How to Grow Your Job Board with Webflow and Memberstack

Job boards can be a thriving online business model, and creating one is now easier than ever with the power of platforms like Webflow and Memberstack. These tools are built with designers and developers in mind, and offer a host of features that simplify the process and optimize the output. This blog post will guide you through the process of using these platforms to launch, optimize, and grow your job board.

We're assuming you have your job board built but if you haven't, this blog post on how to build a job board with Webflow and Memberstack might help! 

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How to Market Your Job Board

SEO Optimization

The core of online visibility lies in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). With Webflow, you can easily manage meta tags, alt text, and other SEO-friendly elements. Additionally, Webflow’s CMS allows for dynamic SEO settings. By creating a template for your SEO tags, you ensure that each new job post is SEO optimized automatically.

SEO Optimization comes in many forms. Oftentimes, this amounts to an arms race between search engines looking to provide better information to users and content providers looking to position themselves more optimally than their competitors. Here are a couple broad categories  for you to start thinking about: 

Dynamic SEO and Open Graph settings: SEO involves creating unique titles, descriptions, and Open Graph content for each page. With Webflow, you can create a dynamic template for your SEO tags, and Webflow will automatically generate SEO-friendly content for each job post on your board.

Keyword Optimization: The key to SEO lies in understanding what your target audience are searching for and using the right keywords. With Webflow, you can integrate keyword-specific content into your job listings. This helps search engines understand your content and increases the chance of ranking higher in search results.

URL Structures: A clean, concise URL that includes relevant keywords is another positive ranking factor. Webflow allows you to customize your URL structures, making them SEO-friendly.

Site Loading Speed: Page loading speed is a crucial SEO factor. Webflow is known for its robust performance and quick load times, helping you retain users and rank higher in search results. (Things like image and video compressing, enabling browser caching are ways to help your site speed). 

Mobile Optimization: As Google prioritizes mobile-friendly sites, it's important to ensure your job board performs well on mobile devices. Webflow is designed to create responsive websites, providing a great user experience across all devices.

For a quick overview of how to best optimize your site for mobile, check out this blog post from Webflow.  

CMS API: Webflow's CMS API allows you to programmatically add, update, or delete items from your collections. This feature is particularly useful when optimizing SEO for large job boards with frequent listing updates.

Analytics: Understanding how users interact with your job board can provide valuable insights for your SEO strategy. Webflow's in-built analytics tool provides critical data, such as bounce rates, average session durations, and user demographics, helping you make informed decisions.

Socials

Leverage the power of social media to reach a wider audience. Creating engaging social media content that highlights your job posts and promotes your brand will drive traffic to your job board.

Twitter - Post new job listings, create infographics in Canva that show a snapshot of the main listing benefits to encite job seekers!

Starting a Monthly Newsletter

Sending out a monthly newsletter is a great way to keep your users engaged and informed. It can include featured job postings, tips for job seekers, and relevant industry news. Webflow and Memberstack both offer easy integrations with email marketing platforms for this purpose.

A good newsletter for a job board should include the following elements:

1. Curated Job Listings: The most important part of your newsletter should be a selection of the newest, most relevant job listings. Try to personalize this as much as possible to the recipient's job interests and skills.

2. Success Stories: Share testimonials or success stories from job seekers who have found employment through your job board. This not only inspires confidence in your service but also creates a sense of community.

3. Job Search Tips: Include practical advice on job search strategies, CV writing, interview skills, and more. This adds value to your subscribers and positions you as an authority in the field.

4. Industry News and Trends: Stay relevant by sharing updates or news from the industries your job board covers. This could be anything from technological advancements, changes in labor laws, to emergent job roles.

5. Call to Action: Encourage subscribers to visit your job board, apply to jobs, or share your newsletter with friends who are job searching.

For a quick overview of how you can use your Memberstack email list to get new users for your site, visit this walkthrough from our help center

Growing a Community

A job board is more than just a platform to post and apply for jobs – it's a community. Foster this community by engaging with your users, soliciting their feedback, and offering relevant resources.

You could use a platform like Slack or Circle and have different channels like job seeking support, advice, specific channels for different job industries (design, development, marketing roles etc). Make or Zapier are great places to build these communities – especially because they contain native integrations with both Slack and Memberstack.

How to Get Job Listings

Reach Out to Employers

Proactively reach out to employers in your niche and invite them to post their job listings on your board. Highlight the benefits they stand to gain by using your platform, such as reaching a larger, more targeted audience.

There are a couple strategies for getting more jobs on your site. The goal should always be to convey the value of your service to potential employers, and then to provide a structure through which they can reliably find good candidates. Some of these strategies might be: 

Offer Free Listings: Initially, to encourage employers to list their jobs on your site, you might offer free job listings. This can help build your reputation and increase your site's traffic, which can be leveraged later when you transition to paid listings. 

For more “premium” listings, or if you want to offer special services in addition to the listing themselves, we encourage you to offer different tiers of membership. Memberstack offers an easy way to do this. For a tutorial, check out this page. 

Direct Outreach: Start by identifying companies in the industry or niche that your job board serves. Reach out to these companies directly via email or LinkedIn, explaining the benefits of listing on your job board and the potential exposure they could gain.

Network at Industry Events: Participating in industry-related events, whether in person or virtually, can provide you with opportunities to connect with potential employers.

