As I explained in my previous post, encouraging your team to have their own office blog can be a tremendous tool to attract the best and brightest candidates. It offers an authentic view into your office culture and presents your workplace in a way that you can’t—from future co-workers’ perspectives. In this article we’ll look at some of the refinements you can add to the blog as well as how to get it found online.

Photos: Be sure to upload lots of photos (it’s a snap) that tell the story of life in your office. Pictures of all team members are essential, as well as plenty of candids from around the office. (Be sure to have them sign a photo consent form.) Display the perks of working there.

• If you have a lounge area that you’re proud of, show it.
• Do you eat your lunch outside in a pretty area on warm days? That’s a photo opp that shows the quality of work life at your agency.
• Does someone bring their dog to work?
• How about a birthday party?
• Anytime you are doing something that demonstrates an aspect of your workplace brand, that’s a photo opp.
Keep an inexpensive digital camera in the office, so you won’t miss those great moments.

Audio: If you want to go farther into multi-media, consider adding audio to your blog. Even just an audio welcome from you would be nice. Snapvine is a free service that records your message over the phone and makes it easy to add to your blog. A message from your office manager might be good, too. Audio is great for team member testimonials and for job opportunity info.

Video: Here’s where it can really get fun! For about $120. you can buy a Flip digital video camera that fits in your pocket and only weighs a few ounces. The learning curve is all of 10 seconds—push the Start button and you’re making a high-quality video. Plug it into your computer to transfer the video. Push a few more buttons and it’s uploaded to the Internet. Really, it’s that simple. Nothing sells like video. And after all, this IS a sales site, selling job candidates on how great it would be to work for you. Document fun activities in your office and even outings you may have with your team. I wish I’d had one when I took my team whitewater rafting. It’s also great for giving a grand tour of the office. Even the video hosting is free! Just open a free account at YouTube and Flip will upload your videos to that page with one click. Then from your YT page you can capture the code to paste into your blog. You can shoot a video in your office and have it online in under five minutes.

Promoting your blog: Here’s the really cool part. Have 500 or more colorful business cards printed up (Vista Print is an inexpensive online company). On one side have a brand statement, proposition or qualifier; it could even be in the form of a question. Use anything that sets you apart form your competition. For example:

• Want to work with great people?
• Where fun and work coexist.
• Want work/life balance?
• Looking for a better job in DesMoines?
• You just found the healthiest place to work in Richmond.
• Ready for a change and a challenge in Atlanta?

Then on the reverse, in large letters, simply have your domain name: www.workinghereisfun.com . Do not put any phone numbers, names or your agency name on the card. Just the blog address. The whole point is to send people there to learn what they need to know about working for you. Trust me, the cards will be intriguing, especially if your question or statement hits a hot button for job seekers in your area. Give these cards to everyone you know to pass along. Drop them off at college placement offices, daycare centers. Leave them at Starbucks. Pin them to bulletin boards. Have your team think of inventive places to leave a stack of them. Where do people you’d want to hire spend time? A local bookstore? Because of the uniqueness of this approach, many people who get the cards will pass them on to people they know who may be good prospects. Then let the blog do all the heavy lifting. (Be sure to say on the blog how interested applicants should contact you.)

Another idea would be to advertise the blog in simple classified ads—perhaps even in other categories besides Help Wanted, using the same technique to stimulate curiosity. Again, the idea is to just get candidates to the blog, and then let it do the work. Consider advertising in a nearby college paper or nay of the many websites that post jobs.

Getting your blog found online: Search engines love blogs—as long as they are updated with some regularity. If you’re in a competitive job market, then you might be able to attract applicants directly from the Internet who are searching for job openings. In that case, you’d want to optimize your blog to do well in searches, which is beyond the scope of this article to explain, but you can learn all about it by Googling: SEO for blogs.

Advanced effects: If you have someone on your team (or maybe it’s you) who is tech-savvy and creative, there are endless free tools you can use to spice up your blog even more with animations of the boss (Blabberize), slides shows (RockYou), music videos (Animoto)—you are limited only by your imagination in how you portray the work experience at your agency.

There’s an added benefit to this process: your existing team members will have a good time doing it, be reminded of the fun they’ve been enjoying working for you and become invested in the recruitment process. So get blogging!

If you’re serious about improving your recruitment processes, check out my Employee Attraction System™ here; it’s full of great ideas like this.

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