101 More Employer Branding Strategy Ideas for 2023: Social, Advocacy, Talent Acquisition

Employer branding is more important than ever for companies who want to attract and keep top talent in the digital age.

With the right strategies in place, a strong employer brand will help you build a solid and positive reputation as an employer.

Part one of this series covered building your brand, setting KPIs, creating Personas and developing your EVP. Once you've established these basics, you are ready to dive into:

• Leveraging social media and digital channels
• Emphasizing employee experience,
• Building employee advocacy,
• Localizing employer branding strategies, and
• Supporting talent acquisition and hiring teams.

This article is a must-read for anyone looking to take their employer branding efforts to the next level.

Before we get started there is a LOT to go through when it comes to Employer Branding strategies, which is where a good tool can make all the difference.

We'd recommend taking a look at The Martec, the only Artificial Intelligence for Employer Branding content - which helps some of the world's best Employer Brands across much of their strategic needs: content planning, KPI targeting, AI-powered written and video employee content, people intelligence and distribution:

Leveraging Social Media and Digital Channels

Your online presence serves as a window into your organization for potential candidates. It's strength is often the deciding factor for candidates assessing your company, deciding whether or not to join.

Most job seekers seek their next opportunity online through job ad sites and LinkedIn. A solid online presence allows you to reach a wider audience. You can read about the importance of social media and why GSK is devoting 75% of their employer branding effort to their social channels. By sharing stories about your employees, culture, values and benefits, job seekers can make an informed decision.

A strong online presence allows you to control the narrative about your organization. In today's world, as you know, anyone can say anything about your company online - whether it's true or not.

By growing your online presence, you will encourage people to share information that shows your company in the best possible light.

There are a variety of social media and digital channels that employer branding professionals can leverage to enhance their efforts. Typically LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the most used. But outside of these core ones, other potential platforms to consider include:

• Glassdoor 
• Snapchat
• YouTube
• TikTok
• Reddit
• Medium
• WeChat
• Pinterest

Exploring social platforms outside the main four may give you additional reach, depending on your particular audience. It's worth researching and considering which, if any, are worth your time and investment.

🧰 Tool insight: find a tool that includes social listening for target talent, streamlined employee advocacy distribution (can be as much as $1.9k in earned media value per employee), and finding your best employees. The Martec is one tool that ticks all these boxes.

How to Use Social Media and Digital Channels to Reach Your Target Candidate Audience

As part of your employer branding strategy, here are ten tips for how to leverage your social and digital channels:

1. Develop a social media strategy: choose your social channels and plan how you will use each channel.
2. Utilize employee advocacy by encouraging current employees to share content and information about your company on their social media accounts.
3. Create engaging content: Use social media to share information about your company's culture, values, and employee testimonials.
4. Live stream events on social media platforms: to give potential candidates a behind-the-scenes look at your organization. These events can include webinars, panels and Q&As with your hiring team.
5. Use paid social media advertising: to target specific demographics and job titles to reach particular candidates. You will need more than the organic reach of your employer branding content to get your content in front of all relevant candidates. 
6. Leverage influencer marketing: by partnering with industry leaders or influencers to share your employer branding message with a broader audience.
7. Optimize for SEO: through keywords and meta tags to ensure that your employer branding content is easily discoverable through search engines.
8. Use employee-generated content: to share employee photos, stories and videos to give a real-life look at your company culture.AI-powered content platforms like The Martec can help you create authentic video and written at global to regional scale.
9. ‍Create an inclusive career site: that is easy to navigate, mobile-friendly, and includes information about your EVP and company culture. Consider a using a dynamic widget to target visitors with personalised content customised just for them, from your existing content library.
10. ‍Use analytics: to track the performance of your online channels to determine which tactics are effectively reaching your target audience.

10 Ways to Create and Share Engaging Content to Enhance your Employer Branding Strategy

11. Identify the types of content that will resonate with your target candidate audience and align with your EVP. This can include employee testimonials, behind-the-scenes looks at the company, or industry thought leadership pieces.
12. To keep things fresh and exciting, utilize different types of content, such as text, images, video, and audio.
13. Create a content calendar that outlines what will be shared and when. This calendar will help ensure a consistent flow of content and make it easier to plan your content in advance.
14. Encourage employee engagement and employee-generated content, including employee-led social media takeovers or employee-generated photos or videos.
15. Utilize data and analytics to measure the success of your content and make adjustments as needed.
16. Share content on various platforms, looking beyond LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to reach the widest audience.
17. Utilize paid advertising options on social media to target specific candidate personas.
18. Use employer branding hashtags to make it easy for candidates to find and follow your content.
19. Use social media to build relationships with potential candidates by responding to comments and messages.
20. Share company news, such as promotions or new hires, to keep your audience informed and engaged.

