Tracking the Strategic Impact of Your Employee Content: Leadership Insights

Employee storytelling is a key aspect of employer branding to build brand awareness and attract the right talent to grow the business in the right direction.

As part of our Campfire Leadership Series we surveyed some of the world’s top leaders in employer branding to understand their employee-generated content strategies from planning to measuring success.

Following on from my trends to watch out for with employee content in 2023, we discussed the importance of employee-generated content to employer branding strategies, unique ways to create the content, building brand ambassadors, measuring the impact and getting executive buy-in for EB content strategies.

Get ready to dive into a wealth of knowledge, practical know-how, and mind-blowing revelations from industry-leading experts as they share their insights on measuring the impact of employee content on your employer brand.

Importance of Creating Employee Content as Part of Your EB Strategy

Storytelling is a key aspect of employer branding. From showcasing your company culture and values to improving employee engagement and retention by empowering a sense of connection, the benefits of employee-created content run deep.

75% of the leaders strongly agreed that employee content is crucial to their employer branding strategy and are actively working to improve ways they can empower their employees to post their stories on social channels organically without prompting from the employer branding team.

My Take

Organizations are (finally) recognizing the immense value of employee content and storytelling as a powerful tool in their employer branding strategy! This reflects a shift towards a more employee-centric approach, which values authenticity and diverse employee stories.

When companies empower their employees to share their authentic experiences, they not only create a more compelling and genuine brand image but also foster a sense of connection and engagement among their employees. This is especially important during times of change or crisis.

The growing trend towards more employee-generated content highlights the power of storytelling in building meaningful relationships between organizations and their employees.

Companies that prioritize employee storytelling and recognize its potential will soon see the positive impact on employee engagement, retention, and brand image.

Creating Content That Amplifies Your Employer Brand

When it comes to creating content for your employer brand, it's important that it not only resonates with your target audience but also aligns with your organization's strategic goals. 

Leaders use a few different methods to create the best content for their employees:

🤲 Collect the responses: manual Q&A via Google Forms / Typeform / internal communication apps

👻 Ghost-write articles: internal copywriters / freelance writers / writing it themselves

📹 Creating videos: agencies / marketing team / editing themselves

🖼️ Editing images: Canva / Photoshop

Some of the respondents use The Martec platform, which does all of the above (and much more!) using AI 🤖. Our community has also voted for the top 75 tools for employer branding.

Despite having established methods to create employee content, many leaders are still struggling to achieve the desired results from their employee-generated content. 

My Take

Despite some leaders expressing satisfaction with their content, there still seems to be a disconnect between their content and the strategic results they want. This begs the question: could a lack of creativity, freedom, or time be the culprit?

It's possible that leaders are feeling restricted in their content creation process, resulting in a lack of truly engaging and impactful content. There’s nothing worse than seeing the same stale, boring content, am I right??

Alternatively, the results may be driven by factors outside of the content itself, such as the company's reputation or industry demand.

Regardless, it's clear that there is room for improvement when it comes to creating content that not only satisfies leaders but also aligns with organizational values AND drives the results they need (from brand awareness to qualified candidate conversion).

If you have questions on how to create employee content that you are happy with and that gets you the results you want, let’s connect.

Publishing Employee-Generated Content Regularly

In general, it's recommended to post consistently and frequently, but not so often that you overwhelm or annoy your audience.

Achieving strategic outcomes through employee-generated content can be challenging, especially when there is no consensus on the ideal frequency for posting. There was an even split amongst leaders on how often employee-created content should be posted to get strategic results. 

However, it's important to remember that quality should always take precedence over quantity. By sharing high-quality, engaging content that resonates with your intended audience, you can build a loyal following and expand your reach.

Despite all the leaders struggling sometimes to get their employees and leadership teams involved, it's important to encourage employees and the leadership team to share and distribute it. By doing so, you can increase your brand's reach and engagement significantly. 

Content shared by employees receives eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels, and employee advocacy can increase your brand reach by 561% (survey by MSL Group).

My Take

Ultimately, there's no one-size-fits-all answer to how often you should post on social media to reach your target audience, but by focusing on consistency, quality, and data-driven insights, you can develop a posting strategy that helps you effectively engage with your audience and achieve your social media marketing goals.

Measuring the Success of Your Employee-Generated Content

Measuring the success of content was a key point that leaders were eager to explore globally. Currently, success is being measured based on the following analytics:

📱 Social Media: engagement, views, impressions, and shares

🖥️ Website: traffic, click throughs, job applications, and time spent on page

📝Content: views, impressions, click throughs, time spent on content, and engagement

While 50% of leaders reported being satisfied with their content, only 25% believed it was effectively contributing to strategic outcomes. 

To ensure that their employer branding efforts are truly making a difference, organizations should ask challenging questions and really understand what success looks like for them.

My Take

Success on social media could include an increase in engagement, reach, number of followers, or meaningful comments. But the ‘post and pray’ never works. 

It’s important to meet candidates where they are - What social channels are your key talent segments hanging out on? What type of content are they consuming (written or video)? 

While it's important to track and analyze your social media metrics to determine the optimal posting frequency for your specific audience and goals, you may need to experiment with different content formats and channels to see what resonates best. 

If you're feeling left out of hot conversations like this one and want to mix with your peers connect with me on LinkedIn to be considered for inclusion in our next Employer Branding leader campfire session!