Employer branding: the Dennis approach Last week, we released a new blog post where we interviewed Adestra’s HR team to find out how

they approach Employer Branding online. All following on from our first blog post back in 2016

finding some great examples of Employer Brand Storytelling.

When we approached Dennis Publishing to see if we could have a similar interview with their staff

regarding how they’re telling their story online, we were happy when they jumped at the chance to

get involved.

So if you’re here now (which we know you are) and if you’re excited (how could you not be), look

below to find out the Dennis approach!

Life at Dennis

Founded in 1974, Dennis Publishing are one of the leading independently owned media companies

in the UK. They have transformed their business from a traditional print publisher to a multi-

platform media company and in 2011 they created the Life at Dennis Twitter page.

We welcome you to our guest blog interview between Becky (our Marketing & Events Exec) and

Alexandra (Talent Acquisition and Social Media Partner at Dennis)…

Background

Becky: When did Dennis decide they wanted to start telling their story online?

Alex: They have always had social media accounts and they used to use them without having a

strategy in place. I started here about a year and a half ago and around 6 months into my Talent

Acquisition role it was changed to include social media as well. So I put our strategy together and

came up with employer branding and storytelling.

Becky: Why did you start telling your story online and do you use any other sites apart from

Twitter?

Alex: I wanted to put a structure in place and let people know what it’s like in our offices at

Dennis. I wanted to be able to show people what a fun place to work we are and some of the

benefits they’d have if they worked here. We currently use Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and

Instagram.

Becky: And when you refer to yourself, does that mean it’s just you that posts updates or do you

share the responsibility with other team members or departments?

Alex: At the moment it’s just me that posts online, but we’re looking to bring in an intern to

support me in 2017. Right now it works well balancing it with the recruitment aspect of my role

and other departments get involved with the content, especially on our Instagram and Snapchat

pages. A few colleagues actually have the log-in details which we find best for them as they are

able to take a quick snap and upload it when they’re out and about.

Life at Dennis’ Goals

Becky: Is there anything in particular you’re aiming to achieve by telling your story online?

Alex: My main goal for Life at Dennis is to share our culture and get it known in the community. We

are very proud of who we are and how we work so we want this to come across in our job adverts.

Alex: We also wanted to grow our platforms and get our culture across to more people, and also to

get our brands across as well as they are some well-known names. We are now wanting to build

our brand with Dennis as a whole hub and showcase who we are altogether.

Alex: Increasing our quality of hire by sharing our events and activities in and out of the office is

really important to us too. We want to hire good quality candidates that will stay here for a long

time, so sharing the benefits of working for us is important.

Action Plan Becky: When you started putting together a strategy for posting online to reach your goals, did you

attend any specific training?

Alex: Yes I attended some courses to learn some new skills including Instagram for Business,

Digital Marketing and Recruitment Advertising. But I also conducted a lot of research by

researching what other companies were doing.

I also searched a lot of the big companies like Google to see what worked for them, and to see

whether it could work for us. I then put the ideas I found into my strategy and started building our

platform online. I also searched to find when our audience were online and looking at content so I

knew the right times and days to post.

Becky: As you were using ideas from Google and other large companies, did you find it difficult to

do what they do online?

Alex: I was only mainly trying to find out how they were doing it and to see if there was anything

we could incorporate onto our pages. Really I just wanted to know what we could do to make us an

Employer of Choice.

But as we are built on a charity I really wanted to push our work online as we do a lot of

volunteering and tree planting. The content and ideas for these posts were what I gained from

looking at larger organisations. Not every idea I took from them has worked, however it did build a

premise for me to create my own voice online.

Becky: Well you’re definitely doing well online, your posts prove you’re a popular company to work

at. But has your popularity online come from a lot of practice and finding out what works best for

you or from the training you attended?

Alex: I learned a lot from the training and developed new skills in social media marketing. Also, I

tried a few things in the beginning just to see how they worked, like different types of posts for job

vacancies, but they never got much attention. So we started what we’re doing now with posting

more image content on our social media and careers pages to see if it helped bring more attention.

It’s definitely more engaging and now when we post a vacancy for our brands, we make sure to tag

their accounts, so candidates can tweet or message them directly if they have any questions

about our interview process.

