With a reported 1 billion active users, Instagram has grown into one of the most popular social media platforms today. It’s designed for a “mobile first” experience, with a focus on visual and in the moment experience, which are just some of the reasons that their users love the platform so much!
An Instagram profile can give you a real insight into someone’s life and personality (as they want to be perceived that is), so when companies want to showcase their company culture it’s no surprise that Instagram is quickly becoming the platform of choice to do this.
If you aren’t a total Instagram connoisseur already then don’t worry, we’ve got a few suggestions to help you get started with showcasing that amazing company culture of yours!
11 ways you can showcase your company culture on Instagram:
Display your working environment
One of the things that candidates want to know before applying to a company is where they will potentially be working and most importantly what the environment is like.
Instagram’s visual nature makes it the perfect platform for showcasing your offices (or other working environments if you aren’t just based in the office), and you can share snaps or even post a video tour!
Whilst we always encourage our clients to be authentic on social media, it’s always worth having an extra “spring clean” and tidy before you take to the gram to snap your offices for the world to see!
Show your people
The people you work with form a huge part of your experience in a job, yet when you apply to a company from a standard job advert you often have no idea who you will be working alongside until you arrive for an interview, or in some instances arrive on your first day!
You don’t need to go totally over the top with a cheesy “meet the team” campaign on Instagram (although this can work well when executed correctly), but it is great to show your employees on here so that potential candidates can see who they may be working alongside!
Your people are the heartbeat of your employer brand, so without them you will probably struggle to post enough content anyway, so getting them on board needs to be a priority!
Highlight the fun parts of your company culture
If you are a company that offers quirky perks and has a fun office culture, then you 100% need to showcase this on Instagram! The “fun stuff” is usually more eye-catching, more engaging and more effective for attracting candidates than the more every day working life posts, so be sure to make this a part of your content plan. You might be showcasing a work event such as your Christmas party, your employees bringing their dogs to work, tasty work lunches or a charity event.
The “fun parts” of the job allow you to share your real personality and showcase those key employer brand differentiators which have a big impact on candidate attraction!
Spotlight on key job roles
Whilst you will be focusing on showcasing your employer brand and culture for your business as a whole, it’s also great to focus on individual job functions and departments for the purposes of attracting candidates. Not only does this communicate to your audience the type of opportunities your company is likely to have, but it gives a more localised and specific insight into the department culture.
For example, the company Sky shares lots of posts from the cool things happening in their offices, but for the purposes of attracting people for a “Sky Home Engineer role” this wouldn’t really communicate the type of culture / environment relevant to this position. To overcome this Sky decided to create a standalone #UpYourStreet campaign to create a spotlight on this particular job role, show an authentic insight into the working life of a Sky Home Engineer and help to attract more like-minded candidates. Learn more about the campaign here.
Use stories and story highlights
One of the best things about Instagram is it allows you to showcase life as it happens through Instagram Stories. Instagram Story posts don’t need to be perfectly polished and filtered, in fact your more raw, authentic and off-the cuff posts work really well here, so don’t be afraid to share posts that aren’t works of art!
Stories are great for sharing updates from a work event or sharing themed updates around things like your perks or job opportunities.
You can even create story highlights, so you don’t lose that amazing content after 24 hours! Story highlights sit at the top of your page, so you can highlight key areas of your employer brand and culture through highlights such as “Our Offices”, “Our Vacancies”, “Our Perks” and “Our People”.
Be your authentic self
People who use Instagram are often criticised of showcasing a lifestyle that isn’t exactly true to reality, in fact it’s become part and parcel of what we see every day on the platform.
Whilst it’s normal for “influencers” to post perfectly filtered photos from their extravagant trips abroad, a company profile should remain balanced on the type of content they post.
Yes sharing images of your company holiday, awards nights and perfectly presented offices is great, but candidates will see past this! Candidates want to see more authentic content, so don’t feel like every post needs to make you look like the World’s best company to work for and instead share real life updates of life as it happens in your company!
Showcase why your employees love working for you
You want your content to showcase your company culture in a way that it appeals to potential candidates, but if all this content is created and shared by your marketing department then you may find that candidates don’t fully buy into what you are sharing!
Instead involve your employees and ask them to share why they love working for you. Not only will you get a broader range of responses this way, but it will also help to build trust with potential candidates who check out your company on Instagram.
Don’t disconnect company culture from the corporate brand completely
We encourage companies to create a standalone careers focused Instagram account so that the content they share is more relevant to each audience, but it’s important to still retain a connection on here with your corporate brand. The majority of content you share will focus on your employees and the work that they do, but potential candidates will want to have an understanding of what you do as a business too so make sure you drop in a few posts to highlight this.
Use a unique hashtag
Instagram is a platform where hashtags work really well, so consider creating a unique hashtag to brand your posts with (and encourage your employees to use too). It can be as simple as something like #LifeAtCompanyName and using it will help you collate all your content into one place. Instagram users can even follow hashtags instead of profiles too, so using a company hashtag will help create more engagement opportunities for your employer brand.
Activate employee advocacy
One of the best ways to increase your social reach (without paying Mark Zuckerberg for the privilege) is to activate an employee advocacy programme. Employee advocacy is basically getting your employees to share content that showcases why they love working for you, it gives your employer brand an authentic voice and it helps create trust with potential candidates. If you took our last point on board and created your own hashtag, invite employees to share their own work moments using this hashtag to help drive more candidate traffic towards your brand.
Ensure your office is set as a location you can tag
In order for people to be able to tag your office as a location on Instagram you will need to have this location set on your Facebook company page. It’s simple enough to do and it means that you can tag your company as a location on your Instagram posts (and encourage employees to do the same). Just another simple way to be more visible and discoverable on the platform!
Original source article can be found here…