Emphasizing Employee Experience

The employee experience plays a crucial role in shaping an organization's employer brand. A positive employee experience can increase employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention. 

Ritchie Bros. is an example of the benefits of your employee experience right. On the other hand, a negative experience harms an organization's reputation. This negative experience can lead to high turnover rates and top talent not applying for roles.

Therefore, organizations should focus on employee experience as part of their employer branding strategy. Organizations can foster a strong sense of employee satisfaction and engagement by creating a positive work environment. Learn more about how this can give organizations a competitive edge in the war for talent.

How to Create a Positive Employee Experience

Employee experience covers all areas of an employee's interaction with the organization. This experience includes their onboarding experience, work environment, benefits, and opportunities for growth and development. Organizations prioritising the employee experience understand the impact a positive employee experience can have on their brand. Below are ten tips for creating a positive employee experience:

21. Encourage transparent communication: by creating channels for employees to share their honest opinions, thoughts, and experiences about the company.
22. Foster a sense of belonging: encouraging employees to build communities in your company through programs, online channels, events and initiatives.
23. Recognize and reward hard work: to improve employee happiness by showing appreciation for employee achievements and contributions.
24. Invest in employee professional development: through formal and informal training and mentorship.
25. Embrace work-life balance: by promoting internal programs to encourage employees to prioritize their personal lives and well-being.
26. Nurture a positive and inclusive company culture: through inclusivity initiatives, events, programs and content.
27. Provide access to the right resources: including the tools, technology, accessibility equipment and resources they need to be productive and successful.
28. Facilitate employee engagement: in company events, team-building activities, and volunteer opportunities.
29. Provide competitive benefits and perks: such as flexible work arrangements, health insurance, and paid time off.
30. Encourage feedback and improvement to improve the employee experience and overall company culture.

How to Gather Employee Feedback to Improve Your Employer Branding

Once you’ve started building a positive employee experience, you must monitor how successful you are. We’ve compiled ten tips for gathering and utilizing employee feedback to enhance your employer branding:

31. Use regular surveys: to gauge employee satisfaction, opinions on company culture and overall work experience.
32. Organize employee focus groups: to get a more in-depth understanding of their experiences and feedback.
33. Review exit interviews to gather their feedback on what improvements to make regarding their employee experience.
34. Measure Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS): to reduce potential turnover and to improve your employee experience.
35. Schedule one-on-one meetings: with employees to get their honest thoughts and feedback in a more personal setting.
36. Implement employee advocacy platforms so employees can share their experiences and feedback to improve their experience.
37. Create online forums: where employees can share their experiences, feedback and ideas. This forum can be as informal as Slack, Teams or Yammer channels.
38. Gather anonymous feedback: through a secure platform to encourage honesty.
39. Ask your HR team: to collaborate on your data to improve the employee experience together.
40.  Monitor Social Media: including Glassdoor, for any mentions of the company and gather feedback from employees and other stakeholders.

By utilizing these techniques, you can make data-driven decisions to improve the overall employee experience.

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🧰 Tool insight: get a free Employer Branding content planner for the whole of 2023 targeted to your top strategic objectives and KPIs:

Building Employee Advocacy

Another way to maximize the impact of your employer branding efforts is by leveraging employee advocacy. Employee advocacy refers to formally recognizing employees who actively promote your organization on social media and other channels. By creating an employee brand advocacy program, you can tap into your employees' personal networks to reach a wider audience.

Employee advocacy has become an increasingly important aspect of employer branding, with employees serving as influential ambassadors for their organizations. Potential candidates are heavily influenced by how employees talk about their experience at work and the company’s culture. To enhance employer branding, organizations need to foster a culture of employee advocacy.

Employee advocacy is the promotion of a company by its employees through their personal social media and other online channels. It refers to the actions taken by employees to promote their company, its products, services, or values to their personal networks. When employees are passionate about their work and feel valued, they are more likely to become advocates for the organization.

By nurturing employee advocacy, organizations can organically promote their culture and values to attract the right talent. In addition, employee advocacy helps organizations communicate their values, mission, and culture more authentically to appeal to potential candidates. Read more here about how employee advocacy is the most powerful voice for your brand.

10 Tips to Build an Effective Employee Advocacy Program

Building an effective employee advocacy program is essential in enhancing your employer branding. Here are ten tips to help you get started:

41. Define your goals before you start your program. Clearly outline your KPIs for the program and how you plan to achieve these.
42. Incentivise your employees through recognition and rewards to become involved and active in the advocacy program.
43. Educate your employees through sessions, meetings and content on the importance of employee advocacy and how they can get involved.
44. Encourage employee sharing through tools and resources, such as a company intranet or social media channel.
45. Foster a supportive culture where employees feel comfortable sharing their experiences and opinions about the company.
46. Monitor and measure the success of your employee advocacy program to identify areas for improvement.
47. Provide a steady stream of relevant content that employees can share with their personal networks.
48. Encourage employees to participate in events and activities related to your advocacy program.
49. Create a sense of community among employees through regular communication, team-building activities, and recognition.
50. Celebrate your program’s success by recognizing and rewarding the top employees who promoted your employer brand.
51. Use employee advocacy tools to build your content strategy and manage your employee advocates. Watch this webinar to learn more!

