Culture: It's Part of Your Brand, So Show It Off!

Lisa Wiese
Posted by Lisa Wiese on February 27, 2013

Positive_work_culture
If you've been a follower of our blog for a while, you know that we talk about Inbound Marketing and, with that, we give you all the pieces to make your Inbound Marketing strategy stronger. We give you SEO tools and tips, we cover blogging (okay we cover blogging a lot), we talk about the sales funnel, we talk about the endless Google tools... you get the idea. We give you one heaping Thanksgiving plateful of information, but we also need to give you the milk to drink it down. What's missing?

IT'S US!

Let people know there are humans behind your brand! I just waved to every one of you from behind my screen.

In HubSpot's Year in Review Blog Post, they went over the company's milestones and the successes of their customers. HubSpot ended the post with a very personal message about their office culture. Maybe you don't care that HubsPot offers free beer to their employees – but it may mean something that they offer free business books to their employees. Isn't that a neat gesture – and an indication of what's important to the company?

So often we hide our culture and let the strong-sided business face shine through, but HEY, we're people on the other end. The human side of business has no number value; think of it more of a sliding scale. In fact, sentiment was at the center of discussion a few weeks ago on #MetricsChat, a weekly Twitter discussion focused on marketing and analytics. Let your culture shine; the benefits are endless.

Which audiences care about your culture?

Clients — These days, with amazing digital technology, many professionals don't ever meet some clients face-to-face, leaving little room for relationship-building via phone and email. Open up a window into your world and share with them the daily happenings. Build confidence in your storytelling ability by sharing facets of your work life. You may not be able to "wine and dine" them, but find other ways to include them in your culture. Celebrate a milestone, take pictures and share. Edward Marshall's "Building Trust at the Speed of Change" writes about the idea that if you emphasize internal trust and relationship building from the top down,  you can dedicate more time to client needs and, in turn, embrace a great workplace culture. Best of both worlds? I think so.

Current Employees — Bottom line:If you need to post about your culture, you become responsible to your audience for having an awesome workplace culture. What does your leadership do to break up the monotony of a workweek? Beer:30 on Thursdays (where culturally acceptable), donuts on Fridays, celebrating a new marriage or baby...it all helps camaraderie and fosters a interesting culture. Take for example Zappos Your Culture is Your Brand: "At Zappos, our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff — like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers — will happen naturally on its own."

Prospective Employees — Did you ever see the VP of Marketing dual tasking as the VP of Human Resources? Well the Harvard Business Review points out that it's happening. Bridging the two takes a solid understanding of the fact that your culture is your brand; they are homogenous. It applies "practice what you preach" in real-time. 

So why is culture important to prospective employees? Showing your culture gives them a reason to ask probing questions relating to culture in the workplace based on what they’ve seen, not generated out of thin air. Showcase your culture on an easily accessible platform (Facebook or a blog) and you may be surprised at the questions that surface.

General Public — Building goodwill never hurts but it sure takes time and effort.  I will assimilate positive public relations to good brand maintenance. In the event of a crisis or announcement (Yahoo, I’m talking about you), having the general public aware of your culture may put your announcement into context. Whatever side of the fence you sit on with the Yahoo announcement, the cultural resonance of this announcement will either make or break Marissa Mayer’s decision. It’s imperative that Yahoo follows up with pieces demonstrating how much their culture, productivity and creativity have improved since removing work-from-home. 

Don't believe me? Take a look at Google's office in Tel Aviv. Hard to argue that that atmosphere doesn't curate an awesome workplace culture.

Google_Tel_Aviv_office

Do you look at your workplace culture in a new light now? Weidert Group is freshening up our outlook on sharing our culture and we look forward to coming out from behind the curtains. After all, we rock at what we do on paper; we want to show you how much we rock at being us.

Topics: Business Branding, Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing

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