How can you use social media to support your employer brand?

In my experience this is one area that organizations do not value enough. Your employees are your biggest influencers and advocates and if they do not believe in the EVP that helps tell your brand story, then how will your customers?

Without clear and through your organization communicated values even your already employees do not know your EVP. Before going all-in in social media, make sure your EVP is clearly communicated and REAL. Branding your employer brand to something it is not, is a huge mistake which will backfire sooner or later.

Social media is a powerful tool for supporting employer brands. By sharing authentic and engaging content, you can showcase your company culture, values, and benefits to potential and current employees. This can be done by sharing employee stories, because people are more likely to be interested in working for a company if they can see themselves reflected in the employees. In addition sharing contents that show off your company values; and sharing information about salaries, benefits, and career development opportunities. All this will let potential candidates get a feel of what it's like to be part of your team and what to expect.

It is so important that company's utilise their social media profiles. Especially on platforms like this (LinkedIn). Keep it up to date and content should be shared regularly on their stories/posts. Authentic content from current employees can really make all the difference to potential candidates. Culture is increasingly one of the most important values in any company. Sharing photos from team-building events, offsites or 'a day in the life' type posts can be beneficial. Showing 'real' commitment to diversity and inclusion. Sharing success stories of changes implemented and it's impact. Highlighting the diverse backgrounds and experiences of employees is something I know many look for.

Upon joining Devsinc, the blank slate of its social media stood as an open invitation to craft a vibrant employer brand. I built a team from scratch, and together we chose authenticity over polish, scripting original content, and casting our own team in videos. This personal touch transformed our social pages from mere corporate facades to lively showcases of our culture, making each post a mirror to our collective ethos. Through this journey, I've learned that personalization isn’t just a strategy, but a canvas for meaningful connections, turning employees into brand ambassadors and social media into a community hub.

A big part of the strategy is creating a content framework. The framework helps to align the content to your goals and objectives and can be vital to staying on track. There's so much content out there, and so many new themes and trends to try, but not all will align with your goals, and you don't want to deplete your resources on content that won't get to where you're trying to go.

I agree you should also Showcase the company’s culture: Use social media platforms to share photos, videos, and stories that give a glimpse into your company's culture, values, and work environment. This helps potential candidates understand what it's like to work at your organization and attracts those who align with your culture.

There's nothing worse than a schizophrenic company social media presence. Decide upon your company brand guidelines Define your tone of voice Develop templates for content Focus on platforms where your crowd hangs out

Your social media strategy must align to any existing digital marketing strategy that is being implemented across your business - please ensure that you connect with your local social media team before starting any pre-work. To add context here, it is likely that your marketing team have already built a social media marketing plan, by connecting with them you they should be able to identify opportunities, resource requirements and moments in time where your EVP content/strategy can be added to the editorial calendar that they are following. Taking this action also ensures that you are aligning teams from across the business and supporting each other accordingly.

One thing I've found lends integrity and awareness to my company's brand is to make sure to not sell on LinkedIn. I can share thought leadership blogs, photos of team members having a fun evening, and so on, but if my readers get a whiff that I want them to buy something, the credibility goes out the window. For brand awareness to work, you have to engage and attract an audience, not put them on the spot for having to say yes or no to what your company sells.

Being authentic is very essential in everything we do. Make sure that you’re adding value to them and you engage your team members with things that they value and can improve their lives. When we choose valuable information and that can have an impact on their lives then we can get them engaged and motivated.

Show your values and back up that you are committed to them. It sounds easy, but it’s harder than you think. However, you run a real risk if you say you stand for things, but then don’t show you really mean it. So when you’re developing an EVO, make sure these are things you truly believe in, and that you are ready to show the world you are walking the walk instead of talking the talk.

Authentic content comes with empowering your employees, supporting their projets and helping them develop their own, unique voice. I've found that the best employer brand strategies come to life when the brand aligns its interests with those of their employees. This means, not only requesting that they promote your brand, business & products but also encouraging them to pursue their own professional interests and grow their own audience - this kind of win-win situation helps build more trust and yield higher results over the long term

Brands should not just create their own employer brand content aligning to their EVP but, even more importantly, engage with current employees’ social content to encourage them sharing and to amplify their positive experiences to a broader audience. People trust other people more than brand accounts so amplifying the voices of employees directly is a great way to build the employer brand.

Do not be afraid to share content that isn't yours! Sharing industry best practices and news from other outlets shows that you are in touch with your industry and willing to learn and grow from others.

In HR and talent acquisition, think of yourself as a marketer. Your product? The company culture you’ve built. Don’t obsess over beating competitors on social metrics; instead, focus on showcasing what makes your Employer Value Proposition unique. Social recruiting is a long term strategy and will require patience. Use social listening for real-time feedback and A/B testing to refine your message. Optimizing your metrics is the real key to boosting engagement and if you keep up constantly refining, tailoring your content to what different audience segments want, your EB awareness on social will grow and eventually may just jumpstart your employee advocacy efforts if they are not taking off as you’d like or if you’re just starting out.

A/B testing and optimising future social media content is the key to success for social media marketing. This could be as simple as testing which type of content performs strongest - employee quotes or 'behind-the-scenes' content for example. Once you monitor and optimise the content that you are publishing you should see stronger results, ensure that you always approach social media marketing with a growth mindset so that you remain agile in making tweaks to your strategy to maintain momentum over time.

Your employees' social media reach will often dwarf your brand's reach. This can make it easy to get caught up in gaudy metrics. But be sure to monitor performance after the initial hype has gone down. Are people still sharing and is the content still being engaged with after the novelty has worn off. If they aren't, you may have a problem.

Monitor, optimize, and listen to your target audience! Social media content strategy must be agile and the focus should not be only on the corporate account but also engaging, commenting, resharing the employees' content. Focusing on the people because they bring added value to the products & services. Emotional aspects are essentials, however it is difficult to analyse with simple KPIs.

Testing, testing and more testing. Then analyze those results, learn from them and apply your findings to further posts/testing.

Companies want to hire people with disabilities. They bring a perspective that can't be learned in school or on the job. And they won't be able to recruit and hire people with disabilities if their social media activities aren't accessible. This means captioning videos, describing images, using #PascalCase in hashtags by capitalizing the first letter of each word, and considering color contrast. It's so easy to make content accessible once you know what to do. No company would publish the first draft of an article, right? Our English teachers taught us to revise and edit our drafts. Content is incomplete if it's not accessible.

2 easy ways: Showcasing Expertise - Share industry knowledge and thought leadership. Storytelling - Share stories of employee success and growth.

As the expert, make it easy for people to share on their own platforms. When you have a big campaign launching or want to boost employee morale with great press coverage, here are 2 simple ways to encourage more participation on social media: 1. Write multiple copy options and share them in a document internally to relieve the pressure from those who may not feel completely comfortable posting their own thoughts/comments. 2. Encourage a simple 'repost' or 'like' as it can go a long way in boosting content. Building momentum for engaged employees is no easy feat, but it's possible. It starts with a celebratory culture and support and encouragement from leadership.

Focus much more of your content on culture and your people and far less on posting job openings. People will find the jobs on their own--what they have a harder time finding is information on what it's like to work at your company. Or, what kind of people work at your company.

Encourage employee advocacy on social platforms, especially LinkedIn. This is a quick and easy way to increase visibility and reach. Leverage the 'My Company' section of your LinkedIn company page to provide pre-written content employees can share in seconds on their own LinkedIn feed.