Why is LinkedIn the essential social network for your employer brand?

Everywhere, employer branding is considered important; 83% of global recruitment leaders agree that it is a key element in their ability to recruit the best talent. Today, companies are constantly increasing their investments in employer branding, which reveals a real awareness of its importance in the life of a company. However, despite this awareness, almost half of businesses do not have a proactive strategy to create and maintain it.

Many tend to say that the most effective tools for conveying your employer image are career sites but, at a time when more than 83% of the French population has at least one account on social networks, isn't it more appropriate to think that these viral channels are the most relevant and significant for building and maintaining your employer brand?

LinkedIn is, without a doubt, the essential social network for your employer brand. This platform can only allow you to enrich your employer brand image and develop your reputation for the simple and unique reason that LinkedIn is the first professional social network in the world. The platform is particularly popular in countries like France where it is most used by professionals, with 4.5 million members.

I- The challenges of employer branding

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a) What is an employer brand?

Today, far too many people associate it with a concept of “communication and seduction” reserved exclusively for recruitment. Well no! The reality is more nuanced, the employer brand is the image that a company reflects to its employees, its potential candidates but also, to a wider audience such as its customers, its service providers, its investors... It is based on a pedagogy and marketing of conviction that includes, of course, the internal management of human resources, but not only. It can also allow companies that tame it to better promote their offers, products and services to students or potential candidates.

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b) Why is it important to have an employer brand?

The implementation of an employer brand strategy aims to meet 3 main objectives: attracting, convincing and retaining the best talent. Did you know that 4 out of 5 candidates are looking for information about your company before applying? Well, employer branding allows a company to increase (both in quality and quantity) the number of applications it receives in order to improve its performance.

It is also worthy of significantly increasing the well-being of its employees in order to retain them, motivate them and promote their commitment. Which will allow you to obtain a certain credibility and significant reputation in your market and to improve, of course, your brand image.

We can say that the high productivity of your employees is the result of a good employer brand. Do you doubt it? Let us explain everything to you!

In terms of recruitment, the employer brand makes it possible to facilitate procedures and reduce their costs, you receive more and better applications, you recruit the best employees and therefore, you improve your productivity.

In addition, a good employer brand makes it possible to retain your employees, they will benefit from a certain recognition and will experience a high level of professional satisfaction. Your best employees, the most committed, stay. This significantly decreases your turnover and therefore recruitment costs and thus (you are beginning to understand...) increases your productivity!

The employer brand has a considerable influence on the commitment of your employees, they will be more motivated, will work with desire and will become real ambassadors of your brand and therefore (you got it!) will be more productive!

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II- How to create an employer brand strategy?

a) The characteristics of a successful employer brand

Your employer strategy must first be differentiating in an easy and fast attribution logic by involving your employees in its development, construction and management. It must also be attractive in order to meet, in the best possible way, the expectations of your target audience. It must be credible, it requires an accumulation of evidence over time. An employer brand is not created overnight. It must also be perennial and Real by reporting on the reality within your business. The biggest mistake is overselling the promise.

And finally, your employer brand strategy should be Shared, it must involve your employees from start to finish.

However, the most important thing is, without a doubt, that your employer brand must be extremely authentic and to do this, the alignment between the internal and external aspects of your employer brand is fundamental.

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b) The stages of building an employer brand

In concrete terms, to create a successful employer brand you must:

1- Study the market: analyze your current employer reputation, how are you perceived by candidates? Do you reflect a positive image? Analyze the job offers of your competitors, how do they stand out? How do they get more applications for the same jobs than you do?

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2- Work on the targets: seek to understand as finely as possible their functioning, their expectations, the consumption habits of the labor market in your sector. You need to know them perfectly.

3- Building the value proposition: here you must formalize a range of added values that distinguish the living environment of employment in a given company from that of its competitors. The aim here is to communicate the corporate identity as an employer. It gives potential candidates a clear idea of the value they will get from working for the company in question. It is therefore naturally the first and most important component of the employer brand.

