#046 Employee Brand Advocates and Leveraging Creators

FROM BORING TO SOARING: MASTERING AUTHENTIC CONTENT AT SCALE

In this thrilling episode of Generation Social Media Podcast, Beth Trejo, the Captain of Creativity (CEO) and founder of Chatterkick, delves into the exhilarating world of crafting authentic content on a grand scale. Joining her on this adventure is Allison Gates, Creative Maestro (Manager). Buckle up for an epic chat about unlocking the power of creators, influencers and the unsung heroes of your company – your employees!

“Creating authentic content at scale requires thinking creatively and leveraging the resources you already have at your disposal.”

- Beth

Biggest Takeaways From This Episode

Here are a few things that stood out to us:

• Authentic Content Creation: Businesses often struggle with content creation, especially in the B2B space where the subject matter can be complex and less visually appealing. Authentic content is crucial to engage audiences effectively.

• Leveraging Employees: One effective strategy is to tap into the expertise and passion of your own employees. They may already be talking about the company on social media, and by encouraging them to share their experiences and successes, you can create authentic content that resonates with your audience.

• Storytelling and Employee Engagement: Employee-generated content should focus on storytelling, showcasing your product or service makes a difference. When employees are genuinely excited about their work and share their experiences, it creates an emotional connection with the audience.

• Collaboration with Aligned Brands: In B2B, collaborating with businesses that have aligned audiences can be beneficial. Joint webinars, partnerships and sharing content can expand your reach and provide value to your target audience.

• Content Discovery: Use tools like hashtags, search various social platforms and partnerships with educational institutions or internship programs to discover potential content creators and influencers.

• Reusing and Recycling Content: Encourage your team to reuse and recycle existing content to maximize its impact and maintain authenticity.

CONCLUSION

Creating authentic content at scale requires thinking creatively and leveraging the resources you already have at your disposal, including your employees, aligned brands and partnerships. By telling compelling stories and focusing on employee engagement, businesses can effectively connect with their audience and stand out in the competitive digital landscape.

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Transcript

This text below is a straight up audio transcript of the episode. In our humble opinion, we think the audio podcast sounds much better in its original form. We have not edited the transcription below so there are indeed some grammar errors (some quite funny, in-fact).

INTRO (00:02):

You don't have to be a millennial to be socially savvy. We believe anyone can join generation social media, and your journey starts now. This is the Generation Social Media podcast by Chatterkick.

Beth: Welcome to another episode of Generation Social Media. I'm Beth Trejo, CEO, and founder of Chatterkick, a social media agency.

Beth: And I have Allison Gates with us today, our Creative Manager. And we're going to be talking a little bit about authenticity at scale, how you can create authentic content. Specifically in this episode, we're going to talk about leveraging creators and influencers and even your employees to be able to create that authentic content.

Beth: So Allison, welcome again to our podcast, and I'm excited to have a conversation about this with you today. It's a, it's a topic that I know is on a lot of businesses minds.

Allison: [00:01:00] Yeah, definitely. And I think that that's one, that's a stopping point or a pain point for a lot of businesses of like, how do I even?

Allison: How do I get content? How do I make content? Um, and so I think, you know, leveraging content creators or potentially working with influencers is a great option to do that. So, how, how would you recommend that a business get started with this? You know, getting over that kind of pain point of content creation, where do they even begin?

Beth: So I think one of the biggest opportunities that businesses have is to look at the people closest to them that are already either creating content on their behalf, they're bought into the company, the brand, the mission. That could be employees, that could be some of your best customers that love to post online, or it could be people using your products.

Beth: When you look at this, I think you have to kind of separate it out into B2B, which we, we service a lot of those clients where it's just not as easy to get user generated content and maybe the [00:02:00] influencer space is just not as much defined. Or, on the opposite side of that is B2C, where there's a lot of content creation, a lot of influencers.

Beth: I think that's a whole different element of how you kind of create authenticity at scale, because you can have people using your products, you can show people wearing your clothes, demonstrating how your thing or, or, you know, item works. As opposed to B2B where it oftentimes is just a little bit more complex, a little bit more obscure.

Beth: Maybe it's something that you don't have a lot of visual representation for. And so I think it's probably important that we separate those 2 things out and maybe even start with the B2B since it is a little bit trickier. And I think 1 of the things we've seen work really well on the B2B end, creating authentic content at scale with influencers or, you know, content creators.

Beth: Is leveraging your employees and when I say that, I [00:03:00] mean that they may already be talking about you on social media, on LinkedIn. You're not even asking them to do anything more than what they're currently doing, but it's helping to take that message and exponentially. Get it out to more people, whether that's your customers, your prospects or other employees on the recruitment side.

