5 Ways to Bring Your Offline Company Culture Online

Guest Article by Megan Biondi Social Media Marketing Specialist at Blue Fountain Media.

Company culture is a hot topic for today’s business owner. Job candidates ask questions about it, current employees work to maintain it and social media managers look for ways to share it with their respective audiences.

Being a social media specialist myself, I am quite familiar with using social platforms to showcase company culture, and know how important and impactful it can be to take this element from the office to the digital space.

Your company’s social media strategy should help to tell the story of your brand, providing an inside glimpse of your organization that most people don’t see when they’re learning about your offerings.

The best and most effective way to do so is by highlighting the people who are behind the inner workings at your organization each and every day – your employees.

If done correctly, you can give your company a significant edge against the competition when it comes to selling your products or services, recruiting new talent, and expressing employee recognition.

Showcasing your employees, their personality and interests gives users an opportunity to personally connect with your brand beyond your offerings.

Now, how exactly do you deliver information about your company culture, and those who make it possible, to your users through a social media campaign?

Below are five ideas from companies successfully bringing their offline company culture online.

1. Showcase The Personal Interests of Your Employees

Your employees are the foundation of your company, and are crucial to the successful growth of the organization. They help you make your company what it is—from operations to sales, and often, your reason behind hire choices will extend past technical skillsets.

Allow your existing and potential customers to meet the people behind your brand by presenting them in a personal light. Share fun facts about their hobbies and interests, and show appreciation for them in a recurring social media content campaign.

One example of a campaign like this is in motion at my current agency, Blue Fountain Media. Each week we choose an employee from our team to feature across our social media platforms as the “BFMer of the Week.”

Although our agency executes digital projects, our current and potential clients are able to learn a little bit more about our team beyond their professional skills when they check out these branded posts on Facebook and Instagram.

2. Tell Their Professional Story

A personal LinkedIn profile only goes so far. In addition to sharing an employee’s personal background outside from their current role, you can utilize social media as a platform to share their professional experience.

Showing where your employees have come from, the jobs they have had in the past, projects their proud of, and how their passion for their career of choice was ignited can highly engage potential customers on your social channels.

An example of a company that does does an exceptional job at this women’s clothing and fashion line, Free People.

Each month, they focus on one employee and craft a blog post that goes into detail about the employee’s career ambitions, their inspirations, and just exactly how they are an influential member of the Free People team.

This sort of employee exposure helps customers see each members value to the team, and in turn ensures the employee’s value to the company.

3. Share Behind the Scenes Projects 

Regardless if the industry is horizontal or vertical, an influx of exciting projects and important tasks is why you’ve built a strong team in the first place.

Incorporating behind the scenes footage or sneak-peeks into the day-to-day routine of your team’s work can help potential customers, employees and fans of your brand see your team live and in action.

Sharing this type of content on social media gives your audience a feeling of exclusivity and inclusion, and ultimately a reason for them to continuously check your social media platforms for the “inside scoop” on your brand.

4. Highlight Team Outings

After spending 40-hours a week together, employees often become friends, or find common interests and hobbies to bond over.

Whether your employees are together at a planned company outing, heading to a concert or running with the bulls in Pamplona (like this group from People Water), showing your employees working together and having fun outside of the office is an organic and efficient way to display your company culture.

In addition to posting this content on your social media platforms,allow your employees to share up-to-date encounters with co-workers by creating a lifestyle hashtag for your organization.

At Blue Fountain Media, we tag our images with “#BFMLife.” Having a hashtag such as this one allows you to easily locate pictures of your team’s outing and is a portfolio that exemplifies you’re the culture at your organization

5. Celebrate Awareness Days

Whether it’s Halloween or National Junk Food Day, participating in these widely known, and light-hearted holidays can help to expand your brand’s reach and connect with users that you may not have been exposed to otherwise.

Taking pictures of an event or creating a branded video that shows how your company is celebrating a certain holiday or awareness day can make for great shareable content.

In this example by Mashable, they harp on the one employee in their office who is notorious for loving junk food--every office has an employee like that, so it makes content that is relatable, and that much more likely to get some attention.

Final Words

Adding a more personal angle to your brand and social media approach allows job candidates as well as customers to connect with your team before meeting them, or to see someone they interact with regularly for professional needs, in a personal light.

Is there a social media campaign that you have implemented to give your customers and target audience an opportunity to see you company culture in action?