0:00
Jennifer Gutman
All right. Hi everybody. I'm Jen and I'm the director of social strategy here at Oktopost. And I'm really excited to welcome everybody to actually our second installment of the radically transparent webinar series. We've got a really special webinar lined up today with a really interesting guest and she's always my go to person when I need to talk about anything social, anything video and anything employer branding. So on this webinar, we're going to dive right into how to tell your employer brand story on social media. So. So it's going to be a good one. With that, I just want to remind everybody that you're all currently on mute, which. Awesome. Amazing. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the Q and A box in the Gotow. In the Gotowebinar. What is this, 2012 in the Zoom? Sorry, GoToWebinar. So drop those in the Q and A. And as I mentioned earlier earlier, you'll absolutely get the recording. If you'd like to follow any of the conversation that takes place after this webinar or what's happening in terms of our initiative with the radically transparent webinar series, feel free to follow along with the hashtag radicallytransparent. And about halfway through, there's going to be a chance for you to win your very own little Octi. So we'll get excited and just keep your eyes on the slide to win the prize. And he does a little circle dance. All right, so to kick off, I always like to start with a little bit of an introduction. As you know, my name is Jen. I am the director of social strategy here at Oktopost. I've been with the company for about six and a half years. So I'm no stranger to Oktopost and I absolutely love webinar day. That is no secret to anybody. So thank you all for joining. With me today is a good friend of mine, an expert when it comes to employer brand storytelling. Sivan, gonna pass it on over to you. Let us know a little bit about yourself, what you do, who you are. And if you could throw in a fun fact that's always entertaining.
2:02
Sivan Felder
Well, here's a fun fact. I don't think we've ever met in person.
2:05
Jennifer Gutman
That is true.
2:06
Sivan Felder
Is that true? Right? I was like, wait, that's crazy. So that it's a strange, strange good friends and never met in person. What do I do? I actually just started two months ago working at SimilarWeb, which is a high tech company in it's a global High tech company, but the headquarters are in Tel Aviv. So I get to going to the city every day, which is exciting. And I manage their employer brand, which we'll talk a little bit about what that actually is and specifically creating content for social media, running their campaigns. Another fun fact is I have a small toy Yorkie that I bought during Corona who's not with me here giving the webinar. But usually he joins me, like, barking in the background. So he's. He won't be joining us today, but yeah, that's about me. Fantastic.
2:52
Jennifer Gutman
Sivan, welcome. And also you may be seeing some for everyone listening in and watching, you'll see our cmo, our chief Mascot officer appear throughout the webinar. Right, little Octi. And you'll have a chance to win one during the. During the episode.
3:07
Sivan Felder
My kids are very nice to the answer that you're going to send me some of these. I already told them we're getting little purple octopuses in the mail.
3:15
Jennifer Gutman
Like they are on their way. All right, so I want to start off, you know, I have to. I have to be radically transparent with you, Sivan. When I saw on LinkedIn that you were focusing your career in employer brand storytelling, I knew it was important. And I know it's such a buzzword and being in social media and, you know, working at Oktopost, we hear it all the time. But I think for many of us, I'd like to break down, like, wtf? Like, what is this? And I feel like it's blown up in the. In the past year. So I definitely want to talk through it. So let's go ahead and get started.
3:49
Sivan Felder
So I actually wanted to add, before I answer your question, I want to go back, go back and let people see what the answer is. I wanted to ask everybody who's here, if you can type in the chat just like one line, like, why are you here? What is it that you're looking to learn about where you work, even? Well, first of all, I can't see your faces. So I feel like, I mean, as wonderful as Jen is, I can't see any of you. And I'd really love to know, kind of like, what? Oh, we have to have an open question. There's no. There's a chat. There's a chat. Okay. So if you guys can, if you want to post something. Okay, let's, let's go. First one. All right. Okay. So first of all, employer, brand is forget what you know about marketing, forget what you know about branding or about employers. Long story short, it's your Organization's reputation as an employer. And just like, you know that famous line by Jeff Bezos, you know, your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. When you have employees, they're definitely talking about you a lot, whether you're in the room or not. And everything that's happening inside of your company is being reflected on the outside, whether that's something that you are controlling or not. And it's your overall reputation, what people think of. Oh, here people are writing. They want to learn about the marketing field. Oh, Carol from Checkmarks. Okay, great toolbox for plants. Okay, great. Yeah, this is. These are. These are all things that we're going to cover today. Awesome. So, okay, you can do next. So why is it important? So, Jen, this answers your question of why it's kind of blowing up now. You know, there used to be, I guess, a problem in the job market where there were lots of people who were looking for jobs and not enough jobs. And now, thank God, the industry has changed to the point where there are so many companies that have exploded in growth. Either they've gone public or they've gotten funding or now even smaller companies that are able to grow a lot more. And so there's this wealth of jobs that are available, and there aren't enough qualified candidates for each of these positions. So it actually makes it that instead of you being to be able to be the differentiator of, like, oh, well, I don't want you and I don't want you, you know, you're not Harvard anymore. Now it's the people who are applying to the jobs that are really doing the differentiating. And because of that, it means that you, as a potential employer, have to prove to me, as a potential employee, why I should choose to work at your place versus any other company.
