There’s a lot to be said for the role of company culture when it comes to building and maintaining a strong, positive brand. Your company culture influences the way your brand is manifested in the real world, and your workforce is the living interface between your brand and customers.
Of course, there are numerous other ways to build and maintain a positive brand identity; together all the elements make up the cohesive brand experience that your customers encounter. However, by focusing on your employer brand, your company is nurturing a living, breathing manifestation of your brand in action.
Your employer brand helps your workforce understand the expectations of the workplace, nurtures a sense of belonging, and gives them a way to understand the company they work for as something more than a faceless corporation.
It can be tough, however, to communicate the values behind your employer brand – especially when recruitment and training is done remotely. Keeping this messaging consistent and up to date across different departments and company divisions can also present a problem.
Using digital storytelling to nurture your employer brand
Today, digital media in the form of digital storytelling is probably the most influential way we can communicate brand values and stories. They allow brands to create engaging messaging that has emotional impact, while being both customizable and repeatable. However, the management of this is usually seen as a complex challenge.
Every time new digital content is added, it needs to maintain consistency. All departments need to be aligned too. Siloed content held in different departments can quickly lead to fragmented, outdated, or wrong messaging. Furthermore, inconsistent content can lead to a misalignment of values, and a company culture that is at odds with itself.
Maintaining a consistent brand identity throughout every touchpoint and department might seem like a huge challenge.
But it really isn’t at all - in fact, it’s super-easy. You just need the right Content Management System.
How can we achieve this coordination and consistency in brand digital storytelling?
A good Content Management System (CMS) is central to achieving the much needed ‘single source of truth’. It can make sure that all the messaging and digital content is in one place, and that it’s up to date. However, the CMS also needs to fulfill certain criteria to work in practice, with new content being added (or removed) over time.
- Accessible to all departments
- Simple for users to add new media
- Easy and clear to removal old media, when out of date
- Able to provide targeted and up to date messaging, for each departmental need
- Not siloed, but accessible to all and controlled by a central administrator.
A good CMS will also help companies to become more digital, by ensuring that all departments have access to the value of digital media, without being bogged down by the technology behind it. A user-friendly graphical user-interface (GUI) can reduce the management of digital media assets to a simple process of ‘drag-and-drop’, and a clear user hierarchy will ensure that administrators have editorial control over every departmental and company-wide digital asset.
So, how can you use your amazing new CMS in practice, to build a strong positive employer brand? Let’s look at 5 tactics you can employ to create a powerful and consistent brand experience for employees and customers alike.
5 tactics for building a strong employer brand
Make the office an attractive place – When employees are happy in the office, they bring more positivity to your brand. A great way to make employees excited to go to the office is to use a Customer Experience Center (CXC) for incredible interactive presentations and brand experiences. If you already have the hardware set up for a Customer Experience Center, it’s easy to use the Hyro software to transform it into a brand experience for employees too. By turning their recent accomplishments into an incredible digital storytelling experience, they’ll be excited to present to colleagues, and the audience will be fully engaged too.
Elevate your Brand and Culture guide with personal stories – Most companies use a brand guide to keep their messaging on-target. Similarly, to reinforce company culture, many companies are doing something similar by publishing Company Culture Guides for staff. Both become more impactful, when delivered as a digital story. Personal stories from employees about their company experiences will create a strong emotional connection. These have the advantage of being ‘dynamically updatable’ when needed, and can be executed anywhere using the cloud based Hyro platform.
Turbocharge your remote recruitment – Today we can attract the best talent wherever they are. Your perfectly organized and harmonized digital media assets will keep remote recruitment experiences ‘on brand’. Using a virtual studio solution can really impress candidates with an impressive remote brand experience. Furthermore, you can conduct fully branded virtual office visits, onboarding, and training. This can be done remotely, and by different departments, without sacrificing consistency, using the common media library in Hyro.
