Social media is a place where employer branding content thrives, and it’s the most effective way to share your company culture with the world.
And the data doesn’t lie: Building your employer brand is critical to how audiences view your company, and it influences your ability to attract the best talent.
Just take a look:
- 79%+ of job applicants use social media in their job search. (Glassdoor)
- Job seekers rank social media and professional networks as the most useful job search resource compared with job boards, job ads, recruiting agencies, and recruiting events. (CareerArc)
- 75% of U.S. respondents believe that companies whose C-Suite executives and leadership team use social media to communicate their mission, brand values, and purpose are more trustworthy. (Glassdoor)
Why Employee Social Networks Matter
While company social content is important, encouraging employees to create and share employer branding content is also incredibly valuable.
- Your employees are the trusted source of truth about their work and the company.
- Employees have new networks of people that are unfamiliar with your brand and company culture.
- Employee network referrals have some of the highest applicant-to-hire conversion rates.
Here’s a simple example
Say you have 500 employees consistently sharing employer branding content, and each has an average of 1,000 total social connections. You’ve now expanded your content reach by 500,000!
Now extrapolate that reach over the course of a year. 😮
And this doesn’t even include the growth of employee profiles over time or the fact that secondary connections will see this content in their own feeds.
This is why employee advocacy programs are so valuable to employer branding and recruiting teams. It allows users to easily organize content, share company news and updates, and encourage employees to create and share content to their networks about their work, new hires, job openings, and more.
We put together some good employee advocacy statistics, but here are a few that’ll catch your attention:
- Brand messages reached 561% further when shared by employees vs. the same messages shared via official brand social channels. (MSLGroup)
- Employee referrals have the highest applicant-to-hire conversion rate. Only 7% of applicants are found via employees, but this still accounts for 40% of all new hires. (Jobvite)
- Employees of socially engaged companies are more likely to stay at their company, feel optimistic about their company’s future, and believe their company is competitive. (Prophet)
7 Employer Branding Content Types
So let’s talk about content.
Good content that highlights the cool stuff your organization does will amplify your employer brand and recruiting efforts.
But in order to better engage your employees, you need a mix of employer branding content types that are interesting, powerful, and creative.
Here are seven employer branding content types your company should create that’ll get employees sharing to their networks.
1. Open job positions
Probably the most common employer branding content type that you’d want employees sharing is about open job positions.
Naturally, filling the recruitment pipeline is important, and there are numerous ways recruiters and talent acquisition leaders achieve this, including job boards, company websites, ads, and more.
But employee referrals and their social networks have some of the best traction for finding top talent. We share this type of content from our own platform to help drive awareness and get people to apply.
And, as you can see, we like to make the posts a bit fun, too. 😉
2. Work Culture & Perks
How do you attract top talent today? By having a great work culture and perks that show you value your people.
This comes from leadership and team managers, and it can’t be faked. Employees aren’t going to advocate on your behalf if your company isn’t actually living and breathing culture.
So before you try to push content around these items, make sure you truly have things in place for your employees.
That said, showing off culture content will be big in building trust and attracting new talent. And no, I’m not talking about that office game room. Sure it’s cool to point out, but there are more important things people care about, like:
- Professional development
- Career growth and support
- Team-building activities
- PTO policies and perks
- Transparency and communication
- Taking and applying employee feedback
- Great employee stories
- Company swag and gifts
Content around the above showcases your work culture and is what talent is what talent wants to see before they apply.
3. Employee Experience & Onboarding
While new hires and onboarding news might be more for internal use, it actually can be a top employer branding content type as well.
Most people don’t have much insight into the employee experience at companies, and employees are the best source for that information.
So what better way to build your employer brand and recruitment pipeline than showing off how awesome the new hiring experience is?
That could be the swag and welcome package you provide new hires, their manager or team connecting with them on social media, training materials, and more. If your company provides a great experience for new hires, encourage employees to talk about it.
4. Employee Testimonials
A great way to tell your employer brand story is by highlighting the people that make your business successful. That’s where employee testimonials can really shine and drive positive attention to your brand.
Employee testimonials can be a review of what it’s like to work for the company, the onboarding experience, the team culture, or how the company assisted in professional development.
This content can come from review sites like Glassdoor or Comparably, and it can be featured as quotes in images or GIFs, in video testimonials, in blog content that an employee wrote, and more.
Humanizing the brand through employees is a strong strategy to build your recruitment pipeline and get potential candidates pumped to work for your company. Plus, co-workers love to support and rally around colleagues who are highlighted by the company.
5. Employee Spotlights
We’ve all heard of “employee of the month,” which has been around for years in the traditional workplace. Sometimes people view it as a bit cheesy, but that’s only if the company is purely doing that to check a box.
Otherwise, highlighting and showcasing individual employees for their hard work, expertise, and dedication can be a powerful contributor to your employer brand.
As mentioned in the previous content type, people love to rally around their colleagues and show support. Beyond that, audiences also enjoy seeing real people recognized as valuable team members, no matter what position they hold.
This content takes the focus off the company and puts it on the individual employee, which makes it more engaging and shareable. Below is a great example of an employee spotlight.
6. Company Events & Initiatives
Something else employees will love to share and talk about is any company events or specific initiatives.
Company events could be in-person team meetings, an all-team meet-up, an internal company townhall, a holiday party, etc. But content around that showcases your company culture and shows that your organization knows how to have fun.
The term “initiatives” might sound vague, but what I’m referring to here is if your company focuses on specific areas like charity work, volunteering efforts, or sponsorships.
Highlighting these things humanizes the brand, shows what your company stands for, and proves your commitment to the organization’s values.
7. Career Growth & Support
When applying for a new role, a good question candidates will have is about potential for career growth and professional support. Most people want to know they have ample opportunities to grow their careers within an organization.
So how does your company support employee growth and offer ways for them to learn in their role?
- Do you have internal training courses?
- Do you provide financial support for those looking to go back to school?
- How often do you hold one-on-ones to evaluate job performance and salary?
- What other growth opportunities do you offer?
At EveryoneSocial, we have access to LinkedIn Learning, courtesy of the company. And anytime someone has an idea for learning, leadership is more than willing to explore it.
Creating and encouraging content around career growth and support is highly interesting to attract top talent. And this is also going to attract more attention to your employer brand.
Don’t forget content mediums!
With your employer branding content types, you also can’t forget to mix up the mediums! That means you want content that isn’t — think text-only posts, images, GIFs, and videos.
Spamming links all day does more damage to your brand, and employees aren’t interested in just sharing links all the time.
Certainly, links are important, but remember to have a solid content library of different types and mediums to truly drive a better employer brand and increase your talent pipeline.
Top Content From EveryoneSocial Customers
We collect data around the content types that our customers have the most success with. And in 2021, content about recruiting and employer brand rose to the top of the list.
These were the content types that generated the most clicks from employee shares:
- Recruiting
- Personal Development
- Cybersecurity
- Brand Partnerships
- Humanity Topics
- Remote Workplace Policies
- Company Awards
Not surprisingly, recruiting is the content most clicked.
But as you can see from this list, personal development, humanity topics, remote workplace policies, and company awards are all strong employer branding content types that audiences click on.
