In October 2009, James Swift will be taking part in the Amsterdam Marathon for Macmillan Cancer Support. Macmillan Cancer Support improves the lives of people affected by cancer. One in three of us will get cancer. We are all affected by cancer so any help you can give will go a long way!

This will be his 4th Marathon in total and he will be aiming for a sub 4.30hr time. The more you donate the harder he will train! 

Donating through this site is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to sponsor him: Macmillan Cancer Support will receive your money faster and, if you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in tax will be added to your gift at no cost to you.

So please sponsor me now by visisting: http://www.justgiving.com/james-swift/

Many thanks for your support.

I popped along to the Mylonglunch Innovation event in Manchester this week and was refreshingly impressed with what I heard, who I saw and the whole event in general. Glorious sunshine and a few beers helped of course, but well done to Jamie for pulling together some great products and services, some of which I’d never even heard of before. The agency turn out wasn’t bad but for those who didn’t go along, you definitely missed a great opportunity to engage with some genuine innovative ideas.

I’ll most certainly be looking out for the next event!

Following on from my previous post, here are some specific questions I was asked on the role of ad agencies:

How has the role of ad agencies in online recruitment changed over the last few years?

What has happened is that the internet has become one of the most innovative, exciting and individual-centric communication medium. For example, we have have seen an explosion in social networking – to such an extent people actually share with other people the thoughts that pop into their heads (e.g. twitter). So, in order for ad agencies to progress in this market, they now must have the best knowledge and expertise at their disposal to advise their clients properly.

What are the ad agencies most/least effective & successful at?

They’re great at giving clients what they want. But is this what a candidate wants?

How do you see the role of ad agencies developing in the future? (What influences do you think will have the most impact?)

More use of multimedia (e.g. video, social media)

A performance and ROI pricing model

The elements of the digital recruitment landscape will become increasingly complex as the market continues to innovate. Therefore, the need for advertising specialists who totally understand this market will become even bigger.

Interesting article in May’s Onrec magazine discussing the role of ad agencies in today’s market. Here are a few thoughts that I’ve contributed to the article: I’ll post the whole article when it’s live on their website.

All ad agencies are chasing less money.

Everybody is looking for a deal at the moment. Whether you’re buying a house or placing an ad: Everyone is in the mood to barter. It’s a buyers’ market.

Clients are looking for better value-for-money. They want to be able to measure their ROI as precisely as possible. (more…)

According to Google there are 11.5 billion pages on the internet. To make sure yours get noticed, you need an expert on the job.

Writing copy for the web is a distinctive skill. Many seasoned copywriters with decades in the advertising business behind them, can come unstuck writing for online. Language should be an integral part of your brand communication. It has to say the right things in the right way, consistently. And that’s no mean feat. It involves getting your tone of voice clear at the start and making it come alive across all your online communications.

Web copy simply means the words that make visitors to your website apply for your job opportunity. Words are the true currency of the web. While it may seem counterintuitive, it’s little wonder why the most important ingredient in a recruitment website is the copy.

Picture a website with cutting edge design, mind-blowing graphics and all the interactive bells and whistles. Compare that to simple web copy on a plain white background. Which of the two websites would better sell your organisation and job? According to a study by Stanford University published in 2000, it’s the one with the simple text. That’s because nothing happens until somebody writes the words that get people to click, sign up, register or whatever else you want them to do.

So, it’s not enough to make your website look appealing. The words have to wow, charm and seduce a causal web surfer enough, to turn them into a quality candidate. If your language isn’t interesting, doesn’t tell a good story or is hard to understand, it won’t be read.

Some of the biggest mistakes businesses make are to take marketing principles that work well in the offline world and try to use them on the web. Many of the techniques used in print and radio simply don’t get visitors to do what you want. That’s because they don’t follow fundamental web copy rules: don’t make your website look like an ad; always stop your readers dead in their tracks; and always capture email addresses. Don’t obey these rules and your visitors will not want to stay.

If you think that it’s okay for a website to be less creative than print or have a weak headline, think again. It’s as important to call out creatively to your audience as it is in any other medium. Knowing how to write in a conversational style and not use contradictions or corporate jargon is vital to success. As is an appreciation of how people read online, and the techniques writers use to help readers find the information they want.

Perhaps the most specialised area of an online writer’s repertoire is their ability to apply psychological motivators and emotive words that appeal to the intuitive part your reader’s mind. Using these devices can turn surfers into applicants; and applicants into vacancies filled! These are the tactics that fly beneath the radar of your readers’ perceptions producing an almost hypnotic effect that makes them do what you want them to – without them even knowing why. They’re powerful devices that must be used appropriately, discreetly and ethically.

However, using psychology to sell isn’t about conning people to take a decision they don’t want to. It’s about using an understanding of human nature to make your reader volunteer to become involved in your organisation. So, you must make it enjoyable and totally painless! The fact is; from the cliff-hanger principle to neuro-linguistic programming and embedded commands; psychological techniques amount to nothing unless you speak to the needs of your target audience. You’ve got to know what they want, and how you can give it to them.

