How to Leverage Storydoing to 10x your Engagement

What exactly is Storydoing?

Storydoing is not some quick social media tactic, and it’s not telling stories for stories' sake.

It’s putting a spotlight on aspects of your culture that have been, and continue to be, proven out by the real lived experiences of the people at your organisation.

When you capture these unmanicured snippets of life at your company, you’re capturing what candidates need to build an emotional connection with your values. You’re creating resonance.

And that drives tangible results.

Why Employee Stories Matter

In this post-pandemic era, people are losing appetite for marketing gloss. They want authentic content.

Candidates place value on unfiltered glimpses at your company’s inner workings, which would explain why employee generated content gets up to 8x more engagement than company posts.

The right stories, told with effective frameworks, can illuminate what sets your culture apart, showcasing your values, strengths, challenges and your greatest asset – your people.

Sharing stories isn’t just about getting talent to feel “warm and fuzzy”; it really works.

Let’s take a look at some real-world success stories.

InMobi 

The tech company InMobi was struggling to differentiate itself. With so much competition out there, it was enveloped in a sea of sameness.

Then, the talent team decided to make a change. They started asking their employees, “What really matters to us?” and “What do we stand for?”

They resolved to home in on what made them special.

Once they refreshed their employer branding strategy to reflect their real work culture and leveraged employee stories, they saw astronomical improvement.

In just 9 months they had 5x more applicants, a 95% drop in recruitment spending which saved nearly $2 million and a higher calibre of talent applying for their roles.

The key to InMobi’s success was that the employer brand it shared with the world was an accurate reflection of the working experience. It wasn’t an over engineered, polished look. It leveraged its people to share stories about the unique culture and practices, and content was getting reshared all over the place.

Activision

Likewise, the team Activision made a big change last year, by leveraging their people and games to reinvent their brand voice.

After they built out an employee advocacy group of 60 people to start sharing all the different elements of their culture and brand, the results were profound.

In less than a year, they reached over 20 million people through their employees posts. Their career site traffic went up 52%, brand engagement across all these channels increased by 105%, and they saw a 40% increase in applications.

On top of all that, they had two of the most successful game launches ever. So as well as breathing life into their talent brand, storydoing helped their consumer brand too.

Heard enough? Want to create your own success story with storydoing? Here are some practical tips to get you started.

Strategic Story Capturing Tips

1. Involve Employees from the Start

Most companies will wait until after their career site or EVP is launched to get employees involved. That’s a mistake.

If you get buy-in and input from staff early on regarding what matters to them and what it's really like to work in your organisation, the stories you tell will be genuine and resonate both internally and externally.

2. Know Your Cultural Focus

Identify the specific cultural facets you want to shine a spotlight on. Is it your career growth oppurtunities? Flexible working? Exciting events and projects? Your diverse workforce?

Once you’ve pinned down what you want to capture, tease out the stories that will support those key themes.

3. Capture Personal Passions and Journeys

If you put people on the spot or box them in with leading questions like “Why is it so great to work here?’, responses will be awkward and forced.

Would you be able to produce a compelling answer under those circumstances? Probably not.

Instead, ask warm-up questions around the employee’s interests – their background, their motivations. Find out what makes them tick. Create a dialogue. Foster a more comfortable environment which allows story gold to flow.

4. Capitalize on Momentum

If you want to capture content about professional growth opportunities at your company, what do you do?

You talk to someone who has been promoted, right?

Leave it too late, though, and you risk a lukewarm response. Emotions fade quickly.

If you’re timely with your prompts, and can catch events like this right after they have happened, you can capitalise on the inherent enthusiasm that exists when good news is still fresh.

More emotion, better stories.

One last thing

Storydoing allows employers to highlight their greatest asset - people.

By taking the time to discover what makes your culture special and sharing those unfiltered glimpses, you create resonance that today's candidates crave.

Embrace storydoing in your recruiting strategy and watch your employer brand reap immense rewards.