How do you launch a new job board or website? Once it is designed and built, you have a problem -- no links, no Google PR rank, and no visitors. Even with the best content, traffic does not happen magically. You have a chicken and egg problem -- no one will take you seriously, until other people take you seriously. And launching a job board is more complicated than most other ventures. Joel Spolsky explains why in How Hard Could it Be?: Of course, some companies sell to businesses and to consumers, but this is a tricky balancing act. If you raise prices too fast, you will lose consumers. But if you continue to charge low prices, businesses may think your product is cheap--and you won't be extracting very much money out of precisely the customers who are most willing to pay.
To successfully sell to businesses and consumers, you need to realize that you're building two companies, not one. You need separate product lines. Cisco does this well, selling home versions of its business products through its Linksys division.
If you have no jobseekers you'll get no employers. If you have no employers you'll get no jobseekers. You are starting two companies at the same time and each depends on the other for it's own success.
The basic mechanisms for growing a website are probably e-mail marketing, search engine advertising and search engine optimization. Of these, search engine optimization is the most interesting and complex. Google makes the rules and its algorithms mandate that we spend as much time link building as we do creating content. As they say, links are the currency of the web.
Sometimes with a high priority launch you may want to get help, as we did when we launched DiversityJobs.com. Fortunately, link building can be fun and interesting and I am often a do-it-yourselfer. Some of our newborn websites where we are doing our own include InternetRecruitingNews.com and HispanicJobs.info.
Here's a list of some of my favorite reading about link building:
- mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-getting-links
- audettemedia.com/blog/link-building-fundamentals
- searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3629078
- seobook.com/archives/001930
- polepositionmarketing.com/seo-sem/link-building-secrets
- wiep.net/link-building-articles/ http://wiep.net/link-value-factors
- seobook.com/content-marketing-win
- blogstorm.co.uk/how-to-build-links
- searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/theres-no-shortcut-for-link-building
So how does it work? I need both jobseekers and employers unable to get one without the other. Is there a book out there or someone in the industry who can help me get started?
**es** that is the central problem in this business. If you are not starting out with some unique advantage which seems to you like a natural starting point, you may be better off looking for some other pursuit.
Eric, Thank you for having this site for people like me to find resources, greatly appreciate it. I am sure there are many out there who have great suggestions but keep the information to them selves. I am not going to give up that easily. If someone else has been successful I can be also. Of course with hard work. What about having a GRAND LAUNCH DAY. Like Grand Opening retail business haves. Market to employers, hopefully get a few postings registered prior to going live?
**es** My pleasure Jack! My personal preference is to avoid fanfare - not sure it helps you to attract a lot of attention before your website has some real momentum. You would do well to find a good source of job postings before launch day. Otherwise, you'll lose credibility. Your grand launch day may be best planned for six months after you really launch...
Naturally you will want to get candidates registered first and once on board, you can market to clients that you have active candidates on board ready to view their vacancies. My question is, without a large marketing budget, how on earth can you reach the candidates in the first place to gain significant awareness at a national level. Many of your candidates wont have email addresses so what cost effective marketing strategies can you adopt to engage their interest when you are looking at targeting over 50,000 candidates in your industry?
**es** you can do it through trade publications, groups, events and associations but of course this costs money. every year that goes by, as competition increases, the marketing budget is less optional!
Thanks Eric. Many people I speak with say that launching a job board properly with national coverage and awareness would be a minimum investment of $500,000 to a mil. Including radio advertising, online campaigns, trade publications and many more. Given you cant approach every candidate personally in their workplace to build awareness, do you think this figure is realistic given I am trying to target approx 200,000 candidates? Cheers
**es** that figure is going to be dramatically more reasonable today than it was a year ago. I would probably skip radio unless there was a really good reason.
The answer to the question really depends on the degree to which your target really has adopted its trade publications and events as its own. Does it really read them, really attend etc.? In my niche, you would find them plain ineffective. There are publications which belong to the advertisers much more than the readers!
Also, that seems like a small population -- so I would want to be very sure that 1) recruiters would be falling all over themselves to pay for access to this group if you succeed in attracting them and 2) the target is not in such high demand that it has little use for a job board.
-eric
Eric, what do you think about buying email address and marketing to candidates a new job board?
**es** it's all in the list. it's a great strategy if the e-mail list is a good one.
Eric, how many job's should a new job board have before starting to market? What would you say the minimum should be? Thanks
**es** Jack, that number would depend entirely on the niche in question, but basically, the job board needs enough jobs to be useful to most people in your niche.
My job board is ready to go. I would like to build the employers side first. I am contacting employers by phone offering a promotional Free 30 day posting, no obligation. They are saying No. I wanted to build the Job postings before contacting applicants to view and post there resumes. Is there an easier way to have job posted then what I am doing? Do I need there permission to post there job description? Help Eric...Thanks.
**es** When I was doing this in 1997, I did not ask permission. Neither do most jobs search engines when they start scraping other job boards! But, there are lots of job search engines that will give you a feed...
Thank U Eric..I want to make sure it done correctly. Anyone out there have a feed for Jobs in AZ?
**es** indeed.com will fill your job board right to the brim!
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