Are you doing content wrong?
Normally, when I think about content marketing, the most common questions are: what should we write about (or create a video about), who should create the content, how frequently should we write?
But have I been asking the wrong questions?
I’ve been a content marketer for more than 30 years. But, I recently read a statistic that completely reframed my approach to content marketing:
20% of your effort should be content creation.
80% should be content activation.
Boom!
Most people do the opposite (me included). They spend nearly all their time deciding what to write, getting it approved, polishing the copy, finding the image, and getting the content posted.
Then they move on to the next piece.
The problem?
Publishing is not the finish line.
Publishing is the starting line.
Great content still matters
Before we talk about activation, let’s be clear about something.
Crappy content will not magically become effective because you distribute it better. More promotion does not fix boring. More distribution does not fix irrelevant. More quantity does not fix content that sounds like it was assembled by a committee and edited by the legal department.
Great content still has to be great.
For staffing companies, that means your content should be:
- Timely. Connected to what employers and job seekers are dealing with right now.
- Relevant. Focused on problems your audience actually wants to solve.
- Educational. Useful enough that someone would save it, share it, or forward it.
- Perspective-driven. Challenging people’s ideas—not just repeating the same generic interviewing advice everyone else is publishing.
- Specific. Written for a defined audience (specific buyer personas), not “employers” or “job seekers” in general.
- Actionable. Giving people a practical next step.
- Interesting…and, when possible, even a little entertaining.
For a staffing firm, strong content usually helps clients make better workforce decisions or helps candidates make better career decisions.
It might explain how to reduce turnover. Eliminate candidate ghosting. Prepare for peak season. Evaluate pay rates. Speed up hiring. Manage compliance risk. Compete for quality talent when applicants are scarce or workforce reliability is low.
That content has value. But only if people see it.
More importantly, only if the right people use it.
Activation is the missing step
Activation is the process of making sure your content gets used. It includes distribution, but it is bigger than distribution.
Distribution means getting content in front of your audience. Activation means getting content into the market, into conversations, into sales follow-up, into recruiting outreach, into account management, and into the daily behavior of your team.
Activation turns content from “marketing material” into a business development asset. This is where most staffing firms leave money on the table.
You may have good blog posts, case studies, salary guides, hiring checklists, interview tips, employer resources, candidate resources, newsletters, videos, and webinars.
But if your sales team does not use them... your recruiters do not share them... and account managers do not bring them into client conversations... then your content may die a quiet (and useless) death.
Content that just sits there is an unrealized asset. You spent time and money to create it…hoped it would have an impact…and then ignored its greatest value.
One idea should have many lives
A strong piece of content should never be used only once. It can (and should) be repurposed, reformatted, redistributed, and reused across multiple channels. This is a Dan Kennedy principle applied to content: one message, many uses.
Say you create a guide on reducing first-week assignment falloff. That one idea could become:
- A blog post on your website.
- A LinkedIn post from your company page.
- Three shorter posts from individual salespeople.
- A client email.
- A candidate-facing checklist.
- A sales leave-behind.
- A webinar topic.
- A direct mail piece to high-value prospects.
- A section in a proposal follow-up.
- A reactivation touch for dormant accounts.
- A short video from your branch manager.
- A pitch to a local business publication.
One idea. One piece of content. Many different uses.
This is where your content ROI starts to improve. Not because you are creating more, but because every useful idea is being squeezed for more value.
And yes, “squeezed” is the technical marketing term. Probably.
Sales and recruiting must be part of the plan
This one is the biggest miss for most companies. Your opportunity is not just more channels. The biggest opportunity is getting your people to use content in their daily outreach.
Your salespeople need better reasons to reach out than:
- “Just checking in.”
- “Wanted to follow up.”
- “Are you hiring?”
- “Do you have any staffing needs?”
Those messages are easy to ignore because they are about the seller, not the buyer.
Content gives your salespeople a more useful door opener. For example:
“I saw a lot of manufacturers struggling with turnover in the first 30 days, so we put together a short guide on how to reduce early assignment falloff. Thought this might be useful for your team.”
That’s a sales message with real value. And one that stands out from what 90% plus of staffing salespeople are saying.
It leads with value. It shows relevance. It gives the salesperson a reason to discuss a business problem instead of making another generic pitch.
The same is true for recruiters. Recruiters can use content to nurture candidates, reengage past applicants, prepare people for interviews, improve show rates, educate candidates on market trends, and build trust before the next assignment is available.
Think of it like making deposits into your relationship bank account. The more you put in, the more it compounds, and the more you will be able to take out.
That matters. Because the best sales and recruiting conversations rarely start with “here’s why we’re better,” they start with relevance.
Activation is about creating better conversations
The real value of content is not traffic. Or visibility. Or even “going viral.”
The real value of content is providing your team with better topics to discuss. But that does not happen just by creating content.
The key part of activation is showing your team how to use the content in their day-to-day sales and recruiting activities.
Many years ago, we had a client in Irvine, CA who used our HaleyMail service. HaleyMail is a content marketing program with monthly newsletters for clients and candidates, a robust library of website content (Staffing Resource Center and Candidate Resource Center), and more.
Every month, when we sent their newsletters, the client would call a meeting with their sales team. They’d read the new articles together. They’d discuss what these topics meant to their clients, and they would brainstorm conversation-starting questions to use.
By integrating content into sales training, this company was radically changing the look and sound of their sales organization. By leveraging content in the emails, website, and sales conversations, they were able to improve focus on business issues, client outcomes…and they spent a lot less time answering the “what’s your mark-up” question!
Great questions position your company as an advisor, not a vendor. They move the discussion toward the operational issues your clients truly care about.
And that is the real role of content marketing in staffing.
Not to prove that you can write.
Not to keep your website fresh.
Not to feed the LinkedIn algorithm.
The real role of content marketing is to create trust, open doors, nurture relationships, and give your team better ways to engage the people you want to serve.
Try this next
Take one good piece of content you already have. Do not create something new. Instead, build an activation plan for it.
Ask:
- Who should see this?
- Where can we distribute it?
- How can we repurpose it?
- What should salespeople say when they share it?
- What should recruiters do with it?
- Which clients or prospects should receive it directly?
- How can we use this topic to start better conversations?
Creation matters.
But activation is where content becomes growth. So before you write another blog post, record another video, or launch another campaign, look at what you already have.
Your next big marketing win may not come from creating more content. It may come from finally putting your best content to work.
As always, happy to talk this through if you have any questions for us. And if your content library is sitting untouched (or worse, is not being built at all), do not feel bad. Reach out.
Let us help you with your content creation and activation.
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