By following these tips, you can build an effective employee advocacy program to amplify your employer brand.

How to use Employee Brand Advocacy to Amplify your Employer Brand

Employee advocacy can be a powerful tool for enhancing the reach of employer branding efforts. Candidates are more likely to trust content published by employees rather than on corporate channels. Employee advocacy allows you to tap into this trust and credibility to create a more impactful and authentic employer brand. Here are a few tips on how to use brand advocacy to enhance your employer branding efforts:

52. Define the clear goals: and objectives you want to achieve through employee advocacy. These goals range from increasing brand awareness to generating leads and referrals.
53. Create an internal communications plan: to inform your employees about your brand and the goals of your advocacy program. Develop an internal communications plan outlining the message, tone, and content employees should share.
54. Provide employees with relevant content: that is both valuable and relevant to their personal and professional networks. This content could include company updates, industry news, or thought leadership pieces.
55. Make it easy for employees to share content: using social media management tools and pre-written or AI-generated social copy. An excellent tool for this is The Martec AI platform which is used explicitly for employee-generated content.
56. Recognize and reward employees who are brand advocates: through incentives like bonuses or opportunities to attend events or networking opportunities.
57. Track and measure the results: of your employee advocacy program to understand what works and what doesn't. Then, use this information to make data-driven decisions about how to improve your program in the future.
58. Encourage employees to be authentic: and share their personal stories and experiences. These stories will help to build trust and credibility with their networks. You can also use employee advocacy to drive authentic diversity as part of your strategy.
59. Provide employees with training: and support to help them become more effective advocates for your brand. This support could include social media training or workshops on storytelling.
60. Foster a supportive culture: that encourages employees to be proud of your brand and share their experiences. Encourage open and honest communication and provide opportunities for employees to give feedback and offer suggestions.
61.  Continuously evaluate and improve: your employee advocacy program. Ask for employee feedback, track results, and make changes as needed to ensure that your program is practical and relevant.

For more tips on getting employees to be your biggest advocates, check out this article by eight of our employer branding community leaders.

Localizing Employer Branding Strategies

In today's globalized and diverse business landscape, having a strong employer brand is essential for attracting top talent and staying competitive. However, more than replicating your employer branding strategy across different regions and cultures are required. It's necessary to understand your target audience's unique needs and values and adapt your strategy accordingly.

We recommend customizing your brand messaging to align with each region's cultural norms, language, and values. This customization helps you connect with your target audience and shows that you respect and value their cultural differences. Atlassian does this well by treating its regional employer branding as an extension of its global strategy, with distinct local differences. 

Despite the importance of regional employer brands, don’t develop these at the expense of your broader employer branding strategy. To avoid diluting the overall strategy, you must ensure that all your regional efforts connect to a greater whole. In addition, regionalised employer brand efforts must be rooted in the same beliefs held at the global level.

How Can You Localize Your Employer Branding Strategy?

62. Research the local culture and values of the target region to understand what resonates with potential candidates.
63. Tailor the messaging and visual elements of your branding to fit the local market.
64. Provide localized benefits and perks to align with the needs and expectations of the local workforce.
65. Foster a sense of belonging and community through events, networking opportunities, and local initiatives.
66. Hire local employees who can serve as ambassadors and help build relationships with the community.
67. Partner with local organizations and charities to give back to the community and demonstrate your commitment to the region.
68. Create localized social media accounts and tailor content to the interests and values of the local audience.
69. Encourage employee-generated content, such as local stories, testimonials, and success stories, to show the human side of your brand.
70. Offer language support and cultural training for new hires to help them acclimate to the local environment.
71. Continuously gather feedback from local employees and adjust your branding strategies as needed.

