Overcoming the Social Media Pitfalls of Employer Branding

Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages can help you successfully communicate your employer brand message. But those same tools can also damage your brand. It just takes a few disgruntled employees posting scathing examples of your workplace to make potential candidates question your reputation. And even those who don’t work for your company — employees’ family members and friends, or rejected applicants — can post negative comments about your company on social media to remain for all time. So how do you handle these potential pitfalls of social media and ensure that your employer brand will continue to shine? Here are four tips. Monitor social media closely Rather than leaving it to chance, make it someone’s job to monitor social media sites to see what’s being said about your company. If you don’t monitor the Web, you’ll have no idea when something is said that needs your attention. Consider setting up Google Alerts or another tool that will alert you whenever something new about your organization is posted online. Sign up for a Free Employer Account so you’re in the know about who is visiting your Glassdoor profile and which of your competitors they are looking at as well. Stay professional When something is posted on social media about your company that needs to be addressed, ensure that any comments or responses from your company are made in a professional tone. Resist the temptation to bash the source of negative comments about your workplace. Also, resist the temptation to avoid responding at all — you don’t want to appear as if you don’t care what people say about your company or what it’s like to work there. Read up on best practices for responding to reviews. Construct a team response In addition to crafting responses from the human resources department, consider asking current employees to serve as employer brand ambassadors and add their own positive comments to the online discussion. Several current employees’ positive stories can make a few ex-employees’ negative comments appear bitter and insignificant. Learn about how to encourage employee feedback. Walk in their shoes Just as potential candidates for positions at your company are Googling your workplace to find out what it may be like to work there, you should also use a search engine to “research the company.” You’ll see what they are seeing when they Google your company and be able to determine whether there is information readily available that doesn’t fit the employer brand you’re trying to build. Manage problems from within Rather than repairing the damage when disgruntled employees take their negative stories to the Internet, try preventive maintenance and work hard to make sure employees are satisfied in the first place. Institute an open door policy and when employees have potential problems, address them before the employees leave and make their discontent known online. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you have much more control over employees and what they might say about your workplace while they are working there than you would if they left. Commit to creating the positive culture your employer brand promises, so that current — and future — employees will only have positive comments to share about their experience at your company.