Employer branding through social media platforms in financial consulting companies

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the use of social media and its effects on enhancing Employer Branding, as done by 5 case companies in the financial consulting industry. The five case companies have been chosen based on employee size and industry: J.P. Morgan, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC. Each case company has been matched with a focus country in Northern Europe to better understand the efforts put into local Employer Branding.

The social media platforms used for data collection are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. These platforms were chosen because of their market share and userbase, but also because of their interactive nature. Likes, comments, and shares were used to analyse the success of each company post, and each profile. The time frame for data collection was 1 January 2017 until 30 April 2017.

While all companies have quite different strategies (from J.P. Morgan’s uniform content to EY’s diverse pages), none of them are particularly tactical. Though Facebook is clearly the platform companies put most effort into, it remains either unfocused, or has very low user engagement rates.

The value sought through the thesis is to create a set of guidelines for companies in the financial consulting industry who wish to develop their social media presence in order to enhance their Employer Brand.