Creating content can be a big task!
This is particularly true when you are an in-house team for a single brand. After years of the same message told a million different ways (or what feels like a million ways), content creation can begin to feel like a never-ending chore. If you’re just getting stared, you may have a little trepidation on how to speak for the brand and how to go about creating content that will grab attention.
We believe in a “work smarter, not harder” approach as the inspiration for these three solutions:
Don’t forget to look inward.
Ideally, you’ve hired people who are enthusiastic about your brand and company. Employees come with their own personal story and connection as to why they’re enthusiastic about working for your organization. Empowering your employees to talk about your brand, their experiences (either through blogs or company-published channels) or through their individual platforms (such as LinkedIn) shows a trust and co-ownership in the brand.
From the outside, this approach gives a more human look into the brand. One brand that embraces a crowdsourced approach with their employees is IBM. They hold to guidelines around speaking about the brand such as:
- Personal responsibility
- Being clear that it is from your voice as an employee
- Respecting copyrights, clients and sensitive information
- Upholding brand standards
For some organizations, working from the top down is a great way to encourage employee advocacy. Coaching your leadership to be an example for speaking on their channels, sharing content and overall expressing their pride and enthusiasm for the company can be a more comfortable fit in engaging employees for content.
Create a strategy that pulls user-generated content for the brand’s content.
This is a continuously successful way of creating genuine and engaging content (when done correctly). Some social publishing platforms help source user-generated content (UGC), others utilize more grassroots methods and directly reach out to customers, clients, students, etc.
Whichever route is chosen, always gain permission from the original creator. Taking work uncredited in any space is frowned upon, even in the social media space. Not sure if anyone is even speaking about your brand online? A few quick organic ways to see what content may be available is by searching tags for your brand, your location and even hashtags. This can give a taste of whether or not this is a viable approach for your organization.
Delve into the influencer as a content creator.
The term “influencer” often brings to mind just a singular type of individual or content space. Don’t worry; just as there are magazines for every type of business or interest, so too there are influencers.
Research who’s talking about the subjects you’re wanting to talk about, who’s using products that are your competitors, etc. These are influencers in the space. Micro-influencers, those with a 1,000-10,000 following, often are more attainable and can be more engaging than the enormously followed, increasingly expensive influencers with 100,000+ followers. Platforms and businesses now exist to help navigate the world of influencer marketing. Similar to an ad buy with traditional and digital media, there are influencer buys and programs as well.
Excited to tackle content from a different angle? We’d love to help you create your content strategy and even help train leadership and employees on how to engage in social media. If UGC really intrigues you, great; we’d be happy to walk through a strategy for your business and how to make that content building approach with your business goals in mind. Reach out at helloindy@westcomm.com or follow us on LinkedIn for more insights.
