d love to hear from you too.

How To Get More HR Clients From Your Company Blog

Data On Blog Performance

Before we get started on the advice from HR marketing leaders, let’s take a look at some research conducted recently on exactly what works (and what doesn’t) in business blogging.

1. Long-form content gets an average of 77.2% more links than short articles. Therefore, long-form content appears to be ideal for backlink acquisition.

2. When it comes to social shares, longer content outperforms short blog posts. However, we found diminishing returns for articles that exceed 2,000 words.

3. The vast majority of online content gets few social shares and backlinks. In fact, 94% of all blog posts have zero external links.

4. A small percentage of “Power Posts” get a disproportionate amount of social shares. Specifically, 1.3% of articles generate 75% of all social shares.

5. We found virtually no correlation between backlinks and social shares. This suggests that there’s little crossover between highly-shareable content and content that people link to.

6. Longer headlines are correlated with more social shares. Headlines that are 14-17 words in length generate 76.7% more social shares than short headlines.

7. Question headlines (titles that end with a “?”) get 23.3% more social shares than headlines that don’t end with a question mark.

get more hr clients from your company blog question headlines

8. There’s no “best day” to publish a new piece of content. Social shares are distributed evenly among posts published on different days of the week.

9. Lists posts are heavily shared on social media. In fact, list posts get an average of 218% more shares than “how to” posts and 203% more shares than infographics.

get more hr clients from your company blog list posts

10. Certain content formats appear to work best for acquiring backlinks. We found that “Why Posts”, “What Posts” and infographics received 25.8% more links compared to videos and “How-to” posts.

get more hr clients from your company blog why posts

Ok, now over to the HR marketing leaders and their advice on how to get more HR clients from your company blog . . .

Hannah Churchman

Marketing and Management Systems Manager @ accessplanit

Hannah Churchman“Is it worth having a business blog? Only if you are going to provide original and useful content. Consumers have got so used to cutting through the noise and screening marketers out that unless your content is adding value then you might as well not have a blog at all. Businesses need to be helpful and solve audience problems rather than constantly trying to ‘sell’.

My top tip for generating more leads using your business blog is by always ending with a relevant call-to-action whether it be a download, subscription to the blog or scheduling a demo. By collecting details (in a GDPR friendly way!) you can continue to provide valuable content and build the relationship with your readers.

accessplanit is course management software that lets businesses easily manage course schedules, availability, and profitability.

Blog Quote - Hannah Churchman

Alan Collins

Founder @ Success in HR

Alan Collins“Eight years ago, when I started up the Success in HR blog I didn’t realize that it would become THE single biggest asset and catalyst for my career in human resources.

But it didn’t start out that way.  When I began, I knew nothing.  And I was just looking for a way to express my ideas about HR and get them out there for other folks to hear about – and attract new coaching and consulting clients.  Who knew that eight years later I’d be still at it — and having a blast!

Here’s what I’ve learned over the years about blogging:

Treat your blog not only as a client attraction device, but also as a tool for developing a deeper meaning and purpose about your career in HR.  My blog is my primary coaching tool for inspiring HR professionals to reach for greatness (and not mediocrity) in their HR careers.  It allows me to help people I’ll never meet take their careers to the next level.  And, to encourage them to challenge the status quo in their own personal lives.  This is my source of motivation for keeping my blog going.

The best way to get client leads from your blog is to be authentic and to write primarily about things you believe in.  The longer I write, the more I realize that if I’m not putting out stuff that I’m proud of, each and every time, my client readership and engagement numbers fall off.  However, I’m not going to hit it out of the park every time.  None one does. 

And what that means is…some of my blog posts suck and yours will too.  I know that.  But even if you occasionally miss the mark with a blog post, clients don’t mind it if you can consistently providing them with solid content —  especially content containing real life stories and examples that can help them move their careers or their businesses forward.  If you’re able to do this, you’ll have a successful blog that will attract new clients and inspire and engage your existing ones.

The goal of Alan’s Success in HR website is to help HR professionals take their career, impact and income to the next level.

Blog Quote - Alan Collins

Are you a consultant in the Human Resources industry?

Are you in an HR SaaS/Tech company?

Becky Boston

Co-Founder and Business Development Director @ Emphasis HR and Training

Becky Boston Profile“HR is very personal and therefore it is important to build relationships and trust.

We get the most engagement when we do blogs about personal aspects of the team, either individually or as a whole.

Business owners want to know who is dealing with their trickiest and thorniest issues. So my tip is … expose a bit about yourself!

