Your brand’s social media followers include active candidates and current employees. However, sometimes organizations’ social channels aren’t updated regularly. Every day without a post is a missed opportunity to give candidates a look at your culture and engage team members through posts that reflect what’s great about working there. 

The answer is to build a library of content that’s tailored for your social media channels and encourage employee involvement. Here’s how to make that happen. 

Repurpose content for social media posts 

Content that has already been developed for career sites, blogs, online video platforms and recruitment marketing websites is ideal for social media. And, since social posts are typically shorter than content designed for other channels, you can often segment longer content into multiple, smaller pieces for social campaigns. 

Find a place on social media for every story 

Featuring team members as the stars of your social channel is ideal for both candidate and employee engagement. If you’re already sharing employee stories, find a place for every image, video and quote on your social media accounts. Use each post as an opportunity to celebrate team members, departments and offices. 

Eliminate stock images from social streams 

Stock photos have no place on social channels meant to reflect your real employer brand. Use REAL images featuring REAL employees. When you don’t have the right image, develop a text-based graphic instead. Of course, the best words for your graphics reflect authentic quotes from your team members. 

Develop a consistent posting schedule

Daily posts Monday through Friday are ideal. But, you can start with a cadence of two posts per week and build from there. Scheduling posts for all of your channels in one place such as Sprout Social or Hootsuite can streamline the process. Plus, aggregating your social posts and calendars makes it easy to both vary and repurpose your content across your channels. 

Launch a branded culture hashtag 

Hashtags that combine your company name with #lifeat, #jobsat or #workat (e.g. #lifeatGoogle) give insights into your company’s culture and communicate talent needs. Or, you can take your hashtag beyond this typical formula and promote one hashtag that is unique to your employer brand — examples of this include #ExpediaCares and #IWorkforDell. Then, you can invite and encourage employees to use those hashtags! When employees organically post to their personal channels using those hashtags, they provide an endorsement of your company’s messaging. 

Get employees involved, respectfully 

When employees share about work on their personal social channels and tag the brand or use your hashtag, the brand should, without fail, respond with enthusiasm. 

Be sure to both Like and publicly comment on every employee post. These responses are as essential to recruitment marketing and employee engagement as your brand’s own content streams. If you would like to reshare an employee’s post on the company’s channel, always direct message them for explicit permission — whether their social media profile is public or private. 

Armed with these tips, your social media channels will be revitalized! Watch how your social media engagement and click-throughs increase as your content connects with employees and candidates.