The most important part of launching a new job board is awareness. Without audience awareness, you’ll launch with no candidates or employers, severely limiting the growth of your new job board.
One of the most effective ways to build audience awareness is a PR campaign. By reaching out to the press in the right way, you’ll attract qualified candidates and niche appropriate employers directly to your job board, ensuring a successful launch. You’ll also improve your SEO, by building links from authority websites.
But how do you get started?
1. Write Your Story
Unless you are Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Richard Branson, the media isn’t interested in hearing a story about you. Right now, your story needs to be about your job board and how it solves a problem.
Think about every great book, film or television programme you’ve enjoyed. All center around some form of struggle between two opposing forces, usually a protagonist and an antagonist.
Your antagonist, or villain, should be the problem you are trying to solve. Make sure your villain is believable and within a wider topical context, so your audience will clearly understand the problem.
Your protagonist, or hero, is your job board and how you are trying to solve the problem. Your hero should triumph and resolve the conflict, but the adventure should be compelling and entertaining.
You then need to condense this story into less than 100 words, that anyone can understand in less than 30 seconds. Keep it short so you can grab a journalists, bloggers or influencers attention, then expand the story later in a follow-up conversation.
A fantastic example from the JobBoard.io community is WorkFortSmith.
- The villain was unemployment in Fort Smith
- The adventure was “to match 100 regionally unemployed persons with 100 regional jobs” as part of their “100 Jobs in 100 Days” campaign
- The hero is WorkFortSmith, offering job posts and helping job seekers find jobs
Miles Crawford, the founder of WorkFortSmith, was interviewed on regional television, extensively published in regional newspapers and even endorsed by the Mayor – a fantastic way to launch a new job board.
2. Know Your Audience
If you are trying to launch a job board aimed at the top 10% of automotive executives, getting your story posted on BuzzFeed is unlikely to get you meaningful results.
Start by reading your story again and start creating a list of newspapers, magazines, blogs or social media accounts that reach the audience you are looking for and that your story is relevant to.
3. Create Press Release
All press releases follow a similar format, so that those receiving them can quickly find key information and decide whether you can worth writing about.
You can see an example of a press release here from Publicize. The numbers below are from their guide to writing a PR release and correspond to the numbers in this example.
- Include a one line title to catch the reader’s attention. This line should be your story.
- In the line directly following the title, include one line to explain why the announcement is meaningful.
- State where the company is headquartered and the date of the press release.
- The first line in your beginning paragraph should repeat what your story is.
- Following paragraphs should go in-depth into the particular announcement. This should explain why the announcement is important and, if it is a company launch, how the business is different from its competition.
- Before the conclusion, provide background information.
- The second to last section should be an About portion, providing a background of the company.
- The last section should include the contact information, including name, email, and phone number.
- In general two quotations are used in a press release, one from the founder/CEO and one from an industry insider.
4. Sending the Press Release
There are two ways of sending our your press release.
You can use a free or paid press release submission website. We suggest:
- PRLog.org (Free)
- PR.com (Free)
- PR-Inside.com (Free)
- i-Newswire.com (Free)
- PRWeb (Paid)
- BusinessWire.com (Paid)
- MarketWire.com (Paid)
Alternatively, you can build relationships with journalists, bloggers and influencers by becoming an expert source. When you help, record the details of the journalist for future outreach – if you’ve helped them, they will be more likely to help you!
To become an expert source, there are two main websites. Both ProfNet and HARO work in the same way – complete a profile, set your preferences and you’ll receive a list of questions and interview requests on a regular basis. You can then reply those questions which are most relevant to you.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Congratulations – you’ve taken your first steps to launching a PR campaign! But what next?
- Keep repeating step 4 until you’ve been featured in a range of publications.
- Return to step 2 and change your audience to keep your story fresh. Don’t forget to rewrite your press release to keep it audience relevant.
- Return to step 1 and start writing a new story.
By continually focusing on PR, you’ll build a wide range of connections, ensuring your job board receives media attention for years to come. Good luck!