If you’re working on monetizing your trade publication website or are looking for ways to diversify revenue streams, you may have considered putting a custom job board on your site. Or, perhaps you manage a stand-alone job board.

With custom job boards, you make money from employers who post open positions on your site. They’re a terrific addition to trade websites because they bring in a targeted, primed audience interested in the jobs your niche job board offers. They’re also great for you because job boards draw new traffic while encouraging repeat traffic.

Once you have your job board up and running, you need listings. Many providers “back fill” your listings at first so you don’t go live with an empty jobs board. But to have healthy long term revenue from your job board, you need to promote your job board and encourage employers to post their listings on your site. Here are 5 ways to encourage more employers to post on your job board.

1. Partner With a Respected Job Boards Provider

Before promoting your job board, your choice of job board software sets the stage for your success with job postings. Look for a provider that offers the following features:

• Job matching alerts
• Profile and resume management
• One click application
• Social media integration
• Mobile device friendliness
• Premium / featured job listing capability

Your job board should be customizable so that its look harmonizes with the overall design of your site.

2. Specialize: Niche Job Boards Are Easier to Sell

Particularly with trade websites, niche job boards are easier to sell listings on. For one thing, job seekers find that niche job boards simply provide better opportunities tailored to their needs. Targeted job boards usually include job openings that don’t show up on big job aggregator engines like Monster. Niche job boards also typically provide contact information for hiring managers, which is very valuable to job seekers. On Craigslist and big job aggregator sites, this information is rare, and makes job seekers feel as if their resume is disappearing into a black hole when they send it off. Promote your job board by showing potential employers how your site draws targeted traffic, and they’re more likely to list because they can reach just the type of people they’re looking for.

3. Use Press Releases Strategically

You’ll want to do a press release to promote your job board when it first goes live, and with various other job board milestones. For example, you could put out a press release once your 10,000th listing goes live, or when you partner with your job board provider to do a virtual career fair on your site. If you start offering premium or featured job listings for employers, you could write a press release around that. The periodic press release is like a steady drumbeat of reminders about your site and its services.

4. Create a Branded Experience Around Your Job Board With Video

If you have the resources to create a YouTube channel to promote your job board, you can use it to create a branded video experience. For example, you could create videos around the types of jobs that your job board advertises, using the same logos, colors, and other branding cues that your regular site and job board use. Each video should have descriptive text links and links back to your site. You could do a series of videos about jobs in your industry, or videos offering career advice to your site’s target audience. An employer will want to list on a site that shows effective outreach to targeted job applicants.

5. Cultivate Your Online Community to Show Employers Your Targeted Audience

Cultivating your site’s online community is playing the long game, but it’s very important for building and promoting your job board. Use analytics to measure traffic from various sources, and if you have demographic data on site visitors (from filling out newsletter sign-up forms, for example), you can show this to employers you want to list on your job board. Show them steadily increasing, targeted traffic, testimonials from employers that have listed with you and give examples of lively discussions that take place on your site. This shows employers that your site brings in exactly the people they want to hire.

Job boards themselves add value to your site, but you have to promote it just like the other site content. Make your job board the subject of the occasional social media posting to rekindle interest in it, and work on overall traffic development. Show employers that your site is the best site for them to post job listings.