Employer Branding – How To Use Social Media For A Successful Employer Brand

What do companies like Starbucks, Google and Ikea have in common – other than being globally known brands? It might not be your first thought, but their common thread is actually that all 3 of these companies are using Employer Branding very successfully.

Over the past couple of months, the topic of Employer Branding has gained massive importance and this development shows no signs of stopping. Especially with COVID-19 tying us all to our homes, recruiting becomes a bigger challenge than ever before. But what if we told you that that’s exactly why building a strong Employer Brand online is now more important than ever? Therefore, it is absolutely inevitable to make 2020 the year of Employer Branding and hop right into creating your own Employer Branding Strategy.

Sounds like heaps of work for you? Well, it isn’t!

Fortunately, we live in the era of real-time communication and – above all – Social Media, making it incredibly quick and accessible to build a strong Employer Brand online.

Let’s get into it!

What is Employer Branding?

Your company is an amazing place to work. You know it. Your employees know it. But what about everybody else? Employer Branding makes sure that the knowledge of your company being a great employer isn’t lost, but rather spread to all the potential coworkers. Looking at the job market we have today, it’s quite evident that a simple “We offer our employees steaming hot coffee in the break room!” isn’t going to any person to think your company an extraordinary place to work. Much rather, it’s time to call in the big guns: Employer Branding.

Put simply, Employer Branding means that you create a company culture and environment that makes people look forward to their workday – and would ideally recommend to their friends. However, it doesn’t stop there. Employer Branding is how you showcase your company to desired job seekers. This can be done by openly displaying your businesses’ unique differentiators.

Now you might as: Why bother?

Here’s why: When making a decision on where to apply for a job, 84% of job seekers say the reputation of a company as an employer is important. (TalentNow, 2018) 

So, not only can actively focusing on Employer Branding help you increase the overall happiness and productivity in your company. It also helps you to acquire new talented professionals and stop throwing money down the drain for useless recruiting processes.

An example for the lowered expenditures is our own recruiting process. As well as unsolicited applications, we also get more feedback than average in comparison to fellow campaigners. Of course, we are not considering the low ad expenses here.

Source: Hokify statistics of weBOUND marketing

Or should we look at it from another perspective?

What is Social Media’s Role in Employer Branding?

So far, we have settled that …

1. Employer Branding can get you more qualified staff for less hassle, and
2. you should, therefore, make it a mission of yours to spread the message of your company as an amazing employer!

However, with COVID-19 demanding social distancing, it can be quite difficult to put the classic Employer Branding measures like conferences and factory tours to use. 

That is precisely where Social Media enters the game. Widely defined as a channel for mass-communication with easy access to the phone and laptop screens of hundred-thousands of professionals, Social Media is an unmissable tool when it comes to Employer Branding.

Simplify Recruiting

While undoubtedly your website is an important outlet to showcase your efforts as an employer, it will rarely ever provide the same reach volume as Social Media can. 

Here are 3 striking statistics to underline the importance of Social Media in Recruiting:

• 59% of all candidates use Social Media to research companies they contemplate applying to. (Talent Works, 2017)
• 48% of all candidates used Social Media in the search for their most recent job. (Talent Works, 2017)
• 49% of all professionals follow companies on Social Media to be updated on open positions. (LinkedIn, 2019) 

What this emphasizes is that leaving Social Media out of your Employer Branding Strategy is a big loss! Talented people ready to roll up their sleeves and work are right there, looking for opportunities. So why aren’t you?

Reputation Management

As we said before, Employer Branding is all about creating a favorable reputation for your company as a great employer. While you might not always be in the position to change what is written on recruiting-websites and magazines, having a Social Media Presence for your brand puts the reins back into your hands.

Through being your outlet – and your outlet only – Social Media enables you to create exactly the impression you have in mind for your company. It simply depends on how you use it.

Another plus is the interactivity of Social Media. Never before has it been easier to get in touch with other people. Or in this case, other talented professionals.

How to use Social Media for Employer Branding

First and foremost, it’s always important to have a clear intention in mind before you start. Don’t go into this thinking, because it’s Social Media it doesn’t require planning.

Here are some points you should take into consideration:

Showcase your Corporate Culture

People like to know what they are getting themselves into. So, naturally, any glimpse they can get into the day-to-day culture of a business will provide them with the security of knowing, they would enjoy being part of this.

That’s why, in the first line, you should focus on showcasing the work culture of your organization on Social Media. Post content on your Social Media channels that are designed to reflect your Employer Brand and show all the Why’s and What’s of working for your company.

Incorporate Employee Advocacy

Think about your company. Who knows best what it’s really like to work at this place? In turn, who can best present a thorough picture of your company as an employer? That’s right: The employees themselves!

