Would you work for a company that you believed sold subpar products or had a bad company culture?
You might, if you needed to. At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to provide for our families and put food on the table.
But would you then sing that company’s praises on social media, telling all of your Twitter and Instagram followers, Facebook friends, and Snapchat connections that you loved working there and were proud of the work they did?
Probably not, right? Just like you wouldn’t if you were a customer who’d purchased one of those products.
We generally only advocate publicly for things we actually believe in. Our favorite sports team or TV show, favorite band or celebrity, or companies and products that we love.
If you work in comms or marketing, or even HR, how can you empower your team and leverage their social content for both stronger external marketing and internal comms? Let’s dig in.
Honest Advocacy Leads to Trust
As a consumer of all types of content across social media, we believe our friends more than we do brands. I haven’t seen last night’s Game of Thrones finale, but I’m inclined to believe the Tweets I’ve seen more than the HBO Twitter account. I know HBO has an agenda. It’s their job to say good things about the show. My friend Sarah doesn’t. She’s going to give me the raw, unfiltered version.
We trust peer recommendations so much that according to research by Digital Intelligence Today, 92% of consumers say they’re more willing to purchase based on a recommendation via UGC (user-generated content) than they are from branded content or an ad.
Harnessing Employee UGC for Recruiting and Employer Branding
If you have employees who believe in your mission, products, leadership, and each other, there’s a good chance you have employees who are sharing this belief across social media. Harnessing this content and leveraging it as a part of your employer brand is a great recruiting technique. Showcase your employees, share this on your social channels, include in your job postings, curate their stories to embed on your website.
This will draw more interest, because your company stops being your brand logo and the products you sell, and starts being a group of people the candidate can see themselves being a part of.
Inform, Entertain, and Include Colleagues
In addition to leveraging these employee stories externally, you can also bring them inside the building. Most companies have screens throughout the office; in conference rooms, in the lobby, in meeting areas and auditoriums. Make these screens more dynamic by creating an internal comms cadence that ties in your events calendar, product roadmap, notifications, videos, and social content from the team. Make the entire team a part of the story. This will create goodwill with the team who’s excited to see that their own opinion, but seeing their colleagues share positive sentiment will give your employees an incentive to post more frequently as well.
Highlight Customer Stories Internally
Not every person in your company interacts with customers on a daily basis. If you have customers who love you, you probably have customers who are sharing that love on social. Make that a central component in your office. As humans, we get energized by creating things that people love. If you can remind your team that people love what they’re making, you’re going to have a more productive team.
The Stories are Already Being Told
At the end of the day, the stories you want your employees, prospects, and customers to see are already being told. Save yourself the time and energy it would take to create unique content by leveraging these stories, which are going to be more resonant anyway.
Shameless Plug: Tagboard customers can create visual narratives that include social content from any major network, graphics, videos, countdown clocks, polls and hashtag battles, and photos or slides to create a carefully crafted internal comms narrative that allows you to edit and swap assets out on the fly. No more static powerpoints on office monitors. You can leverage dynamic and interactive content to keep your team engaged. Request a demo to learn more!