Recently my friend, Steve Bellach from Bottomline Marketing, and I did a webinar on employer branding. Employer brand is just like your customer brand, but rather than focused on customers, it’s focused on potential candidates out there in the world and current employees. It can also boost your customer brand as customers gain insight into who your company really is and what it represents.
If you missed the webinar, you can watch it here. Steve provided a bunch of tips for going through the process of developing your brand, and I provided a bunch of tips for ensuring the brand you put “out there” matches what’s actually happening in your organization.
It got me thinking about how you might highlight your brand on social media to attract potential candidates (and customers). So I asked Sameen, our talented HR Assistant, to develop a list for you.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to do it all on your own. The more employees involved, the better!
Here are employer branding ideas for social media
- Pictures of employees with their favorite quote or hobby. Anything to help people get to know your workforce.
- Announcements about promotions, new hires, work anniversaries, and other exciting happenings.
- Information about perks and benefits via video, gifs, or pictures. One by one, highlight your leadership development program, your company-wide subscription to LinkedIn Learning, your retirement programs, your flex work policy, and more.
- Announcements of employee, team, and company accomplishments. Celebrate hitting goals, overcoming challenges, or receiving awards.
- Client case studies, testimonials, and even short conversations with them about their own areas of expertise.
- Share news articles about your clients, and reshare some of their social media posts. Also congratulate them on their wins (even when you had nothing to do with them).
- Photos of the workspace or a video tour. Highlight your break room, conference room, offices, worksites, etc. These days you could include photos of willing employees working from home.
- Pictures and videos of company events. You might share holiday parties, training events, staff meetings… the list is endless.
- Photos and videos of the team giving back to the community. Participating in clean-ups, walk-a-thons, and other community service is a great way to promote your brand during the event and online during and after.
- Quotes, blog posts or videos from employees discussing their favorite thing about working there.
- Quotes, blog posts or videos from leaders and employees regarding the company core values and how they personally live them at work each day.
- Quotes, blog posts or videos from leaders regarding ways in which the company as a whole demonstrates its core values.
- Socially responsible comments on topics such as equity and inclusion. For example, “We applaud our local mayor today for her speech on creating more equity in local government jobs. We look forward to seeing her plan unfold.” Or, “We’re looking forward to the local Pride parade this Saturday! Our workforce will be there in droves – see you there!” If you’re comfortable with it, feel free to go deeper and more meaningful by commenting on laws, political figures, and social movements.
More employer branding ideas for social media
- Support and promote other organizations who contribute to a greater cause or movement related to your industry, mission, or core values.
- Links to articles and events related to your industry.
- Videos and short posts about how the company maintains its company culture and addresses hiccups, challenges and problems.
- Information about internal company happenings. Consider it a company-wide newsletter, only its out there for all your potential top candidates to see.
- Information about initiatives the organization is engaging in and the progress being made, such as equity and inclusion, creating a new product or service, or increasing market share or customer satisfaction ratings.
- Updates about current job openings. Be sure to highlight tasks, how the job impacts you or your clients, benefits, and more. You might also provide continuous updates about how the hunt for new talent is going. (e.g., “We’ve already received 100 applications for this role! We’re excited you’re excited!”)
- Job description videos to bring the job to life. Consider recruiting employees already in that role to talk about what they do, or managers to talk about how the team runs or why it’s a great place to work.
- Information for potential candidates about the recruiting and interviewing process. Include who they might meet with, what happens next, etc.
- Information about your VIP onboarding process. You could even acknowledge and celebrate the milestones your new hires hit to bring onboarding to life for outsiders.
- Videos of your employees delivering a testimonial about your product or service – only if they actually use it and like it of course.
- Post messages related to various holidays throughout the year, and not just the mainstream ones. Warning: Be sure you have a full understanding of what the holiday you’re posting about represents before doing so. If you’re going to do it, do it right.
- Create a unique hashtag to connect messaging to your company – Relativity, for example, uses #ActOnIt to highlight their initiatives in the tech space.
- Join other trending hashtags – Ibotta joined a trending hashtag on #NationalCatDay to share their mutual love for their feline friends with this Facebook post. On a day like this, you could also encourage cat-owning employees to post pictures of themselves with their cats using the cat day hashtag alongside your company’s hashtag.
- If you have positive employee survey results, such as a 98% net promoter score (NPS), then celebrate it. If your survey platform creates word clouds for open-ended questions, such as, “What’s your favorite thing about working here?” post a picture of them. Also post a little on opportunities for improvement and what you’re doing to fix them.
Whew! That’s a lot of ideas. I think Sameen just created a list of responsibilities for herself.
Sincerely,
Catherine & The Civility Partners Team