What is your corporate culture? What work environment do you offer? What career? What remuneration? What social benefits?

4- Establish an action plan: the objective is to build the elements of attracting candidates, acquiring and retaining employees through various means and/or tools put in place.

5- Promote and manage: the objective is mainly to promote the employer brand as a shared corporate responsibility with HR and/or communication and/or marketing management.

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III- How to optimize and strengthen your employer brand strategy?

a) Promote a strong corporate culture

“Corporate culture is a set of shared references in the organization, built throughout its history in response to the problems encountered in the company.” According to Maurice Thevenet, professor at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts

A strong corporate culture is a considerable competitive advantage that is generally built on founding myths or on the personality and vision of managers (sometimes called raison d'être). It allows you not only to stand out but also to bring your employees together, to recruit more easily and to strengthen the acquisition and loyalty of your customers.

It is not built overnight, it is not a question of writing it on paper or making a LinkedIn post on the subject, no. Corporate culture must be reflected on a daily basis in many aspects of the life of your company such as rituals (events, birthdays, integrations...), customer relationships, colors, your premises, work uniforms (if there are any), the language used...

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b) Create engaging and shareable content

Create content that draws the interest of your target audience, requires them to engage and share it.

Some content ideas:

● A new recruit

● New or emerging trends in your market

● The history of your business

● Testimonial from your employees

● Blog post

● Company life (seminar, meals, meetings...)

● Your news

● etc.

To increase engagement under your LinkedIn posts, don't forget to add a question (as a CTA) at the end of them as well as relevant hashtags (no more than 4).

c) Encourage employee advocacy: involve your employees

Your employees are your best ambassadors.

According to LinkedIn, the world leader in professional social networks with its 22 million users in France, each employee has about 10 times more connections than a company has subscribers.

If only 2% of employees share information about their business, they are responsible for 20% of your social commitment. Thus, it is important to empower your employees to share content and communicate around their professional expertise.

How do you motivate them to communicate?

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Marine Bryzkowski, head of communication at Shine revealed in a LinkedIn live on the theme “Ambassador program: multiply your ROI thanks to LinkedIn influence” some tips to motivate employees to communicate on the platform. It reveals that it is important that the communication of your employees on social networks (and in this case LinkedIn) is not imposed. It makes more sense to focus on people who are willing and motivated to speak out on the platform.

In a group common to all employees, the Shine Group communication team regularly shares the visuals of the posts as well as some key points to guide employees who wish to communicate in writing their publication. The objective is to encourage employees to write their posts themselves in order to avoid traditional copy/paste that go against the objectives set.

The group has also set up challenges/challenges for their employees on the platform. In this live, Marine talks about a “week to break shyness”. It aimed to desecrate the LinkedIn post and to encourage employees to speak up, to break the silence, to respond to comments, and to exchange with their community. A fun way to encourage your employees to communicate!

d) Trust the BtoB influence

Working on your employer brand means working on your brand image. And working on your employer brand with influencers means doing so in a dynamic format that offers real opportunities to give a fairer and more lively vision of the company. LinkedIn B2B influencers have their role to play in promoting your employer brand. The large number of contacts they have as well as their communities committed to their expert eye in their respective fields are significant in arousing interest and applications for your company.

However, it is important to keep in mind that, as with commercial communication, communication about the employer brand that uses influencers cannot derogate from certain fundamental rules. The first being “coherence”; the editorial line of the influencer must adapt to the professions and the company presented.

The “freedom” of the influencer is also essential; the tone of the B2B influencer, his environment, his spontaneity, his personality are what unite his community and make the opinion leader so appreciated on the social network. Finally; ethics. It is imperative that Internet users know that this is a paid collaboration/business communication.

To discover some examples of brand-employer campaigns with B2B influencers on LinkedIn:

https://www.lesanneesfolles.co/post/les-influenceurs-au-service-de-la-marque-employeur

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