Not attracting enough good fits to your opportunities? You may want to beef up your employer brand with visual storytelling.
Video stories are a powerful way to turn a relatively dry message (“We’re an awesome place to work!”) into something meaningful and memorable.
That is of course, only possible when you understand that a professional video does not equal formal scripts and wooden employees acting out something they don’t believe in. So, how to make visual storytelling work for your employer branding and talent attraction?
As ya’ll know, I’m all about the copy. So, I caught up with Laura Ashmole from Connect Creative for her top tips on creating and maximising visual content.
“Look how amazing we are!”
Using video stories to sell your employer brand.
Why you need visual storytelling for employer branding
It’s a competitive talent market out there. You have people sitting around dining tables offloading the pros and cons of multiple offers to confused spouses who probably just want assurances of job security. How to clinch them?
Effective talent attraction is not, ‘I’ll just throw this job ad out there and the people will come.’
Talent attraction requires marketing. It requires bloody good storytelling that connects to the job seeker’s needs and desires, and convinces them, you’re ‘the one’.
And while great copy is, well, great at communicating clear messages, video and photographs that demonstrate these messages in action are worth a thousand words x one thousand (because #video).
Here’s how to make sure you convey your story in a way that brings the best people to you and ultimately reduces your time to fill.
3 Ways to get your employees involved in your storytelling and branding
Laura says that to maximise the quality and effect of your visual content, you absolutely must involve your employees.
1. Get the team involved in your EVP journey
Employee Value Propositions (AKA What’s in It For ME?), work when everyone is involved and everyone believes it. Adopt the mindset of co-creating your EVP with your employees and you’ll end up with stronger, more compelling culture pieces.
2. Use employees to deliver authentic messages
We’ve all seen an awkward About Us video where employees have been fed scripts to memorise and perfect on screen… but the thing is, your employees aren’t professional actors or TV journalists! So, let’s ditch the wooden scripts and allow space for genuine answers. Try issuing talking points and break it up with specific questions. You’re allowing them to prepare but without memorising a 60-second spiel that answers all.the.things.
*Note to selves: Just having the CEO or director on screen saying, “This is a GREAT place to work!” is not what we’re talking about here when we say employees… Back it up with believable truths.
3. Get employees involved in sharing your content
Laura says that when your employees have contributed to your visual story, they’re more likely to share it with their own social networks = maximum reach! As consumers and job seekers, we place much more trust in recommendations and referrals, especially of the people we know. So again, the more people are involved, the more they’ll share the content they’re involved in.
Super. Now that you’ve engaged your employees in crafting your EVP and employer story, you want to make sure you maximise the content you create.
Making your visual content work
#Mythbuster! Visual storytelling doesn’t need to be expensive or time consuming. You don’t want to be spending your annual marketing budget on one video you dump on your career site just to let it gather dust.
Here’s how.
Laura’s top 5 ways to maximise visual content
Generally speaking, when creating an About Us video, you want to try using this video as a fun cultural story. So, get the team involved, have a few people interviewed, and pull out the best bits to tell a compelling About story. And then:
#1 Splice | repurpose what you have
The best way to make your visual content work harder for you: splicing and repurposing, of course! Laura says that, all too often, employers are missing the opportunities to cut bigger culture videos, usually your About Us, into bite sizes to use for other platforms and content pieces.
“There are so many ways to cut and chop that content – Start with an Evergreen piece to create a mini chopped up version of a major piece. For example, interview a hiring manager about ‘why join this team?’, and then cut in some from the About Us to make a new video using existing content purposefully created for a new vacancy.”
#2 Team and employee photos throughout your career site
You can profile your interviewed employees throughout the career site with catchy stories, testimonials and quotes pulled from video. High quality, professional pictures of your team and office working environment can reinforce your key messages and showcase diversity and inclusion.
For example, “We’re fun and exciting!” or “We’re hybrid!” could mean anything – but including images that demonstrate what this looks like in reality helps job seekers better understand how they’re likely to fit working with you.
#3 Videos repurposed for social media
Your epic About Us video shouldn’t just sit on your career site gathering dust. It can be shared, reshared, chopped and repurposed for use on your social media channels, and /or stored on your custom YouTube channel. (Umm, YouTube is the second largest search engine next to Google. People upload more than 100 hours of video per minute to the platform.)
Social media is where splicing and repurposing is most effective.
Think of all the footage you record on Shoot Day that isn’t included in the big video. Use it to create mini employee stories: Day In The Life Of (DITLO), an employee’s career goals and triumphs, why they chose you and still work with you.
Snacky bite sizes, folks, and don’t forget to repeat.
#4 Video in job ads
How long does it take you to write a good job ad? (Be honest – a *good* one!)
Laura says more employers could use that time to create a video of people talking about the opportunity.
Ideas to get you started:
an introduction to your graduate program
a role preview by the hiring manager and ‘What it’s like working with us’, or touch on leadership style and the team environment
a DITLO video or role profile, shared by an employee in that role.
Remember that people leave managers and poor culture fits. So, again, you’re providing job seekers with quality information that helps them make informed decisions about their likely success with you.
#5 Candidate emails
Candidate communication throughout recruitment is another *major* missed opportunity for employers trying to communicate their brand messaging and promise.
Try embedding your About Us video in your automated, ‘Application Accepted’ email, or get the team together for a quick, “Thanks! Here’s what’s next.”
If you have a role profile or DITLO video for the advertised role, or a team or hiring manager introduction, share that early in the recruitment process to better inform applicants of reality.
The more information you can give them early on about your culture and the realities of the work, team, role, the more likely they’ll:
a) full on commit to you, become engaged in your brand and future employment if successful, or
b) self-select out of the recruitment process before any more time is wasted on assessments or interviews.
It’s a major win-win.
Visual storytelling helps beef up your employer brand
Talent attraction is a tough game, especially post(ish) pandemic with closed borders and job insecurity. To be an attractive employer brand, you’ll need to stand out and communicate compelling employee stories creatively and visually across all your marketing channels.
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Round of champagnes for Laura!
Connect Creative helps businesses own their brand story and tell it well. They’re making professional quality video accessible, affordable and easy; creating content that connects organisations to the people they need to grow. Working with a range of businesses, from start-ups to global enterprise clients, they believe everyone should have the opportunity to leverage the power of visual storytelling, to communicate who they are, set themselves apart and ultimately grow their business.