Social media.
It’s dreaded by some, adored by many and used by just about everyone.
In fact, adults ages 18-34 spend an average of 45 minutes each day on social media platforms. If you’re one of the few recruiters keeping it old school, you’re missing out on one of the best ways to promote your employer brand to the majority of the workforce.
Employer branding through social media is a low-lift approach that can produce big results, and it’s easy to get started. We’ll cover a few best practices before breaking down 19 examples of social media employer branding that we particularly love.
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How to Use Social Media for Employer Branding
Before we jump into our examples, let’s take a look at a few best practices for promoting your employer brand through social media. These basic strategies will get you started and lay a strong foundation for continued experimentation as you grow.
Highlight Your Company Culture
You’ve worked hard to establish a strong company culture, and you know it’s great, but most candidates don’t. That’s a major issue, as company culture is the primary reason candidates choose a job over other opportunities. Social media provides companies with a platform to highlight their culture and share the fun and quirky side of everyday work life.
Feature Your Employees
At the end of the day, your company is really a group of people working together toward a common goal. Featuring the people that make your company great is an easy way to promote your employer brand to potential candidates and demonstrate appreciation for your existing employees. This may be illustrated with regular employee spotlights that highlight an individual's role and experience at a company as well as some personal aspects, like interests, passion projects or a brief history of their career. It doesn’t have to be fancy to be effective.
Stand Behind Your Mission
Every company has a mission, and it’s important to distinguish how your company differs from others and relay how that is integrated into your culture and daily practices. Have brand ambassadors relay the message through the lense of the company’s established mission and values statements. This will help unify individual perspectives and reinforce the purpose and goals of the company.
Promote Your Perks and Benefits
89% of the 18-34 year old workforce considers perks and benefits to be more important than pay raises, and while perks and benefits don’t define your employer brand, they’re definitely part of it. Candidates want assurance that you’ll provide adequate healthcare coverage, work-life balance and professional development opportunities, to name a few, so make sure to cover this topic in your social media employer branding efforts. Rather than simply talking about your benefits or posting pictures of employees playing ping pong, tell a story about how those perks and benefits improve their lives.
19 Examples of Social Media Employer Branding
Ok, now that you understand the basics, let’s take a look at some examples from companies that are nailing the art of social media employer branding. Each one offers a unique take away, so pay attention!
Employer Branding on Facebook
Why we love it - Spreetail is an ecommerce company that builds technology to provide customers with delightful shopping experiences. This Facebook post shines some light on one of the most important benefits candidates look for when considering employment opportunities — professional development. 87% of millennials say that job-related training influences their career choices.
How you can apply it - Know what benefits and perks your target candidates value most and promote them. When the image isn’t self explanatory, Facebook is a great place to provide a bit more written context to support your video or picture.
Why We Love It - Ibotta is a consumer-facing shopping technology that helps shoppers earn cash back on their purchases. Ibotta knows that promoting your employer brand on social media requires you to stand out from the crowd, and when it comes to the internet, nothing stands out like cats. The company joined a trending hashtag on #NationalCatDay to share their mutual love for their feline friends with this Facebook post. Believe it or not, more and more candidates are looking for et friendly offices, so this post was a smart play.
Why We Love It - It’s perfectly acceptable to get a little weird sometimes. Candidates want a look at the real you, and this post provided just that. It also drove a huge amount of engagement, which is what social media employer branding is all about.
Why We Love It - Domio is a platform supporting travelers throughout their journey, from booking to check in to check out. In this Facebook post, Domio celebrated the naming of its COO to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. It may seem like a humble brag (and it totally is), but it also serves an important purpose for Domio’s employer brand. Candidates want to work with and learn from the brightest minds in their industry, and Domio makes it known that its team is second to none.
How You Can Apply It - Celebrating individual successes provides insight into the support a company offers its people. Make sure to take time to highlight your team’s accomplishments — big and small — as part of your employer branding.
Why We Love It - Flywire is a full-service billing, payment and receivables technology that offers solutions and transparency for transactions across the globe. Like Domio, Flywire uses social media to highlight its people, but with a bit of a twist. In this Facebook post, the company is promoting its internship program by featuring an employee who began their career with the company that very way. This allows them to both attract talent and demonstrate what an internship with Flywire can lead to.
How You Can Apply It - At its core, social media employer branding is storytelling, and who better to tell a story than someone that’s lived it? Tap into your employees whenever possible for an authentic point of view that candidates will trust.