6:18
Jennifer Gutman
And I think that's really fascinating. And so I want to get to like, you know, when we talk about, like, what is your employer brand made up of? Right. Because
6:29
Sivan Felder
what are people talking about saying about you in the Latin room? Yeah, this is like a big. And honestly, I spent like, a lot of time doing not just research on, like, specifics of what SimilarWeb's employer brand is, but what is actually involved in making an employer brand. Like, that sounds like you said a buzzword. And I don't like buzzwords. I like very practical things. So overall, what your employer brand is made up of is, first of all, what your employees think about your company as an employer. So, you know, think of, you know, you're At Oktopost. So any of the feelings that you have towards your manager or the food that they serve at lunch or employee experience or your paycheck, all of those are part of your experience as being an employee. So that's part of the employer brand, the culture, values and mission of a company. This is actually, we'll talk a little bit about this, but this is actually super important because think about when you make a new friend, right? What's usually the differentiating factor is their personality, right? Why would I choose to be friends with you over somebody else? Or why do I like one person and another? It's very subjective and everyone has different things that they're interested in. But maybe I'm more interested in you because we have similar values or we live in a similar location. Right. There's so many different qualifying factors. So you being open about what your personality is or what your values are make it easier for me to decide if this is a place that's going to work out for me long term. Your X factor. This is interesting. We'll talk a little bit about this, but this is what makes you special. So a lot of companies have all of the same thing. You know, we give you cupcakes at a party and we give you a paycheck and we give you parking and we give you career opportunities and we like, okay, cool. But what makes you special. And maybe what makes you special is just you have a really cool product or on Thursdays you have lunch with the whole office. Maybe it's something really small. But you need to know what your employees think is your X factor because that's what's going to be what you're going to put out there as this is what makes this company different to work at. And this is really important, the last one. It's not the story that you as a company want to tell. And I think a lot of times companies make this mistake is like, oh, I'll just come up with a slogan and like market myself. But if the slogan or the marketing is not what your employees at the company actually believe, it doesn't work because your brand is. Again, what people say about you when you're not in the room. So if you're talking about what a generous employer you are and how big the paychecks you give to your employees are. But then I call somebody who works at the company and they're like, what are you talking about? You know, they nickel and dime us. You've lost credibility. And it's not actually your employer brand. So this is kind of like a snapshot of getting involved in the employer brand and what it actually is. So it's your reputation, and it's made up of all these things.
9:05
Jennifer Gutman
All right, so you've broken down employer brand. Right. And, you know, as you were explaining a lot of this, it makes a lot of sense. I have more questions for you. Like, does it come. It's, you know, top down, bottom up. We'll get into it, I'm sure. But now, when you add. Right. Storytelling to the end of that,
9:23
Sivan Felder
can
9:24
Jennifer Gutman
you take it a step further? Like, what is employer brand storytelling?
9:30
Sivan Felder
So if you take out the word employer brand for a second, like storytelling. Right. A story is something that we all can relate to. It's a shared experience that helps me understand something a little bit better. So employer brand storytelling is taking something really lofty, like your culture, your values, your employee value proposition, and it's sharing it with me in a way that I can process. And I'm going to give some specific examples. But when you talk about how you want to communicate your culture. So maybe my culture is we're all really friendly or we all really believe in supporting each other. Well, just telling me that isn't going to impact me. I'm not going to remember it, and chances are 400 other companies are going to tell me that. So it's really the story is really the details that make up the experience. And it's also the story that I'm going to tell myself after I do all my research about what it's going to be like to work at your company. So I'll show you, like, a few things of how you can actually break this down. Okay, so how can you tell your story? Before we go into what your story actually is, what do you have available to tell your story? So what we're going to focus on today is content on social media, just because there's so much we could talk about. But it's, I think, the basis of the webinar. But you also have your careers page, which is really important. You also have how you treat your candidates. So the candidate experience, which I cannot tell you, I think I can't remember the exact statistic, but it's like 75% of people will choose not to work at a company because they had a negative experience as, like, any sort of interaction with them as a candidate. Meaning that if I heard that my friend has a negative experience, I'm 75% likely not to apply for a job there. And that's crazy. That's not even Somebody who works at your company, that's a candidate who applied in a position, they had a negative experience, then chances are not going to be interested. And you can also use employee advocacy. This is really big. Your employees, the people who work at your company, are really the people who should be telling the story. And you need to empower them also to do that. And we'll talk a little bit about how you can do that, too.
11:30
Jennifer Gutman
So I found, I just want to say this I found fascinating. I know millennials, if any millennials are listening. I'm also millennial status. But, you know, we always get a bad rep.
11:41
Sivan Felder
I know. I feel so bad when I say, like, I'm a millennial. I feel like it's such a judgment. I think it's a cool thing, you know?
11:46
Jennifer Gutman
Right. But I have to say this. This surprised me and what you said about it even more. So I just had to throw my two cents. But continue.
