10 Steps to Creating a Powerful Employer Branding Content Strategy

Have you ever browsed a company’s career pages and immediately wanted to apply for any position just to experience what it’s like to work there?

Or maybe you’ve read employee testimonials boasting an amazing work culture, leaving you eager to join their team.

That’s the power of a strong employer brand strategy.

Now, you might think that only multi-million-dollar businesses can afford to invest heavily in creating employer branding content to attract top employees. 

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

A successful employer branding content strategy is not exclusive to the biggest industry players with the largest budgets. 

Regardless of your company’s industry or size, you can develop a content strategy that shows top talent how great it is to work at your company.

We’ll show you the steps you need to take to do that.

Forget about leaving your reputation as an employer to chance (looking at you, Glassdoor reviews). It’s time to actively shape the narrative.

Let’s see how.

#1 Align Your Teams Around a Common Goal

First things first: employer branding content should never be created in isolation. 

Similar to when you’re hiring a new team member, there are multiple departments and stakeholders involved. 

Therefore, it only makes sense to follow the same principle when planning and creating employer branding content. You need to include all relevant teams and stakeholders and align everyone around a common goal.

Let’s say that the goal is to attract top talent for a developer position.

In that case, relying only on HR or recruiting teams won’t suffice. You also need to ask the technical staff to contribute to creating job ads that accurately represent the position.

Depending on the role, the process could include everyone from marketing specialists (who know how to make alluring ads) to technical roles at various levels (some of which you can see below).

Each of these teams has a deep understanding of the necessary job requirements.

Some companies find this collaborative approach challenging. Admittedly, it does take more time than letting a marketing intern draft employer branding-related LinkedIn posts.

However, according to Chrissy Thornhill, Head of Global Employer Brand at MetLife, alignment and collaboration between different departments within a company are vital to employer branding success. 

As Thornhill briefly sums it up, “It helps to ensure a cohesive, 360-degree content story.”

So, forget about tasking one team with employer branding content creation. You’ll need all hands on deck if you want a united branding front.

#2 Set Goals for Your Employer Branding Content Strategy

Okay, you’ve now assembled a working party that will create content to boost your employer brand.

Seeing as there’s little value in broad-spectrum and unfocused content, your next step is to set clear and specific goals for both your employer brand and the related content.

Connecting your employer branding goals with your content goals has two major benefits.

You’ll ensure that the content you create serves a clear purpose and contributes to achieving broader employer branding objectives.

Need an example to put things into perspective? We’ve got you.

Suppose your employer branding goal was to stand out from your competitors.

In that case, you’d focus on creating content that emphasizes the distinctive qualities of your company. Think company culture videos, behind-the-scenes social media posts, or employee stories.

Of course, differentiating from competitors is just one of the possible employer branding objectives. You might aim to achieve other goals, such as promoting diversity or improving employee engagement. 

Now, telling your content team you need them to “improve the talent pipeline” is a tall order. 

And, frankly, it’s out of their scope. 

So how can you translate those business or HR goals into goals for the content team?

To help you get started, here’s a high-level overview of some employer branding goals and their corresponding content strategy goals: 

There are many other goals you could add to the list. We’ve compiled a more extensive list that you can download below to jump-start your own goal-setting process.

You’ll notice that each of the goals we’ve mentioned is actionable. Not only that; they’re also SMART, as in:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

In other words, getting specific when it comes to goal-setting will help you establish a clear roadmap for content creation.

And by determining clear goals before shooting videos or writing employer branding blog posts, you’ll know exactly how to structure your content to achieve your objectives. 

Better yet, you’ll know what KPIs to track to gauge how close you’ve come to your goals (but more on that later).

With clear goals in mind, you’ll be able to create targeted and impactful content that reinforces your overall branding efforts.

#3 Audit Your Existing Employer Branding Content

You may be itching to start working on new career pages or Instagram reels, but there’s still work to do before content creation. 

To grasp the image that job seekers see when interacting with your company, you should first audit your existing employer branding content.

You probably already have bits and pieces of content scattered around different channels.

Whether you’ve announced your WFH policies during COVID-19 lockdowns or hired a copywriter to describe your business when you first created your website, you likely haven’t had the chance to review your content over the years.

As a result, there may be some outdated content. And you don’t want poorly worded posts to turn candidates away.

Conducting a content audit and analyzing how it holds up will help you ensure that your employer branding content aligns with your current goals and paints a positive, consistent image for candidates.

Moreover, content is not only about the reading experience. You want your content to perform well on search engines, too.

That’s why an audit also covers evaluating the SEO aspect of your content.

Content audits can get complex unless you approach them strategically and pragmatically. In addition, SEO audits sometimes require deep technical know-how.