Why We Love It - Sailpoint is a cloud-based identity governance technology that brings the Power of Identity™ to global enterprise customers. This Facebook post shows a bit of their culture and collective passion for helping the local community raise money for cancer research. It also shows one of the top rated perks among employees — company outings. People love the opportunity to bond with colleagues outside of the work space, especially when it involves social good. Sailpoint has also optimized the post with a company-specific hashtag, link to the organizations they’re supporting and an impressive number for the donations they raised together.
How You Can Apply It - Major events like holiday parties or conferences are a great way to promote your employer brand, but smaller outings are often more authentic, so make sure to have your phone handy so you can take pictures whenever your team gets together.
Employer Branding on Instagram
Why We Love It - Pitchbook is a financial tech company that provides professionals with transparency in capital markets by organizing and analyzing data. This Instagram video post tells the story of a company volunteer outing from multiple perspectives, highlighting the company’s culture, its sponsored volunteer events and its people.
How You Can Apply It - Videos may require slightly more effort to create, but they drive big results on social media platforms. Pitchbook took a low-lift approach by combining short clips with photos to develop a longer, more engaging video. No need for extensive editing, voice overs or captions.
Why We Love It - Talkspace offers online therapy services to over 1 million people with more than 2,000 therapists available. This Instagram post (their entire social media presence, really) is centered around the company’s mission — to provide and advocate for mental health services throughout people's daily lives. When it comes to your employer brand, mission matters, and Talkspace never loses sight of that.
How You Can Apply It - For Talkspace, it’s all about curating content rather than creating it. This post is an example of a regram; sharing someone else’s content with your followers. Strategically curating content and supporting other users who post about mental health allows Talkspace to cultivate an active and impactful presence on Instagram with much less effort.
Why We Love It - HubSpot is a leading sales, marketing and customer relationship management platform with over 19,000 customers worldwide. This Instagram stories post shines a light on their diverse and international cultures from Berlin, Singapore, Sydney and at a HubSpot women’s conference. It gets their entire global team in on the action, engaging users with stickers that allow people to respond to yes or no questions and video showcasing some fun office perks like a ball pit and free food.
How You Can Apply It - Don’t forget about team members working out of satellite offices or remotely. While each location will have its own unique culture, your employer brand should reflect everyone on your team, not just those at headquarters.
Why We Love It - Markforged builds an industrial 3D printing platform to help designers and engineers expedite their processes. This Instagram post highlights the company’s Senior Director of Business Development with an image of her at work and a direct quote. It’s an easy way to both highlight the talented people that candidates could work with and ensure your current employees feel appreciated.
How You Can Apply It - Interviews don’t have to be in the form of videos. Keep it simple; snap a photo of the person being interviewed and put their quote in the caption. It’s a simple way to gather quality content with little effort, and it provides users with an insider’s perspective on the company, culture and mission.
Why We Love It - Centro provides digital advertising agencies with enterprise-class software that simplifies operations and drives performance. In this Instagram post, they highlighted individual employees taking part in the 2018 elections, but there’s a message that goes beyond people exercising a civic duty. Centro makes it clear that it supports its people and encourages them to be responsible members of the community. Demonstrating its supportive culture does wonders for Centro’s employer brand.
How You Can Apply It - There are several good lessons here, so pay attention. First, Centro took part in a trending conversation by loading its posts with relevant hashtags, greatly increasing its potential reach. Second, they used Instagram’s carousel feature, allowing them to feature numerous employees in a single post. This format can be a real timesaver, so consider adding it to your mix.
Employer Branding on Twitter
Why We Love It - Bounteous is an ecommerce platform that integrates design, engineering and digital marketing to help brands create and optimize their vision. Their Talent and Culture team created this GIF for Twitter while attending a conference on (what else?) talent and culture. While it’s a simple approach, the GIF helps Bounteous stand out in crowded newsfeeds. It’s also a smart play to let potential candidates know that the company has people dedicated to developing and maintaining a healthy culture.
How You Can Apply It - Take advantage of unique media when promoting your employer brand on social media. All of the major platforms offer an array of unique options that will make a bigger impact than your standard status update.
Why We Love It - New Knowledge is a cybersecurity company that helps businesses monitor and defend against intentionally harmful misinformation. The company tapped into its subject matter expertise to write an OpEd on election interference for the New York Times and cross promoted the article on social media. While this may not seem like traditional employer branding, this tweet speaks volumes to potential applicants. Elite candidates want to know their work will make a difference, and New Knowledge makes it abundantly clear that it’s working toward something more than profit.
