Following on from our last post, we are continuing with advice on employer brand promotion, this time looking at your social media strategy. 54% of Gen-X job seekers visit the company’s social media channels to evaluate the employer brand, so if you are missing the mark here you could lose out on those all-important candidate applications!
Choosing your social channels
It costs nothing to have an organic presence across social media, so if you have the time to share quality content across multiple channels then you may expand your opportunities to engage wider audiences. That said, we would always advise a quality over quantity approach, it’s far better to post content to fewer more relevant channels for your employer brand than spread yourself to thin. So which are right for you? LinkedIn is non-negotiable. As a professional network it is always going to be one of the most relevant channels for employer brand promotion and candidate attraction / engagement. Following this you’ll want to consider Instagram (Great for visual content and showcasing your culture), X (Twitter – great for real time updates, events, and trending topics), Facebook (holding strong as a favourite platform for Gen X), TikTok (short form video content, a favourite for Gen Z) and YouTube (The place for your long form video content). Platforms like Hootsuite can help you post content across multiple channels, but different platforms often require different approaches when it comes to formatting posts, visual dimensions, hashtags, targeting so beware of blind posting and aim to use a more considered approach.
Corporate vs employer brand
One of the biggest debates when looking at social media for your employer brand. Are you using each platform to post both corporate and employer brand content? Should you create a standalone employer brand social profile? For us boils down to a couple of things: Audiences and Content. If you have used persona mapping to define audiences for your corporate brand, you need to look at this for the employer brand too – mapping out your employee and candidate demographic. If the two align closely then you may see a benefit from sharing employer brand content within an existing corporate social channel. However, in most cases these two audiences are totally different so there is a huge argument for creating standalone employer brand socials. The same goes with content. Will potential candidates be engaged by the posts you share to your corporate socials? Does the volume of your corporate content overshadow the employer brand updates you are sharing? Could employer brand content even compromise your corporate brand (e.g. do you want to share posts about your employees cutting loose at a social event on a platform where customers may be visiting to vent frustrations
Content strategy
Defining your social media strategy, mapping out a social media calendar and planning your content is extremely important to your employer brand promotion objectives. You will want to share content that communicates your employer brand, your EVP, culture, showcases your environment(s), your people, spotlights on relevant job functions, highlights important company updates and of course outlines how candidates can join you. Visual content is very important, and unlike your corporate marketing strategy it’s very common (and in many instances more powerful) to share less polished and put together imagery for your employer brand promotion. Investing a high budget into producing a perfect employer brand video for your YouTube channel is great, but if you can get a more honest insight into your employer brand with a TikTok that costs you nothing and takes far less time to create (and potentially gets A LOT more engagement) then you may want to rethink this. There is no one-size-fits-all approach here, so don’t be led by your competition either. Focus on your employer brand, your objectives, your candidate and employee demographics and strategize the best way to promote the employer brand across your chosen channels.
Posting in the moment
A social media calendar and a strategy to ensure you continually drive engagement to your employer brand audience is key, but don’t forget to be in the moment with your employer brand social presence. Not everything can be planned, so don’t be too rigid with the social media calendar. Changes will happen, news will need to be shared, and you want to ensure you do this in a timely manner. There may also be instances where you need to alter your content plan, e.g. if your company has just gone through a round of employee layoffs you will want to be sympathetic to this in what is shared immediately after on your social media. The same goes for current affairs. If you scheduled a “Happy Friday” post about a team social event on your Hootsuite, but something such as a terror attack occurs that day you will probably want to rethink the scheduled posts to come across as tone deaf in this instance.
Top tips
There are too many to name, BUT we have done our best to roundup a few of our top social media tips for your employer brand social media strategy below:
- LinkedIn jobs – As we are owned by a recruitment brand we get to see exactly how different channels perform for candidate attraction, and LinkedIn is undoubtedly (within tech at least) one of the best platforms to attract relevant applications. Plus each applicant is encouraged to follow your company page, so the more jobs you post the bigger your talent pool becomes over time too.
- Instagram story highlights – Stories are great for sharing authentic insights to your employer brand, but if you want to keep great content visible beyond 24 hours then ensure you use highlights (and organise into categories) to make this visible for candidates.
- TikTok #WorkTok – With 2.5 billion views (and rising), TikTok is fast becoming a platform for candid work-related discussions. It’s also a place to have a bit of fun with your employer brand (check out Hobbycraft for some feelgood EB content).
- Targeted paid social – If your organic socials aren’t meeting those strategic goals you set for your employer brand then consider targeted paid social. It will help get your content in front of the right audiences, without relying solely on a small organic following.
- Employee advocacy – Keep an eye out for our next blog for this one – but employee advocacy will amplify your employer brand (without the price tag of paid social) and build trust, so you need to incorporate this into your social strategy.
If you’d like to know how effective your social channels are at portraying your employer brand you can get a free employer brand score and discovery dive report at holler.global. For more tips on showcasing your employer brand keep an eye out for the next edition in this blog series that looks at employee advocacy activation.