Ensuring Consistency in Your Employer Brand Across Different Regions

Maintaining consistency across all locations is crucial to ensure a consistent and cohesive brand image. Here are some tips on how to ensure consistency in employer branding across different areas:

72. Establish clear and concise brand messaging to ensure all locations clearly understand the company's mission, values, and messaging. This consistent messaging will help in creating a consistent image across all regions.
73. Create detailed guidelines that outline the company's branding standards, including tone of voice, visual identity, and messaging. These guidelines will help maintain consistency in employer branding efforts.
74. Use centralized marketing materials: Encourage all locations to use centralized marketing materials, such as brochures, flyers, and other promotional materials. These centralized materials will help to maintain consistency in messaging, images, and graphics.
75. Provide training to all employees in different locations to help them understand the company's values and employer brand. This training will ensure that all employees understand the company's culture and messaging.
76. Foster communication between different locations and central HR teams to help keep everyone informed and engaged. This communication can include regular check-ins, email updates, and virtual or in-person meetings.
77. Nurture a sense of unity regardless of location by sharing employee stories, hosting cross-region events and promoting cross-location collaboration.
78. Monitor and measure the success of your employer branding efforts across different locations. Measuring these results will help you identify areas for improvement and adjust your strategy as needed.
79. Encourage local customization: While maintaining consistency is essential, it's also important to allow for some local customization. This customization can include tailoring messaging or marketing efforts to local markets and cultural norms.
80. Utilize digital tools: to help maintain consistency in employer branding efforts. These tools can include creating a centralized intranet or digital platform for sharing resources and communicating with employees.
81. Continuously review and assess: your employer brand to ensure you stay relevant to changing markets and cultural norms. Make improvements as needed to ensure consistent branding across all locations.

How Employer Brand can Support Talent Acquisition and Hiring Teams

Employer branding is a crucial component of talent acquisition and hiring efforts. It is vital in attracting top talent and promoting the organization as an employer of choice. Companies must be proactive in building and maintaining a strong and consistent employer brand in today's competitive job market. By supporting talent acquisition and hiring teams, employer branding efforts can simplify the end-to-end recruitment process. 

An effective employer brand is essential for building a solid reputation as an employer and attracting top talent. Additionally, it can streamline the recruitment process, making it easier and more efficient for hiring teams to hire suitable candidates. We've pulled together ten tips to support talent acquisition and to help your collaboration.

10 Collaboration Tips for Employer Branding and Talent Acquisition Teams

82. Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team and establish a process for regular communication and collaboration.
83. Create a shared understanding of the company’s employer brand, target candidate audience, and recruitment process.
84. Provide training to talent acquisition and hiring teams on effectively communicating the employer brand to potential candidates.
85. Offer support to hiring teams developing job descriptions, interview questions, and other recruitment materials that align with the employer brand.
86. Collaborate on creating an enjoyable and memorable candidate experience, from the initial application to the final decision. We have a great article on how to do this here.
87. Work together to create a referral program that leverages the power of employee networks to attract top talent.
88. Arm your hiring teams with branding materials, including videos, employee-generated stories, and social media posts, to share with potential candidates.
89. Regularly gather feedback from talent acquisition and hiring teams on the effectiveness of employer branding efforts and make adjustments as needed.
90. Host joint events and webinars with talent acquisition and hiring teams to engage potential candidates and build relationships.
91. Offer ongoing support to your hiring teams, including regular training sessions and access to the latest industry insights.

You can read more about the benefits of collaboration between employer branding and talent acquisition teams here.

How Can You Employer Branding to Attract and Retain Top Talent

Employer branding is crucial to any organization's talent acquisition and retention strategy. Organizations can attract and retain the best talent in their respective industries by creating a strong and positive employer brand. Here are some ways in which organizations can use employer branding to attract and retain top talent:

92. Develop a compelling Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that defines your organization. You can find a detailed guide on developing a persuasive EVP here.
93. Share your company culture and values through diversified channels like your website, social media, and employee testimonials. These social channels will help potential candidates understand what it's like to work at your organization.
94. Offer attractive and competitive benefits packages, such as health insurance, retirement plans, and paid time off.
95. Create a positive and supportive work environment that promotes collaboration, creativity, and growth.
96. Provide opportunities for professional development and career advancement.
97. Foster open and transparent communication with employees, encouraging them to provide feedback and suggestions.
98. Offer flexible work arrangements, such as remote work, flexible hours, and part-time options.
99. Foster a sense of community and belonging through team-building activities and events.
100. Recognize and reward top performers, creating a culture of excellence and motivation.
101.  Encourage employee referrals, as they often result in high-quality hires.

These tips allow organizations to create a strong and positive employer brand that will help attract and retain top talent. Using the right strategies, your employees are more likely to be motivated, engaged, and committed to the company's success.

In conclusion, enhancing your employer branding strategy is crucial in attracting and retaining top talent, building a positive employee experience, and creating a strong company culture. We hope these additional 101 tips have inspired you to take your employer branding efforts to the next level in 2023. Remember to share how you have implemented these tips and read the first 101 tips for a comprehensive employer branding strategy. Together, let's make 2023 a successful year for employer branding.

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As always, a big thank you to The Martec for their AI-powered content tool for Employer Branding. They make this possible, and the content and images magical!