As they are involved in all the daily processes, employees are the most trusted source of workplace evaluation. While messages conveyed from businesses sometimes lack in credibility, messages conveyed from a human, an employee, are usually greeted with wide-open arms. It’s, therefore, inevitable to incorporate Employee Advocacy in your Employer Brand. Give employers the possibility to express their true thoughts and feelings towards their employer and let them have their 15 minutes of fame.

This is also a great way to demonstrate your appreciation for your existing employees while promoting your Employer Brand to potential candidates at the same time. What is more, employees themselves are quite likely to have their own Social Media accounts. Whenever you can, encourage employees to share to their networks. This keeps your organization engaged, as well as increases reach and popularity of your company!

Make it Online!

Social distancing is the current credo, so naturally the Social Media world flourishes more than ever before. And while it might be evident that regular events can’t happen in person for the time being, you might consider holding them in the world wide web!

Platforms like Skype, Zoom or Microsoft Teams enable smaller, company-wide gatherings. For all those bigger events with up to hundreds of participants, consider holding conferences with the help of tools like GoToWebinar or UberConference.

All in all, this not only ensures your event management efforts won’t go to waste, but also create a wonderful opportunity to show how future-oriented and flexible your company actually is.

Get your own free guide here “Home Office, now what? – The Coronavirus Emergency Guide” for 27 pages of useful tips, tricks and tools!

19 Strategy Impulses Outstanding Employer Branding on Social Media

Throughout all of the following tips, always keep in mind one thing: Your Employer Brand on Social Media is to almost 90% based on your existing employees! This means, your employees are your capital and before hoping to create any positive branding, always make sure to keep them happy.

1. Set up a Careers Page

Your regular Feed is most of the times the first touchpoint a potential customer has with your brand. So, why not give your potential employees a first touchpoint solely dedicated to them as well?

Here, it depends on your target audience (of employees) which Social Network is the best one to go for: Either a LinkedIn Focus Page, a dedicated Facebook Page or Instagram Account are all possible. All of them give you the possibility to concentrate only on prospective candidates and share carefully selected content with them that makes working at your company look most desirably.

Pro tip: Feel free to set up a landing page in addition to or instead of the social media career page! You can always refer to these in order to offer interested parties curated information and to facilitate the application process.

2. Employee Account Takeover

Essentially, what people want to see is the real deal of working at an organization before applying. Therefore, letting employees take over the company accounts every now and then can do wonders to demonstrate what day-to-day business might look like. Ideally, use Instagram Stories for this to reach the full potential of a laid-back, casual approach!

Also, who doesn’t love following people around their day?

If it is a complex production shows significant company insights, you can also publish the video as an IGTV or YouTube video. If you want, you can also link this within your own website.

3. Employee Story Highlight

This one is especially viable for smaller companies with a manageable amount of employees! Create a dedicated Instagram Story Highlight for every employee in your organization. Not only can all the stories done by/on this person be saved in there, but it also helps to let potential candidates get to know the heart of your company before even meeting any of them in person. In the end, it feels like they’ve known you forever.

4. Employee Stories

For a change, this doesn’t refer to Instagram Stories. Employer Branding involves a lot of storytelling-aspects, and who could better tell a story than someone that’s actually lived it? When it comes to telling stories, tap into your existing employees for an authentic point of view.

What is great, is that Employee Stories can be shared in various shapes and sizes on basically any platform: A picture of your longest employee, talking about his company history on Instagram? Great! A Talking-Head Video of an employee talking about their employment process on LinkedIn? Even better!

Related Topic: My honest internship experience at weBOUND marketing

5. Follow My Day 

Along the lines of Employee Stories, Follow My Day Videos are a great way to show what daily business in your organization can look like. In order to give a thorough picture, consider making it a series and following around another person or position every week, month or so.

Remember: People love seeing what a CEO does, so don’t neglect them!

In addition, the CEO or significant employees with a lot of customer contact can also run their own social media channel to enable cross-posting. On the one hand, people prefer to interact with personal brands, on the other hand you can show everyday business life from a different perspective – possibly even a little more informally. This can also be advisable for employees if they are active in sales or customer service. With this you humanize the company all the more and increase the connection and interaction points.

6. Tag Employees

In all the efforts Employer Branding takes, don’t forget tagging the employee showcased in the piece of content. However, keep in mind that you should always clarify if they are okay with being tagged!

7. Employee Engagement

Sharing content revolving around your employees is great, but sometimes there might just be missing one thing to take credibility to the maximum: The Social Proof of said employees! This can be easily reached through making sure employees also engage with the content from your company or share it. After all, why would the like, comment or repost if their opinions don’t align with the company?