11:56
Sivan Felder
Yeah, this is actually. This is a statistic I found because I'm helping now at similar Web to develop their employer brand. And I was trying to present an idea and why I felt that it was the best idea for us. And I realized that the company is made up, I think, over 60% millennials, which is a pretty big chunk. And so I did some research, and I was like, wait a minute. I think we make up most of the workforce, which means that you really need to understand who the majority of your target audience is. Just like when you're marketing, you have a product, you know, if you're pro, if you're marketing to my grandmother, it's going to be really different than if you're marketing it to my mother or to my daughter. Right. Everybody's going to want to see something different. So it's really important to understand that because the workforce is going to be made up primarily of millennials, you're essentially marketing your company to Millennials. And they are very digitally savvy and very discerning, and they really want to know they're going to do their thorough, thorough research before they apply. You know, when I was applying for jobs, I didn't just, like, look at the careers page. I went on Instagram and I asked people, I went on Glassdoor and looked at their LinkedIn and when was the last video that they posted and what was the last time they did it? Like, I was all over the place. And any company that had, like, a not updated Facebook page, I was like, I'm not, like, not even going to apply there. They're probably dead. So There's a level that you need to be at in order to even be in the race. And just assuming, because you're a great company, right? Like some, like, oh, I'm Harvard, so of course people will apply. It's not going to work. In another year from now, you're going to be. No one is even going to remember. So it's really important to kind of stay up to date. So this, this is basically what your audience, your millennial potential candidates are asking themselves, which is, what is it going to be like to work at your company? What's in it for me? Right. I get it. You're cool, you know, you want me to do work. You want me to give 10 hours of my day to you every single day for the next couple of years. What is that going to look like? And that's what they're asking. Okay, so what do they actually want to see? This is now breaking down, right? Your reputation, all that stuff. But how do we break it down into the practicals of, okay, these people are coming, they're going to ask themselves all these questions. So what should I be showcasing? Like, what are they actually asking? So this is all based off of research that's been done over the past two, three years by LinkedIn, Deloitte, lots of companies that are trying to understand what millennials want from a workforce, which is really different than what boomers wanted, also different than what Gen Z is interested in. So they're looking for these things that I think I could summarize it as, overall, they want to know who you are as a person. Right? They're looking for your mission. They want to know that you have an emphasis on what? Work, life, integration. It's not even balance. It's like, I get that I'm going to have to be on Zoom calls all day and have my kid like you were telling me, and have my kid on the call. But, like, how's that going to work? And I want an emotionally intelligent employer. I want to know that the things that are important to me are also important to you, which means you have to know it's important to me in order to showcase that. I want there to be career development opportunities and internal growth. By the way, this is the number one thing that generate that Gen Z wants to see. They want to know, how can I progress in my career commitment to diversity and inclusion? This is huge. And I don't think a lot of Israeli tech companies understand how I happen to work in an Israeli tech company. And I can see that there's In Israeli society in general, it's not the same as in other places. Whereas I know in the States like that is one of the number two thing that is important to potential candidates is a commitment to diversity and inclusion. And that's something we have to get better at. People want to know a culture of recognition. I'm going to put in all this effort. Are you going to pay attention to what I do? Are you going to recognize me for all the work that I've done? This is a really big one. A non toxic work environment. My mother was telling me how when she was in the corporate world the buzzword was like synergy. So I told her, yeah, I think in our time it's toxic. This is a very toxic work environment. This person's very toxic. It's true. If managers aren't listening to feedback, if the CEO is disconnected from employees, how is it when I have a problem at work, is there somebody that I can go to? Am I harassed if I don't? I'm not able to meet these deadlines if it's not working on my schedule or I'm unhapp. So all these things together and I think we think of them probably you're reading this list and you're like, oh, that's so basic, of course. But this is not actually how corporate was run at all. How companies saw themselves at all. I think companies see themselves as I have a product and I'm going to sell the product. And employees playing an important role in the company is relatively new. Like HR is even a new concept relatively. So all these things again are the more humane side. And that's what employees are looking for when they're coming and they're looking on social media. They don't want to see how many cupcakes you have, you know, each day at your employee experience party. They don't want to see, you know, the bonuses that you're giving out. Although those are nice. They're really asking themselves, how are you doing all of these things now what
16:49
Jennifer Gutman
I think is interesting, Sivan, and you know, just taking it from a social perspective and anybody who's listening in, who's managing corporate social or you know, building out social campaigns where social media is 247 and you're always looking for interesting content. What I think is really interesting in this slide, when you look at these kind of what potential employees want to see and you think about your, your follower base, if any of you have done like a follower audit, right? I know for Oktopost, you know our goal, right? We would like to have majority marketers following Oktopost, which makes sense because they're a huge. Right. We market to marketers. It doesn't get any better. But when I think about. Also when I look on LinkedIn for example, and I look through and do an audit of our followers, it's almost as if I need to also understand, right, who are my followers, who are my potential employee followers and how am I speaking their language and incorporate that into my social plan. So my wheels are spinning now when I think through our campaigns on social media because a lot of these pieces, right, we might be like touching the surface or maybe being very surface level in some of these, but I think we can do it much better and maybe, you know, who knows, we're growing and so maybe that will really help the efforts in getting the right people to join. But I know we might come back kind of social strategy on that. But I'll hop over right here. Right. We're kind of.
