By Carl Chapman | cec search, llc | managing partner, founder

Why do you blog?

I blog as part of my strategic goal to increase my presence on the web, improve my position in organic searches for important keywords to my market niche, and as a way of building a trusted reputation for integrity and expertise in my industry.

How much blogging has impacted your business/company’s recruiting brand?

Not sure that I can measure it, what I say would be a WAG. I think it should be major, and hope that it is positive.

My blogging along with a steady application of solid, white hat SEO principles has helped drive my website to over 230 first page listings and over 50 #1 placements in major search engines for very competitive keyword phrases associated with my particular niche. Being listed #1 so many times has given our small company the appearance of a much larger group.

Monetarily, the blog has helped drive, directly, well over $50K in business and another $120K in yet to be filled contracts since the beginning of this year. This is a measure of the direct impact to just my search firm.

The performance of CEC Search, as driven by the blog, has also resulted in my starting another venture – SEO for search firms and small businesses at Recruiting-USA.com. We provide web services and and SEO for search firms and offer a unique perspective – the ability to understand our client’s business from the inside out and translate their financial objectives into specific web based SEO strategies. That business is growing quickly too – all because of our success with CEC Search and the “Confessions of an Executive Restaurant Recruiter” blog.

What do you prefer to blog about?

I really prefer to blog about whatever topic seems appropriate given the state of current events and the happenings within my industry.

Where do you receive your inspiration from?

Aside from great sermons and Biblical teachings – I get it from reading great blog posts, news articles, industry publications, things that happen around my house, stuff my kids and wife do, and conversations that I have with some of the fantastic folks I have met in the recruit-o-sphere in the past year.

Who do you write your blog for?

My blog is targeted toward two segments job seekers (who I would like to become candidates) and employers (who I would like to become clients.)

When do you find the time to blog?

I consider blogging as a money making activity so I make time to blog and prioritize it only behind items that have a more pressing deadline. If things get so busy that I can’t blog, I will hire someone to create content for me. It is that important.

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By Carl Chapman, Principle, CEC Search, Author, “Confessions of a Restaurant Recruiter”

Funny thing happened this morning; it’s a long an involved story so it may take some time for me to weave the tale and have it make sense for you;. but here goes.

There is an ongoing buzz in the recruiting blogopshere which I think was started by Dave Mendoza with his series of articles on the Influence of Bloggers on the Recruitment Industry;. Quite a few folks have commented on the premise both on their own blogs and on recruiting.com:  Harry Joiner, who write Marketing Headhunter.com, says that no blog equals no sale. Matt Martone of Job | Searchmarketing writes The night the lights went out; an experiment in blogger influence, Martin Snyder of Main Sequence dukes it out with Animal, Jim Durbin of Stlrecruiting.com has give and take on a number of blogs on this topic, Recruiting Animal who has blogs Recruiting Animal and Recruiting Bloggers, seems to make the claim that our community is too small to have much influence. Seems like there is an argument about how our 300 (plus or minus) recruiting focused blogs don’t have much influence in the industry. Heck, there is some question about whether or not my blog even counts as a blog in the recruiting industry, as Recruiting Animal and I have had some tongue-in-cheek dialogue about that in comments on recruiting.com.

Now here is where it gets somewhat interesting. I got an email from one of my readers, we’ll call him "Mike." Mike sent me a note complimenting me on my blog and asking if I knew of any restaurant chains for sale. Mike just happens to be a big wheel at a group that invests in and buys restaurants and restaurant chains [among other things.] In fact their main office is in New York near Wall St. and they have hundreds of restaurant properties world wide.

After sending him an initial email response and getting a note back from him detailing sort of what his group is looking for, I had an idea. In between my first note and his return email I had read an article on Jason Alba’s (no relation to Jessica) JibberJobber Blog about "Chicken Lists" and it got me to thinking. See I don’t really have a chicken list. After starting in my very first recruiting role with MRI, I had spoken to and recruited about 20 CEO’s of various sized companies. In fact when we added up potential fees for their placement, my boss got the idea that restaurant recruiting might just be lucrative; but I digress. Anyway, I decided that since I wasn’t afraid to call Mike that I might just as well do it; now! So I did just that. Mike and I had a great conversation and I gave him an idea for investment into a chain of restaurant properties not far from his office. Both Mike and I were happy to make the other’s acquaintance and I’m sure that we will be doing business in the future.

Now, if that isn’t influence, then I’m not sure what is. How would I measure it? Well that’s a different matter altogether. But It would say it is significant just from a relationship standpoint.