Employee Generated Content: Your Super Strategy To Boosting Your Social Media Engagement
Stuck dealing with lackluster engagement on your company’s Instagram and Facebook pages? It may be that you need to tap into the power of employee-generated content to give your social media content a boost.
Posting corporate content with company news, tips and how-to’s is important. It’s usually in the form of an image and a caption or a carousel slide of text.
Let’s be honest, it’s sometimes not easy to make an Instagram reel about B2B tips that gets much of a response.
You’ve heard of user-generated content, which is typically what your customers or clients create based on their experience with your products or services.
But what is employee-generated content (EGC)?
How can you use it to help your company and brand? And how can you leverage it to make your social media feed more exciting, vibrant and engaging?
Let’s dive in and find out first why you need it, and the basics of getting started with EGC.
Why Is Employee Generated Content An Important Social Media Strategy?
There are several reasons why including employee generated content in your social media strategy is beneficial.
Here are some of them:
- Improve social media engagement: Brands get 28% higher engagement on user-generated content – think about how much engagement your authentic employee content will get, especially if they share it on their social media.
- It’s authentic: Real-life experiences are genuine and bring the brand to life.
- Leverages powerful storytelling: A personal story is more impactful than a corporate story. Your employee stories bring your brand to life.
- Employees are brand ambassadors: Getting employees on board to share their positive work experiences makes them positive influencers. It creates a positive impact on your brand’s reputation and attracts talented potential hires.
- Attract talent: Your potential hires are checking out your company culture and work environment. If your team is engaged and happy, you’re more likely to catch the eyes of the cream of the crop.
- Employee development: Get your employees out of their comfort zones, and expand their communication skills.
- Showcases diversity: You demonstrate the diversity of your employee backgrounds, perspectives and experiences.
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Types Of Employee-Generated Content
What kind of content can your employees create? It can be anything from static visuals, videos, text and even live streams. If you’ve got a team member who’s a whiz at Canva or creating Instagram reels, let them shine!
These are just some of the types of employee content that you can start using to spice up a bland corporate-looking social media account:
- “Day in the life of” posts
- Sneak peeks on new programs or services
- Company events
- Company community initiative support
- Employee spotlights
- Personal volunteer work
- Product/service tips
- Celebrating “fun” days of the year
- Social media takeover for a day
- Employee testimonials
- Workplace celebrations and milestones
We tapped into our team to come up with the women who inspire them for International Women’s Day 2024. Each person provided a quote and/or reason for their choice along with photos to create this Instagram carousel post:
View this post on Instagram
How To Inspire Employees To Generate Their Own Content
Getting started with an employee-generated content program can be tough: sometimes there are no volunteers!
How do you get employees inspired to share their content for your social media?
- Lead by example: Get the senior leadership team on board and participating first
- Provide platforms for sharing: Make it easy for sharing wins, personal achievements, stories and ideas for social media content.
- Hashtag it: Create a company hashtag that everyone on your team can use for related content
- Interview them: Recognize rising or star employees by doing an “interview”.
- Make it fun: Create a competition or choose a quirky theme.
- Offer training and support: For employees who could be more design-savvy or more creative, provide them with what they need to make great content.
Provide Guidelines For Employee-Generated Content
Before you launch your employee-generated content program, you’ll need to provide guidelines.
This is to ensure that they:
- Keep to the company mission, vision and values
- Follow the brand guidelines
- Don’t create content that potentially will damage the company’s reputation or business
- Don’t share private information
Create an approval process for a content draft before it’s published on an employee’s social media or yours.
Turn Your Employees Into Brand Ambassadors
By recognizing that your employees have something of value to share with your customers, you do something fundamental: you start them on the road to being brand ambassadors.
Showcasing their skills, experience, personal stories, interests (including volunteer work) and achievements is a way of appreciating them.
Need help determining your employee-generated content strategy and program? Let’s connect and get you started.