How You Can Apply It - Remember that your employer brand is more than a ping pong table in the break room or Thursday night happy hours. It’s ok if much of your social media employer branding content is lighthearted fare, but don’t be afraid to take a stand on important issues. Candidates will appreciate it.
Why We Love It - Morningstar, Inc. is a financial technology company that provides people with investing information to help them make informed decisions. It’s no secret that the technology sector has a bad rep as a boys club, but Morningstar works hard to let potential candidates know that it’s dedicated to equitable hiring practices. This simple Twitter video post features one of the company’s senior leaders discussing how excited she is to be attending the Grace Hopper Conference, an event that celebrates women in computing.
How You Can Apply It - Tackling challenging issues head on is often the best way to connect with candidates, so don’t be afraid to do so. Morningstar knows that if it doesn’t take a leading role in the conversation around women in tech it may be lumped in with other companies that aren’t as dedicated to fair hiring practices.
Why We Love It - Versus Systems is a gaming platform that provides players with the opportunity to play their favorite games for real-life rewards. This Twitter post highlights a few engineering employees who had the opportunity to attend an industry conference and expand their skill sets. As mentioned earlier, professional development is big for job seekers looking for new employment opportunities and that includes attending events, meetings and conferences with educational benefits.
How You Can Apply It - Take a picture, grab a quote and slap on a hashtag. It’s always a great idea to show off events that your team attends. Doing so both informs prospects of potential opportunities, and it may lead to networking opportunities with other attendees who engage with your post or vice versa. Conferences typically have a specific social hashtag, so make sure you’re clued into what’s trending to contribute to the conversations in-real-time.
Why We Love It - Wunder Capital is a software company that develops and manages solar investment funds for large scale solar energy projects. This Twitter post highlights two of their employees’ appearance on a podcast discussing their passion for the company’s mission and creating a more diverse workplace. Then, rather than adding a generic ‘learn more’ link, they utilize the opportunity to promote their open roles. It’s a smart way to pitch your open positions while people are actively engaged with their employer brand.
How You Can Apply It - While you don’t want to overdo it with the hard sell when pitching your jobs, reminding people that you’re hiring — especially when discussing the positive change your company is working toward — is always a smart play. Opinion pieces and open roles aren’t mutually exclusive.
Other Employer Branding Examples
Why We Love It - Skykick creates cloud-based SaaS products and platforms to help IT partners migrate, backup and manage customers. This LinkedIn post utilizes hashtags and links to support the companies and people hosting the 1st Black Women in Technology NW Summit.
How You Can Apply It - Part of employer branding is supporting and promoting other organizations that contribute to a greater cause or movement related to your industry and mission. While LinkedIn is generally used for professional content, it shouldn’t be overlooked in your social media employer branding strategy.
Why We Love It - BCG Digital Ventures is a corporate investment and incubation firm that builds startups and helps them grow and scale by investing in them. With this article, the company eschewed the more traditional social media platforms in favor of Medium, a blogging community. This post goes deep on what the company is doing to maintain its culture as its team grows at a breakneck pace. We love the fact that BCG was willing to take a risk on a non-traditional platform, but we really love the subject matter. This is a question they’ll likely receive from candidates during the interview process, so discussing it in an open forum can help them get ahead of any potential objections that may be holding people back from applying.
How You Can Apply It - If you’re stumped for content, focus on the questions you receive from candidates during the interview process. These can be a goldmine of ideas for your social media employer branding efforts.
Why We Love It - Relativity is a cloud-based software solution that helps companies organize and analyze data during litigation, internal investigations and compliance projects. With this Youtube video, Relativity provides a brilliantly choreographed insider’s view of the company. Hosted by several employees, the video tells a cohesive story about the company’s mission while also showing off their office space, a few perks and the diverse employees that make up their team. They also created a unique hashtag - #ActOnIt - that can be used across platforms to connect the message.
How You Can Apply It - We’re always fans of a low-lift approach, but if you have the resources to create professionally produced video, do it. While Relativity’s video likely didn’t come cheap, it’s a phenomenal piece of evergreen content that can be utilized for years.
Why We Love It - ArenaNet is a gaming company that created Guild Wars, which has sold over 3 million copies. This Tumblr post takes their mission outside the office and beyond the employees, extending an invitation to fellow gamers to enjoy a night of drinks.
How You Can Apply It - Tumblr is a unique social media platform that doesn’t make sense for all companies, but it makes perfect sense for gaming companies. Also, what better way to build a culture around your product than sponsor events for users and fans to get together and bounce ideas off one another. Who knows, one of your superfans may be your next colleague.
Learn from 60 real examples.
