Employer branding toolkit: Creativity fuels visibility to potential employees.

Companies work hard at marketing themselves to attract and keep customers and clients. But most don't do a good job marketing themselves as potential employers.

The strategy is called employer branding, and a Portsmouth company, in cooperation with others in New Hampshire, has developed an online resource as part of a project to help companies better brand themselves in their efforts to address an ongoing issue: hiring and retaining employees.

"Business owners need to market as aggressively to potential hires just as they would a potential client or customer," said Michael Cinquino, co-founder of SoHo Creative Studio in Portsmouth.

Over the past several months, Cinquino and his team, along with the Strafford Regional Planning Commission and others, have developed what's being called an Employer Toolkit for employee attraction, development and retention. It was made possible by a Collaborative Economic Development Region grant provided by the New Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs.

It offers specific ideas to specific challenges.

For instance, a challenge cited by one employer is this: "My company has served the Seacoast Region for decades, but now we feel invisible to the new talent base."

Looking from the outside in

Here is what the toolkit recommends:

Job seekers look to a business's website to learn more about the company as a whole. Strengthen your digital presence by: creating a distinct employer brand to attract top talent; authentically communicating your story and culture so that potential hires can envision themselves working for you; and share your mission, so that talent has a deeper understanding of the 'why' behind your work.

One effective tool is video to communicate a story, which is under-used, according to Cinquino.

"There is a huge, huge opportunity with video, and I know people know it but don't necessarily execute it," he said. "If you just get a video up of you speaking honestly for about 30 seconds, a minute about why you're doing business and/or why a couple of people are doing business there, you really create a situation where someone can see themselves fitting into your culture or connecting with you on a very human level. And that's one big thing that seems to be missing."

As an example, he points to electronics giant Sharp. "When you look at their employer branding, they have a really great video on just interviewing workers on camera saying: 'Why do you like working here?' And they're just...