In Part 1 of this series, we heard a story that really reinforced a company’s pursuit of its mission, and we learned why companies should use stories like that one in their recruitment marketing efforts. If you haven’t read Part 1, you might find it helpful to start there. Here in Part 2 of the series, let’s follow Gabe’s story through the process that will turn it into a shareable piece of content that the company can use in a recruitment marketing campaign. candidates.

Recruitment marketing is every channel and tactic you use to communicate your employer brand to candidates in order to attract and engage them. Your stories are pivotal assets in a recruitment marketing strategy that can influence candidates at so many touchpoints throughout their journey.

Determine the best medium for the story. 

Communicating a story to candidates starts with capturing it in a medium through which it can be shared. At its core, the medium might be video, audio, image, or text, but it could also include extensions or combinations of those media, using creative elements like illustration, graphic design, front-end web development, podcasting and more.

How do you choose the best medium for a particular story? A great story can translate well in any medium, but there are a few things to consider in picking the most effective one.

Availability of relevant imagery — Some stories, more than others, could really use the help of some supporting visual references. If you don’t have any relevant photos available to you from when the story took place, video might not be the best option for that particular story, because it would have to rely entirely on the storyteller’s verbal descriptions. Consider recreating the scene from scratch by using illustration to tell a story.

Intended distribution method — Later in this article, we mention some of the many ways of getting the story out to the world. If you have specific distribution methods in mind for a particular story, those might inform the medium(s) that the story should take. For example, if you know you’d like to share the story on twitter, and saw some data that suggests that Twitter users tweet images 361% more than they tweet videos, it might be worth considering an illustration to tell the story. Similarly, since using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19%, click-through rates by 65% and reduces unsubscribes by 26%, you may be inclined to tell the story through video as part of your planned candidate email campaign. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the data out there — the point here is to consider where you’ll be using the story when you choose which media you’ll use to tell it.

In the example of the Kasasa story, Gabe happens to be a very engaging speaker — and his passion for the company’s mission really shines through in his body language — so video is a good fit for his story.

Determine how to feature the story.

Stories can be powerful on their own as standalone pieces of content with minimal context required. They can also serve as supporting examples or exclamation points inside a broader narrative, with the story sitting adjacent to additional information.

While Gabe’s story could stand alone as its own video, we thought of it instead as a concise opportunity to introduce a broader conversation about Kasasa’s mission that pulls in multiple perspectives.

Distribute the story and measure the results! 

There are so many ways to share a story with the world — uploading it to your Careers page, featuring it on your LinkedIn company page, sharing it through social media channels, adding it to job descriptions, including it in automated email campaigns to candidates, posting it to online groups and forums, etc. — so how do you determine where it should go?

Some stories might be more effective distributed through some channels over others, so it’s worth giving some thought to the story’s message—and the personas and intentions of the audience using each channel — when choosing where it should go. Thinking about Gabe’s story, since the story reinforces Kasasa’s mission, it would be pretty powerful getting it in front of engineering candidates who are fielding offers from large financial institutions, in order to appeal to their sense of purpose. Kasasa could share the story in online groups where those folks gather.

Once you’ve gotten the story out into the world, measure its effectiveness and gather insights to learn from for future storytelling. Which types of stories are candidates spending the most time engaging with? Which stories generated the most social shares and conversions? How are these stories becoming sources of influence in the overall candidate journey?

Gabe's final story.

One final note: you probably noticed that a lot of hard work has to happen in between the three steps we laid out — specifically the process of becoming aware of and uncovering stories, like Gabe’s, as well as the creative process of actually producing the story. Those topics are for another day. In the meantime, if you have any questions, learn more about how we create employer branding content at Stories Incorporated.

Stories Incorporated produces engaging, story-based recruitment marketing content, serving as a long-term partner for clients in need of consistent, timely, compelling media for distribution across all employer branding channels.