We are a small Indianapolis staffing business. We do not have a multi-million dollar marketing budget and we do not have a marketing, PR or communications department. We have a tight group of intelligent employees who do their level best to communicate regularly with clients and candidates. Limited resources, however, do not need to translate to limited interactions. Being small helps you to keep things simple and we have also discovered, creates lines of communication that are more meaningful and more sincere.
We do not compromise our blog with ghost writers to have more content. All of our content is original and personal to our internal staff members, our clients and our candidates. We do not outsource our social media engagement. We divide and conquer internally. We don’t engage an outside resource to create and distribute manufactured messages to our clients and candidates…when we have something to say, we write it and send it ourselves.
Now, realizing that this is not the most efficient way to manage your communications, there is a fine line for a company our size between what is efficient and what is effective. However, we have been told enough times from our audience how much they appreciate our personal touch and this has become a true competitive advantage for us that we strive to maintain. We want our clients and our candidates to know that when we are talking to them it is really US talking directly to THEM. We want them to know that we are smart enough and educated enough about or industry and our community that we can provide information of value to them.
I recently read a blog post by Clint Swindall titled "It’s Your Turn" that emphasizes the importance of keeping in touch and the personal responsibility that we each have to make the effort to communicate with those who are important to us. In this post he talks about personal relationships rather than work relationships, but I would like to challenge you to make your work relationships more personal by keeping in touch. Your customers for life will be those for whom you provide value. By telling your candidates that they are important to you, by thanking your customers for their business and by providing interesting information now and again these work relationships will evolve into relationships of trust and engagement.
