Employees can be the best advocates for your company. Not only can you expand your social media reach to their networks, but the public are much more likely to trust brand messages if they come from a real person, rather than an official source. Findings suggest that 84% of people trust recommendations from people they know, meaning your employees friends could soon be converted into customers.
Content marketing is another marketing technique that he proven to be effective for attracting new customers, as well as retaining existing ones. By sharing interesting content about the industry, your audience are likely to share it on social media, expanding your brand awareness and driving traffic to your website.
So what are you waiting for? Surely it makes sense to combine the two, right?
The two techniques fit hand in hand. Your employees can be your social media superstars, but for their work to be really effective they need quality content to share. Trapit have explained how you can integrate the two.
Why do content marketing?
- In 2014 users shared 2,460,000 pieces of content every minute.
- In 2015 Twitter users send 347,222 tweets every minute.
How can you stand out?
- Organic reach – Is on the decline. Companies reach between 2% and 6% of their followers on social media and people don’t trust brands.
- Paid reach – 54% of of ads aren’t actually seen by humans, so money is wasted. Only 48% of people trust ads on social media.
- Employee advocacy – Your best marketing asset on social media.
Why use employee advocacy?
- 84% of people trust recommendations from people they know.
- Buyers want authentic human interactions.
- Brand messages are shared 24% more when distributed by employees, rather than the brand itself.
- Leads from employee social marketing convert 7% more than other leads.
How to combine the two
- Employees need content to share, but marketers can’t produce enough to meet their needs. (E.g . 10-14 updates a day on Twitter)
- The answer is to supplement your content with other people’s content that you have curated from other sources.
- For every self serving tweet, you should share one relevant tweet and four pieces of content written by other people. \
- Store content in a library where employees can easily access it and share it.
Developing a strategy
- Who will be in charge of your strategy?
- How will the content be organised?
- What types of content should employees share?
- What types of content do customers want to see?
