Employee engagement is one of the most vital tools in any organization’s arsenal. Regardless of what industry an organization operates in, optimal employee engagement is pivotal for the long-term success of a company. An organization that is concerned about the overall well-being of its employees should have an effective employee engagement strategy in place. 

Contrary to what one might think, better employee engagement also results in higher customer satisfaction, better sales and turnover, and long-term loyalty.

Why Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement provides a host of valuable benefits to an organization. It improves productivity, increases employee retainment, lower absentee rates, and much more. But one of the most overlooked aspects of employee engagement is its role in marketing.

Any organization, while creating a marketing strategy, puts a lot of thought behind its goals, target audience, the type of content they align with, and much more. 

As it happens, one of the most effective ways to market your business is to work on your employee engagement. This helps in creating a positive outlook towards your company and converts your employees into loyal brand ambassadors.

Content Marketing and Employee Engagement

It’s no secret that content is key to marketers. Whatever goal you are trying to achieve via engagement, whether it is sales, leads, conversions, or downloads — good content is the best way to go. 

However, good content alone won’t do the trick. You need effective strategies in place to make the content reach the right audience.  

One of the easiest and most effective methods to ensure your content doesn’t fall through the funnel is to make use of your employees.

Incorporating your employees into your content marketing strategy will help you improve your brand presence. This tactic gives a humane face to your faceless corporation.

As you work on improving employee engagement, you are bound to invoke a sense of brand ownership and pride in your employees for being a part of your company. 

The result is that you earn their loyalty and further improve employee retention.

How to Implement Employee Engagement using Content Marketing?

Here’s how you can integrate employee engagement with content marketing to achieve long-term business goals: 

1. Leveraging employee influence

Influencer marketing is at an all-time peak in the current atmosphere. 

Every business, be it large or small, relies on influencers for content marketing. Organizations have understood that mediums like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are the most influential channels to spread brand awareness. When executed successfully, influencer marketing can produce considerable returns. 

But one should be very careful when choosing an influencer to promote the brand. If an influencer has a reputation of choosing any brand on the basis of the rewards and not putting any thought behind what their ideology is, then it is best to steer away from such public figures. The alignment of ideologies should be the primary point and not the popularity garnered by the influencer.

This is why more and more companies are choosing micro-influencers who have lesser fan followings but target a specific demographic pertaining to their industry. While it is an effective strategy, an often overlooked aspect is right under your nose.

Employee advocacy is a great way to market your brand. To the outside world, an employee advocating for your brand will come off as more authentic and trustworthy. Because who can possibly know a company better than someone who works there, right?

So, make sure you are doing everything you can to keep your employees happy and satisfied at their job. Whether it is through efficient management, employee recognition, or bestowing rewards — it should be your priority to improve employee engagement and turn them into your brand ambassadors.

The best idea is to present them with gifts on important occasions, be it a work anniversary, milestone achievement, onboarding, birthday, and so on. 

2. Sharing company content 

If as a company, you are committed to upgrading and evolving with changing times, it is highly probable that your organization already has a social media policy describing the dos and don’ts of appropriate social media practices. 

Make adjustments to the existing policies and let your employees share company content in their personal socials. 

This will allow company content to reach a vast audience and to create an awareness within the employees about the principles and the voice of the company.

3. Spice up the company blog

A well-maintained and updated company blog is a great tool to bring traffic to your company website. Including posts from employees on the blog is an effective way to bring authenticity to the account.

Most times, your target clients do not relate to the CEOs on a deep level. On the other hand, most people are bound to feel connected to the employees. Hence, bringing diversity to your blog by including guest posts from employees will allow for a vaster audience reach.

Meaningful work and recognition are what every employee craves. By showing off your employees to the world by putting up their content on your blog, they get the recognition they rightfully deserve for their hard work.

4. Public acknowledgment

In this era where social media is a huge part of our life, nothing is official unless it is Instagram official. Publicly recognize and acknowledge your employees on official social media accounts when they do a good job. This acknowledgment could be something as simple as tagging them in a Twitter post. 

It may be a simple gesture but rest assured, it will make your employees feel extremely valued and appreciated. On the other hand, your audience will get the impression that you care about your employees and are willing to acknowledge the fact publicly.  It might look like a simple hong to do, but the impact it creates is quite powerful.

5. Content marketing directed at employees

While we talk about content marketing, we are mainly concerned about directing it to the target audience. But this strategy works both ways. 

Internal content marketing is a great and effective way to improve employee engagement.

You should be focusing more on creating informational, easy-to-understand, and educational content targeting the employees. This internal content should strive to empower your employees and assist them in progressing their careers.

With means of communication like email, office intranet, newsletters, and more, use internal content to educate further and engage your employees. Moreover, your employees should be well-versed in and believe in the company values and goals for them to advocate it.

You can also experiment with a variety of formats like video, interactive sessions, and more to see what works the best. Try incorporating them into working hours in a manner that is not distracting or boring.

6. Employee rewards for advocacy

When an employee or team does well in a particular term or when they exceed expectations, make sure to acknowledge them. And, you can achieve employee advocacy by including of employee rewards or corporate gifts.

This practice is sure to make employees feel appreciated. More than the monetary value of the reward, the appreciation and thought behind the gesture is what add value to the employee.

Employee rewards are a great way to optimize employee engagement.

Did you know employees who receive corporate gifts tend to share them with their friends/followers on social media?

7. Feedback and criticism from employees

More often than not, the suggestions and feedback from employees prove to be extremely helpful. They are smart, resourceful, and will have a different perspective that higher officials often lack.

Employees know your business more than you think they do. This experience and hands-on knowledge will lead to some insightful feedback that you might otherwise miss. It is also an effective way to improve employee engagement as this will make them feel included and part of a team.

Plus, you can share particularly helpful feedback on your company pages. Nothing works better than user-generated (in this case, employee-generated) content, right?

Final Words

The world we live in is extremely fast-paced. We have started to subconsciously demand engaging content at every turn. 

But the truth is, we are so used to content everywhere that it is getting increasingly hard to churn out creative and engaging content.

To stay ahead of the curve, one must be creative and use every resource at their disposal— and employee engagement and advocacy is one such effective method to market your company to the public.