Employer Branding Content Marketing: How Does It Work?

6 min readFeb 1, 2021

Let’s face it. Content marketing is everywhere. What differs is the purpose of a particular content marketing operation. In the case of Employer Branding Content Marketing, it presents different aspects of the company’s value proposition.

In this article, we will take a look at how employer branding content marketing works.

Why does the employer branding content matter?

Employer branding content is the conduit between the company’s value proposition and the target audience’s engagement.

In essence, employer branding content is a tool to communicate the company’s values, showcase its culture, and explore its benefits.

In order words, employer brand content creates a narrative. It tells that the company cares about its employees and invests in their growth and well-being.

In one way or another, every aspect of employer branding can have a piece of content wrapped around it.

For example, it can be an internal document describing dos and don’ts during the pandemic. Or an official career blog that describes hiring policies. On the other hand, an Instagram post can show “fly on the wall” accounts of the development department’s everyday life.

What are employer branding content goals?

Overall, employer branding pursues four goals. The overarching goal is to engage with the target audience of job seekers and potential candidates and convince them to consider the company as a viable employer.

Let’s take a closer look:

Visibility of the brand

Employer Branding Content maintains the visibility of the company’s brand on a variety of different channels.

Constant and consistent presence results in TA persistent “top of mind” association of the company with a specific topic (for example, in the case of CNA International IT, a recruiting agency).

This association makes the company a go-to place when opportunities like applying for a job or ordering services arise.

Accurate information about the company

It provides accurate and fulfilling information about the company, its culture, projects, etc.

Accuracy is critical because misleading or vague information confuses and frustrates candidates; thus, they lose interest in applying. On the other hand, accurate information builds trust and maintains the credibility of the brand.

It is crucial to avoid excessive window dressing as it can seriously backfire (for example, on Employer Reviews). Because of that, it is better to keep the presentation straightforward. The goal is to deliver critical information for consideration.

Valuable content for the target audience

Employer branding content provides valuable and relevant information to the target audience. It is the content that satisfies TA needs.

It is essential to communicate the employee value proposition throughout such content.

For example, to explain candidates hows and whys of the recruitment process on the career page.
Or posts that showcase the company’s success stories as case studies or testimonials.

Consistent of employer branding messages

Employer’s Brand Content maintains the consistency of the messages throughout different digital channels and targets audience segments. Each channel tells its own facet of the narrative that best fits the format of the channel.

For example, Instagram fits well for “slice of life” posts, while LinkedIn is suitable for formal posts. On the other hand, Twitter is much versatile and suitable for both approaches.

What kinds of employer branding content work best?

Let’s look at several examples of employer branding content to showcase different aspects of its values and culture.

Employee Testimonials

Employee testimonials provide a personalized showcase of the benefits of working for the company and a positive impact of the company’s culture on the individual.

It can be a simple statement similar to a client testimonial. The goal is to illustrate the employee experience.

The underlining of such content is that the company gives employees opportunities to succeed.

Guides on the hiring process and interview procedures

This type of content explains the company’s recruitment workflow for job seekers. Its goal is to clarify the workflow’s ins and outs, set realistic expectations, and avoid misunderstanding.

For instance:

Breakdown of the application process and interview stages — it is essential to understand what happens after what and why it matters for both parties.
Description of what kinds of candidates the company is looking for in terms of technical expertise and personal traits.

Such content is an excellent addition to the career page . Also, it is always a good thing to include a FAQ section on the career page.

Domain Expertise Showcase via Employee-generated Content

Engaging employees to produce content (or collaborating with employees) is an excellent way to showcase the company’s expertise and engage employees slightly outside of their mainline duties.

Pieces like case studies or topical articles showcase the company’s expertise in the domain, emphasizing credibility with real people.

It is also an excellent way to mix-up mainline marketing content.

“ Slice-of-life Glimpses” and “Fly on the Wall” pieces

This type of content serves as a background fodder on the external marketing channels.

In the case of the company’s website, it is better to select images for the career page to give the viewer “the vibe” of working in the company.
In the case of Instagram, you can post such pieces frequently. However, it is better to stick to important events when it comes to channels like Facebook and LinkedIn.

How does a multi-channel digital strategy showcase the employer’s brand?

Like regular marketing operations, putting all of your eggs in one basket isn’t going to get you far. You can make the most out of your employer branding effort if you communicate its messages through multiple channels.

Having a website with all relevant information in the right places is great. But your goal is to be seen and attract the target audience.

This goal requires the proper representation of the platforms popular amongst your target audience.

And it is not even that hard. One might think that working on multiple channels requires more work, but it is not the case. The secret is keeping things consistent. Then, it is a matter of adapting content for a particular platform.

On the one hand, consistency of brand content makes it easier to communicate key messages in a unified effort. If your website states that roses are red, so is your Twitter and Facebook account. Confusion is the last thing you want to evoke in TA.
On the other hand, consistency keeps you from overdoing content. In other words, you don’t need ten pieces for ten platforms. You just need to adapt one according to the requirements of different platforms.

How to make an Employer Branding Multi-Channel Strategy?

Let’s take a closer look at how you can do it.

Social media

Sharing relevant content to maintain brand visibility. At the very least, you need to have company pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

The benefit of maintaining social media accounts is that you can strengthen engagement with TA through various content to illustrate different aspects of EVP.

For example, “fly on the wall” glimpses illustrating what working in the company looks like.

Similarly, you need to take care of professional communities and platforms. In this case, employer branding expresses itself through knowledge-sharing.

An official Github repository that showcases what the company is doing can work wonders in attracting developers.
Expert presence in professional communities is also a good way of building a trustworthy image in the target audience’s eyes.

On the other hand, you need to keep an eye on employer review sites (more on our next article).

Additional blogs

Blogging platforms like Medium or LinkedIn allow you to showcase a different side of the employer’s brand and expose it to a specific target audience segment.

You can focus on personal narratives, success stories, field reports from meet-ups and conferences, slices of life, and other stuff that lets people peek behind the curtain and see what the company feels like.

Similarly, you can use videos or podcasts to talk about relevant subjects. In addition to communicating employer branding messages, it is a good way of showcasing the expertise (because of that, it works on multiple marketing fronts). Youtube channels and Mixcloud work just fine for these purposes. For example, Netflix is doing it to great success.

Newsletters

Keeping a company’s newsletter is a great way of keeping in touch with TA, both employees and job seekers.

In the case of employees, the company’s digest is an excellent way of keeping everybody on the same page regarding current projects and other events.

You can share news from different departments, project updates, employee’s content, fly on the wall accounts and other stuff.

In the case of potential candidates, it is a way to maintain a long term connection with the talent that ultimately results in them applying for a position.

It works if the job seeker hasn’t found a vacancy that fits his skills. A good example of this approach is the OpenAI career page.
It is a way to get back to candidates who weren’t selected for the position or reject the job offer.

In conclusion

As you can see, there are many opportunities for showcasing the employer’s brand through various content formats. However, one needs to remember that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions for employer branding content.

Each company needs to figure out its own way of expressing its values and showcasing the culture. And this task requires a deep understanding of the subject matter combined with the unbiased external perspective.

Originally published at https://cna-it.com on September 23, 2020.