In 2019, WhatsApp reached 2 billion global users and solidified itself as the most popular mobile messaging app worldwide. Here's how brands leverage it.My feeling is that Europe and Asia have embraced WhatsApp far more than America (1.5B users globally, but only 23MM in the US) but that just means we can learn some lessons on how to leverage it. The best part? WhatsApp is free.

We don't talk about corporate comms much (well... we complain about it sometimes, but that doesn't count). Hubspot has a nice writeup on how to level-up your corporate comms strategies. What? You didn't know you were in the corporate comms business? You think someone else does that? Yeah, you're going to be far more effective at building internal allies and advocates once you learn to lean into the corp comms stuff.

It feels like everyone's still hot on Instagram as a tool for growing brand awareness and engagement (I have doubts as I haven't seen great metrics on how many people search Instagram like that, and you have to pay money to get a call to action on a post, but I digress). So if you're ready to raise your instagram game, take some tips from professional Instagram managers.

Speaking of content marketing, have you started experimenting with live video yet? In a remote world, it might be exactly what you need to get people interested in what your company is doing and why they might consider applying. Here's a great how-to on how to get good at live video in a hurry.

If 86% of all consumers say it is "critical" of brands to show empathy, where are you in these conversations?

File Under: Great Use of Not New Tech. Chiquita Banana put a Spotify code on their banana labels so that you could point your phone at it and listen to a playlist. Cute, right? But what if instead of just making a nice little playlist, you built a playlist of your executives on podcasts, or your recent favorite podcasts? The tech is free, so if you're leveraging podcasts in your content building (and Spotify is going HARD on podcasts right now), this might be a clever way to connect physical with the digital.

Adding pictures of staff wearing masks increases applications as much as 46%. Huh. It;'s almost like SHOWING how well you protect your staff encourages people to join. Weird.

And here's a creative example of how to show your product off during lockdown.

How the creative director of Spotify uses data. This is a great video, but I suggest you watch to see ways Spotify could have used data in the aggregate to tell a big boring story. But instead, it found unique slices of the data to say something interesting, about themselves, about their listeners and about the world.

The word "purpose" gets attached to so much of what we do, these days. Our EB should provide purpose for employees (which is crazy, as purpose comes from inside people) and that the key to successful companies is a shared sense of purpose (which is always framed in "we save the world" language rather than "we retire early" language). But as EB gets closer to corporate brand, and as corporate brand understands how to leverage the people to support the brand, the conversation around brand purpose gets louder, but mushier. Which is why I thought this article on brand purpose was a good read: it talked about how to think beyond "use some sense of purpose to get more out of your employees" blah blah, and instead use a real sense of purpose to breakthrough roadblocks and see new possibilities. (includes some nice examples)

Virtual recruiting events are on everyone's mind lately, so here's how Google does it.

I get a lot of gruff when I say this, but. firmly believe it. When you’re posting to Facebook and Instagram, you aren’t competing with their employer brands, but with Ryan Gosling and 90 Day Fiancé memes. So if you want to stand out, you have to raise your sights higher. So here are 10 (non-EB) Instagram accounts who are killing it. These brands are telling compelling stories in a single image, and that’s what you’re up against. Suddenly, that pick of 20 employees standing next to each other in two rows like it’s 2nd grade picture day doesn’t cut it.

A good list of companies doing D&I videos well.

Case study: Cisco reinvents its employer brand around the concept of trust.

Shared with Dropbox

Ready to get deep? To jump off the really high platform? Here we go. Instead of thinking about your video strategy in a “let’s make a video about the London team” way in which you try and take enough footage that shows what you’re trying to say kind of way, what if you really began to think about telling real stories. Google has some examples of hardcore marketing storytelling told via sequential videos. My money says we’re going to be spending a LOT of time thinking about building these kinds of videos in the next year or two.

Complete case study on how Mondelez built its global employer brand (video)

Your employees shouldn’t just be advocates, you should think of them more as “talent magnets.” A few lessons from SAP.

I am legit jealous that I didn’t think of it first, but here’s Danaher’s one-stop-shopping page on how to do your research before interviewing at Danaher. So well done.