18:13
Sivan Felder
Well, it's a good. Actually we don't have a slide on this. But this, this is an important point and I think that it's also really hard because your potential employees are not going to follow your social channels, right? If I'm looking for a job position at your company, I'm going to do a really thorough search. But chances are most of the candidates are not following you for months. They might check in and out, right? A lot of people are passive, so they're not necessarily looking for a job at every once in a while we'll go check out. So that's why it's like you have to have this breadth of content that's available to them, but you can't expect them to be engaging all the time. So it's such a different metric. And even we can even talk about like, how do you gauge if it's working or not? Because actually coming up with the KPIs of like, is this actually, is this benefiting us? Like, what are we tracking to see if it's working is really complicated. But you're not necessarily going to see like thousands of views and hundreds of comments because it is a very, very different type of content. So you're right, it is, it is kind of like the balance of like, how am I keeping. The truth is that a lot of times companies will have like send Instagram, A lot of times you'll find like life at similar web life or like, you know, Microsoft life life at Google. And that's where you can find more of the employee experience kind of Stuff, whereas the product is, has its own, its own page. And I've seen that a lot on LinkedIn. I actually know somebody here from Checkmarks that she posted and it was so great that they made their own like Life@Checksmarks LinkedIn page because it's so complicated how to differentiate those two things. But moving on, how to tell your story on social media. Okay, so actually Frank from Here Technologies asked a great question and I'm going to answer while I present this. So he asked. I'm interested in getting insights on how to continue telling relevant employer brand stories when employees are still mostly working remotely and external events have slowed down. So first of all, now that you know that the events are the least important thing that your employees want to see, it didn't even show up on the list of like, what do your events look like? And I've been to a few corporate events now and I have to say, like, they're all the same. It's nice. Like people drink and eat and talk and it sounds like a birthday party. They're all, you know, nice but not so important. So great. So what can you showcase? Especially when you're remote, which is such a big problem because you don't have lots of people grouped together. How are you going to showcase this? Okay, so first of all, the number one rule of storytelling is show, don't tell. What that actually means is that I don't want to know, for example, that this is a, this is a video that Microsoft did. They have a surrogacy program and they pay for same sex couples to have a baby through surrogacy. I don't, I don't know exactly how it works, so don't follow me for the exact details, but they created this really beautiful video about these, this couple and their whole process going through this. So they could have made a video where they said, hey, we have this great program where if you come and work here and you're a same sex couple, you can apply to, you know, to the surrogacy program. Instead, they created this really heartfelt story of one couple through the process. It was really emotional actually. And you get to see them like actually have a family and it's really beautiful. And that is a story, right? So they took this really complicated concept of how do we showcase that our culture is divert, that we really include, we have inclusion and diversity and we really care about our employees and we want to showcase like a real situation. And so they just told one specific story, which would be a lot more powerful anyway than if they had said all of those things straight out.
21:42
Jennifer Gutman
I love that. I actually never saw, saw this story. And now I'm.
21:47
Sivan Felder
Microsoft R and D in Israel has an amazing, amazing content. I mean, some of it's very strange. They have a lot of the, like, gimmicky, you know, man dressing up as a woman thing, which I don't fully understand. But other than that, a lot of their content is very on point for their target audience. It's actually a great example of they localize very, very well. So. So in different areas, they have different types of content, which is very cool.
22:08
Jennifer Gutman
So I actually wanna get back for a moment to Frank's question. He had asked maybe some ideas.
22:14
Sivan Felder
Go to the next one, I'll show you.
22:16
Jennifer Gutman
Okay, cool. Cause I wanna share an idea also before you jump into this, just throwing it out there during COVID and it's ongoing, but we actually started showcasing Employee Takeover. And for anyone listening who has not. If you guys have an Instagram account and you're looking for something interesting because you threw in kind of that work from home element, like, how on earth do you showcase working from home? So we actually had one of the highest performing campaigns on social. When we used the hashtag employee takeover and we actually gave our Instagram. I'm happy if you want to take any of this kind of strategy offline. For anyone listening in, feel free to connect with me and I'm happy to share it. But essentially what we had done was we had given our employees, employees the bandwidth on social to tell their own stories. Some of it had nothing to do with Oktopost, like their hobbies. So if you're thinking in that direction, I just wanted to throw that idea out because it worked really, really well for us. So sorry, Stephen, if I stole.
23:12
Sivan Felder
No, that's. That's exactly. That's perfect. I was going to say the same thing, like, to give your employees the platform either to create the content on their own, so like Instagram stories, or to do it with them and to help them, you know, showcase the things that are important to them. But I think one of the beautiful Corona's been a disaster. But one of the really nice upsides if we're going to look for a silver lining is that it really changed the playing field in terms of content. And I know personally that now I don't have to necessarily get a $500,000 budget to do a video. Like, I could ask one of the employees to film themselves on their phone and that'll get approved because it's really lowered our standards. Of what we need to see. And we're actually really attracted to the authenticity that stands out now. So I think even though there are no events, there's still a lot of content you could create. So, for example, this was a video, just something very simple we did for Pride Month, where the DEI lead at similar web. I just interviewed him on, like, what is Pride Month? What does that mean to you? And he shared it to his personal LinkedIn. We shared as a company, and it wasn't a viral campaign. It was just a piece of content that was showcasing something that a value that was important to the company, but not the company talking about itself like a story of a real person sharing something that's valuable to them. And giving your employees the platform to do that is important, but also really easy. It didn't. This was a phone and, you know, a couple minutes of editing.
24:30
Jennifer Gutman
Amazing. Looking at your screenshot here, you know, that's some pretty high engagement. So that.
