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Without a doubt, video is the rising star of social media content, and the reasons why are pretty clear. Let’s start with the numbers: Facebook users watch 8 billion videos per day, 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and video content taken as a whole is expected to make up 82% of internet traffic by 2021. If we take things a step further, we can see that video content also plays a major role of boosting engagement levels on virtually all social media platforms thanks to its power to convey a deep, meaningful message to users within seconds.
Think about it: they say a picture’s worth a thousand words; so what does that make a video? And given that a successful employer brand is in large part based on your ability to convey information to, and connect emotionally with, your target candidate personas, crafting high-quality video content is only getting more critical over time.
Keeping all this in view, let’s try to unravel the secret thread that leads to successful employer branding videos.
What to Avoid
Crafting the perfect video content is an art form—one that has to be approached with an eye for detail. A lot of users will judge a video, and by extension an entire company, based on the little details that are so important to get right. So, let’s start with the things we should avoid. In a market that’s becoming more and more saturated with video content by the day, you have to make sure that yours really stands out from the crowd. Naturally, the first thing is to get off the beaten trail and avoid the clichés of classical interview videos. People tend to click away from content that feels tired or repetitive, and social media users are already overwhelmed by the enormous quantity of information they encounter on a daily basis on each platform.
Thus, right off the bat you need to cut to the heart of your employer brand: what makes your company tick? What makes it different from other companies? How can you provide value for your applicants? Take those elements and showcase them proudly in your videos. Don’t be afraid to innovate! Your potential candidates would love to find more about your true company culture, and you should make sure you’re showing that off to its best advantage, rather than relying on clichés. Start with your company’s core mission and values, then show your audience how those values play out in real life. Video content that does this gives you an amazing opportunity to bring your target personas into closer engagement with your company. How can you make this happen? By opening up and giving them a glimpse of your work environment and your team.
Authenticity is the Best Policy
Though the ultimate objective of the employer branding video is to promote your company culture and persuade people to find out more about your career opportunities, there is such a thing as too much marketing. Candidates don’t want to feel like they’re getting the hard sell, and if what you’re doing seems too pushy they’re likely to tune out. This is why you should choose an open and honest approach. Authenticity is the key to creating powerful employer branding videos. The stilted language and wooden acting that's defined so many recruitment videos for so long has no place in a modern recruitment marketing strategy—what you need instead is a spotlight on the real experiences of your employees: their day-to-day challenges, triumphs, and opportunities. If you’re willing to put them front and center, the genuine emotions and honest opinions of your colleagues will captivate your audience, ultimately leading to increased engagement, improved employer brand gravity, and improved conversion rates.
The question remains, however, of how exactly should you go about doing this. We gave a list of things not to do in the section above, but what are some active strategies you can employ to make sure that your content has the desired effect? For starters, make sure that your video content is diverse, both in terms of format and in terms of the employees that it highlights. Don’t stick to just the classic interview-based video. Get creative and use motion graphics, interactive videos, story based videos, and animation. These elements will set you apart from your competitors, and they’ll give your future applicants proof positive that your company operates on the cutting edge in everything it does. In this way, you will leave a lasting impression and your employer brand will be much more easily recognized.
Light Speed Employer Branding
Okay, let’s say you’ve created a video with all of these elements—what’s the most important thing to consider as you’re getting ready to finalize your content and push it out into the world? Time. Time is crucial. We are living in the age of the attention economy, and users have less and less time to give to the impressive amount of content constantly inundating them on social media. What’s the best solution here? Simple: keep your video content to less than 90 seconds.
That might seem like it’s not enough time to get your point across. More than that, it might seem like all of the time and effort it takes to create high-quality video content couldn’t possibly be justified by just 90 seconds of video. But think of it this way: you can start by creating a master video that’s as long as you’d like. From there, you can excerpt a 90 second section that best distills your employer brand. Better yet, you can pull out a series of different 30 second excerpts to push out to your various social media channels. Each of these can focus on a different communication pillar in order to make sure that all the relevant information reaches the right audience. This advice might seem a bit technical, but it’s a proven strategy for getting the most out of your content.
Since we’re offering up technical advice anyway: know that the most successful videos make sense with or without sound, due to the way most newsfeeds are currently built. Moreover, you should always have the highest standards when it comes to video quality—always use professional equipment for the audio-visual content. Follow all of this advice, and you’ll be in an ideal position to engage directly with your audience and boost your employer brand gravity.
