As with any brand, an employer brand is very much about perception. It is the image you project to current and prospective employees, and also how customers and the general public view you as an employer. Your employer brand is more than the wages and benefits you offer. It represents the values of your company and the quality of the product or service you intend to provide. If you are a small employer with a work force of just a few people you still need to have a commitment to a positive employment brand.

Developing an employment brand may seem like quite a challenge, but we'd like to share some ways you can leverage free tools and maximize the resources you have on hand to thoughtfully craft your employer brand. There are several steps to creating an employment brand:

Step 1: Talk to Your Customers and Your Employees

Begin by surveying your customer base and those that come into contact with your brand regarding the perception of your company. This doesn’t have to be elaborate—but a customer opinion survey is important. In some cases, you will be able to boil your survey down to one question: "How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?" Answers may be provided on a 1 to 10 scale.

The average response to this question is known as Net Promoter Score (NPS), and will provide you a basis for understanding the general loyalty of your customers. The Survey Monkey platform also enables you to easily develop a simple survey for use. This may be a good tool for surveying your employees. Embrace this opportunity to learn from the people who are most important to your organization; they will appreciate the chance to provide input. For more ideas on which questions to ask your employees, check out this article from SmartRecruiters.

Determining the general perception of your employment brand is a valuable first step in the branding process. Every organization no matter how large or small has one, and your brand as an employer can be critical to attracting and retaining talented employees. This should equip you with valuable data about how your customers/employees perceive your business and guide you in the areas that you should emphasize or further develop as part of your employer brand/company culture.

Step 2: Identify and Build on Your Strengths

The feedback you get through surveying is going to help you create that distinctive image which will set you apart from your competitors. It may include a commitment to community service, providing mentorship or coaching to help employees realize professional goals, or a desire to provide services and benefits that will enhance the quality of private lives (e.g. on-site daycare, college debt counseling, etc.)

The greatest benefit from seeking input from current employees is a better sense of ownership. Their opinions, after all, are now part of the creation of the brand. You can impress on the staff the importance of the brand, how it is going to improve success and what roles you all play in sustaining this positive image.

Step 3: Champion Your Brand

Now that you know what your company/employer brand is all about, get the word out. Making use of social media is a good place to start. A LinkedIn page is important because this will be a place many prospective employees may utilize to investigate your company as part of their job search. Refining your presence on Google Places https://www.google.com/business/ is essential, and is your chance to curate the image of your company in the place it is found most often; a Google search.

Facebook is also a great place for a small business to showcase its culture. If you are worried that having a number of social media accounts will take up all of your time, that's okay. Start with one platform at a time to become familiar, and when you get to a point where you have multiple accounts that you're trying to manage, a platform like Hootsuite will allow you to schedule several messages to different platforms all at once.

Step 4: Stay on Top of Things

Even a small company has to be vigilant about its employment brand. Just as social media platforms are a great place to broadcast your brand, review sites like Yelp and Glassdoor are both places where feedback from customers and even employees may be recorded. Glassdoor allows present and former employees to provide reviews of working at your company and gives a more direct evaluation of you as an employer.

As with any review site, you should check posted comments and reviews on a routine basis. Always be kind and courteous to commenters/reviewers—displaying negativity can only be harmful. Take comments in stride and use this as an opportunity to go above and beyond. After all—the customer is always right.

Step 5: The Benefit/Payoff

Maintaining a positive employment brand is about more than just perception. By committing to your vision for how to treat your employees, you're investing in your most important resource. Not only will this reduce turnover and make it easier to attract quality candidates, but you'll see a higher level of commitment and productivity from your employees along the way. The payoff of an Employment Branding strategy can be exponential, and should be taken as seriously as other marketing endeavors for your products and services.

Local Eye Site focuses exclusively on the eyecare industry and has partnered with the best-known associations and publications for optometry, optical and ophthalmology professionals. This dba story was adapted from Local Eye Site’s informative blog. More info about Local Eye Site, job postings and recruitment trends can be found here.