Publisher Spotlight: Jeremiah Owyang of Web-Strategist.com

It's time for another Publisher Spotlight, where we interview a distinguished Simply Hired Publisher to learn his or her tips and tricks for customization, promotion, and new uses. In this spotlight, we interviewed Jeremiah Owyang, who runs Web Strategy, about how he uses the Simply Hired Job-a-matic.

 

1. Tell us a little about your site/company/product.

I run a "Career Blog" which spans my career focus on Web Strategy: How companies connect with their customers using web technologies. I started this several years ago and was one of the first bloggers to cover social and big business. I kept at it, and it paid off. It's now an extension of my job as an Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group, where I'm one of the owners. I use it to glean research insights in the comments, build connections, and share my insights from my research.

2. Why did you decide to sign up with Job-a-matic?

I saw Guy Kawasaki do this, but I don't think he's using Job-a-matic now. I didn't want to put ads on my site, as I really want to add value to the readers, not hit them with ads. I want to be a trusted source of content and actually since I write for corporate web teams, they are often thinking about growing their careers. It's a good fit for my content, as I've discussed their career paths at great extent in my research and my frequent "on the move" posts where I discuss who's getting jobs in the industry.

3. Why did you pick Simply Hired over other options?

What? There are other options? Quick tell me who they are so I can cut a deal!

4. What have you found to be the biggest benefit of Job-a-matic?

It's turnkey, simple embed, and away we go. I configured it a few years ago, just once, and that's it. It's been running smoothly for years, and I get a check in the mail every month. At first it was beer money, and now it's keg money! Boo yeah!

5. Do you have any customization to your board? If so, please describe.

I had a developer adjust the CSS so it would match my style, which was key to have a smooth experience.

6. What is the biggest benefit of Job-a-matic for your audience?

This is great content, which fits my audience's career-minded objectives at work and their next jobs.

7. How do you promote your Job-a-matic board?

Oh yeah, this is a great question. An integrated perspective is key: I tweet out when new jobs are here to my near 100,000 followers on Twitter, and as I do regular "on the move" series shouting out who got jobs, I point to the job board, aligning the content. As you might imagine, my promotion of the job board attracts recruiters who know I have a large--but targeted--audience of web, business, and marketing professionals.

8. What kind of promotion do you give job listings posted to your board?

It's featured above the fold on my right hand column. I'm planning a redesign soon, and it will receive similar levels of awareness.

9. To what do you owe the success of your job board?

It took some patience, this isn't something that you can turn on and expect to be successful. You have to provide people with a reason to come to your site on a frequent basis and do integrated marketing.

10. If you could pass along a single piece of advice to a new Job-a-matic publisher, what would it be?

Build compelling content on a weekly basis (I've over 2,500 posts written nearly all by me) and be consistent. This gives people a reason to come back.

11. For fun, what do you do with the income generated from your Job-a-matic account?

Sooth my patient and beautiful wife with fancy gifts in exchange for my incessant blogging. Wait what? I could use the money for myself?

 

Comments

[D]

Exactly what part of his site qualifies as a job board? I've looked everywhere and see nothing except a few links on the side. It would be great if you could profile a real job site.

[Eric]

I must say I've noticed an extreme drop in traffic ever since Google has rolled out the remainder of their Panda updates. My job-a-matic site was seeing anywhere from 500-1000 hits a day, and has dropped to under 100 for the entire month of April. Now it's treading water at around 20 hits per day.

This is extremely concerning and I've seen the same drop across the board for all of my websites. I guess the new SEO rules simply hate jobamatic websites.

What does Simply Hired plan to do about this? Do you have any suggestions?

[Kelly]

I came across this site. I'm using a competitor of Jobamatic, but thinking of switching. Can anyone (or Jobamatic) comment on SEO?