5 Innovative Ways to Build Employer Brand
In today’s complex job market, employer branding is essential for all companies that want to attract and hire top talent. Convincing potential candidates in the value of working at your company is the core of every employer branding strategy, especially on social media.
Studies show that companies with strong employer brands attract at least 3.5 times more applicants per job. (Source)
Here are five innovative ways to build your employer brand and communicate it through digital channels:
1. Detect your uniqueness
What makes you different from other organizations? Drive to innovation, workplace flexibility or promoting leadership?
Answer these questions to define your message and then spread it.
2. Create a specific working culture
Employer branding isn’t only about prospective candidates – it is also about nurturing your current employees and developing a great working culture that they will portray through their own channels.
After all, your employees are the ones that really know what it is like to work at your organization. That’s why they make the best brand ambassadors.
You can create a great working culture by fostering a sense of community and connecting employees on a meaningful level through a variety of dedicated activities. You’ll quickly see how this kind of positive working culture will become attached to your employer brand.
3. Involve company employees
To continue the point above, you can inspire your employees to take an active role in promoting your organization’s employer brand.
Every time your employees are asked about what they do, they’re in a position to communicate your employer brand. Provide them with a clear message about how to express your employer brand to others.
You can also promote great stories about your top employees and encourage workers to share these stories and other content that you have created with their online industry communities.
When it comes to social networks, including company employees is essential to make any news resonate with the largest audience possible. For instance, if you plan to launch a special recruitment video, ask your employees to share the video through their social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This is an effective way to make sure the news gets lots of attention.
Try helping your team to develop their individual brands as well. If they have their own blogs you can encourage them to share positive stories about work and they most likely have social media accounts where they can share messages that help grow your employer brand, don’t be afraid to ask for their help.
4. Coordinate with marketing
Get in touch with your marketing team to come up with an efficient strategy for leveraging the potential of social networks for employer branding. More often than not, your goals and those of the marketing department go hand in hand. Fostering a strong and mutually beneficially collaboration is one of the best things you can do to grow your employer brand.
5. Use visuals to build your employer brand
Social media users love photos!
Photos drive more traffic and promote engagement with brands across the board, so why not use photos for communicating your employer brand as well?
Including images or video with the content you tweet or share to Facebook is an excellent way to increase engagement. You can also try using social networks that are visually based like Instagram or Pinterest.
With Pinterest, you can create a company board where you’ll pin content like photos from events, awards or workplace life. All this will give candidates a good sense of the internal life of your organization.
Building an employer brand online is easier than you think. All you need is a strategy, motivation and patience to see your branding efforts take off!
Tess Pajaron is a Community Manager at Open Colleges, an online learning provider based in Sydney, Australia. She has a background in Business Administration and Management.
