AR&D Reinventing Local Media

Lots of local sites make the mistake of trying to get into the “help wanted” business by trying to become the local Monster.com. This is usually a bad idea. There are some limited success stories, but for the most part, Monster is still - well - the monster in the room. On the other hand, you can offer what Monster doesn’t offer - a chance for great local networking, blogs and advice.

Right now, what employment-seekers need is to network. Yes - they’re looking for job leads. In October, the time spent on job search sites jumped 13% from the same month a year ago, “while the total number of job-site pages viewed rose 20% in the same period, according to comScore Inc,” writes the Wall Street Journal.

But these sites don’t know your town and city. What you can offer is talk and networking about the jobs special to your city. You can launch verticals in your market that are specific to your market. Find local employment gurus and give them free space to give advice. Outplacement firms would be a great advertising target for a site like this. Hold a meetup to launch the site. Get people talking with each other!

Have forums for discussion and lots of FREE job postings. The point isn’t the postings, mind you - it’s the discussion about the market and the advice each person can give to their fellow job-seeker. You can’t out-Monster Monster. But you can Meta-Monster. That is - you can be the local site where people talk about jobs. And because it’s local, you can own the discussion. All the more reason for local advertisers to be with you. As Terry says, our first mission is to enable local commerce. Local commerce starts with local employees.