Five ways to boost your employer brand using social media
If you use it correctly, social media can be a very powerful tool in communicating and boosting your employer brand.
89% of job seekers evaluate a company before applying for a job with them. Want to know how they’ll do this – your social media channels!
Here’s five things you can do to help boost your employer brand using social media:
1. Make sure your information is accurate
Let’s start with the basics. We know it sounds silly, but we’ve all done it – you’ve changed your email or phone number. You’ve changed your website to reflect the change but forgot to change it on the socials. It seems like a small detail, but it could put people off.
Someone could reach out on email to ask about roles and receive a bounce back. Or you’ve made a mistake in the website URL and visitors are sent to a ‘this site can’t be reached’ page. Neither of which give a great first impression.
While you’re checking your details are correct, look at any additional information you can add to the page bio. Many businesses use this section to speak to consumers and forget that it’s another area you can utilise to speak to potential employees.
2. Create a content calendar
Stumped for things to share? Try setting up a calendar for the year and putting in key events/awareness days, then look for industry-specific events or awareness days that relate to your values.
You can then start to plan content relating to your staff, such as birthdays and work anniversaries (workiversary – it’s a great term isn’t it). Try to remember the calendar when events and work activities are planned, the more organised you are, the easier it’ll become.
It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, just create a new calendar in Outlook or put the dates into a spreadsheet.
3. Enrol employee ambassadors
We’ve all got them, the company cheerleaders who will happily help when asked.
Ask your team whether anyone would feel comfortable taking part in an interview for social media and having their photograph taken. Depending on your available resources, you could create a short video, or simply use their words in a post with their accompanying photo. It’s important to use an actual staff member’s photo rather than uploading without an image or using stock because it’s more authentic.
Ask them questions like:
What would you say to someone looking to work for us?
What’s your favourite thing about working here?
What does your role involve?
Ideally you need a handful of willing employees (although more would be brilliant), so that it’s not always the same face that people see. If possible, we would recommend asking a variety of employees so that you get a range of perceptions and highlight the diversity in your team.
4. Share what’s important to your company culture
Think about what’s important to the culture of your company and make sure it has a presence on your socials. For example; if you’re passionate about supporting mental health, make sure you’re sharing posts relevant to this and acknowledging the appropriate awareness days.
Your social platforms should be a window to your organisation. You need to highlight what you stand for and how you operate – not just sell your services or products.
5. Show off your workplace
You’ve shown your people, shared your culture and celebrated relevant events and awareness days – we think it’s time to show where you work.
Not everyone has an office with a slide and video game area (just to clarify, we don’t have this either), but think about the parts of your workplace that are important to your existing employees. For example, do you provide tea and coffee? Have a dedicated staff down-time area? Beautiful views from your window? Photographs and videos can help job seekers to picture themselves working in your environment. If you’re offering a hybrid or working from home role this works too – ask staff to share some of their at-home offices, desk mascots and share how you manage to stay connected.
Author: Kim Draper