Beth: What do you think? Um, from a, let's say, kind of employee engagement or just showcasing your employees as influencers or advocates. What do you think is the key to that? Because I know we have a lot of customers who are using this strategy to generate content for them. And I'm curious what you think from a creative perspective is, is the right approach.

Allison: Yeah. So I, when you were kind of talking about that, like the difference. B to B and B to C. Um, I think it's the, the opportunity for storytelling, which on B to [00:04:00] B, you really need to have that story of like, I made the difference. This service made the difference for our, our, um, client. And this is why it matters.

Allison: And I think it has, there's. It's a little bit, like you said, a little more complex in explaining maybe your service or what you do. Leveraging employees that already are in it. They know how to talk about your product or service. And to share that, that story and like the excitement that they had, they were so glad they made this connection and I think how you can, you know, kind of build that within your content strategy is making sure, first of all, that that's, that's something that you.

Allison: Want your company, your, your employees to do to say like, who's, you know, what's, what are you guys talking about right now? If there's a, a Slack channel or something where you're able to celebrate some of those wins, like taking those bits of content and it, and it's almost something that really [00:05:00] snowballs because once employees see that, Hey, we're getting featured so and so story got featured, or they got a shout out and, you know, on, on the brand social media channel for whatever.

Allison: That kind of can snowball and it, you know, you are telling your employees that this is an initiative, but it just becomes like a natural part of their day of like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to share this win in my Slack channel, but then I'm also going to send it to, you know, our social media team, so then they can, um, publish this as well.

Allison: And we love that when clients share those little stories with us, because it's just like content gold. And it is the difference between, you know, content that kind of falls flat of if you're, if you're a brand that's talking about a service, like at people versus, you know, sharing something exciting and sharing, having that emotional connection makes such a difference.

Beth: Yes, that is such a good point because I [00:06:00] think that is the key in the difference between what is good from like, you know, your employees, your customers, and then what is great is that when this stuff happens naturally, and you're allowing other people to celebrate. Your wins as an organization, and it's in their words, it's not forced, right?

Beth: Like, I, you don't want to force it because then it feels completely inauthentic, which is the opposite of we're trying to do. And then I also think that there's an element there of it's greater than just the leadership or the management. It's the team's perspective on everybody moving in the right direction, creating content that tells different pieces of the story.

Beth: And it's not all about we like company focused, right? It's kind of like a collaborative approach and they're probably closest to your customers at times as well. Like, you know, from the front desk person to the [00:07:00] product development people, like they're all coming at. A similar problem or hopefully trying to solve the problem your company is solving from different angles.

Beth: And to showcase those, I think is probably the most straightforward B2B advocate or influencer strategy that you can get, don't you think? Yeah, definitely.

Allison: I mean, it's, it's like you said, it's the people that they already have relationships with on a, on a regular day to day, so you're not. I mean, you may be engaging with the content because you love the product and service too, but you also are connected to that person.

Allison: So you're like, Oh, I love the, you know, I love seeing them every day when I come into the office or whatever, when I, you know, visit, visit my, um, visit the company. So, I think making sure that connection is not, is not lost. Um, I think it's really similar to. Why reviews are so much more impactful, like, you know, authentic [00:08:00] reviews from people than.

Allison: The company saying, Oh, our product or service is so great. This is why people still go to look at the reviews. It's kind of similar to, you know, employee advocates and some of those internal influencers that it's like you said, it's not leadership saying, Oh, our values are X, Y, Z. They're showing their values and the awesome service and, and what they're able to provide for their clients.

Beth: You know, another, um, really great piece of, um, like I wouldn't call them like content creators or influencers in the B2B space are other businesses that have aligned audiences that are doing webinars. And I see this a lot in the software world or in the product world where they may be solving completely separate problems, but they're both going after a similar audience.

Beth: And so partnering or pairing yourself with those similar, I mean, they're different types of companies, but maybe having a joint webinar [00:09:00] or a. Um, you know, like you share our stuff, we'll share yours, or we're already creating content and we'll, we'll give you content that's net new for you to, um, talk through an example of this would be, let's say, um, so we do a lot of work with, uh, manufacturing companies specifically as it relates to employer branding and.

Beth: Hiring on social media and a partnership that would make sense for us to leverage would be maybe a, an ATS or an applicant tracking software company that integrates really well with the social channels. Right? We could do joint webinars together. We could come at different angles to the customer. We're providing value because we're talking about different, you know, And How much is your applicant costs looking like?

