Employment branding best practices: how visible are you?

You’ve done the hard work of developing an employment brand and created some dynamic messaging. You’ve applied that brand to your career website and you’re ready to go to market and attract the best people.  Not so fast! It’s time to step back, think about all of the different touchpoints and make sure your employer brand is visible and optimized everywhere your candidates could see you.

Here are some quick tips to help you be brand ready, across all communication channels.

1: Focus on unique, targeted content.

When promoting your employment brand, your goal is consistency, with variety: consistent imagery and tone, with customized brand assets for different platforms. While it’s important to develop your employment communication tone and style, pay equally close attention to how you promote your message; your Facebook friends are a vastly different audience from your LinkedIn contacts.

2: Promote your employment brand. Subtly, but relentlessly.  

Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter… People are naturally social. They love to talk. Engage. Share both personal and professional experiences. It’s what connects us to our world. When formulating an employment brand, you’re also cultivating a unique relationship with current employees and prospective candidates. And all relationships require authenticity, integrity, transparency and communication. So give readers the option to leave comments on your content, and include social sharing icons on each employment-branded communication piece.

3: Nobody likes a ghost post.

There’s a reason it’s called social media. It’s not enough, for example, to cobble together a Facebook presence, insist that your own employees “like” the page to “generate traffic,” then expect prospective candidates to magically discover you. It doesn’t work that way for companies selling products, nor does it work that way for organizations promoting their jobs.

Think about it: you can only “like” a Facebook page once. And nobody likes the Twitter Twit who self-promotes but never engages. Give people a reason to connect with your employment brand through all of your social media channels—and they’ll share your organic, clever content with their friends and colleagues.

4: Maintain a branded presence.

Branded templates in job board postings, banner ads on general recruitment media, targeted communications for industry-focused sites (nursing, engineering, etc.) or hard-to-fill positions – all are crucial elements to building a solid brand presence. The key is to promote your organization’s unique employment value proposition at every touchpoint with consistency in style, tone and messaging.

5: Eyes on the prize.    

The ultimate goal is to drive traffic to your career site. This is your content. Own it. You’ve put forth the effort to communicate your unique employment brand and engage with your audiences, so don’t blow it. Your career site is where the full brand experience comes alive. Get your career site up to speed, and ensure that you’re communicating with authenticity and integrity. That’s the essence of an employment brand. It’s a living, breathing entity that requires constant nurturing.

The stronger your employment brand, the more successful you will be in attracting people who are the best fit for your organization. To learn more about developing and promoting your employment brand, contact NAS today.

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