“Content is King” is officially a cliché. However, the challenge is that there is so much content online, even utilizing tactics like boosting posts in social media, it’s difficult to get your content in front of the right people. When it comes to getting the word out, the best tools in your toolbox are your employees. Through employee amplification, sharing content is more honest and organic via word-of-mouth marketing in the digital sphere.
Is your content really catering to Employee Amplification?
To succeed NOW in the social marketing environment, we must take “content is king” to the next level through employee amplification. If no one sees and/or reads your company content, it is because the posts and blogs are lost in a sea of ubiquitous information, hence it’s not king. Therefore, it’s “consumed content” that is really king.
How to go from content to consumed content
To increase the number of people who read your content, follow these 3 key principles:
Key #1: Employee Amplification. People are more likely to read information that is shared by friends or connections they trust. Pushing a post or blog article out on your company Facebook or LinkedIn page isn’t going to get as much attention or action as having a more personal connection share them with their peers. This is known as influencer marketing. If influencers share something with their audience, their audience is sure to take note because they trust the source. Here is the good news; you already have a built-in tribe of fanatical influencers…your employees! Influencers don’t need a large following to be effective they just need to be trusted by their community.
By leveraging the tens to hundreds to thousands of employees, you can have a staggering impact on reaching and validating the number of people who read your content. Do the math. Let’s say your Facebook page has 1000 likes. If you publish a blog on your company page, about 10% (on a good day) of your fans will see your post. That’s 100 people. However, if you have 50 influencers, employees, who each have 200 friends then your potential reach is 10,000 (100X more)! Plus, you are sure to get more reads because the post/blog came from someone the reader knows/trusts. A company’s message shared on an employee’s personal social network is re-shared 24 times more than if the same content was posted on a company social network*. To get the same amount of reach through boosting/advertising would cost around $500-700 or more.
Key #2: What’s in it for me. To get your tribe of employed influencers engaged in sharing your content, educate them on the benefits. Start with your sales team. Successful salespeople are problem solvers and are looking for ways to help their customers and prospects. They also want to stay top of mind. Sharing your content on their social channels is a good way for them to accomplish both goals. For example, a real estate agent would love to share an article on “10 ways to declutter your house before putting it on the market” with their followers because the content would be useful to their prospects and (like drip marketing) sharing this article keeps the agent top of mind. Eighty-four percent of consumers say they trust recommendations from people they know more than they trust advertising.*
Key #3: Use automation to overcome busyness. While employees may jump at the idea of sharing your thought leadership content to maximize success, you can’t leave it up to them to do the work. Your employees are busy doing their day job. You can’t expect them to remember when your new content will be available and exactly how to go about sharing it. An option to consider for facilitating the process of getting those posts and blogs to your employee’s friends and connections efficiently is through an automation tool. You take the work off their plate. Vende Digital offers a couple of options for you to consider based upon the size of your team. Contact us to learn more.
Best practices for Employee Amplification
Remember these best practices to get the most out of Employee Amplification:
Social media policy. Develop a policy that clearly communicates the do’s and don’ts of sharing company posts and blogs within their social media networks.
- Remarkable content is also king. Quality is better than quantity so spend time building something that will make your company and employees look smart.
- No big brother. Do not expect your employees to hand over access to their social accounts. You need to offer them a solution that makes it easy to share your content without needing access to their social media account. Vende Digital offers a couple of options for you to consider based upon the size of your team. Contact us to learn more.
- Only post when it makes sense. You don’t want to over use this valuable distribution channel. Build a unique content plan that pushes remarkable thought leader content when it makes the most sense. From a cadence perspective, probably no more than 2-4 times per month.
- Multimedia. Remarkable content can live in multiple media formats. Start by writing a blog, then convert the content to an infographic, and finally make a video. Plan on pushing these out via your employees over time. This way one piece becomes 3 different posts that drive traffic to your site.
We have all heard that “Content is King” but to stay ahead of your competition and to be successful in 2017, you will need to create not only remarkable content but leverage your tribe of engaged influencers to help get the word out. Vende Digital offers many options to help you create content and amplify your content through your employees. Contact us to learn more.
If influencers share something with their audience, their audience is sure to take note because they trust the source.