24:35
Sivan Felder
Yeah, it was. It was actually, he's not very like. He wasn't necessarily, like, overly active on LinkedIn, so I was like, maybe people see, maybe not. But a lot of his co workers shared and a lot of his friends also. And I thought that was so beautiful. People were so excited to support him. And I think that that's really an important thing to remember is that, again, it's really not about your company or your story as a company, because nobody cares. It's about the people who work there and you empowering them to feel good and to create content and to be the advocates, but also through actually advocating for them. So this was something that was important to him and we gave him the platform and he was happy to participate. So, yeah, that was pretty. It was a cool thing. This is an example. Yeah, this is another Microsoft. I love Microsoft. Microsoft, I love you. They did this whole. So this is just an example of, let's say you want to show the value of, like, hey, it's not always about work, because not everything that you want to like. I don't really necessarily need to know everything about your company or everything about working there. What I also want to see are the people, like, who is it that makes up your company? So they have this great series. It's like. It's like a cooking show. So all the employees at Microsoft can have the opportunity to showcase, like, a family recipe. And it's like, really simple. It's just like them in their kitchen. And it's so. And I think I don't know these people, and I'm not A cook, really. So I didn't make any of these recipes, but I watched all of them because there was something really like, fun and homey about it. And again, with a big company like Microsoft, right, Telling a story is actually really complicated because it's big and global and thousands of employees. So something so specific, like, show us a recipe, like a family recipe, and let's do a cooking show. Such an amazing way to showcase really the company's values and that they can have fun. And it's not just all about the work and that people are willing to be in. It also shows you a lot. So I thought that was pretty cool.
26:20
Jennifer Gutman
I think these are fantastic examples. Oh, and there's one more. Oh, oh. Salesforce.
26:26
Sivan Felder
Okay, so this I thought was interesting because actually I think what you choose to say really says a lot about you, right, not just how you say it. And this is Salesforce, their Glassdoor page. So one of my roles here is like to manage the glass door. And so I did a ton, a ton of research on like Glassdoor pages, which is a huge, huge. It's a whole industry in and of itself. And Salesforce uses their whole page to basically tell you, hey, if you're stressed out, come and learn how to be mindful. And they have like all of these meditation courses and like all these cool things to help you learn how to relax or to feel good throughout the day. So whereas they could have had at the top, like, we are a company that really believes in work life integration. What they've chosen to say is nothing about themselves and everything about what you're probably feeling as you're job searching or looking up companies on Glassdoor. And I thought that that was so powerful that a company with so much emotional intelligence that they could even optimize their Glassdoor page to be for the type of what the candidate is feeling. Like, hey, maybe come learn how to meditate for a few minutes before you go back to job searching. So again, the story you tell, it's not the words that it's not, once upon a time, we were a company and this is what we offered you. It's if you work here, this is the experience that you're going to have. And that's what all of your content should be showcasing. So these are just some examples I saw recently that I thought were worth
27:46
Jennifer Gutman
mentioning, definitely worth mentioning. And I want to move forward because, you know, when we were prepping for this webinar, you know, I had asked you, you know, Sivan, what are some brands doing this? Well, because I don't know about you, but for me, when I'm sitting every quarter making up our social media plan, I'm like, all right, which of the brands do doing it well? And what's interesting, I think, is like, kind of this art of social media where you could have two companies doing the same thing but have completely different results. So I always like to really dig a little deeper and look at other brands. But I also like to hear from other social media enthusiasts, brand storytellers, who they think is doing it well, because it helps me understand, like, am I even. Am I in the big leagues? Am I in the small leagues? Where do I need to improve? Or who haven't I thought of?
28:32
Sivan Felder
It's hard. It's really hard when you ask me this question. And I think, like, I tried to take two different types of companies, but I think you'll see that they're pretty similar. And I think that there's a reason for that, because, again, I think when you're talking to a millennial population, there is a certain type of authenticity that we're looking for. And so both of these are examples of employer brands that I feel are authentic but very clear on the story that they're telling. So this is HubSpot, for example. I love their. I feel like, because my job involves, like, all this stuff, I feel like my whole web history is like, career page of this. Like, what is it like to work at this company? And, like, if anyone wants to go through my search history, they'd be like, why is she searching for another job so soon? Like, no, no, it's just part of my daily activities is checking out what other companies are doing. So here, HubSpot, I thought was great because the story that they're telling so clearly is we care about our employees, we care about you as a human, and we want you to succeed. In fact, we care so much about you that even before you apply to work here, we're going to give you everything you need to be successful. And then naturally, the thought as a candidate is, wow, if they're putting this much effort into me feeling good as a candidate, imagine what it must be like if I actually worked there. And again, they don't say this anywhere. It's just from all of their content that that's the feeling you get. They focus very heavily on. They have, like, on their website, they have all these videos of different employees talking about what it's like a day in the life and their role. Their Instagram is full of tips of, you know, when you're applying what the interview process is like, how to answer certain questions. They focus a lot on, you know, national, all these national days and how they're celebrating them. They show employees their Instagram is full of all their employees. Like, their employees are so heavily involved in the content and it's also real and not highly produced. And I personally know what an effort it is to get people on camera and to participate in content and to do all those things. I'm like, wow, if they were able to, if people were willing to do this, that says a lot about a company. And I think that, that so all of their content makes me feel that way. That like, wow, they really. People care enough to participate. That says a lot about the employer. So HubSpot is one example.
30:33
Jennifer Gutman
I definitely would agree. And what I want to throw out there with HubSpot because my eyes are also on them. They do a lot of things well. So their HubSpot life is actually separated. So for anyone kind of thinking about their social strategy and again, totally depends on size and bandwidth and where you are, are in kind of the social journey. But what's interesting with HubSpot is this is not their only Instagram handle they have. I think it's at least four or five. I've counted different handles focusing on different aspects of what they do and where. I think that becomes interesting again. You know, right. HubSpot life we talked about earlier, that kind of Oktopost life, similar web life, the your company life hashtag. Right. It's a place where people are. It's becoming kind of that norm where people are going to go to search about the culture. But I also think it's interesting because some brands are choosing to kind of intertwine that Instagram account, especially if you don't have yet like that super large following, they are choosing to combine that into one. And what I want to ask you is, do you think that, you know, like, what do you think are kind of the recipe or the secret sauce behind that Instagram? Does it, does it matter if we're putting it all in one? Does it matter not matter if we're like a certain size, let's say under like 500 employees, should we be having multiple Instagram handles? Like, when it comes to this kind of stuff?