Emphasis go beyond the policies and paperwork, working alongside you to deal with often complex and emotional issues, delivering an efficient, timely and satisfactory conclusion. Through their people development programmes, they help management teams avoid risk and create a positive working environment for all.

Blog Quote - Becky Boston

Tobin Murphy-Coles

Co-Founder & Chief Commercial Officer @ Earthmiles

Tobin profile“Set the narrative and the tone: there are many concurrently running issues at anytime for the HR community and often we can be transfixed on particular subjects. This can be unhelpful.

There are many opportunities through events and thought leadership to use well researched and well written blog content to move the needle for the entire community onto pressing issues that need solving.

Earthmiles is on a mission to help people improve well-being with a combination of behavioral psychology and analytics. Rooted in well-researched principles of behavioral psychology, the Earthmiles concept utilises commonly available activity data to incentivise healthy choices and enhance intrinsic motivation. Users earn exclusive wellness rewards as they collect earthmiles by walking, running and cycling.

Blog Quote - Tobin Murphy-Coles

Caroline Robertson

Principal @ CHR Consultancy

Caroline Robertson“Your blogs need to be authentic and discuss real workplace scenarios that you have been involved in and managed and how these were resolved. Potential clients need to feel confident that you can resolve their issues. Your blogs and marketing need to build trust with the reader to a point where they feel they could work with you. Being authentic helps to do this.

Caroline provides practical advice and guidance on all aspects of HR management, organisational development and change management.

Blog Quote - Caroline Robertson

Eli Domínguez

Marketing Manager @ Talent Clue

Eli - Website conversion tip“First of all, you have to deeply understand the needs, pains and frustrations of the ideal customer you’re trying to attract and convert. Investigating about your current customers and developing buyer personas will help you focus on your primary ideal buyers and you’ll be able to detect how they feel, what solution they’re looking for and will shed light to how your product solves their needs.

Then, if you prioritize the needs in what’s critical for them and what’s not, you can define a content calendar to address those needs. Talk like they do and promote the content on the channels they are actually on. It will most likely be LinkedIn, so keep your company page updated, connect with relevant HR people, get your team on board and engaged on sharing content for you…

Keep the blog layout clean and simple, so they can focus on reading and make it easy for them to navigate to the call-to-action and convert to your marketing offer. Don’t bother them with too many pop-ups and distractions. Content needs to be helpful -really helpful, and relevant for these people. Cut the “my product is awesome” bullshit and help them solve their problems. As easy as that!

Think in evergreen content, that blog posts that will always be searched for, and update and optimize them frequently. Keep your content alive, don’t just promote it the week you launch it on, but use it whenever you can: sales emails, email nurturing, workflows, social media, convert it to ebooks, webinars…

And, of course, measure everything: you have to know what worked well for you and why, so you can keep on doing it. And you need to know what content is not helpful for anyone and why, so you can solve it.

Blog passionately and try to do it with your own style. Don’t just be someone else: be different!”

Follow on Twitter: @elizabethlies or on LinkedIn.

Talent Clue is a recruiting software that helps you boost your employer brand to connect with the best talent and hire them in less time.

Blog Quote - Eli

David Niu

CEO @ TINYpulse

David - Website conversion tip“It’s important to go beyond marketing qualified leads– yes, we all want form fills and interaction with the website. But at the end of the day, if you’re not following customers all the way to successful conversion, and understanding what delights your existing customers, then you limit your visibility.”

Part of that is building a good relationship with sales after that MQL has entered the pipeline, because they are your eyes and ears. They can tell you which blog content is leading to better conversations, and which campaigns are driving the sort of leads that they can convert. Then, following those new clients through their Customer Success Manager, to understand if your first touches with them on the website set them up for success right from the start.

Follow on Twitter: @TINYPulse

TINYpulse is a simple, all-service tool that helps employers manage every moment of the employee experience from hire, to inspire, to retire.

By collecting regular feedback from employees, TINYpulse is able to provide actionable insights for managers looking to nurture culture and engagement, and increase retention.

David - Website conversion quote

Jo Webb

Founder / HR & Leadership Consultant @ Culture Co

Jo Webb“I find the key to writing blog posts is to make them as challenging as possible. Ask questions that really challenge leaders to evaluate their own situation and sparks initial interest.

People like taking mini surveys online so ask a thought-provoking question that then drives people to action e.g. by visiting a landing page on your website – to obtain further information.

Culture Co works in partnership with CEOs, leadership teams, and HR Teams to help them define and develop a winning culture that leads to business growth.

