Marketing with Stories Blog
A Storytelling Lesson From the Olympics
The Olympics are over but the images from the games are lingering in my mind. I watched a little bit of everything -- from water polo and climbing, to track and swimming, to bike racing and gymnastics. The picture that takes up the most my 2020 Olympics memory, however, isn’t anything that happened at one of the events. It’s a picture of Suni Lee’s front yard where the homemade balance beam that she practiced on as a child could be found.
Impact and Insight - The Jack-in-the-Box Moments of Storytelling
Just before sitting down to write this, I had to do a search to see if you could still get jack-in-the-box toys. You can. You can get them in even more variations than the standard clown that was the norm when I was growing up. The ageless thrill of the jack-in-the-box is a mixture of predictability and surprise. You know as you turn the handle what’s going to happen. Yet when the lid flips up and the toy pops out, it’s always a surprise. This is what happens in storytelling, and I call it impact and insight.
The Burning Question Your Job Candidates Are Asking
Technology has made us predictable. We use the same behaviors to explore, discover and research job opportunities that we use when we’re shopping for the products and services we need for our personal and professional lives. We seek out answers to our own questions and by the time we’re ready to contact a business or walk through their door, we have a pretty good idea of what direction we want to go. Asking and finding answers to questions helps us develop confidence that we’re making a good decision.
3 Topics for Your Careers Blog
Consumerism has overtaken recruiting. People are using the same behaviors to look for a job that they use to buy products and services. The first thing job seekers are going to do when interested in learning about your company is go to your website and they could have many online interactions with your company before they make the decision to apply for a position.
Time for an Employer Reputation Audit
Did you know that you have an employer reputation? It’s called your employer brand and you can either leave it to chance, or you can manage it. It’s much better to manage it if you want to have a say in the narrative that is being shared about your company in its role as an employer.
3 Ways Employee Testimonials Pump Up Recruiting
Would you ever buy a house without walking through it first? Do you think you could make a confident purchase if you weren’t even allowed to peek through the windows? Probably not. Yet that’s what you might be asking your job candidates to do if you don’t use employee testimonials in your recruitment marketing. Employee testimonials give your candidates a window to peek through to see if your company is a good place to work, and if the job you want to fill is right for them.
Marketing Consultant Gives XPERTECHS Product Manager Freedom to Focus
When Chris Freeman, a marketing professional at managed IT company XPERTECHS in Ellicott City, MD, moved into the role of product manager, he felt pulled in too many directions. As a product manager, Chris was tasked with developing new IT service product offerings, but he still had to maintain all of his marketing responsibilities. The result was that daily marketing tasks started to fall through the cracks, and Chris knew that he didn’t have the bandwidth to get everything done.
How Will You Treat Me When There's a Crisis?
There are a whole lot of employer brand stories in the making right now as companies are figuring out how they will respond to the continuing COVID-19 public health crisis. We’re hearing some of these stories already. Some companies are finding ways to enable employees so that they can work from home. Others have had to temporarily shut down. Still others are operating at a reduced level. Many are stepping up to help their communities at the same time that they’re creating their own coping strategy.
Introducing Sarah Olson, Brand Storyteller
Sarah Olson joins her mom, Lori Creighton, as a writer at Homestead Media, helping companies communicate their reputation as a good employer through employee experience storytelling. Her role at Homestead Media provides a way for Sarah to keep her professional experience fresh while she cares for her two young sons. It’s a great situation that helps her to put her family first, and stay close to her mom, Lori, owner of Homestead Media.
What is Employer Branding?
When you hear the word “branding,” your mind might think of logos, colors, and design. While a consistent visual presence certainly plays a part in creating a positive impression to the job candidates that you want to attract, employer branding encompasses a whole lot more than your graphic style. It’s your reputation.
Guidelines for Using Employee Photos for Marketing
You know a stock photo when you see one, don’t you? Authentic photos of a business and its people are much more effective at nurturing trust and building relationships with potential job candidates and prospects than a generic stock photo. Getting great employee photos, however, takes a lot more effort than just browsing through a library of stock images, and you need to take care to make sure that using real photos of your people will be a good experience for employees and that you’re not violating privacy concerns.
Consulting Services Make It Easier to Be a Marketing Department of One
Courtney Casey is the Director of Marketing for Accent Computer Solutions, now VC3 after being acquired in 2022. Being responsible for marketing in an extremely competitive industry means that Courtney has a very comprehensive marketing strategy and is active in multiple channels, from content development, advertising and email marketing to customer communications, sales enablement and networking.