31:53
Sivan Felder
Look, it's not one size fits all. My feeling in general is, and we'll talk about, like, I think in best practices, but I think that choosing one platform that you're really going to focus on creating an employer brand where you're going to put post the Content. So let's say that's Instagram or LinkedIn. Like you should be investing in having a one place that has a separate page. And the reason that that is is because if I as a candidate go into, let's say on Facebook, right, And I see hundreds of posts about your blog posts and like the last time you posted employer branded content was two months ago. I'm not even going to get that far down and it will just get lost. And actually your candidates are expecting you to optimize their experience. So think how Spotify creates all these playlists for me. Just knows what I like. And Netflix can suggest these shows. Like people are not going to put in an effort to get to know you. You need to optimize yourself so that it's easy for them. But again, don't take more than you can choose. So on LinkedIn, there's a tab that you can, I think you have to buy it, but it's like a life tab that people can come and it's like a little bit of mini career page. Instagram, it's free, just make a Oktopost life or whatever. Those are really, I think the two main channels you can have on YouTube. Like people will what's it like to work at this company and then you don't need your own YouTube channel. But definitely having one location where you're going to host your employer branding content, I think separate from the company.
33:11
Jennifer Gutman
Valid. Thanks for answering. That was just.
33:13
Sivan Felder
Unless you're a four person company, in which case I don't think.
33:16
Jennifer Gutman
All right, let's keep going because I know there's a few more.
33:18
Sivan Felder
Good one.
33:18
Jennifer Gutman
And this one I'm all over.
33:21
Sivan Felder
So. Yeah. So if you don't know Gong, the truth is actually you said you asked me why did I choose to focus my career in here. So I actually got, I didn't get a job offer from Gong. I didn't even apply there. That's like, it was such a cool place. But I was like, no, I'm not ready. But I did get another job offer, something that was content related. And I was really thinking like, okay, where am I taking this? And I personally realized that I don't care about products, I care about people. And I also realized that the concept of storytelling, whether it applies to people or product, is actually really interchangeable. And for me it just felt really exciting to pursue this concept. And I knew it was on the right track because after I took the job at SimilarWeb, I saw that Dong posted that they're looking for an employer brand Manager. I'm like, so, okay, if they're also looking for one, then this is a good. A good track to be on. But I think it's such, like, a cool thing that now we're getting to, like, telling stories of people because basically this is like the story of who works here. So anyway, I thought it was cool. But, yeah, I'm obsessed with gong. I love their. I love all their stuff. And the reason I love all their stuff is because they've really chosen a personality and they've, like, nailed it. They've just gone with it. And I think this is actually a really good example because they're a bit of, like, an intense personality. This is not a place for everybody. And I think that that's really important to remember. Like, you're not trying to attract every type of person. When you think about who you work with on a daily basis in your company, chances are there's like, unifying themes or characteristics that would apply to all of them. And so when you create your employer brand, you have to remember you're trying to attract the right people. You don't want people who are going to come and be like, wait, these are not my. These are not my people. So I feel like at gong, they were like, they're even their employee value proposition. Like, their top line on their career page is become a Gongster. Now, some people, they don't want to be part of a cult and they're not interested in being part of a family, and they just want to work at their job and go home, and that's fine. So actually, by putting out, like, what their culture is like in such an abrasive way, I think it's amazing because it will get rid of all the people who don't want that and attract the people who are really looking for that. And they really, they make an effort to be very tongue in cheek. They showcase all their employees, like, all the time and all this really authentic looking content. They post gifts. They're very on point with their millennial speak. And this is totally different than HubSpot, which is much more corporate. You know, they're not. They're not trying to invite you into a cult. They're not saying they're a family. They're just like, hey, we're HubSpot, and this is kind of what we do and what you should know about us. So two very different brands, but both of them, I think, really nailing the employer brand storytelling.
35:50
Jennifer Gutman
All right, so I want everybody to, like, take a moment. I know 2020. And 2021 was filled with, you know, zoom fatigue, and it's real. And Sivan and I, before we hit record this webinar, we were laughing about that, right? Like, zoom fatigue is real and these days are crazy. So I want to have a little fun. I know it's a little cheesy, but I feel like all of us could use a good laugh. So I want you to take a moment and just think about your corporate brand presence as is. I cannot see, you know, none of this result will be shared.
36:19
Sivan Felder
It's anonymous.
