Employer branding is the humanized face of a company. When it’s done right, it evokes emotion and personality. Strong employer branding has its benefits: from driving higher applicants per job, reducing the cost per hire, and decreasing turnover.

While it may be tempting for recruitment or marketing teams to create an employer brand strategy in isolation (this does help get it done faster!), if the brand doesn’t align with how your broader team experiences your company, the brand won’t be adopted and it won’t flourish. After all, a successful employer brand is just as much about current team members as it is about candidates.

Culture surveys and other opportunities for team members to express how they feel should be the starting point for any authentic employer branding exercise. Ask team members why they chose to work with you and whether their reasons still hold true. When gathering this information, it’s important to ask questions about what they like about your company culture, and what they’d like to see improved. Once you’ve gathered this information, you can start communicating your employer brand externally.

Here are some recommendations on what to include in your employer branding strategy and some examples of solid employer branding in action.

Empower your team members to share their stories

Engaged team members are apt to become your culture champions. Interviewing team members about their experiences is an excellent way for potential candidates to get an idea of what your company is really like. Questions should focus on your values and how team members experience them. Using examples help stories come alive, so get folks to be specific. Encourage team members to reflect on their experiences and share what makes them excited to show up to work every day. The more personalized the story the better.

Here’s a list of questions you could ask when interviewing team members:

• What makes you excited about showing up to work every day?

• What have you learned since starting to work here?

• What’s an exciting project you’ve worked on recently and what was your role in it?

• What advice would you give to someone who’s looking to apply for a job with us?

This recommendation in action

At Jobber, they profile team members and post their stories on the company LinkedIn page. The profiles are casual in tone and the goal is to feature team members across the organization.

Speaking from experience, when I was interviewing with Jobber I spent time reading through each of these profiles. They made me even more excited about joining the team because of how intimate the profiles were.

Co-create your social media presence

Potential candidates will move from browsing a company’s website to looking at its social media platforms to get a better impression. I’m particularly keen on using Instagram to demonstrate your culture in action. It’s obviously a visual platform, so having original photos is key, along with unique copy, a custom hashtag, and broader hashtags that loop you into your community.

Through images, Instagram provides you with an opportunity to share your team member stories and testimonials. You can also demonstrate your employee benefits and perks. Anything that you highlight to differentiate yourself on your careers page can easily be reflected in a photograph.

The trick to managing your account? Co-create your Instagram presence by getting your team members involved. Encourage team members to take pictures when they’re at the office, in the community, or at industry-related events. If you create a Slack channel where team members can share their photos along with a suggested description to include, you’ll have ongoing content to pull from.

This recommendation in action

Hootsuite is one of the originators of showcasing an employer brand on Instagram. By using #hootsuitelife, Hootsuite collected all of their stories in one place. They made it easy for team members to reflect their culture within a collection of social content. Job-seekers can then look through the variety of content.

Say no to stock or highly edited photos

Speaking of photos — candidates prefer images of actual team members, in their actual office, doing actual tasks. If a company doesn’t want to use its actual office space as its public image, it may say something about the working conditions of your team members. And though we all appreciate a well-edited photo, when it comes to showcasing your team members, I’d use caution on how much you’re editing the photos. The goal isn’t to be perfect — it’s to be authentic.

This recommendation in action

On Rover’s careers page, they’ve done a fab job of using images on their site that look they’re just taken by smartphones, as opposed to highly produced studio shots. It’s inviting. It’s real. And it’s easy to picture yourself alongside their team.