Once you’ve used all these online techniques and principles to create your killer web copy, you need to make sure your passive and active job seekers can find it. Of course, one way to do this is to drive traffic through traditional press-based advertising. The other takes us into the wonderful world of search engine optimisation (SEO). This is the one of the most powerful methods a copywriter can employ to give a website competitive advantage over others. A well-optimised homepage is one written by a copywriter fully conversant in latent semantic indexing and adwords. Armed with these SEO techniques, a copywriter can boost conversion rates and deliver quantity and quality of candidate. It can transform the effectiveness of your recruitment strategy and deliver outstanding return on investment.

A professional online writer is more than just a producer of words. They’re brand detectives and ideas people who are fully involved in the strategic and creative process. With a professional writer onboard, your website can make that all important emotional as well as commercial impact. And your website will go from ordinary to stunningly effective.

www.beyondinteractive.co.uk

We recently ran a campaign with Jobsite and Reed to recruit a Sales Executive for Rx Systems. They are the UK's fastest growing company in the retail pharmacy software solutions market. The total spend for this campaign was just over £1K. Both sites delivered a phenomenal response and the successful candidate has already started in the position. Not a bad cost per hire and here's what the recruiting manager has to say:

Dear James,

I’d like to thank you at Beyond interactive for supporting us in our recent recruitment campaign. I was delighted with the courteous and professional approach of your team and I will be recommending your services to the other department heads here at Rx Systems.

Thanks again,

Stephen Hards
Sales Manager
Rx Systems

Following on from a recent blog on the Mylonglunch website regarding stats and over-reliance on e.g. search engines, here are a few thoughts on why these stats should not be used to paint the real picture of how successful a potential recruitment campaign could be:

It's all good and well being #1 on google for e.g. IT jobs, but that doesn't mean the site is right for a campaign – far from it! The focus needs to be much more specific to what you're looking to achieve. If e.g. a £50K Developer from Reading is looking for a new job, do you think he/she will google “IT jobs” to start their job search? Unlikely!

The skilled media planners of this world should already know the capabilities of the sites in question and should therefore use the information available to them from each site intelligently. Good job board sales people won't just spin the Google (or Hitwise) stats, they will look at the brief properly and (hopefully) come back with a solution that's not only believable, but is accurate to the brief in question.

Also, testimonials are not a good indicator either. All sites have shed-loads of testimonials they can throw at you and what's right for client X may not be right for client Y anyway.

Even then, if site X has more Developers in Reading than site Y, is still doesn't mean that site X is right for a campaign.

I could go on….

Having just spent half an hour arguing with a recruitment consultant about how to write online copy, here are a few thoughts:

Do they know what works and what doesn't?
Do they know that an ad should always centre around a 'what's in it for them' audience proposition and not what an organisation does?
Do they realise that online readers scan jobs before reading on?
Do they know about frontloading sentences?
Do they know they have only two seconds to trap a reader's attention?
Do they know that less is more?
Do they know that research tells us that unnecessary words such as 'hence' turn a reader off?
Do they know that using up the vast majority of a wordcount on talking about how great a business is has been proved counterproductive and a waste of space?
Do they know that the best advertising copy is conversational?
Do they know that, just like having a conversation with someone, if you keep on talking about yourself, they won't listen?

A recent report from Colin Sinclair, the chairman of the Manchester Investment Development Agency (MIDAS) states that Manchester will soon become what Barcelona is to Madrid or Milan is with Rome…Here’s a few thoughts:

The perception that the good jobs only exist in London has changed. Manchester is now regarded as one of Europe’s top 10 investment locations (ft DI 2008) with some really exciting projects such as Spinningfieids and Beetham Tower giving the city a new skyline and huge investment. This has given global firms such as Siemens, Google, Cisco and IBM the opportunity to move into the region and tap into a huge talent pool.

Research suggests that well over 50% of the 115,000 graduates in Manchester stay in the region after graduation (ONS/ME 2008) and according the Guardian, Manchester is the most sought after destination for international students.

The transformation of Manchester from post-industrial decline to a shining cosmopolitan city is down to a lot of things; the central position at the heart of the UK, some great entrepreneurial spirit and some really good universities producing bucket loads of talent.

Long may it continue!

From a small agency point of view, we regularly go up against the big agencies and on a few occasions, we've just missed out because we dont have a big creative team etc, nor do we have the resources to heavily invest in pitches. Hence, client Y going with a bigger agency.

For our last pitch, however (to an education client in the North West), we took the bold approach of investing a lot of time and money into getting the creative message right. We ended up winning the business last week and from the feedback from client Y, it was not only because they were they really excited about the online stuff, but we took it to the next level and delivered a variety of creative concepts. This allowed us to not only to demonstrate what they should be doing from a digital persepctive, but exactly what it would look like!

Now I'm pretty sure they don't think we sit in flashy offices (anyone that's been here will vouch for that), but hats off to this client for treating every pitch on merit and not on e.g. the size of the agency and it's client base. If we didn't win client Y, we would have been dissapointed of course, but it just goes to show that a little investment is well worth if it the reward is great enough.