Off-boarding – This is how you play the long game in recruitment. In many specialized areas we often see the same highly skilled staff come back around again after a few years. The most talented employees are a limited pool, but it’s natural for them to want to expand their horizons. If you love them, set them free: by exploring their profession outside your company, they’ll gain skills and experiences that would not be possible if they stayed. When you take time to do ‘offboarding’, you can ensure that they leave the company with a positive experience that sums up their achievements and growth over the years. This makes them feel welcome, and keeps the bridges open to their possible future return. If they don’t return, at least they’ll leave with positive stories to tell.
Structured content library – Keep a well-organized and well-structured content library. Use all the available attributes to clearly label digital assets, as this helps to distinguish similar but different versions, and it assists in identifying out of date items. Having a clear structure and organized system helps every department gain the benefits of these digital assets, and they’ll have the confidence of knowing it is up to date.
How the Hyro storytelling software’s shared content management system makes it all so easy
The Hyro digital storytelling software includes a powerful, yet easy to operate CMS which empowers users to access digital content. This helps users easily add and organize individual media assets, combine them into scenes, and compile these into bigger, customizable presentations.
Hyro digital storytelling software offers these important features:
- Cloud based, and accessible to approved users globally
- Easy to remove old or bad content
- Content is not siloed or ‘wrong’, but maintained in a central repository, controlled by editorial staff who ensure bad content is removed.
- Easy to change, update, add or swap content elements.
Within the Hyro system, users can also see the important attributes for each digital asset or media element, such as:
- the creator/owner of each asset
- when it was first created
- when it was last updated
Additionally, content can be organized by theme, department, region, or other custom filters. Media can be cloned and refined or edited, and all the media elements can be used and reused to make complex scenes and presentations.
Together, these features make Hyro a fantastic solution for managing a well-organized, and accessible yet verified catalog of ‘approved’ media assets.
Many employers still fail to exploit the impact of leveraging their employer brand, but with easy access to a well-organized common digital library the threshold for achieving this is lowered considerably. Any department in your company can create compelling digital stories about the unique experiences of employees working in those departments. This reinforces the company culture, and maintains an easy channel for you to manifest your company values in the real world.
Your own employees are the living embodiment of your brand. Employees help to maintain a positive brand by living and perpetuating a company culture, but - once again - it’s vital that every department is on the same page: from HR, Recruitment to Sales and Marketing activities, each part of your company needs to exude consistency. With Hyro, this level of consistency is so much easier to achieve.
Digital Storytelling FAQs
What is the meaning of employer branding?
Your employer branding is defined as the distinctive brand image that you have as an employer. This covers the employee journey, and how they experience your company as an employer. This has value in attracting the best talent, and in creating a living brand identity.
How do you create an attractive employer brand?
Creating an attractive employer branding is a departure from the usual brand storytelling. It starts with identifying the ways that you are distinguished as an employer and workplace. Your company’s brand values can certainly have a role here, but the focus needs to be on a solid value proposition as an employer. Think about the advantages of working in your company – what perks do you offer? How flexible are you? How many hours of free childcare do you provide? All of these features can build a picture of an attractive employer brand, and this will draw in talented workers.
How is employer branding different from branding?
Employer branding is a form of branding, but it is distinct from your corporate brand. While your corporate brand speaks to the customer with a value proposition that is relevant to them, employer branding is all about what it’s like to work in your company. This can help to reinforce a wider brand identity, and it should be aligned with your company’s broader values. However, employer branding should seek to distinguish itself with personal stories of employee experiences.
What is digital brand storytelling?
Digital Brand Storytelling is defined as the use of digital storytelling to communicate a brand identity. By using digital stories, a company can bring their brand to life with impactful personal stories, stirring soundtracks, and varied digital media assets.
How is storytelling used in branding?
Storytelling is used in branding to give depth and a human dimension to a brand. By encapsulating brand values into a story, it becomes more memorable, relatable and impactful.