Unless you’re willing to invest a lot of time into learning about how SEO works, it’s a good option to leave the audit to professionals who can keep your content appealing to both readers and search engines.

Either way, once you analyze your existing content and identify areas for improvement, you’ll have a base for creating a well-rounded content plan.

#4 Define Your Employer Value Proposition (EVP)

As a business owner or manager, you know that your offerings (products or services) need a specific value proposition to stand out from the competition. 

It won’t come as a surprise then that your job offer needs to stand out amongst competing job offers too. A defined employer value proposition (EVP) can help with that.

EVP is not only a marketing tool; it’s also the foundation of your employer brand.

Essentially, your EVP defines your company. It tells candidates how unique you are and what you stand for.

Here’s a nice example of a well put-together EVP, seen in the career pages of Guru, a company producing knowledge management software.

Guru’s EVP addresses the problem of information overload and invites candidates to join the company on its mission to improve knowledge organization.

The statement is enriched with links to Guru’s core values and benefits the candidates can expect.

With a similar approach, you’d be able to attract candidates whose aspirations matched yours, ensuring a stronger alignment between the company culture and the individuals you bring on board.

When you get to defining your own EVP, you’ll once again need to evaluate what propels your company forward, what it offers to employees, and how working with you transforms jobs into meaningful careers.

#5 Segment Your Audience

Phew! That was a lot of introspection. Now that you understand what you want out of your employer branding content strategy, it’s time to get more concrete.

The next thing on your to-do list is segmenting your audience.

In other words, you have to pinpoint who your employer brand is communicating with.

You can do so by breaking down your audience into segments. This will make your brand messages relevant, personalized, and more successful in attracting qualified individuals.

Regardless of your industry, there are three broad categories you can start with: your candidates’ skill set, seniority, and motivations.

Knowing that you’re looking to hire, say, senior-level accountants will guide you in tailoring messaging specifically for this segment.

For instance, you could highlight the challenging projects they will be involved in, the opportunities for professional growth, and leadership within the company.

To see what this looks like in practice, look at the following job ad for a senior consultant at the accounting giant EY.

Source: EY

Similarly, targeting junior applicants will mean that your content should focus on mentoring opportunities, casual Fridays, and similar benefits that resonate with entry-level applicants.

Different segments will require you to adjust the tone of your storytelling and messaging strategies to appeal to the specific preferences of each group. 

You’ll also have to choose appropriate distribution channels, which is our next topic.

#6 Choose Promotion and Distribution Channels

When you’ve done your audience research, you’ve also gained insight into your potential candidates’ behaviors and preferences. Part of it is knowing on what channels they usually consume content.

This knowledge is crucial for selecting the most effective promotion and distribution channels for your employer branding content.

Hannah King, Head of Global Employer Brand at Straumann Group, states that social media has proven to be an indispensable tool in her recruiting career. 

Accordingly, King claims that social media content is so successful in employer branding because it allows targeted outreach.

So, to ensure that you’re advertising on appropriate channels, you need to align your promotion strategies with the audience’s behaviors.

For instance, if you’re hiring creative roles or social media managers, it makes sense to create recruiting content for TikTok.

On the other hand, if you’re targeting a more professional audience, platforms like LinkedIn and industry-specific job boards are more suitable for promoting your employer brand content.

King’s experience is a testament to that. Her team took a deep dive into TikTok before eventually deciding against it because it wasn’t relevant to their audience.

Bear in mind that posting on as many platforms as you can doesn’t necessarily translate to better results. 

Instead, the key lies in developing captivating content that resonates with your candidate segments on their preferred channels.

#7 Match Content to Employee Journey Stages

Is the goal of your content to attract new employees? Increase retention? Or to educate potential employees about your company?

As you can see, there are multiple stages in the employee lifecycle. Your employer branding content should be precise enough to address topics relevant to each of the stages.

Starting with building awareness and ending with employee retention, you can fit different types of content into your employer branding content strategy, resulting in a comprehensive and coherent campaign.

You can see an overview of employee stages and appropriate content types below.

Don’t worry—this doesn’t mean that you’re back to square one regarding content.

You can save time and maintain your brand by refurbishing the content you already have.

For example, you probably have your mission and vision stated on your website.

There’s no reason why you couldn’t build on that to educate the candidates on what makes your company unique.

Here are some additional content ideas, divided by stages, as compiled by Katja de Witte, a Belgium-based B2B marketing expert. 

All in all, you should expect potential and current employees to have questions about your company and their role within it.

Rather than waiting to be asked, you’ll leave a better impression and build stronger connections with talent by preparing content that provides insights about you across all stages of the hiring funnel.

#8 Lay Out Your Content Plan

It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for—the time has come to start creating content.

Really?