Leverage Existing Relationships: If you have previous relationships within the industry, now is the time to leverage them. Ask for introductions to HR teams and hiring managers who might be interested in posting their job listings on your board.

Develop a Simple Job Posting Process 

If getting job postings on your site is a challenge for potential employers, they are less likely to make the effort to involve your job board. Simplify the posting process! Make it as simple as possible for employers to post jobs. Webflow and Memberstack can help you create an intuitive interface and a straightforward job posting process.

Also, consider offering various job posting packages tailored to different needs. For example, you could offer a single job posting, a package of multiple job postings, or a subscription for unlimited job postings. Meeting your customers where they are is a great way to convince them of your unique value proposition. 

How to Add Value to Both Companies and Job Seekers

The success of your job board lies in its ability to serve both job seekers and employers effectively. Ensure your platform is user-friendly, efficient, and reliable. Provide resources and tools that simplify the job search and application process for job seekers, and offer employers effective tools for managing and promoting their listings.

Some more unique tools you might include could be:

• AI-based writing assistants that use information from the job posting to optimize the information users add to their resumes. 
• Pre-selected contact points that users can send application follow-up emails to. 

Collect Job Post Analytics

Employers are always looking for new ways to track and measure the reach of open job listings they have available. Use Webflow and Memberstack’s analytics capabilities to monitor the performance of your job board. Track key metrics such as the number of job posts, applications, user engagement, and website traffic. Use these insights to continually optimize your platform.

There are many built-in integrations that have traditionally been used with Webflow sites. Some of the most common can be found below. 

Provide Industry-Specific Resources

One way to add value for both parties is to offer relevant, industry-specific resources. For job seekers, this could include articles on crafting resumes and cover letters, tips for interviewing in the specific industry, or even up-to-date news and trends about the industry. 

Companies, might appreciate resources such as tips for creating compelling job descriptions, techniques for efficient candidate screening, or advice on fostering a healthy company culture.

By acting as a hub for useful information, your job board can become more than just a listing service. It can be a go-to resource that users trust and rely on, leading to increased traffic, engagement, and ultimately more successful job placements.

Introduce Advanced Search and Filtering Options

To add more value to your job board, consider implementing advanced search and filtering options. For job seekers, this can significantly simplify the job hunting process. They can filter job listings based on different parameters such as job type (full-time, part-time, freelance, etc.), location, experience level, salary range, and more.

For employers, these features can help attract more qualified candidates. If a job seeker can find a listing that perfectly matches their qualifications and expectations through filters, they are more likely to apply, leading to higher quality applications for the employer.

Templates and Examples 

Memberstack’s Premium Job Board Template

https://www.memberstack.com/webflow-templates/premium-job-board

At Memberstack, our goal is to provide you with out-of-the-box solutions for your online business so that you can spend your time focusing on the things that matter. This premium job board template is no exception. We’ve included all of the features that you might need to get your site up and running. This includes features like:

• In-platform DMs/chats

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• Custom member dashboards (managed by Memberstack, of course)
• Job search capabilities for applicants
• Talent search for companies
• The ability to feature applicants

• The ability to automate job postings
• And an in-platform portfolio viewer. 

We have lso included all of the infrastructure needed to monetize this job board from the start – both from paid featured status (for applicants) and from paid talent search (from companies). 

As with all Memberstack premium templates), this template comes with the full Webflow project, all related Make.com scenarios, a 15 video tutorial series, private Slack group, and a Memberstack template ID for the design of the site. The entire team at Memberstack is excited to support you as you begin to grow your job board business! 

Case Study: Unicorn Factory (Built with Memberstack and Webflow) 

An example of a fantastic Job Board successfully built using Webflow and Memberstack is Unicorn Factory by Conor Finlayson. This New Zealand based freelancer platform defined its niche, found relevant job listings, and provides a huge variety of services to job seekers in New Zealand.  

"The only real thing that I could do is send people Stripe Checkout links. People just wouldn't pay, you know, because there's a huge barrier in the overalluser experience.

With Memberstack, I could embed that entire experience, and easily give people additional perks - like a premium job board - for a membership fee. That solved the problem immediately. Being able to easily charge money, I could also add more value to my paying community members."

Take a look at the anatomy of Unicorn Factory. It's two-sided, meaning people looking to hire freelancers and freelancers looking for work are both able to derive value from the site. They also offer samples of work previously done by freelancers on their site and a selection of packaged services that companies can purchase (as opposed to just hiring a freelancer to do general work). This is a strong example of the kinds of things job board can do to distinguish themselves. 

"The foundation tools are Webflow to build the website, and Airtable which is my database tool.Then I use Make and Zapier to connect those together.

I use Jetboost for search and filtering, Stripe for payments, Flowbase for fast Webflow builds, I send all of my market emails with MailerSend and Circle to host my community."

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Conclusion

Webflow and Memberstack provide features that make building and managing a job board easier. From Webflow's dynamic SEO settings and CMS to Memberstack’s user-friendly dashboards, these platforms offer everything you need to launch and grow a successful job board.

As with any website, the design and information choices you make will play into how you are perceived by both job seekers and employers. The goal is to create a platform that not only connects job seekers with employers but also makes the process more efficient and effective for both parties by continuously seeking ways to add value, your job board can stand out in a competitive marketplace.