What is Talent PR and Communication? [podcast #75]

talent communication and talent pr

Talent PR might surprise you because it is what some of you are already doing or exploring or wanting to do. I’m of course talking about employer brand advocacy!

But that’s not all!

Working with Talent Public Relations (that’s what PR stands for) is everything you do to build and maintain relationships with your talent publics. This can also be done strategically when what you do contributes towards your chosen strategic talent marketing goals and objectives.

The most common forms of Talent PR & Communication

We are no strangers to Talent PR and communication. In fact, we have longer history in communication targeted at our internal and external talent audiences than we have in actual talent marketing, not to mention employer branding.

You probably feel quite familiar with some of the most common forms of Talent PR & Communication:

  • Internal communication
  • Writing and publishing job posts
  • Candidate communication
  • Attending career fairs
  • Organizing career events and meet ups
  • Sponsoring student fairs and events at your relevant colleges and universities
  • Employer advocacy programs
  • Managing media relations to get your employees and management press coverage

What else is there, you may ask?

Many PR people are working with lead generation these days. The same tactics can be applied into our talent context as we can also benefit from working with talent lead generation.

You are familiar with content marketing in the form of blog posts and videos. But there are also other types of content you could plan into your employer branding content plan to help generate talent leads to your recruitment funnel.

Content such as PDF’s, eBooks, reports, webinars, analysis’, white papers and the content in email marketing are excellent opportunities for talent marketing and employer branding too.

For many companies, just to commit to a regular blogging targeted to your talent audiences can be a burden. This is what you could do in the role of a Talent Communication & PR Specialist.

How strategic Talent PR & Communication can benefit your organization?

The important element here is to go from ad hoc and occasional into planned and strategic.

The difference between strategic and non-strategic talent PR & communication is simple. Strategic is premeditated and planned in specific ways to deliver required value for the company.

Non-strategic lacks consistency and often also planning. Or the plan is targeted to independent projects or campaigns which tend to deliver one time value instead of contributing systematically to a bigger whole.

The benefit of working strategically is to have clarity over what needs to be done in order to reach a specific target or a goal. This clarity helps you to plan for the long term, often save time and money and deliver results that require some form of a change.

When you become more strategic in your work, you gain control, feel less overwhelmed and have a clear plan of actions forward. This applies to all talent marketing, but also to talent communication and PR.

How to implement Talent PR and Communication into your talent marketing

I love the infamous quote by Jean-Louis Gassee, a former Apple executive: “Advertising is saying you are good. PR is getting someone else to say you are good.”

This summarizes what PR is and what we can all benefit from doing strategic talent communication and PR in our organizations. We are already doing many things. All we need is to make it more strategic and planned.

Employee advocacy programs are no news to us. We’ve been doing those for ages. Getting your employees to promote your content and messages is of course one thing.

“Advertising is saying you are good. PR is getting someone else to say you are good.”

Jean-Louis Gassee, a former Apple executive

Getting them to become into your talent influencers is a fresh opportunity. The difference is: as talent influencers they are free to develop the content and messages the best way they see fit and they get some compensation for the work and for your company using their media (followers).

The benefit of social media is that we can take steps to build relationships online with our talent publics. Combining your talent communication skills with a community building role takes your company a long way forward in implementing talent public relations into your employer brand strategy.

Digital and social media marketing need good and empowering messages to which a talent communication specialist is able to add huge value. Just because someone knows how to work with digital marketing and marketing tech doesn’t automatically mean they are experts in writing messages that influence and convert.

More and more PR people are working with inbound marketing writing the messages and the content to inbound marketing campaigns and marketing automation systems. This is what can totally be done in talent marketing too.

Listen to episode #75 of the Building a Modern Employer Brand podcast

In this episode of the Building a Modern Employer Brand -podcast, you’ll learn about the role of the Talent Communication and PR Specialist in the modern Talent Marketing Team I’ve compiled and described fully in this free eBook >>

Episode-length: 32:53 min

Check out the podcast-episode 69 in which I introduced the role of the Employer Brand Manager >>

Listen to the podcast-episode 71 in which I introduced the role of a Talent Community and Social Media Manager >>

Podcast-episode 73 talks about the role of a Digital Talent Marketing Manager >>

Do you prefer to listen to this podcast on one of the following apps? 

Click on the link and you will be directed to the Building of Modern Employer Brand -podcast. Click follow there and you will be notified weekly on a new episode!

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Join my Talent Community on Instagram!

I teach modern talent marketing and employer branding in bitesize on Instagram! Follow @talentmarketingpro if you don’t want to miss out on my talent marketing tips! What a great opportunity to expand your talent marketing acumen all for free! 

One Response

  1. Talent acquisition should be treated with just as much importance as any other marketing campaigns. Thanks for sharing this information on benefits of Talent PR & Communication.

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