Beth: And is it going up and going down? So they're, they're in their zone of expertise. We're in our zone of expertise because we need a tracking software to appropriately understand [00:10:00] how many applicants we're driving on social media. And so those kind of alignments for influence really do make sense.

Beth: Especially if you're both going at it at the angle of we're not just going to push our stuff on people, but we're there to help and you kind of have that same approach and maybe you, you're already servicing similar customers. Um, again, that's probably the 1st step to identifying the who is like, don't start new.

Beth: Just take an evaluation of where you're currently at. If I Google search your name, who comes up? Who else has kind of done featured or articles with you and then start searching on the social platforms, right? Search your Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Is there creators out there that are already talking about you that you're just not aware of?

Beth: Or, you know, they're always your top fans. They're always your cheerleaders. Um, those are the great places to start, specifically in that niche market or B2B, which I [00:11:00] think becomes more challenging than again, if you have a product that you can send to somebody that is already a content creator and can create content on your behalf.

Beth: I think a lot of people understand that model, but it's the other one that they get stuck on.

Allison: Yeah, well, and I think, you know, when, as you mentioned in finding that content, um. Instagram is a great, is a great place to, to find the people who are already talking about, um, your content, but just also to not figure out a figure, forget about some of those other platforms as well.

Allison: Um, like you said, who is, who is consistently engaging with your content, you know, that it's quite possible that they are sharing or talking about that, um, on their personal platforms or personal profiles as well.

Beth: A couple other ideas on where to start is if you're doing speaking or presentations or maybe even trade shows using the hashtags to see who is the top [00:12:00] influencers on those hashtags.

Beth: It could be somebody in. Um, an aligned brand again, maybe it's a competitor that's not going to work for you, but just getting an idea of like, who is talking about the trade shows that we are either attending or we should be at, um, another really good idea is, uh, institutional, um, like educational institutions.

Beth: So, if you do an internship program, apprenticeship, um, again, we see a lot of this. For, um, lots of, uh, different types of businesses, but in manufacturing or any production work, they're partnering with their internship programs. And those are great places to start showcasing your company, your values, what you do, those fresh set of eyes.

Allison: Yeah.

Beth: Digitally savvy. Um, you know, you do want to have some form of approval process in some regards so that you can help them understand this is what we can't show, this can. But in many cases, if you just [00:13:00] give individuals the guardrails of like what works and what doesn't and what you can, what you can't, let them be creative in the middle.

Beth: You know, once they have the don't do this, you do this. A lot of times people make things a lot better than what you could kind of control them into. Right.

Allison: Well, like you said, that, that fresh set of eyes, they may notice something or like latch on to one thing that you do that, like, you're just like, Oh, this is part of our regular day.

Allison: You wouldn't have thought that there's a story behind it or really great content idea behind it. But just that fresh perspective where you're like, Oh, that is. That is awesome. We do need to share that.

Beth: Yeah, I think, you know, if you also have direct, um, like learning opportunities, like let's say that You offer a service and you're a service provider, but you have like a coaching or an educational component to what you do, like a training program that you can train people how to do your same [00:14:00] business or service, um, or kind of a self-serve learning platform.

Beth: Those are really good because people are already used to putting in the work. And if they have a little bit of digital presence or digital savvy ness for creation, they may make some awesome content for you. And I think it's such a relief that the world of influencers kind of gotten got, um, disrupted a little bit that you don't need a million followers to be able to have true influence on markets and or businesses and be a good content creator.

Beth: So I think that there's a lot of places that you can draw from inspiration so that someone else can create your content. And you don't have to create everything net new from a marketing perspective.

Beth: All right. Well, this was a really great conversation. Alison, what was the top thing that you think businesses really should leverage in order to help them create content from the people that influence their [00:15:00] business and, or, um, are part of their marketing mix?

Allison: I think looking at what you already have at your disposal, like looking side to side and see what you already have that's close, and then building upon that is really a great place to start.

Beth: Yes, reuse and recycle that content. If it's living in your slacks, your slack channels, your team's channel, maybe it lives in a slide deck for your team.

Beth: Make sure you're reusing content as much as possible because that will help your team scale the content and it will keep it authentic to your business and the people who are working there.

Beth: All right. Well, thank you for joining us, Allison. I think this was a great conversation. Hopefully our audience learned a little bit and stay tuned for next time.

Outro (17:34):

That's it for this episode of Generation Social Media podcast. If you had an aha moment or just a haha moment, I would be so grateful if you leave a review with the moment you loved most. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the next episode, fill out the form on generationsocialmediapodcast.com.

inspiration, Business, Social MediaChatterkickOctober 9, 2023internal team, Podcast, Executive Social, CEO