Using social media to showcase your company culture is critical if you want to find and keep exceptional team members. In today’s highly competitive job market, the most talented employees have many options. When deciding whose offer to accept, these career-minded individuals consider company culture equally, if not more important, than attractive pay and benefits.
Simply put, company culture illustrates the organization’s personality. It is defined by the workplace environment and what current and former team members think about the company. To effectively target and reach quality candidates, it is important to effectively promote the company culture through social media.
Statistics indicate that a company’s culture has a direct impact on employee turnover, which affects productivity, and therefore success. A particular Columbia University study, for example, shows that the probability of turnover at a company with a favorable culture is 13.9 percent while the likelihood of turnover in a negative company culture is 48.4 percent.
Before learning the details of how to implement a thorough social media strategy to spread the word about your company culture, let’s explore what exactly company culture is and why it’s a valuable thing to invest in.
What Is Company Culture?
Company culture is a term used to refer to the shared beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and characteristics of a company and its workers. It plays out in the way employees approach their work, how they interact with one another, how the organization makes decisions and how it presents itself to the public.
Company culture consists of many different elements, which can include the company’s mission statement, leadership structure, management style, employee expectations, and more. It’s something that’s built intentionally over the long term, requiring an active effort from all levels of leadership.
Some of the most admired brands in the world have attained that status by prioritizing company culture: Google, Nike, and Disney are just a few of the top names that come to mind.
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Benefits Of Prioritizing Company Culture
Among the benefits of creating a strong company culture are:
Positive identity
In a Harvard Business Review blog post written titled “Transform Your Employees Into Passionate Advocates,” Rob Markey wrote: “Loyal, passionate employees bring a company as much benefit as loyal, passionate customers. They stay longer, work harder, work more creatively, and find ways to go the extra mile. They bring you more great employees. And that spreads even more happiness – happiness for employees, for customers, and for shareholders.”
Recruiting
A company’s culture is directly tied to its reputation, which impacts how well it can attract talented candidates. For example, you could probably make a decision about whether you’d want to apply at your best friend’s company based solely on what they’ve told you about working there.
When you have a strong, positive company culture, it’s not only easier to bring in applications, but you’re more likely to make the right hire the first time. This is because a well-defined culture makes it easier to identify which candidates would work well as part of the team.
Retention
A thriving company culture not only attracts top talent but tends to keep that talent for the long term because they feel engaged with their career. This results in lower turnover and fosters better chemistry among team members since there are fewer new hires.
Related: Highly Effective Strategies for Employee Retention
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Consistent with Markey’s writings on the value of passionate employees, companies are treating their promotion of company culture in a similar fashion to their traditional marketing. Employer branding is just as important for attracting and retaining employees as it is for capturing new business.
Related: How to Elevate Your Employer Brand
Employee satisfaction
In addition to the practical benefits of building a strong company culture, there are intrinsic benefits to being a place where people simply like to work. It feels good to come to a workplace you care about and where you feel your ideas are valued. When workers have higher job satisfaction, they’re more willing to go the extra mile for their employer.
Understanding all of this, it makes sense that organizations are devoting abundant time, money, and resources to create an inviting company culture. Using different social media platforms to showcase your company culture represents a significant part of your branding and marketing.
Related: How to Measure Employee Satisfaction
How To Use Social Media To Showcase Your Company Culture
Here are tips for effectively using social media to promote your company culture:
Make your brand personable
Social media forums like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and your blog helps promote your company culture and humanize your brand. Engaging infographics, photos of company events, smiling employees, the workplace environment, and captivating content contribute to a favorable social media strategy.
It is important to showcase your business as having a friendly and welcoming company culture. That not only helps attract talented candidates, but it also appeals to prospective clients and customers.
Be professional, but do not hesitate to inject humor and personality into photo captions and content, as long as it is appropriate and relevant. It is all part of humanizing your brand.
Have a presence where it makes sense
Though we just named multiple online platforms where your brand can showcase its culture, this doesn’t mean you need to be on all of them. In fact, for most small- and medium-sized businesses, being on more than just two or three social media platforms isn’t usually feasible or effective.
Instead of trying to be everywhere, pick a few platforms that make the most sense for your company. This depends on who you’re trying to reach. TikTok may be all the rage right now, but if your target candidates aren’t recent graduates or early-career professionals, it might be wiser to focus your efforts on LinkedIn, where the demographic skews older and more experienced (and the reverse holds true, as well). When choosing what social media platforms to participate on, don’t try to be something you’re not–which is a great piece of advice for shaping your company culture in general, as well.
Use content created by employees
User-generated content involves posts and images that are created by your audience, which in this case is your team. This demonstrates how much they enjoy their environment.
Engaging with the company on social media should not be mandatory for your employees, but you should encourage participation. Suggest group photos at company events and outings. Recommend that team members share these images on their own social media accounts as well as posting it on your company’s social media channels.
Consider offering incentives for employees to repost photos to their personal social media accounts. Create a contest to see which employee can get the most likes on an image. Reward the winner with a gift card or another gesture of appreciation.
Remain true to your brand values and to industry relevance, but do not set unnecessary barriers to the content your team members can contribute. Providing a glimpse behind the scenes allows potential employees and consumers alike to better understand what your company culture is about.
Showcase your employees
Content, videos, and photos of team members who receive Employee of the Month recognition, win industry-related awards, or make positive contributions to the community make employees feel appreciated and contributes to positively promoting your company culture.
Remember to get permission from employees before posting photos of them; especially before tagging and sharing on their personal Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media profiles.
Related: How to Use Video as an Innovative Recruitment Strategy
Engage on social media
It is encouraging when your Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter activities are generating likes and attention. Responding to comments represents another opportunity to reflect a positive company culture by letting followers know you notice them and value their feedback.
This demonstrates that your team is attentive and reinforces that your clients and customers are important to your company. A key element of building and maintaining positive company culture is reflecting your values by the way you interact with existing and prospective customers and employees.
Implement a diverse and consistent social media strategy
When you visit a company’s blog and Facebook page, as two examples, and notice the last posts were a year ago, chances are you will not return to these destinations. Remain active with your audience by creating and posting articles, infographics, photos, and videos on a regular basis.
Google embraces websites with blogs that are frequently updated. Create a blog, develop an editorial calendar, and post regularly with relevant and engaging content. Share your company parties, after work gatherings, corporate retreats, and company softball games among other topics.
Start conversations that will attract visitors to your site and give people a reason to consistently return. Write general posts that ask readers for their insight and viewpoints. Ask them about their favorite workouts, activities, foods, drinks, movies and TV shows, for example. Suggest that employees talk about accomplishments they are proud about, and what they like most about their job.
Develop a company tour
We live in an age of vast information where companies have an array of avenues to showcase their brand. There was a time when the only positive publicity you could generate for your business was through traditional media coverage, and company newsletters and brochures. Now you can promote your company through your website and the multitude of social media forums, like the aforementioned LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other outlets.
Create a behind-the-scenes video tour with graphics and music. Show a peek into offices, recreation areas, meeting spaces, and other parts of your environment you deem worthy of showcasing.
Creating an attractive company culture is one step to helping attract and retain employees just as you strive to do the same with customers. Developing a social media strategy is the next critical step. Implementing, maintaining, and growing your social media presence is the third and most essential aspect of promoting your company’s culture. After all, nobody will know about it if you do not publicize it and get your team members to be regular participants!
Key Takeaway
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If you need help identifying the right candidates for your vacancies, we welcome the opportunity to connect! We’re on standby to help you transform your workforce and find the ideal candidate today!
