Every business struggles with website and social media content. Some struggle more than others but let’s face it, online marketing evolves at such a rapid pace that it’s difficult just to keep up. In the end, it’s how well the business’ marketing system works (or doesn’t work) that delivers the best results.
The cornerstone to modern marketing is relevant, holistic content.
Collaboration with and contributions from employees produces quality content that increases search rank, organic traffic, authority and trustworthiness. Employee engagement boosts the quality of your content.
A new, well-researched report from SearchMetrics on the top 5 search ranking factors in 2015 says, “The importance of good quality, relevant content cannot be understated.” Relevant, holistic content is more important than ever but there’s a big step here for many businesses. How to actually implement a process to engage employees in content creation.
Creating an employee engagement model within your business keeps the content pipeline flowing. It requires an assessment of your current operational design, a plan to leverage assets and strategies to build on what you have.
Risk vs Reward
Wins and losses are all part of doing business and the risk of failure accompanies any pursuit of success.
You may be fearful of involving employees in marketing and content creation, however, when done well, the rewards outweigh the risk. You’re trading a little time spent on system creation for higher quality content that reaches and converts more buyers.
Comfort vs Fear
It may seem like a radical idea to foster employee engagement to create website and social media content. I get it. It seems radical but it’s actually not.
Your employees have been delivering content to your customers since the first day you opened. The only difference now is that it’s actually documented in blog posts, video and social media.
Comfort can be a dangerous place, especially in this case where all signs point to the requirement of relevant, holistic content in order to be found first by your target customers.
Overcome fears by implementing a social media policy and a system to make sure employee content is edited and optimized for public consumption.
The following 3 types of employee engagement will help you think through how you’ll approach your own business’ employee engagement model to create relevant, holistic content that buyers crave.
1. Internal Collaboration
- Content Brainstorming: Develop a schedule to collaborate on topics your customers want or need to know about.
- Content Calendar: Save time and your sanity by removing the guesswork out of publishing.
- Best Practices: Sharing stories and experiences improves everyone’s performance.
2. External Engagement
- Social Media Marketing: Done right, employee-created content gets very high engagement. People enjoy peering “behind the scenes” and I call this “Hyper-Local Content.” Customers connect easier when they see happy employees serving happy customers.
- Social Customer Service: In a 24-7 world, businesses hear from their customers at any time. Designated employees can field customer concerns quickly and provide solutions within customer-preferred platforms.
- Social Selling: Leveraging the power of networking via social media can have tremendous results. 79% of salespeople who use social media as a selling tool outperform those don’t.
3. Employee Advocacy
- Social Media Amplification: Employee engagement in the specific marketing campaigns, events or promotions supports your goals.
- Social Proof: Employees are considered “people like me.” When employees advocate for their employer, it brings another layer of comfort for buyers.
- Social Recruiting: The top talent finds its way to you through your employees.
The SearchMetrics ranking study also stated that the importance of keywords in internal and external links has declined. Webpages with the most relevant content for a search query occupy the top positions.
We keep coming back to this word “relevant” when discussing successful content and that’s your cue to take action. There are no shortcuts. Develop an employee engagement model to create relevant, holistic content your customers crave.