How to Make Your Employer Brand Shine on Instagram

No matter the size of your company, it’s only normal that you want to gather quality employees that will allow your business to reach its full potential. In order to attract top talent, however, you have to craft an employer brand that will help you promote your unique identity, values, and goals.

There are several strategies you can rely on when it comes to building an employer brand. Doing it through social media, more specifically Instagram, is one of the approaches you can opt for. Why would a company turn to Instagram of all places, you might be wondering. Well, the truth is that many businesses use this platform to present who they are as a company, their stories, activities, and much more, all with the goal of attracting top-notch employees. This should not come as a surprise when we take into account the number of people from all over the world that use Instagram. What is more, Instagram is among the fastest-growing social networks in the world.

If you’re not sure how to do this and where to start, keep on reading for a useful guide that will aid you in your mission of making your employer brand shine on Instagram.

Use a business account for your company

You might have made an Instagram account for your business in its early days and continued using it until today. However, you should actually turn your current account into a business one. There are many differences between a personal and a business Instagram account. For one, business ones come with many benefits. Take for example access to useful data and insights. You will know how your account and posts are performing and understand which types of content work and which don’t. You will also see how many people your posts have reached and how many of them clicked on your profile and website. Insight into your followers’ demographics is not the only benefit, however, as you will also get the opportunity to add a CTA button to your profile, put links in your stories, and make promoted posts. The call-to-action button can lead to your phone number, email, landing page, free trial, product demo, or something else that you are trying to promote. On the other hand, keep in mind that you will only be able to add links to your stories if you have more than ten thousand followers.

Make a separate account that will appeal to prospective employees

Apart from making a business account for your company, you should make another one that will highlight your company culture. This page will not be focused on selling your products and offering your services but rather on the behind-the-scenes content of how your company operates, the satisfaction of your employees, and various policies you have in place. For example, lifeatgoogle, microsoftlife, and hubspotlife are all career accounts that help these companies put their employer brand in the spotlight.

Understand who you are trying to attract

A big part of attracting the right employees to your company is actually knowing who you want to work for you. That means that you need to understand your candidate persona. You should start by defining your ideal job candidate so that you can adjust your talent acquisition efforts and interest the right people. Interview your current staff members to get more insight into what your prospective employees might be interested in. From their age and education through their life goals and motivation all the way to the channels through which they search for a job, there are many ways how you can personalize your hiring campaign to appeal to your target audience.

Promote career events and open positions

Seeing as how creating a candidate persona will help you better understand your audience, you will be able to utilize this knowledge to the fullest. Creating content that appeals to them will attract them to the page but you have to keep them updated, which is why you need to promote job openings in your company. Every time you are looking for a new team member, make a post about who you are looking for and encourage people to apply. What is more, you can even create a short video about what they would be doing in your company and what obligations and benefits they can expect. Furthermore, you should also talk about career events you plan on organizing. Whether it’s an online seminar or a workshop in your offices, there will surely be interested individuals that would like to learn more about what your company does and how they can be a part of it.

Add a link to your bio

We talked about how Instagram only allows links once you are a business account with over 10,000 followers. However, anyone is able to put a link in their bio, which is why you have to make the most of it. While the link on your main company profile can lead to your homepage or a specific product/service you want to highlight, the link on your careers profile has to lead to the career section of your website. Moreover, if you have a position that you are currently hiring for, link to that specific job opening and mention in your posts and stories that prospective employees can follow the link in your bio. Just make sure that you update the link accordingly as you don’t want to confuse potential employees by taking them to a job opening that has already closed.

Don’t overlook hashtags

When you create posts about job openings, it’s important that you include some specific hashtags. Using relevant and generic ones about job listings such as #jobad, #applynow, and #gethired is okay and can help you get noticed; however, you should also create a unique hashtag for all your career posts. That means that a person that is interested in working for your company can always keep track of the positions you are hiring for. Other than in your posts and stories, put the hashtag in your bio as well. If you’re having trouble coming up with the hashtag, you can always rely on an Instagram hashtag generator.

Do some experimenting

Of course, even if you create the ideal candidate persona, there will always be people who will not fit that mold. That is why you need to do some experimenting, which should not be hard to do thanks to all the different features that Instagram offers. For instance, you can make the most of Boomerang, GIFs, various filters and fonts, live videos, IGTV, and several other features that Instagram has. Having insight into how your posts are performing means that you will be able to see what is popular among your audience and use it more.

Include your employees in posts

While you can simply show off your work environment and the offices where potential employees might be working, it’s best to involve your current employees in these posts and stories as well. Show them doing their assignments, chatting in the break room, enjoying the comfy massage chairs you provided them with, and celebrating a big victory. Then, for example, one staff member can use Instagram to guide people through a day in the life of a worker in your company.

You can include testimonials as well, where team members will talk about how they got the job, their life-work balance, and how their goals align with those of the company. You can also tag their personal accounts in these posts if they allow it. Of course, you don’t want your customers to be intrusive and keep asking business-related questions non-stop, so discuss this with your employees first.

Engage with your audience

If you post interesting content, it’s only normal that your audience will respond. So, do your best to engage with them on a regular basis. Whenever they make a comment on your post, make sure to reply. When they ask a question, reply as that will show that you care about them and that you are attentive. Thank your audience when they mention or recommend you to someone else. On the other hand, it’s also crucial that you don’t ignore negative comments. Take an active approach and ask them to get in touch with you directly through email or contact form of some sort so that you can take immediate action and improve.

Keep it fun and original

Seeing as how you want to attract quality employees, you need to use your Instagram profile to show how fun working for your company can be. There is no need to be too serious, as your company surely isn’t all the time. Show celebrations, dancing, singing along, family moments, bring-your-pet-to-work days, and whatever else fun your employees do around the office. However, you also want to be original. So, don’t follow what everyone else is doing but try to come up with something interesting that will catch the attention of prospective employees.

Be regular

Another thing you have to keep in mind is that regular posting is essential if you want to capture people’s attention. Instead of posting every once in a while, try to post at least three times a week. Alternatively, you can schedule posts through Later or Buffer for Instagram if you like to plan ahead.

Stay honest

Finally, when it comes to employer branding, it’s of the utmost importance to stay honest. Don’t spread around false information or try to create an ideal atmosphere online while your office employees are unsatisfied. While you might attract people this way, you will also be faced with high turnover rates, bad reputation, poor candidate experience, and high hiring expenses. Just be honest, it’s not that hard.

As you can see, there is a lot you can do on Instagram to let your employer brand shine. Follow these tips and you should have no problem attracting top talent in your field.