How to Promote Employer Brand on Social Media

Employer branding can be the thing that makes or breaks your recruitment strategy. If you want to attract the best talent to work for your company, it is crucial that your employer branding is on point and resonates with the candidates you want to hire. Employer branding is how you position your company as an employer, and how this positioning influences the perception of your business and what it is like to work there. The more your branding resonates with your target candidates, the more likely they are to make you their employer of choice.

Why build employer brand on social media

A survey from We Are Social and Hootsuite found that nearly 53 million people in the UK (around 78% of the UK population) are active on social media. Whatever industry you operate in, it’s likely a fair few of these 53 million could be excellent candidates for your next job vacancy. Whether employer branding for a startup or a big corporate, get creative with your campaigns by using different types of content, and make sure that they address the following themes:

• The values your company stands for
• Your mission and purpose as a business
• The benefits you offer
• What it’s like to experience being part of your team

6 tips for promoting your employer brand on social media

1. Use consistent messaging to attract your target candidates

The huge number of people present on social media equates to an equally huge opportunity for employers who want to promote their employer brand. Using social media to target your employee brand messages and reach the candidates you want to attract will increase your candidate application rates — especially when you use consistent messaging that speaks to your target candidates. As many as 73% of millennials found their latest position directly through a social media platform, while 79% of job seekers used social media in their job search over the last year, so use how and what you communicate to stand out and grab people’s attention.

2. Create a social media content calendar to stay ahead of your competitors 

It’s clear that social media plays a big role in candidate journeys, from the first time potential employees learn about a company through its employer branding to when they become full-time employees. It’s not just candidates who are using social media while job hunting. Around 91% of all employers are currently using social media as part of their hiring process. This suggests that a failure to use social media in your recruitment strategy may put you behind the curve with the ground to make up. You could already be missing out on great candidates who are being won over by your competitors’ employee brand strategy. 

So, how do you get ahead? We recommend creating a social media schedule or content calendar so that you can plan for regular, targeted content. Look at what your competitors are doing for their employer branding — how often do they post and which type of content gets the most engagement? You can learn from their successes and failures in order to shape a great calendar of content that should always hit the mark with your candidates. You can also use scheduling tools to help ensure an ongoing campaign of great employer branding content.

3. Share great content 

The rise of social media over the years has given employers and job seekers alike a new realm in which to promote themselves and access the job market. However, simply posting vacancies and hoping that the perfect candidate will see them isn’t enough. Candidates will be looking for the extra ‘wow factor’ that employee branding can provide. This means that even before candidates get to submit a job application, businesses need to offer a real sense of what they are like as an employer and how staff can expect to be treated when working there. It also helps to make sure that the right kind of people for the job are attracted to the roles. Employer branding should be strong enough to seem irresistible to the right candidates while helping people who would not be a good fit to realise this before applying. The end result is a more efficient recruitment process. 

Our recommendation for sharing great content is to bring your employer brand to life through visual storytelling! Use videos to help potential candidates imagine what it’s like to work for your company. You can focus on:

• Stories from your current employees
• The look and feel of your office or workspace
• Snapshots of interesting projects your team is working on
• Examples of how you celebrate individual, team and company successes
• Videos from events you’ve been part of, especially internal events or external award ceremonies
• Videos of your company perks such as office dogs, on-site gyms and team socials​​

4. Give your candidates the chance to connect with you in an engaging and exciting way

Creating an active social media campaign as part of your employer branding strategy also gives candidates the opportunity to connect with you in new and creative ways. Research shows that 1 in 10 people have used social media to create posts they think will attract employers. Create every opportunity to interact with these job seekers and see if their creativity and innovation is a good fit for your company. 

5. Find the social media channel that best suits your candidates and focus your attention there

If you want to engage with people who are ready and waiting to find their dream job, LinkedIn is a great channel to start with. A study shows that 82% of job seekers applied for a job through LinkedIn in the last 5 years. However, don’t stop there. Utilise all of the social media channels that are most relevant to your target candidates — wherever your candidates go to consume content and hang out online, this is where you need to be. Research shows that LinkedIn is more popular among professional job seekers such as accountants, lawyers and project managers. Twitter can be popular with marketing and PR job seekers, while Facebook is popular with people who work in hospitality or retail.

6. Don’t let your industry hold you back

It’s also worth remembering that social media isn’t just for ‘cool’ companies or young, trendy startups. Any business of any size and industry can use social media to its advantage when it comes to employer branding. The trick is to understand the professionals who you want to attract. Your employer branding should align with their values and expectations, and promote key messages that they understand and want to hear more about. When you get your employee branding right, it will feel at home on social media even if it’s not your company’s natural habitat. Look out for key performance indicators such as ‘likes’, ‘shares’, ‘comments’ on your posts, ‘follows’ of your page or account, and most importantly an increase in job applications. You can also survey your followers or the candidates who apply to your jobs to find out how well your employer branding is being received. This can include:

• Which content or messages your audience likes best
• Which aspects of your branding campaign didn’t quite hit the mark
• Ideas for improvements

The more social media promotion you do, and the more feedback you ask for, the more refined and effective your employer branding strategy will become. After all, your employer branding is your chance to stand out against your competitors and other employers in the fight for the best candidates on the market. If you want to attract the best talent out there, it’s time to invest in exceptional employer branding that your target candidates won’t be able to resist. 

Why not use Seenit User-Generated Videos to prompte your employer brand? With Seenit for Employer Branding, you can:

• Create a story and invite your community to take part
• Store and manage your content from a cloud based platform
• Shortlist and edit from the same platform
• Publish your content across all channels