36:21
Jennifer Gutman
We're about to find out. Think about your corporate brand presence on LinkedIn and based solely on that presence on just LinkedIn, not Instagram, not anywhere else. On a scale of one to five, five being, hell yes, my company has nailed it. I feel like when I Look at my LinkedIn profile or my corporate company page, that I fit right in and that they are really telling the story of our people. Or one being that. Well, you know what? I see a lot of product and I don't really see that many posts about company culture. Maybe there's a, like, one or two about new employees joining or like, the milestones. So if you go ahead and want to drop again, we're not going to share the who, but if you want to drop your numbers in the chat or, sorry, the Q and A. So keep it on. But if you want to drop it in the Q and A, feel free to drop in the Q and A. And we'll just give a moment if you want to play. If not, just take a moment. Stretch, you know, if you want to stretch out your legs. We're nearing the end, so I'm just watching some of the numbers come in. I'm seeing a lot of. Oh, I have a 3.5. Okay. Oh, here we go. Okay. Okay, let's see here. Okay. Yeah, there's a few. Okay. There's. There's some high ones. There's, you know, there's some fours one. Awesome. All right, so, so cool. So listen, the reason why I wanted to take that poll, and I'm saying, like, I'm seeing the responses coming through, we're all kind of hitting, I think, between, like, it seems like 3, 3, 5. Maybe happy if you're at 4. But I think it just goes to show there's a lot of room for improvement. And going back to the first slides, and everybody's going to get this presentation emailed out to them that if you want to look at our list of kind of how to tell that story and what topics you know, the millennial population, but also is really resonating with audiences. I think we can all do a little better. So with that time, with that being said, I'll get back to the poll in just a moment. Here we go. There we go. So before I announce some of the winners of the poll, because I saw some pretty high numbers, I want to understand from Sivan, before I announce the winners, how are we going to take action to really make sure that we're leveraging social media, social media for employer branding and not just, you know, speaking about our product and doing the whole marketing thing, making, you know, Right. Driving traffic to our website. It's all very important, right? I'm a social media marketer. It is like my KPIs. But how as has social people as a marketing team, as hr. I see on the call, you know, we have some, you know, really different roles from many different organizations. How really can we leverage social media media to do this?
39:04
Sivan Felder
So I wanted to give some just like basic tips. Obviously we don't. It's already been 45 minutes. I thought I was talking so fast, but I do feel, and I'm happy to talk after if anyone has additional questions. But overall, these are like four things that I feel are useful to start with. So first of all, we kind of talked about this a little bit, but if you're not social media savvy or you don't have thousands of pieces of content to post all over social media, just choose one channel that you're going to focus on. So let's just take LinkedIn for example. I think that's the perfect place to start if you're. That's the second one, sorry. If your target audience is like young and professional, then LinkedIn is definitely where you should be utilizing. It also depends the type of job. So let's say if you're more graphically. If you're looking for more graphically inclined people, maybe Instagram will be the right place. That's really kind of something you'll have to figure out for your target audience. But I find that when people try to do everything, it ends up just not happening. It's just like a psychological phenomenon. So nothing to do with employer branding. But you really want to make sure that you're setting yourself offers success. So choose one place, harness the power of it, go all out and then scale as you go. Start with LinkedIn. Usually the next one is employee advocacy. And this is really big. This is kind of anytime you create a piece of content, employees need to be in it and then you need to actually be asking them to share. And you have to make it easy for them to share and you have to create content that they actually want to share. So, for example, you know, if you're creating a campaign about how amazing it is to work at your company, but you don't feature any employees who are active on LinkedIn, you're kind of wasting a really important potential. And I'm not saying you should only choose people who are content creators and, you know, excited to share, but in general, you know, if you're, if you're going to be creating content, you need to be creating it also with engaged people who are going to be your advocates. And another thing is making sure that they have access to the content so they can share it also. And overall, the storytelling, again, remember, it's not the story of your company. It's not when it was founded and what your CEO eats for lunch or even what your mission is. It's really that your employees are the hero of the story. And so I only want to be seeing faces. I only want to be seeing real people. I don't want to be seeing actors. I don't know why anyone would get an actor to like, talk about the company, like, absolutely not. Should never be an actor. And it's not hard, it's not complicated. It is time consuming and it does take time to figure out what your story is, and that's a whole other topic. But there's no reason why you can't start tomorrow and just with these things, kind of get something really awesome off the ground. So.
41:29
Jennifer Gutman
So, Sivan, I want to thank you for all of this knowledge, new knowledge and insight. I want to open the floor. Before we announce some of the winners of the Little Octis, I want to open the floor up for a Q and A. If anybody has some questions or thoughts, comments, short stories, feel free to go ahead and drop them in the Q and A.
41:49
Sivan Felder
Feelings, emotional things you want to discuss. Preferably on, you know, on top of. I'll see before, I think there was. How do you get your employees motivated to participate in social media, branding and advocacy? This is an excellent question that many companies have a very, very hard time with. And I'll tell you here, it's one of my biggest plans for the next six months is creating a culture of employees creating and engaging and sharing content. There's two sides to the coin, right? So think. And again, just think about friendship. I'm a lot more motivated to do something for a friend that I know is doing stuff for me. So if you're really building a culture where you're giving to your employees and they like working at your company, people are happy to participate in something where they feel, okay, yes, I've gotten something out of this. This is a company I love. So that's number one. If you're reaching out to a lot of employees and no one wants to participate, you probably have another problem, which is that people maybe aren't so happy and they're not feeling motivated to invest extra time and effort into something. But again, that's another. Another problem not necessarily related to employer branding. And the easiest way to start is actually to find who your advocates are already. So I know that I have access to the LinkedIn page for SimilarWeb, and I can go in and see which employees are already sharing content that SimilarWeb posts, who's engaging with our content. And then I reach out to them and I'm like, hey, you know, I was wondering if you'd be interested in doing a little video or I'd be interested if you're participating in this. And 90% of the time they're like, yeah, sure. And then it's very easy to get that. There's no having to force people or having to beg them to post because they're already doing it. And also, people are excited to be part of a community. So if you make the experience as this is a community and you can be part of it, and here's the content we're creating together as a community, you'll find that the motivation is a lot higher than if nobody knows that the content is being created, and then suddenly it's posted and they're like, okay, well, I wasn't involved in this, or I didn't know what's happening, so I'm not so motivated. So again, making sure that people know what's happening, that you're targeting people who are interested already in being in content and creating stuff that they're excited to share. And actually, this was really interesting that I didn't know this, and I guess it never occurred to me, but I think it's like the numbers, like, 98% of employees are happy to share that their company won an award. And that's because we feel a lot of pride in where we work when we're doing well. So if, for example, your company has recently won an award, create like a little Canva post, and you're like, hey, guys, we just won this award, you know? And then people are like, oh, wow, okay, great. I'll post about it. So making it easy for people, making it things that they want to share, that's the easiest way to start.
