Spotlight for Career Services Professionals, February 1, 2012
by Gary Alan Miller  

Blogging seems old. At least in the fast-paced, “dog years” world of technology, it does. While the term “blog” dates back only to the 1990s, the concept goes back to the 1980s, which, let’s face it, might as well be another century in terms of technology. 

But, with the prevalence of social media adoption, blogging provides an opportunity that many career centers are not taking advantage of, and that’s a concept called “inbound marketing” or “content marketing.” Inbound marketing is an approach to getting the word out about your center and your events through the creation of interesting content (articles, video, photos, and so forth). Then, you can use that content to guide the reader to action. 

Compare these two hypothetical Facebook status updates: 

• Facebook post No. 1: We’re having a career fair on Thursday at 4pm! We’d love to have you there to interact with 75 employers! Visit our site for more info. 
 
• Facebook post No. 2: Last spring, Jane Doe met someone very important at the career fair. She entered the event with questions about her future, and left with a new contact that would change her life. Read her story in today’s post on our blog. 

Which of those are you more likely to click on? Which do you think is more appealing to your students? I’d wager both parties are more interested in post number two.  

When your students click on that link and read Jane’s interesting story, you are then in a great position to sell the upcoming career fair because you’ve humanized it, made it interesting, showed direct results, and gave it emotional resonance. 

For our office here at UNC, Facebook is the third largest referrer of traffic to our website and our blog received more than 13,000 views in Fall 2011 alone. Each of our staff members writes blog posts during the summer, which we roll out over the course of the semester, and the students of our Career Peers program create ongoing content, as well. We try to provide interesting slants on our services, our events, and our staff. 

We know from NACE’s 2010-11 Career Services Benchmarking Survey that social media use among career centers is strong—more than 70 percent profess to be on Facebook in that study, and the number is no doubt increasing each day. The same is true for Twitter. These sites are useful communication and engagement tools, but they are even better at helping to spread interesting content. 

I was more disappointed than surprised while completing a recent survey of a group of approximately 200 career centers in the South that only about 10 percent of them have a blog. We are in an environment filled with great stories. Your students do compelling things. YOU do compelling things. You’re missing an opportunity to connect if you don’t have a blog. 

We can’t wonder why we have a hard time getting students to pay attention to us if we don’t focus on getting information to them in a way that is both to-the-point and engaging. Creating and managing a blog is work, but it’s work that provides positive return and is worth the investment. If you don’t currently have a blog, I recommend that you reconsider! 

Gary Alan Miller is the assistant director for social media and innovation with university career services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can follow him on twitter at @garyalanmiller.