How to Promote Your Association’s Job Board

Your association’s online job board provides big opportunities for your members, your organization, job seekers, and employers in your industry. Here’s how to promote it so that everyone gets the most out of it.

Your online job board is a powerful resource for your members, your association, and your industry. It benefits your members by delivering ongoing job opportunities. It benefits employers in your industry by helping them find the most qualified individuals for their job openings. And it helps your association through increased member engagement and non-dues revenue.

These advantages of hosting an online job board, or online career center, are great. But you can’t realize them if no one knows about your job board in the first place.

In this article, you’ll learn top ideas for promoting and marketing your niche job board so that everyone can get the most out of it.

Key benefits of niche job boards

Before you begin promoting your online job board, it can help to fully understand its benefits.

A niche job board allows professionals in your industry to quickly find job postings without needing to sift through a bunch of irrelevant job postings, as they would have to do on general job sites. As an association that represents your industry or profession, you can capitalize on the power of a niche job board to increase website traffic and engagement and help employers in your industry find the best talent for specific roles.

Here are some benefits of niche job boards to keep in mind as you look to attract candidates to your online job board:

• Increased focus – A niche job board is more specific than general job boards. This focus allows you to ensure the postings on your job board are easy to find on the internet. The specific nature of the job postings – which are focused on your industry or profession – will attract more qualified, relevant candidates, saving time and energy for employers who post on your site.
• Brand – This is a great opportunity to make your association’s brand stand out. The job board might be a job seeker’s first exposure to your organization, and you can make it clear to them what your association stands for.
• Network-building – As an association, hosting a job board for your industry will help to increase member satisfaction, encouraging them to keep renewing their membership. It will also help to attract new members, as job seekers will visit your website and potentially become interested in what your association has to offer.

Keeping these points in mind helps to ensure everything about your job board benefits your organization, your members, job seekers, and employers in your industry.

Tips for promoting your association’s job board to employers, members, and candidates

Your association’s job board can help job seekers find industry-specific positions that may otherwise be buried under hundreds of other less-relevant opportunities. It’s also the perfect place for employers to advertise niche job listings that they may have trouble filling otherwise.

But how do you get employers to post their jobs on your job board and job seekers to apply for said jobs?

Here are five ways to help your job board reach your intended audiences:

1. Offer intuitive navigation – Ensure your job board is in your website’s main navigation menu so visitors always have access to it. If you bury your job board behind numerous pages and click-throughs, employers and applicants will likely miss it.
2. Let members know about it – A great way to attract employers to your job board is to tell your members about it so that they can inform their employers. Let them know on a consistent basis through newsletters, emails, in-person meetings, and other methods of communication you use.
3. Conduct research – Since your job board is industry-specific, be sure to keep up with your industry’s trends. Look through relevant social media hashtags to kickstart your research, using them in your own content to reach more individuals.
4. Search LinkedIn users – Finding LinkedIn users in your industry could lead to some positive connections with employers that will bring new listings to your website.
5. Attend industry events – Getting involved in industry events, such as trade shows and conferences, can be an effective way to build connections that could lead to job board listings.

As you explore these approaches, be sure to note what does and doesn’t work for your association’s job board. Every industry is different, so you may find that certain strategies get you better results than others. Over time, you’ll be able to find an ideal strategy for your organization.

How to advertise your association’s job board

Ideally, your online job board is more than just a place to post and find jobs. It’s a true online career center with career development resources for your association’s members and other job seekers in your industry. So, it’s important to build a solid job board marketing strategy that lets people know why your job board is THE career destination for your industry.

Here are advertising tricks you can use to promote your association’s job board, communicating that you’re one of the best places for employers to post niche jobs and applicants to apply for niche jobs:

• Blog posts – If your website has a blog, your job board deserves a post on it. Making an announcement in the form of a blog post is a smart way to let members know about it. Plus, it can serve as a way for users to find your job board when they’re using more general terms in search engines – they may not be searching for a specific position just yet.
• PPC ads – Investing in pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google is an effective way to grow your job board and monitor its growth as you build your marketing strategy.
• Press releases – Depending on your association’s industry and business practices, putting out a press release may be a productive way to launch your job board.
• Social media posts and ads – There’s no question as to whether you should be using social media to promote your job board. This strategy is a great way to inform your followers about your job board, giving them immediate updates about new listings and any changes along the way. Of course, social media is also an effective place for ads – Facebook and X ads can be particularly impactful.
• Flyers – Give influential members a supply of promotional flyers to hand out to friends, colleagues, and anyone else they think will be interested in your job board.

The goal of your job board marketing strategy is to have a brand and develop leads that pave the way for increased traffic and engagement, which ultimately creates more revenue. However, your job board marketing strategy doesn’t have to be complex to be effective. As you explore different advertising options, you’ll gradually craft the perfect marketing process for your association and industry.