I know what you are thinking!

It’s easy for startups or companies with sexy products to be visible on Social Media.

They have so much to say…

But my company deals with everyday technologies and processes. What possibly I can talk about on Social Media!

The answer is… A LOT!

You just need to look around.

There are plenty of so-called boring companies that have created a memorable employer brand using social media.

Take GE for example, a company is known more as an industrial company, but going through a digital transformation.

To change their employer brand perception they came up with a campaign “The Digital Company. That’s also an Industrial Company”.

The series makes fun of how GE is perceived as a manufacturing company and people hardly know about the digital side of the organization

The best part is that that you don’t need a huge budget to get started with promoting your employer brand online.

In this post, I will try to break down how you can also establish your employer brand on Social Media with limited budget and resources.

So, let’s get started.

Step 1: Deciding what you want your employer brand to deliver

Start with asking what do you want to get out of your employer branding initiative.

The trick is to match your goals with your initiatives.

Let’s look at some common goals.

Awareness: You want more people to know about your company. In that case that you have to focus on a strategy that creates a brand recall. Your measure here will be the number of views, likes, and shares.

Talent Attraction: You want to convince job seekers to join your company. In that case, you need to work on a strategy that highlights the uniqueness of your company, its culture, the benefit it provides, and so on. Your measure here will be the number of applications you receive for open positions.

Thought Leadership: You want to be perceived as the leader in your industry. In that case, you need to focus on creating content that delivers in-depth value. Your measure here will be the number of downloads of your white papers, number of attendees in your webinars/events, and so on.

Step 2: Deciding what to talk about

Once you are clear on your goal, articulate what your employer brand wants to convey. It will help you in formulating a solid content strategy.

Look at your website, Intranet, internal communications, wall art, posters, publications, brochures, product manuals, executive speeches, etc., and identify what are the recurring themes.

Come up with a simple table like this after this exercise.

Step 3: Deciding how to talk about your employer brand

Once you are clear about what you want to convey, the next step is to figure out how to convey it.

You have already identified the topics you want to talk about in the previous step.

Now your job is to translate these topics into conversational elements.

You will need to further customize these conversational elements as per the Social Networks you select.

These pieces can be in the form of links, posts, videos, presentations, images, just about anything.

Make your content visual.

Researchers at Xerox found that colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80%.

So, if you want traction you must make your content visual.

Today, you don’t even need a full-time designer to create visual content. With some imagination and do-it-yourself design tools like Canva, you can easily create world-class visual content on your own.

You can read some of my earlier posts to know how to create visual content without any help from a designer:

5 VIDEO MARKETING TOOLS EVERY MARKETER SHOULD USE

HOW TO CREATE AN INFOGRAPHIC WITHIN AN HOUR

FORGET PHOTOSHOP: USE THESE 7 KICKASS DESIGN TOOLS INSTEAD

Don’t feel pressured to be on every Social Media channel.

It’s alright to start with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These are “super platforms.” These platforms alone will give you a pretty good idea about your audience and what they like.

Once you get a hang of your audience, feel free to venture into more niche networks.

Be Consistent.

Like everything else in life, employer branding efforts need consistency. A lot of companies start with a flurry of posts and then become silent. That doesn’t work.

You need to be consistent and patient. Share some interesting content every day, add value and after some time you will notice that you are getting traction.

Step 4: Setup A Governance Model

A lot of times employer branding efforts fail for the lack of an execution model.

In this stage, you need to answer the following questions

• Who champions your employer branding initiative?
• Who’s responsible for overseeing day-to-day operation?
• Who will write content?
• Who’ll design the posts?
• What is the review process?
• Who’ll approve?
• What is your posting frequency?
• How will you react to positive comments?
• How will you react to negative comments?

At the end of this exercise, come up with a simple process flow and get an agreement on it.

Step 5: HAVE FUN

Social Media is supposed to be fun.

Initially, when I started handling Social, I used to write in an official-sounding language while answering comments. A user whacked me saying that I sound like a robot.

That made me realize that I was acting like a robot! And a lot of companies still do.

Be authentic, accurate, and polite but not a robot.

Conclusion

Though Employer Branding is not a new concept it has started gaining traction only in the last few years. Therefore, a lot of companies are still struggling while launching their employer brand online. In this post, we looked at a framework that will help you create a strategy for launching your employer brand online and drive sustained engagement.