Alex: Really our successes are from practice and learning what to do for it to work. When the sites

were first launched the team didn’t use them often enough due to no strategies being in place as

I’ve mentioned before. But once I came in and created our Employer Brand strategy it became like

second nature and easier to bring people into our world.

Analysis

Becky: Is there anything that surprised you since you’ve started posting online at all?

Alex: One of the best surprises has been that we’ve had a lot more applications coming through

since, which we monitor using Google Analytics. It shows a massive increase of candidates

coming through our social media pages after seeing a job advert.

We’ve also seen more people are enjoying the pictures we post too. At the end of 2016 we actually

planned a Christmas campaign where each day we opened a virtual advent calendar which shows a

few questions we asked our employees. We did this because our pictures get a great amount of

retweets and likes so we know it works well with interacting with our audience. We also posted

them on the majority of our social media pages for optimum views.

Becky: And would you say you’ve faced challenges since you started posting your Employer Brand?

Alex: The only real challenge we faced when we started this was getting everybody in the business

understanding why we wanted to do it and why it was important. My colleagues in each

department understand more why it’s important that we do it now, but it was definitely a

challenge at the beginning

Becky: And why is it important to you?

Alex: Well we want to increase our quality of hire and now that everyone is on board with this they

are a lot more enthusiastic too. Which is great for us because more people are getting involved in

posting and they’re happy for their pictures to be posted online.

Becky: So from your challenges of getting people involved around the business, have there been

any important lessons that you’ve learned?

Alex: The biggest lesson was definitely speaking to people in the business. We learned that

including them in the project, and finding out what they thought about who we are has allowed me

to post things that they would like to see as well as our audience.

Another lesson learned was that research really is key to begin sharing your employer brand. I did a

lot of research on other companies, but I also held informal sessions within different departments

to find out more about what our staff thought of our employer brand. Originally we just wanted to

find out what posts they’d like to see as well but as our vision became more directed toward

talent attraction, we realised that we needed to find out what they thought too.

Becky: Throughout the interview you’ve mentioned that you wanted to see what worked well by

posting online and seeing how much interaction you gained from it. Do you analyse the success of

your posts in any other way?

Alex: I use Google Analytics to find where applicants are coming from and whether they’re coming

through our social media channels, which I’m happy to report a lot of them are.

To see how our posts are performing though, I tend to use Twitter Analytics and the analytical

tools on our Company’s LinkedIn page. Using these lets me see how we’re growing online and how

much traffic we tend to get through our sites.

The main way we find out how we’re growing online is by looking at our pages to see if our

followers have grown.

The Future

Becky: So looking toward the future of Life at Dennis and looking back at everything you’ve done so far, do you think you could still learn more?

Alex: There’s definitely areas for improvement. Because I don’t really have experience in digital

marketing I’m hoping to get more involved in courses in the future so I can build my awareness and

become more skilled. For now though, what I’ve learned so far has clearly worked well which I’m

proud of.

Advice for other companies

Becky: It’s been really great talking to you today Alex so thanks for taking time out of your day to

help us. We provide a lot of advice for companies and hold many training events around Employer

Branding, but is there any advice you could give to companies who are just starting out?

Alex: Of course, I’m always happy to give advice to others to help them out a bit more. When it

comes to employer branding and being online the only advice I really have is:

Always plan in advance and build a strategy.

Don’t just jump straight in and get started because the content you post could be completely

irrelevant to the audience you are trying to reach. Think about what you like to see online and

research the competition first to see how they’re doing things.

Get your colleagues together and see what they think

We really wanted to get the whole business involved so that our audience can see the point of

views being shared online from all of us here. With everyone understanding what we were looking

to do, it made it much easier to get them involved and it was definitely a bonus that they enjoy

working here. We also retweet and regram our staff online who are happy for their personal

accounts to be linked to our company ones.

Well that’s a wrap my friends. Our two great interviews have come to an end and we hope you’ve

taken some good tips away for how to start telling your story. The moral of this story really is

research research research!

If you do want a little more help and guidance, why not register for our ‘Building your Employer Brand by telling your Organisation’s Story’ webinar on 14th March? You can even register by clicking

here.

Written and Interviewed by Becky Cellupica, Marketing & Events Executive