Here at exaqueo, we take our work seriously and we also know how to have a lot of fun. As we enter the season of giving, our team thought it would be nice and a little punny to gather our best employer brand tips for you to gobble up!
EMPLOYER BRAND TIPS
- Have a seat at the table with your employer brand agency partner. Be the expert on your business’ needs. Gather as much internal and external data as you can to help you build the case internally for an employer brand, highlighting why it matters and the needles it’ll help you move for the business before selecting a partner.
- Take stock of your photo library. Ask yourself — Does it support the employer brand? Are the photos telling the story of what it’s like to work here? Are they from the same photos our competitors are using? Think about saving a slice of next year’s budget for an employer brand photoshoot with employees!
- Don’t let your channels go cold turkey. If you’re a team of one, consider putting together a team of employer brand "journalists" who enjoy writing and can be your boots on the ground in other office locations, too. Tap into employees with English and PR majors or journalism school grads!
- Roll with the punches from negative reviews or comments on social media and sites like Glassdoor or Indeed. Have a proactive strategy on responding and how you’ll prepare recruiters and hiring managers to address any concerns.
- Let employees know they are the “apple of your eye”. Start with their onboarding experience and give them a feeling of belonging from day one. Ensure that what you’ve marketed to them as a candidate still rings true once they’ve joined the organization.
- Understand the bread and butter of your authentic employment experience by using research to inform your strategy. Avoid making assumptions or building strategies in boardrooms and instead, gather insight directly from employees.
- Stuffing every channel with the same content is boring, stale, and doesn't give your audience a reason to engage. Select the best channels for your organization based on your audience’s sources of influence. Then tailor your content that's best suited for those channels.
- Set the timer on content and measure how it's working for you. make sure to prioritize communication with candidates so it leaves them feeling engaged.
- Food holidays make for fun hashtag fodder! A company made up of foodies may enjoy International Coffee Day (9/29), National Fluffernutter Day (10/8), or National Eat a Cranberry Day (11/23). Find one or more that your team will enjoy celebrating or that aligns with your company’s purpose or products, buy the goods, and create content while sharing a special treat with your team.
- It's easy to Fall into a measurement trap and rely on clicks and social engagement as your only brand measures. But those are just gravy. The real meat of measurement is in measuring brand perception and awareness.
- Share what you know with our employer brand family! This exciting field is growing with more professionals that are all at different stages in their employer brand journey. We know our community only gets stronger when we help each other. If you’re new around here, we've shared a few employer brand resources here.
- A few corny tactics can be helpful in gathering attention for your content. Weave them into headlines, photo captions, or blog post titles, but you want to avoid spammy clickbait! There’s nothing worse than hoping for one piece of content and getting served up something irrelevant.
- Make discovering user-generated content easy as pie by encouraging employee adoption of social media and the use of company brand-aligned hashtag(s). Give employees plenty of guardrails but don’t make it so there’s a barrier to participate.
- Harvest the best employee stories to keep your employer brand authentic. Break the stories into content appetizers like social posts or video clips to lead your audience to the larger content pieces like a landing page or YouTube channel.
- Tackle new trends and technologies when they make sense for your business. Understand the moments that matter in the employment lifecycle, then focus on adding new tools that can help elevate that experience for candidates and employees.
- There is a parade of technologies to amplify and share employer brand and recruitment marketing content. But don't float away with promises of quick fixes or immediate impact and lose sight of your long-term strategy.
- Strike up the band when you have things to celebrate like company awards and new hires. This type of content can inspire candidates to learn more about your brand, instill pride, and increase sharing with employees.
- You won't truly score with your employer brand unless you play the whole game. That means having a pre-game strategy, kicking off with research, pausing at half-time to assess performance, and scoring a touchdown with a plan for activation and management.
- If you have content leftovers from past projects, repurpose them for other channels. Conduct a content and channel audit to identify what needs to be replaced, updated, or removed.
- When it comes to launching a new employer brand initiative, consider how you'll thyme the rollout — will you serve a cornucopia of content? Or slowly dish-out small tastes? No matter how you choose to do it, be sure to align with stakeholders well before your plans are fully baked.
We hope our tips have given you lots to think about and a few laughs. From all of us at #teamexaqueo, happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. readers and warm wishes to all our readers around the globe — we’re grateful for you all!