Blog Quote - Jo Webb

Sean Sears

Chairman @ Sagecrowd

Sean Sears HR marketing“One of the best approaches is to cut through the content marketing noise by using your expertise to teach people something they don’t know but that they value.

For instance, we build better learning models for comprehensive training of large, geographically dispersed teams, so we’ve shared hidden learnings about training and career development that many people don’t know.

This got us a lot of attention and helped strengthen our marketing efforts.

Sagecrowd has created the ideal online training platform to help large teams adopt new ideas, methods, skills & behaviors. Their focus is on helping enterprises implement large change programs that make them more competitive.

Sean Sears HR marketing quote

Kerri Duff-Borthen

Founder @ The SHORTLISTER

Kerri Duff-Borthen“When writing, don’t overthink, be consistent with your delivery of content and be yourself.

I spent years pretending to be someone I thought my clients wanted me to be… it breeds unhappiness and definitely resulted in me attracted the WRONG clients.

I’m quirky, not too serious and have no problem expressing my opinion on certain HR topics, just go with the flow. It will attract your tribe!

The SHORTLISTER is a slick, super-smart recruitment alternative for busy people. They are the ad writing and Shortlisting experts – the perfect addition to any business recruiting in-house.

Blog Quote - Kerri Duff-Borthen

Siobhan Hasner

CEO @ HireHive

How To Turn Website Visitors Into Customers - Siobhan“We focus very much on inbound marketing at HireHive as our long term customer acquisition strategy and we want to offer blog content that is useful and offers value.

People don’t want to be sold to, they are looking for valuable information that will help them in some way. For this reason we have worked hard on creating useful recruitment content in our blog, send out a regular newsletter and share whitepapers and guides on things like interviewing best practice and GDPR information for recruitment data.

The next most important part is the follow up! So often we sign up for something on a blog and are left hanging. It is so important to follow up and build a relationship with people. These conversations are what drive opportunities.”

Follow on Twitter: @HireHive

HireHive is easy to use recruitment software that helps you hire. From candidate acquisition, job board posting and candidate management we have it covered allowing you to get on with hiring great people.

Get more HR customers from your website

Ben Geoghegan

Founder @ Get More HR Clients

“When thinking about how to attract new clients to your Human Resources business via your company blog, here’s a checklist you can follow:

  1. Have a strong understanding of your relevant buyer personas and client jobs to be done so you plan for the right content.
  2. Map out your blog content according to your buyer types and to the stages in the buying journey.
  3. Conduct SEO research on traffic volume, competitiveness, and search intent for keywords and topic clusters.
  4. Choose good topics that bring in the right types of prospects to your business.
  5. Craft alluring headlines that get the blog content opened (this is half the battle).
  6. Write excellent HR blog articles in formats that increase traffic and lead generation.
  7. Include attractive images and graphics to vary article presentation.
  8. Mention influencers and other businesses in the articles so they share the post.
  9. Layout the post in a visually attractive way.
  10. Generate attractive evergreen social media posts based on the article content.
  11. Offer a downloadable resource to generate leads and newsletter subscribers.
  12. Reach out to influencers and businesses mentioned in articles to encourage sharing a boost blog traffic.
  13. Conduct advanced content promotion and amplification for traffic, sales leads, and SEO backlinks.
  14. Monitor blog data (typically via Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools) to seek continuous improvement in blog performance.
  15. Report on your blog’s performance on a regular basis (typically weekly or monthly).

Get More HR Clients helps companies in the Human Resources industry to grow faster.

Get more HR clients from your company blog

Keith Kitani

CEO @ GuideSpark

Keith Kitani - Convert more HR customers“Educate and provide value to your market. Much of the purchasing process (research, talking to colleagues, competition, etc.) now happens prior to prospects actually engaging with a salesperson. Thus, we believe it is critical to build a relationship with your prospects, long before they become customers.

Blog content is one of the best ways to deliver value and so we’ve invested a lot of energy in creating a site for the HR community that provides thought leadership, news and views on employee communication and engagement.

Follow on Twitter: @guidespark

GuideSpark delivers modern employee communication solutions designed to drive the engagement and adoption of employee programs, like benefits, compensation, performance management and culture.

Keith Kitani HR marketing quote

Want More Tips On How To Get More Clients From Your Company Blog?

I’ll be adding more advice and quick tips on how to turn website visitors into customers and B2B clients so check back in here from time to time.

Are you a consultant in the Human Resources industry?

Are you in an HR SaaS/Tech company?

For more tips and ideas, visit the blog to grow your HR business faster.

Post updated on 25 March 2019.