44:27
Jennifer Gutman
So I'm going to chime in actually. So one of my fortes is helping our customers get their employee advocacy programs off the ground. And what you just mentioned named in terms of getting employees to participate is for sure, I'd say the top three challenges of, of getting your colleagues to participate in sharing social content. What I'd like to suggest, if you want to give it a try, it's super easy. I also have, you know, sample questions I can send out. But I, I also encourage whoever is running, whether it's the employer branding side of the social piece or if it's even social media and general. I often have the team start out with sending out a company wide survey or at least to the participants of the program and sending out a survey and finding out from your participants where are they active on social media, professionally and personally, what do they like to share personally and professionally and sending out that survey. I do it actually at Oktopost every quarter and the reason why I do it so frequently is because what I find is interests change, number one. But number two, it's a really powerful way for me to say to my team and my company, hey listen, I'm taking what you're going to say seriously, hear from you, what kind of stories you want to hear, what interests you, et cetera, et cetera. And it's so easy for me to action that. And then when I action what suggestions came from employees from that survey, my team usually says, oh wow, Jen's listening. So I would also think about surveys in that aspect if you're, if participation is low and happy to help with that. So Sivan, let's, I think you have the QA box open if you see any more. We can take probably about like two more if there's any more in there.
46:09
Sivan Felder
Let's look. Okay, so here, there's one. How to properly resonate with our audience and make meaningful relationships through branding. So this is, this is interesting because it's a little bit different than marketing in terms of how customers become followers or advocates or they might be really interested for a very long time and engage with all your content. Again, like we said, candidates or potential employees aren't necessarily going to. So I actually think that your audience should be your existing employees. And I think that like we said, you know, sending out questionnaires, which is also something that I did. And it was really interesting because a lot of the stuff that I thought People would be interested in sharing. They were not, which is great and fine. It just was so interesting. Like, okay, I'm coming at it from a completely different context, right? This isn't product, this is people and what do they want? So thinking about actually building the relationship with your employees and creating content that makes them feel seen and it reflects them back to them, they'll be a lot more interested in sharing and they'll be the ones who that kind of create the relationship with future employees. Because people aren't necessarily building relationships with your company, they're building relationships with the people they're going to be working with on a regular basis. And that's really what the whole concept should be around. So any of the content you create, again, shouldn't be about just your mission as a company and all that kind of stuff. But here's who work here, here's who works here and their stories that you feel your potential employees feel connected with them and your existing employees feel connected with. Connected.
47:38
Jennifer Gutman
I love it. I'm going to go ahead. For the sake of time, I want to get to announce the Opti winner. So if anyone has any questions that we didn't yet answer, you can feel free to go ahead and contact myself or Sivan. And, you know, we speak regularly, so if, you know, you mix us up, it's only final words.
47:58
Sivan Felder
Dry answer to Jen. Actually, I wanted my name to be Jen. Did I tell you that?
48:03
Jennifer Gutman
There you go. So, you know, and again, you're going to get this presentation. So thank you all so much for joining us. And without further ado, I want to go ahead and it looks like my space bar is stuck there, but I want to go ahead and announce the little Opti winner. So how I went to go ahead and look and announce the winner is at first I was thinking, okay, whoever gave the highest score on their LinkedIn poll, which would be a complete five. But I have to be radically transparent with you. Nobody gave a five. Or actually there was. There was a few people who gave a five. But what I want to say is I really appreciate you getting radically transparent with us about where you stand with your employer brand storytelling on LinkedIn. So what I'm actually going to do, everybody gets a trophy, Everybody wins. Everybody's getting a little Opty who participated. Today, I'm going to send email that will have the recording. It will include this entire presentation and it will also include a form that we're going to snail mail you a little octi. So if you want want to go ahead and enter your snail mail address in that form. You should all be getting it. Tomorrow at the latest you'll get that form, put in your snail mail address and I'll send little octies to wherever you are in the world. And just so you know a little bit about our Oktopost community and culture that I love to share, when you get your little octi you can hashtag little octi. It sounds like a rapper. It does. Little Octi L I L O K T up on Instagram, up on LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever you're most comfortable and you can go ahead and take pictures with them and we'll be sure to have our teams kind of get excited and play that little game on social. So keep your eyes out for that and in the meantime stay safe, stay healthy, stay sane and Sivan, thank you so much.
49:44
Sivan Felder
Thank you so much for having me and thank you guys for taking the time to listen to us talk.
