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We all know how useful LinkedIn can be as a professional resource, but how are smaller-scale career websites like Workopolis staying afloat? Workopolis, a Canadian-based career site, is remaining at the top of its game by sticking to one simple maxim: content is king.

With networks such as Linkedin, it’s easy to forget that sites like Workopolis even exist. For this reason, the Workopolis team is leveraging content to draw attention to their website by providing users with relevant, industry-focused, and useful content.

When you sign up for Workopolis, you provide your email. I found one of my first jobs in social media through Workopolis, so they have my email on their mailing list. I hadn’t heard from the career site in a while—to be perfectly honest, I’d kind of forgotten about them—but these past few weeks I noticed two emails in my inbox from Workopolis. Now typically, I delete email newsletters right away (who has the time to read all of them?) But I didn’t delete the two from Workopolis, and here’s why:

Did you catch those headlines? Who wouldn’t be interested?

“Four Reasons why no on is Seeing Your Resume” and “Your Looks Matter: A Study on how Your Face May be Hurting Your job Prospects .” The first article deals with ways that the website’s users can optimize their profiles and online resumes to ensure visibility. The article offers advice, like “add keywords that are sure to attract your employer” and “customize your resume for each job you apply to.”

I sent this article to a friends who is currently seeking employment and she said she found it helpful.

The second article deals with how your appearance impacts an employer’s first impression of you, with much attention paid to first impressions in an interview scenario. More interesting, I think, would be an article exploring how your profile picture on sites such as Facebook and Twitter impact your online brand presence, since most job-hunting happens online these days, but nevertheless, Workopolis’ content is useful for face-to-face professional encounters.

Here’s why Workopolis’ content strategy is effective:

First and foremost, they know their audience: the Workopolis team has determined that any one using their website is either looking for a job or looking to hire someone for a job; knowing this, they’ve catered their content for their audience. Some key questions that the Workopolis content team have clearly asked themselves include, “what does my audience want to read about?” and “how can I develop content that’s useful to my audience?”

Also, all of Workopolis’ content demonstrates a clear and focused conversation. Whenever I develop content strategies for brands, one of the first things I ask is “what is the main conversation taking place here?” One that is determined, it’s easier to make editorial decisions and shape a content plan. All of Workopolis’ content thematically fits into one conversation—”finding a job” or “best practises for finding a job.”

The final reason why Workopolis’ content is effective is because it isn’t marketing to you, it’s informing you.

On the one hand, Workopolis is marketing to you in the sense that their content encourages you to use their site, but on the other hand, their content isn’t trying to “sell” you anything directly; instead, they’re providing informative and useful content that keeps their brand top-of-mind. Workopolis’ content establishes them as experts in the career-finding industry, so later down the road if I’m looking for a job, Workopolis comes to mind because of all the great information they’ve provided to me.

Is your business producing relevant, industry-specific and useful content, or are you simply sending out self-absorbed spam (“buy my e-book”, “join my mailing list”, “look what I did,” etc)? I’ve seen way too many writer-centric headlines floating around the internet and not enough audience-centric content, like the kind Workopolis is creating and disseminating.

Want to develop a better content strategy? Start by creating and sharing useful content. Your audience will thank you.

@Amanda Cosco is a freelance writer, content queen & social media girl genius. To learn more about her, visit her professional blog here.

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