How to Capture Company Culture on Social Media

Can you believe that it's almost Halloween?! This year, we want to inspire you to give insight on your company culture instead of a standard, "Happy Halloween!" stock image. No matter what activities or celebrations your company has in the future, we want to spice up and amplify your marketing efforts by sharing tips and tricks on how you can leverage your company's culture to captivate your audience.

According to MarTech, 81% of consumers believe that businesses should have full transparency on social media. Transparency and authenticity are mission-critical when it comes to contributing positively to social media. Without those two things, the chances of growing an engaging community that will trust in your brand and convert, are next to impossible. When your messages on social media are transparent and authentic, your company culture will shine through and it will only amplify your marketing efforts.

When defined, company culture is the values, goals, attitudes, etc of the company that makes it a gratifying place to work.  By being transparent and authentic,  your company culture should be palpable throughout your marketing efforts. But sometimes, we need a little help. So what can you do to increase your authenticity and transparency and share your company culture? We’ve got 5 tips to get you started.

Stories

Instagram and Facebook stories are by far the easiest and most effective way to show your company culture. These fleeting moments on social media are great for demonstrating company culture by sharing things like snapshots of behind-the-scenes action, how your coworkers spend their days, and what little moments make your company so special. 

Stories can be planned out ahead of time or shared organically in real-time. You could share shots from last week’s project one day and share some spur-of-the-moment content the next. This or that polls are trending right now and are an easy way to make a big splash; or try a “what would you caption this” on a photo of something relatively silly. Put up a question box and have an employee answer the questions on Instagram stories. You could end an office debate by giving your followers the final say on who’s discography is better, Mariah or Britney? Whatever makes up the interesting, fun, and human side of your company, lean into that.

Real-time social media

A lot of times most content is planned way in advance of actual posting dates. If you’re a Kicks’ client, you know we take care of planned content, but anything that happens within the company, in the office, in real-time is on you. This is for a very simple reason - we aren’t there to capture it. Only you can capture your company in a unique way. We can only demonstrate your company culture through what assets we have from you. We aren’t there when someone brings their dog to the office or Toby in HR makes a funny joke (he would never). That’s something that can only be displayed in real-time by people who are there. 

For Kicks, real-time sharing looks like posts about our pets, shots of our favorite fuel (coffee & cocktails), sharing our latest music obsession, or videos from our favorite spots around Indy. But it could look like a client giving a thumbs up after service was rendered, a video on a job site, new office decorations, you get the idea. The same strategy applies here as it does for stories, whatever makes up the interesting, fun, and human side of your company, we say full send.

In addition to real-time sharing, real-time engagement (aka commenting back and replying to DMs) is KING to demonstrate to your followers and to the algorithm that you care about what you’re sharing. By commenting in real-time, you’re encouraging your community to participate in your content with you. And is that not the whole point of social media? But beyond that, when the algorithm that controls what posts get shown more often sees that you are involved and responsive, your posts are more likely to be placed in more feeds across the platform. 

By showing your followers that you care enough to respond quickly and engage with them, you build rapport with your audience. Part of your company culture is how your customers perceive you off of even the smallest interactions, like how quickly you comment back on the ‘gram.

Show your face

Your biggest asset will always be your people. Don’t be shy, don’t hide behind text and graphic posts all the time. History would tell us that faces perform better than anything else—think of every iconic magazine cover you’ve ever seen. In 2014, a study found that Instagram photos with a face were 38% more likely to evoke someone to like the photos than those without. Now that was quite a while ago, but it stands true for us. In fact, 4 out of 5 of our own top 5 performing Instagram posts of 2021 are photos of our people, not the work that we do. In addition to posts, we hop on Instagram stories to talk through new content we add to our website as well, to say hey to our followers. 

Now I’m not suggesting that you set your pretty graphics, photos of your work, or anything like that on fire. In fact, you may not need 4 out of 5 posts to be human faces. The most important part is what we said earlier—being transparent and authentic. So take this as a challenge to level up your face game just a little bit via Instagram stories or on the static feed. Adding in a little extra human element here and there will help remind your followers (and customers) that no matter whatever you’re doing, there are real, transparent, and authentic humans behind the magic. That’s relatable. This is what is more likely to convert your audience into customers.

Video Content

All social media platforms are prioritizing video content right now to compete with Tiktok. So with that in mind, adding video content into your regularly scheduled social media posting is your best bet at growth. And in the same vein, it’s a great opportunity to demonstrate your company culture.

Capturing video content can be daunting, but start small by gathering a few small clips here and there throughout the week. By the end, you have a mashup of one week in the office (or one week in the field, or whatever theme you’d like to choose). This little behind-the-scenes video is a great way to share what your company is up to, and gives your audience a glimpse into what it’s like to work with you (more transparency and authenticity like we mentioned before). This video can be shared on Tiktok, Instagram Reels, and on Facebook as well.

Speaking of TikTok… I know, I know, every boomers’ nightmare. (Well, maybe even a millennial’s nightmare too.) The video-sharing social network is booming with video content ideas and moreover, booming with opportunities to share company culture. TikTok thrives on fast-paced trends that range from dances to storytelling to lip-syncing audios to sharing educational content. Storytelling trends, educational content, and mashup videos are easy options to start with on TikTok. Telling stories about your company, how it started, what you’re doing, etc fall into the first category. Educational content is just that—share what you are an expert in that maybe most people don’t know. And when I say mashup video, I mean taking a bunch of smaller clips and putting them into one video together around a theme like “a week in the office at HQ” or “watch this landscape project come together over one week”, etc. So even if you don’t want to dive into TikTok, it’s a great place to get inspiration for video content for your other social media platforms.

Blog Posts

Alright, alright, I know sitting down to write more long-form content isn’t exactly what you wanted to hear, but hear me out. Blog posts can be the ideal way to capture the bigger, more exciting things going on in your business. Just got back from a conference? Write a blog about the takeaways and include some photos. Have a really good month of business? Demonstrate examples and shout out your coworkers that made it happen. Lots of personal wins for your team? Sit down, brain dump, throw in some pictures to boot, and you’ve got an awesome piece of shareable content FULL of company culture. This gives you the perfect opportunity to gas up your team, spread exciting news, and/or inform your audience about what you’ve got cooking. 

This kind of content can be shared on social media, added to an email newsletter, and is helpful for SEO. So while you may not be excited to write about a lot of things, writing about the bigger moments happening within your company should come a little easier (I hope), and can be a great way to demonstrate your company culture. 



Whether we’ve inspired you to jump into Tiktok or commit to commenting back to your followers more quickly, we hope you found a few takeaways here. Your company culture is just one of the many things that make your business unique, and sharing that can be powerful. We’d love to engage with your content too! Find us at @kicksdigital across social platforms. And if you need help amplifying your voice on social media, we'd love to help.