Social media is currently the most powerful communications tool today. A major factor of a successful employer brand strategy is communication—alignment to brand values, both inside and outside your organization. What better way to amplify your communication efforts than social media.
We are just now scraping the surface on social media adoption within the workplace. However, there are many organizations that have fully jumped on board the social media revolution, and are reaping huge gains from doing so. Each organization is unique by virtue of the make-up of their workforce, and each uses social media in ways that work for them. There is no one specific solution that makes sense for everyone.
While each organization is unique many observable trends have emerged in how organizations are using social media to amplify their employer brand. Three trends in particular have stuck out in my mind and appear to be gaining traction globally.
Trend #1
Video, once only afforded by large enterprises with deep pockets is becoming mainstream as a way to genuinely showcase awesome workplace cultures and employee experiences. The popularity of video is no surprise. Retention of video content is significantly higher than other content forms such as text (e.g. email). Do you remember what that email that Joe sent to you three weeks ago was about? Likely not. What about that Westjet video announcing Kargo Kids three years ago on April Fools Day? You may not remember most of the words in the video but you certainly remember what it was about, and you likely have a much deeper emotional connection to it.
The speed, cost effectiveness, accessibility and content retention are enabling video to be the number one method of maximizing employer brand amplification.
Excellent examples of employee created and produced videos to showcase their awesome workplaces include Sodexo USA, Shopify, Twitter, Dropbox and PepsiCo.
Trend #2
Organizations that are leading the way in leveraging social for employer brand amplification use a central hashtag that is tagged to every single post that relates to their workplace culture. An excellent example is Constant Contact who use the hashtag #CTCTLife to showcase what it’s like to work at Constant Contact. Click here to see what I mean. When you click on this link you will see all social media activity on #CTCTLife from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Google Plus and Flickr. This allows Constant Contact to gain a full picture of how their brand is being perceived, engage with their fans/audience and effectively manage and own their brand. Over time the #CTCTLife hashtag will be synonymous with the Constant Contact workplace and will be the go-to place for talent prospects to gain a clear idea of what it’s like to work there. Other great examples are NPR (#NPRLife), Zappos (#InsideZappos) and JOEY Restaurants (#TheWayWeWork).
Trend #3
As a result of our workforces becoming more global it’s critical to keep staff connected. This has given rise to the importance of social collaboration tools, which allows employees to use technology to replace the absence of face-to-face in-person contact we used to have in the traditional workplace. Key features include instant messaging, video conferencing, web-enabled phone, information and document sharing and cross-hardware use (i.e. smartphone, tablet and laptop). Examples of social collaboration tools on the market include Jostle, Jive-n, Socialcast, Tibbr, Wiggio, Huddle, Yammer, SAP Jam, MangoApps and Tracky.
Whatever activities you focus on to drive your employer brand strategy remember that people are emotional by nature. They emotionally connect based on what they experience, by themselves or through their peers. These three trends maximize emotional connections, which is no surprise that they are growing leaps and bounds.