Well, almost.

The last preparatory step you have to take is drafting a content plan.

The plan will provide a tangible starting point for your marketing efforts, strategically mapping out the content themes based on your goals and audience.

An overview of the upcoming content pieces will also help you double-check that your messages align with your overall brand values.

In the early stages of employer branding content planning, it’s sufficient to choose a tentative timeline and topics—you can fill in the details as you go. 

You can see an example of one such preliminary employer branding content calendar below.

Once you draft the plan, you’re ready to work on content creation.

In addition to creating content from scratch, executing the content plan can mean reusing posts that you’ve created previously (which is why conducting an audit, as outlined in step #3, is crucial).

While creating and posting content, you should keep in mind that your plan isn’t set in stone.

At some point, you may notice that your recruitment needs are changing as the business grows or that candidates don’t respond to your content as you hoped they would. 

Fret not—your plan is still flexible enough that you can pivot and adjust it to accommodate your future strategies and circumstances, as truly agile companies do.

Take the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example.

Who could have predicted that remote work would rule the world of recruiting?

Yet, tens of thousands of businesses worldwide have found ways to incorporate their WFH practices into their content, positioning themselves as caring employers.

To sum up, you’ll achieve better results if you approach content creation strategically. 

A cohesive plan will help you remain consistent, and its greatest advantage is its flexibility to adjust to your current needs.  

#9 Turn Current Employees Into Brand Ambassadors

Professionally created content is certainly a strong base for an employer branding content strategy. 

However, if you want to enrich your brand and make it more authentic, you should turn to your most valuable asset: your current employees.

Relying solely on company-created content can give off a corporate feel.

Contrary to that, employees are seen as insiders, meaning that potential candidates highly value their opinions.

With that in mind, it’s easy to see how turning your existing employees into brand ambassadors can enhance your employer branding endeavors.

If you’d prefer an active approach, you could create a series of interviews or blog posts highlighting the unique perspective of your employees. 

Miro, a whiteboard platform, is an excellent example of the practice.

The company has an entire blog section about its employees. You can see an excerpt from one post in the following screenshot.

These genuine narratives provide glimpses into the employees’ day-to-day experiences, allowing potential candidates to connect with them on a personal level.

A different approach to turning employees into ambassadors is to encourage them to share their stories on social media.

Whether they discuss work, projects, or culture, these employee-generated posts are an organic and relatable representation of your company.  

Lastly, if you already have employees who generate work-related content, seize the opportunity to leverage their expertise and amplify their reach.

Here’s how DEMICON, a leading European IT service provider, does it. 

DEMICON recognized the value of employee-generated content for building trust, both among job seekers and potential clients looking for a trustworthy partner. 

Consequently, they’ve created a space for the experts on the team to share their perspectives and insights.

You can adopt a similar approach by encouraging and empowering employees to contribute engaging and helpful content for prospective candidates.

Show your support by reposting your employees’ content, providing resources and opportunities for collaboration, and, most importantly, acknowledging their ambassador work.

#10 Track the Impact of Your Employer Branding Content Strategy

The content strategy doesn’t end with publishing content and reposting it on your brand channels. 

In fact, that’s the beginning of a significant aspect of your content-related efforts—monitoring the strategy’s success.

The first thing that probably springs to mind is the number of likes and shares your posts get on social media. 

However, if the goal behind your content strategy is talent acquisition, you should ask yourself whether these numbers really matter.

For this particular example, it’s better to focus on measuring the impact of your campaigns by assessing the increase in applications and the caliber of candidates they bring in.

To assist you in content performance measurement, we’ve compiled a list of potential business goals and their corresponding employer branding goals, along with some key performance indicators (KPIs) to track. 

For instance, if one of your employer branding goals is to attract top talent and build a strong talent pipeline, you’d monitor metrics such as the number of qualified applicants, or the conversion rate on relevant application pages.

Vanity metrics certainly sound appealing—who doesn’t want to go viral?

Still, it’s the tangible outcomes that matter in the long run. So select the KPIs to track carefully, and let the data inform your path going forward.

A Winning Employer Branding Content Strategy in 10 Steps

You’ve now seen the whole process of creating an employer branding content strategy. As you’ve probably noticed, it involves a lot of planning, self-reflection, and focus. 

But that’s only one piece of the big picture. You also need a deep understanding of your audience and competition to build a great employer brand that stands out.

No doubt, you have your work cut out for you. But there are very few things more important than hiring and retaining good people.

The first thing your current and future employees will see is your content.

So take charge of shaping their experience and let your content reflect a company they’d be eager to work for. 

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• 4 Important Ways Content Marketing Supports Your Employer Brand
• Best Employer Branding Content Types for All Candidate Journey Stages