The *Real* Way You Make Your Employer Brand Come To Life On Social Media

Your social media checklist for your employer brand might look something a little like this:

• Careers-focused channels created? Check.
• Posting regularly? Check.
• Growing your audience? Check.

While those items alone ensure a robust social media plan, there’s one big item that’s missing in order for your employer brand to truly come alive on social media: community management.

What community management is and why you should care.

Community management simply refers to talking back to anyone who comments on your posts, posts to your page, tags you in posts, or messages your page. If they talk to you and you’re talking back, you’re checking off community management. Without a community management strategy, your overall social strategy is only halfway there. Social media is a conversation, and if you’re not engaging in community management, the conversation is one-sided and you’re leaving candidates hanging.

What you need for community management.

All you need is a person or team of people who know your employer brand’s voice and can communicate with candidates in that voice. You may be tempted to put together tools like response templates so you can just copy and paste answers to questions, but the problem is those responses end up sounding canned and take away from the “real” conversations that could be taking place. You need to trust your community manager(s) and let them give your employer brand a little bit of a personality, because candidates will know if they’re getting unauthentic responses.

How frequently you should do community management.

No less frequently than every day. Social is a 24/7 thing, and it’s all instantaneous. If you think of social media as a back-and-forth conversation, view your response as you would in a real life conversation; i.e., you wouldn’t wait three days to respond back to someone if they asked you a question to your face. On the flipside, unless you have a dedicated employee working on community management and nothing but community management, it’s unrealistic to think you can monitor your pages all day. The happy medium is a daily check in of what’s going on on your social accounts.

Results you’ll see.

• Most of the time when people are contacting your employer brand page, it‚Äôs to ask about job opportunities. If you‚Äôre communicating back with them, you can lead them directly to apply, increasing your applicant pool.
• The more you engage with a pre-applicant population in a positive way, the more likely they are to view your employer brand in a positive light and want to work with you, which also increases your applicant pool.
• A better candidate experience can grow if you‚Äôre answering questions that applicants have from the process. Being helpful will only have a positive impact on your brand.
• Giving your employer brand a personality can build overall brand perception. You won‚Äôt just be increasing your candidate interest, but you‚Äôll draw in customer interest as well.

Social media is all about making connections, and those connections won’t be made if all you’re doing is pushing content out. Check the final big item off your social media list by building a community management plan and interacting with those who interact with you. Your employer brand will feel more genuine and more like candidates are engaging with a real employee inside the company.