7 Tips for a Successful Employer Branding Strategy

Every era has a predominant mass media format, and today we are living in the era of social media. If you want as wide an audience as possible, and to get your message out in the most cost-effective way, that means your marketing should include social media.

The statistics speak for themselves. More than three billion people — nearly half the world’s population — are active on some form of social media. In the United States alone, 58% of consumers follow brands they like on social media. 

The old ways of advertising popularized by passively-consumed media like magazines, radio, and television aren’t nearly as effective in this era. On social media, engagement is active and nobody has time for boring commercials or sales pitches from total strangers. But there’s a lot of noise and clutter out there among the 3 billion-plus users and multiple platforms. How do you get heard?

Many companies have turned to new strategies that leverage their most valuable asset — their workforce — to reach out directly to leads and possible new recruits. Social recruiting and employer branding are helping businesses connect, sell, and hire more effectively than ever. Let’s take a look at how they work.

What Is Social Recruiting?

If you need to hire the very best people to meet your goals as a company, social recruiting is worth the effort. As many as 70% of job-seekers use social media to find openings. 73% of millennials (defined in this survey as anyone ages 18-34) found their last job through a social media posting.

What Is an Employer Branding Strategy (EBS)?

The common thread that can link social media recruitment and social media marketing, is an Employer Branding Strategy (EBS). With an EBS, your employees act as your online brand ambassadors, in a way that comes across as organic and personal. 

This method demonstrates an authentic insight into the company’s culture.

Which Organizations Need an Employer Branding Strategy?

An EBS is a strategy that works better at scale. If you’re a small business with five employees, it probably wouldn’t make much sense to develop an EBS. On the other hand, if you have fifty employees, there’s no better time to start than right now.

7 Tips for Creating a Successful EBS

While EBS is a newer strategy still ripe for innovation, there are already some tried-and-true practices that can help you and your workers build the best EBS possible.

1. Recruit Your Existing Employees

2. Be Transparent

3. Build an Employer Value Proposition (EVP)

4. Put Your Employees in the Center

5. Put Your Company’s Vision in the Center

6. Leverage Real Time Marketing

7. Build Your Own Voice

There’s no turnkey solution for an EBS. It has to be built over time, in collaboration with your employees. Finding a “voice” that both represents your company and resonates with your audience may take some trial and error.

Companies that succeed in pulling it off, however, have an asset to branding, marketing, and recruiting that cannot be bought. You know your employees are bright, creative, awesome people — that’s why you hired them, after all. Don’t let their talents go to waste when they could be on social media making the best possible case for why your company is such a great place to work and shop.