8. Unique Employee-Hashtag

While Electronic Arts is most famous for it, creating a unique Employee-Hashtag has proven to be a great strategy for a lot of companies. Here’s how to do it:

Create a universal (meaning, working on all of your platforms) Hashtag, that hasn’t been used before. Then, simply encourage your employees to use this Hashtag whenever they share something about work culture.

This will help to spread awareness about your corporate culture and connect the global workforce!

This is the more relevant, the larger or more dispersed the team is.

(Adobe Facebook, 2019)

9. Employee-Created Content

If you are blessed with creative, Social Media-savvy employees, use this advantage to all cost. With their consent, use content created by employees to its full avail.

If your employees are not, but would generally be willing to involve themselves more, we recommend internal or private training. in order to exploit the full potential as efficiently as possible.

At weBOUND marketing, we offer free discovery calls. You can find out what previous workshop participants said on our YouTube channel.

10. Employee Achievements

Sometimes, employees do amazing things, and yes, it’s great to celebrate that internally. But sometimes, celebrating individual successes with the following on Social Media does 2 more things: On the one hand, it shows the employee how much they are appreciated. On the other hand, though, it provides insight into the support an organization offers its people!

11. Company Events and Conferences

Generally speaking, not everything out of the ordinary is worth sharing about. But when it comes to big business events and conferences, people usually are very interested in these topics. 

So the next time an employee attends an event, send them with the mission of collecting some content as well in order to show that working at your company doesn’t only involve sitting at ones desk all day.

12. Internal Company Events

Working at a company – contrary to most beliefs – doesn’t only involve working. Sometimes, it also involves getting together with colleagues to discuss or celebrate something or simply wind-down from a strenuous work day. In these moments, be sure to snap a picture or two!

Remember: Bigger events, like a Christmas party, are great, but usually smaller outings, such as a Birthday Wishes for employees, are more authentic.

13. Daily Work

As we’ve already settled, anything out of the ordinary is great for Social Media content. However, when you think about it, what potential candidates actually want to know, is the work culture a company makes use of. Therefore, it is a great idea to share truthful insights into the daily work of your company in order to give of the right impression and attract the right employees for your organization. 

Get creative with this, you can do virtually anything: Instagram Stories or Posts, Facebook Posts, Videos, you name it!

14. Showcase the Workspace

Before starting a new job, wouldn’t you love to see your future work environment? Quite likely that’s a yes, so don’t hold back on pictures of the office, break room and more. Bonus points for taking the pictures in the morning hours – good lighting makes all rooms beam!

15. Yes, Home Office works too

People love seeing down-to-earth and realistic content. And currently, the most realistic thing is home office due to COVID-19. So don’t be afraid of clutter laying around and snap a picture of your (teams) home office spaces to showcase your flexibility.

16. Have some fun at the office – and show it!

We all need breaks and we all need some fun every now and then. So, when these careless moments of bottle flipping or bantering with colleagues happen at the office capture them for the most authentic type of content!

17. Employee Live Videos

Nobody knows better what working for a company like yours is like than your employees. Why not leverage on that? Encourage your followers to ask them questions, which they will be answering in a Live Video! For maximum exposure, make sure to announce the event a few days prior so that interested candidates show up.

18. Remind people you’re hiring

As mentioned above, 49% of all professionals follow companies on Social Media to be updated on open positions. (LinkedIn, 2019) 

Therefore, once you’re hiring, make sure to let your followers know what the open positions are, when & where they can apply and what you expect from a future employee.

19. Perks and Benefits

While you’re already at it, sometimes, it can also be advisable to highlight the perks and benefits your company has to offer in a elegant, non-braggy way. An even better approach could be to tell stories about how the perks and benefits you offer actively improved the lives of your employees.

20. Running out of content?

Whenever you find yourself in an uncreative mood, or the wide pool of content ideas has been exhausted, think back to the last job interviews you had. What kind of questions did candidates ask? Then, use these prompts as inspiration for future content!

Are you already using Social Media for your business’ Employer Branding? And if not, what are you still waiting for? Go ahead and lead your company to greater success!

Share your experience in the comments! We are dying to know!

Bettina Wittmann

When networking wizard Bettina is not working on the next big idea, then she is focusing on how to constantly improve workflows, and systemizing the “stuff that is not so much fun but needs to be done”. She believes in giving and that being kind gets you a long way.

You might spot her as a keynote speaker, a guest lecturer at universities, or a mentor at StartupLive or Greenstart by Climate and Energy Fonds Austria.

Bettina describes herself as a foodie, travel addict, and her team sees her as a true leader, who always encourages everyone she is working with.