How Monster.com has gotten serious about the content business

Margaret Magnarelli, executive editor at Money magazine, was hired as managing editor of Monster.com this past June.

Since then, she has been developing content on the website that would be of interest to people seeking jobs, looking to compete in a space with LinkedIn and The Muse, and hiring editorial staff.

Magnarelli had been at Money magazine since April 2006, first as a senior editor and then as an assistant managing editor before being promoted to executive editor earlier this year.  Magnarelli edited features and cover packages on a variety of personal finance topics, including Q&As with some of the decade’s top-performing fund managers, a narrative on people pursuing perfect credit scores, a strategy story on retirement draw down, and a list of best value crossover vehicles.

Monster’s content resides in a number of places. News and timely advice goes onto the Monster Blog; evergreen goes into Career Advice; early career goes into Career Start.

In early 2016, Monster is shifting to one hub for its editorial content. Its goal is to estructure the content to be able to be plugged in by tags wherever it’s relevant on-site (e.g. next to relevant job listings) or to spin up pages as needed (e.g. a gig economy hub if an advertiser is interested in sponsoring something like that).

Magnarelli spoke by email with Talking Biz News about Monster’s editorial content. What follows is an edited transcript. (Photo by Juliana Sohn.)

Why did Monster.com decide to add editorial content?

Actually, Monster has a rich history of producing content for job seekers. Don’t forget, we’re a Web original— the 454th URL ever registered! The Career Advice portion of the site, made up of basic evergreen job search articles and application material templates, gets nearly 7 million page views a month, with 78 percent of that traffic from search.

The focus on content had become siloed in different departments over the past few years. Then last year, Monster’s senior vice president of global communications and content Matt Anchin was determined that Monster could be bringing more value to job seekers through a strategic brand newsroom approach.

This was timed to something of a renaissance within the company — a corporate reorganization, a move to aggregate all the jobs listed on the Internet and the addition of new products to aid recruiters. Content is a great way to introduce people to today’s Monster and to make the experience more personal rather than transactional.

We’re not just offering jobs, we’re offering a platform that helps in getting those jobs — and encouragement during what’s often an emotional roller coaster. (See: our infographic describing the job search in emojis.)

What attracted you to the position?

While I was working on the launch of Money.com, I saw something really interesting happening in the world of web publishing. As pressure to make numbers increased and staff sizes decreased, traditional journalism outlets were beginning to accept content from companies.

I think it started with the “thought leadership” punditry stuff, and then it shifted into articles produced by brand newsrooms. At Money, we were taking content — from NerdWallet and Credit.com, among others — that was as good as what we were producing. This made me rethink the boundaries of our field.

Meanwhile, having learned from great bosses, I was ready to lead my own team. But I knew I wanted something where I could continue to practice the craft of service journalism, which is in my veins. I like working on content that helps people. So when I saw this job listing — on Monster, of course! — it clicked for me.

This was a chance to bring my traditional journalistic experiences into a brave new world of publishing, while still serving the consumer. Whereas at Money my mission was to help people achieve financial security, at Monster it’s to help people find better in their work lives.

Also, I especially love how all the people at Monster really care deeply about that mission.

How many journalists have you hired so far, and what are they covering?

Right now I have a team of three — previously of The Boston Globe, Patch.com and AOL — and I am hiring more. My No. 2 editor handles news related to careers and the labor market as well as evergreen content; I have an editor who manages content for early career, and another who covers the tech industry and writes general job seeker content.

I’m currently on the hunt for an editor/writer to cover the health care industry as well as a video producer and more. We also have a solid roster of freelancers as well.

Besides my official team, I’ve roped in people from all parts of the company — including a terrific senior product copywriter who’s a former women’s mag contributing editor. Plus, we’ve got an amazing social media team that produces engaging content for platforms including Quora, Instagram and Pinterest, along with a terrific design team that has helped us create infographics and videos.

I’m lucky to have an enthusiastic, dedicated and extremely creative group of people to work with. All told, we put out about 15 to 20 posts per week, with the same standards as some of the top newsrooms in the country.

How big do you plan to grow the editorial staff?

I assume we’ll be the size of Bloomberg by 2017.

Kidding, of course. But I am hoping to hire for three additional full-time positions this quarter.

How are you trying to get people to read the editorial content?

I’ve been directing my team to create content around designed for specific distribution and amplification methods. I’ve created a three-pronged approach that I call “How? Wow! Now.”

The “How” is straight service content, some of which is evergreen stuff being designed for organic pull and some of which is made for our e-newsletters. We work very closely with our SEO agency to look at what our opportunities are for search (things like whether you should send a job interview thank you on paper or email). For our CRM, we need utility that’s more click-y, like “This 15-minute exercise will change your career for the better in 2016.”

The “Now” is news reporting and news responsive, for use in content syndication, the newsletters, and to help power our PR engine. We were one of the first outlets to report on the company in Houston that gave all its employees $100,000 bonuses, for example. And we’re out with both macro explainers and consumer-oriented stories on BLS job report Fridays.

“Wow” is content created primarily for social media engagement, whether that’s infographics, quizzes (I loved this one to help you figure out how awkward you are in conference calls!), GIFs posts, or video. For posts we know have more social sharing value, we’ll have our design team work up some more fun stock-composite imagery to go with it.

Has Monster thought about syndicating the content?

Yes! We’ve been syndicating with Fortune for the last few months, and we’re in talks with a few other publishers. We have hundreds of newspaper partners who use Monster services, and I’ll be working this year to help them adopt our content. Of course, I’m open to talking to any other publishers or colleges who are interested in using our content!

Is all the content about job finding, or are you branching out to job-related topics?

Right now, we’re at about a 70 percent/30 percent mix of job search to broader career topics. That’s by nature of the fact that the majority of our audience is onsite, and people who go to Monster are typically looking for a job rather than managing their careers. That said, as we expand our syndication network, the mix may shift. But we’ll still lean more toward job search. It’s where our brand has the greatest authority and “permission to play.”

I noticed some content is based on Monster data. How often does that happen?

We’re trying to make it happen more! I think proprietary data offers the best prospect of enlightening information — our very own scoop, as it were. Examples include our lists of the top companies hiring now or our finding that the first Wednesday of January is the top job search day of the year.

But we’ve also discovered the value of creating our own data: For Veteran’s Day, for example, we created an exclusive Best Companies for Veterans list with Military.com by taking nominations from a panel of veteran hiring experts, then narrowing the list and ranking the companies based on six data points we collected from them.

Has Monster seen an increase in visits and page views related to the editorial content?

I’m proud to report that in 2015 we’ve seen page views on content rise by 23 percent to 63 million over 2014.

What’s been the biggest hurdle for you in starting up the editorial operation?

Coming into an organization that has a lot of content already under its belt is tricky! You have to figure out where the opportunities are to create new stuff without hurting the rank integrity of the old, especially when it comes to straight service.

Also I’m desperate to get my hands on some of the older stuff that still drives clicks but can seem kind of dated. We recently did a hack day where we dug into the top-performing 100 pages to change the art, title tags and links. I wish we could do more. But if we muck with it too much, we could really hurt the organic traffic those stories are getting.

That’s the tricky thing about the internet. With magazines, you can hide the covers showing 1990’s shag haircuts and peasant blouses in your office archives. On the web, they’re still findable!