What is Employee Generated Content? And why is it important for my brand?
What is Employee Generated Content?
Employee Generated Content (EGC) is content that is created and shared by employees on their own personal social media platforms. Having recently delivered a 4-week training course on this topic to the staff and volunteers at The Wildlife Trusts of Wales we thought we’d publish a blog post to summarise the benefits of employee generated content for your business.
Why Employee Generated Content is important for my brand?
Grows brand visibility & followers
If we use LinkedIn as an example – your business account may have 1,000 followers and you have 10 members of staff on LinkedIn that each have an average of 500 connections. Between those 10 staff members they have a potential audience reach of 5k compared to your business account’s 1k.
By encouraging (never forcing) your team to be proactive on LinkedIn and tag your business account where possible will help you to increase your visibility and followers. It can also help to increase sales – as the old saying goes “people buy from people”.
Boosts brand credibility and trust
A Neilsen study found that 92% of consumers trust friends and family more than a brand, and they actually trust strangers above your brand messaging as well (think of your own consumer behaviour when you’re booking a restaurant or holiday online – how often do you check and trust the reviews before making a purchase?).
By working together with your team towards a shared goal with clear brand values and vision will significantly increase the chances of your employees becoming your brand ambassadors both online and offline. As such, employees producing their own EGC will help to boost your brand credibility and trust in potential customers.
Reinforces your brand message
Employees producing their own posts on social media to promote your brand will reinforce your own brand message. Repetition is key in marketing so if consumers are seeing the same messages on different accounts, then this will help increase brand recall and increase the chances of them taking action.
Gives your brand more of an identity
Employees putting their stamp and tone into their own social media efforts whilst showing the people behind the brand will help to give your business more of an identity. This makes you more memorable with consumers and increases the chances of them choosing your product or service when they have a need.
Provides fresh ideas
In many cases the marketing department or person is stretched for time as they work on multiple disciplines and campaigns at any given time. By having a team of employees generating their own EGC on your brand can often help to produce fresh ideas to use for the main brand page. It can also help to produce new assets in the form of images or videos that the marketing team would otherwise had not been able to capture themselves as they were caught up working on something else.
Improves employee engagement and internal comms
Through training, encouraging and sharing internal best practice with each other helps to improve employee engagement and internal communications between the team. Consider setting up a WhatsApp, group or instant chat group for participants that are happy to share ideas with each other and collaborate on social media posts for best results – even if it’s just a case of posting the link to your published post for colleagues to comment and share.
Reduces marketing cost
The continued evolution of smart phone technology means that employees can capture quality image and video assets whilst on the job, reducing the need for spending on external sources to capture content for you every time you need it. EGC tends to be more authentic and the less-polished approach often leads to better engagement rates.
Having a team of employees pro-actively working as social media advocates for your brand can often feed ideas and assets for the main marketing team or person to use for the main brand page, thus freeing up their time to work more efficiently on other marketing approaches.
Helps attract top talent
Having a strong online representation of your brand through your employees will also help you to attract top talent when recruiting for roles in the future. Candidates want to know that they’ll feel valued and part of a team when deciding their new job role, and by giving off a better ‘vibe’ than your competitors will give you the edge in attracting top talents when salaries and employee benefits are often similar.
Benefits employees too
Employees producing their own EGC also benefits them too. If they can use the content that they produce to generate their own leads or sales for your business then that may help them to earn more money through commission, company incentives or potential pay rises.
If they are being promoted through the ranks, then having a strong voice with an engaged audience will help those individuals as well as you as a brand to have a certain gravitas both online and in-person. More opportunities such as prospects asking them to write a guest blog or appear as a guest on a relevant podcast can help you to reach and engage with new audiences.
Employee Generated Content Training
If you are interested in EGC training for your team (either online or in-person) to help towards achieving your own business goals, then feel free to get in touch with us today to find out more about how we can help.
