Would you make a major purchase, a car for example, from a company you’d never heard of?
Probably not. We trust brands we know. It’s called the mere exposure effect, and it explains why we’re more likely to buy products from companies we’re familiar with.
Would you eat at the restaurant your friend raved about or take a chance on the unknown?
Probably the former since word-of-mouth is by far the most trusted source of brand information.
The principles these examples illustrate also apply to the world of recruitment and hiring.
People want to work for companies they’re familiar with. And job candidates trust what those who know the brand best — its current employees — have to say about those workplaces.
That’s why the world’s top organizations invest so much in their employer brand and why companies from Qualtrics to Apple use EveryoneSocial to empower their employees to talk about them.
Want your people to tell their networks how much they enjoy working for you? Read on for six surefire ways to get them talking.
Foster a Culture People Want to Talk About.
Before you start encouraging employees to post about the company on social media, ensure they have good things to say. (And no, we don’t mean telling them what to post or setting up automatic sharing.)
Refer to your recent employee engagement survey to see what people think about the organization, leadership, culture, and more.
Don’t have one? Now’s the time to solicit employee feedback, engage in social listening, and consult reviews that current and former employees have written about the company. This will give you a clear idea of how your employer brand is perceived.
If you find discrepancies between how your employer brand is perceived vs. what you’d like it to be, take steps to bridge this gap. (You’re certainly not alone: A survey of nearly 2,000 employees revealed that only 19% of them believe their work experience matches what the company promotes.)
Knowing what employees think about the company and its culture is the first step to making improvements. Plus, regularly asking for feedback is itself a step in the right direction because it shows employees that the company values their opinions.
Check out these other ways to improve company culture, boost employee motivation, and foster an environment that’ll get your people talking and sharing on social.
Explain Why It’s Important.
While your marketing and recruiting teams understand employer branding and why it matters, not every employee is familiar with the term. If you want them to help create and share such content, tell them why it’s important.
Explain how the company’s employer brand helps attract and retain top talent, improves employee morale, and builds credibility among current and potential customers. Most importantly, show each team how it aids them specifically.
If your engineering team is having difficulties finding skilled people, for example, explain how beneficial it would be if their peers outside the organization knew what your current engineers like about working for the company.
It’s also a good idea to provide examples of the kind of employer branding content you’d like to see, as well as illustrate how easy it is to share this content via EveryoneSocial.
Create Content They Actually Want to Share.
Even if your people understand why it’s important to create and share employer branding content, they’re not going to unless it’s actually quality content.
No one wants to bombard their personal following with a run-of-the-mill company press release or a blog post that’s not remotely relevant to their audience.
Instead, provide them with blogs, videos, memes, and posts they actually want to share with their personal networks.
We analyzed our customers’ most shared content on the EveryoneSocial platform for our 2022 Employer Influencer Impact Report, and here’s what they’re sharing:
- Recruiting content
- Personal development content
- Brand partnerships
- Cybersecurity content
- Company wins and awards
And when it comes to employer branding content specifically, here’s what your people want to post about:
- Open job positions
- Work culture and perks
- Employee experience and onboarding
- Employee spotlights
- Employee testimonials
- Company events and initiatives
- Career growth and support
Learn more about the kind of content your employees will be stoked to share.
Calculate Your Employee Advocacy ROI 📈
Get a custom, shareable report highlighting the ROI you can expect to generate from employees sharing and creating content.
Ask Them to Contribute.
Employees are more likely to share content they had a hand in creating or that they participated in.
This could take the form of a blog post they wrote, a video they made about their daily life, an article they were quoted in, or an employee highlight where they get the chance to shine.
Not only is this employer branding content they’ll want to post, but it’s also the very kind of content that potential applicants want to see.
After all, it gives them an idea of what it’s like to work for your company and shows them who they could work alongside. And since it features employees who voluntarily chose to participate, it’s organic, authentic content they can trust.
Here at EveryoneSocial, we provide a variety of ways for our people to contribute to employer branding content. Here are just a few:
- We highlight them on social media.
- We look for volunteers to create short videos on a variety of topics, such as their first 30 days on the job.
- We ask them to film social videos to promote blog posts and podcast episodes.
- We showcase specific teams in fun ways like this.
- We provide them with social media prompts so they can create original content for their own social channels.
Most importantly, EveryoneSocial team members participate in the creation of this content only if they want to. In other words, give your people the opportunity to contribute, but don’t mandate it.
Show What’s In It for Them.
Sure, creating and sharing employer branding content is great for the company, but does it help employees themselves?
It sure does!
When they participate in your employee advocacy program and share content, it helps them build their personal brands, expand their networks, engage in thought leadership, find new professional opportunities, and more.
So make sure they’re aware of these perks. You can go over them when you launch your employee influencer initiative or during employee onboarding. Plus, it never hurts to give everyone a refresher and reinvigorate your program.
You can further improve the likelihood that your people will become employee influencers and share employer branding content by providing social media training and educating workers about your social media policy.
Get Organized.
With all that awesome content you’ll be creating for employees to share, you’re going to need a way to keep it organized.
That’s just one of the important tasks EveryoneSocial will do for you. Everything you want employees to share will be located in one place, where it can also be shared with specific public or private groups.
Plus, the content you want pushed out can be accompanied by required or suggested share copy, branded hashtags, and more.
Of course, when it comes to employer branding content, there are other aspects you may need to organize as well, such as forms for employees to submit ideas, content calendars, or spreadsheets to keep track of who’s creating what and when.
There’s no shortage of organizational methods and collaboration tools available today. You just need to determine what works best for you.
Here at EveryoneSocial, we manage our content calendar via Trello, for example, and our social media manager uses Airtable to gather employee information, provide content examples, and hold everyone accountable.
EveryoneSocial Gets Your People to Share
In addition to keeping all your content organized and easily shareable, EveryoneSocial boasts a variety of other features designed to get employees to create and share.
These include an engage feature, gamification and leaderboards, notifications, content emails, and more.
With our easy-to-use platform, it’s simple to transform your employees into influencers and get them creating and sharing employer branding content to boost your brand.
