Part of your organization’s marketing strategy is probably focused on creating content to educate your customers and to attract new potential buyers.
Additionally, your company might also be encouraging employees to help engage and share the content to their social networks.
But a challenge your company might face with the blog content is that it just doesn’t seem to get much attention or love from employees. What gives?
In this post, I’m going to cover a few reasons why employees ignore sharing your company blog content and how you can change that.
Why Would You Want Employees Sharing Your Content?
For most companies, blog content does not rank overnight on search engines. And even if it is a great piece of content, there is no guarantee it will happen with the amount of competition and content being produced daily.
Additionally, your company may have to pay to get the content out in front of more people. While a potentially good option, the results can vary and the costs to advertise are rising.
But neither of those things should deter your company from creating and focusing on content.
A great way to help distribute your organization’s content is to encourage employees to share to their social networks.
It’s important to note that regardless of your company’s view on social media at work, a good portion of employees are talking about their company online.
98% of employees use at least one social media site for personal use, of which 50% are already posting about their company, according to Weber Shandwick.
Additionally, people trust people (their peers, co-workers, friends, and family) far more than they trust branded accounts or paid ads.
Lastly, think of the organic network effect when you have employees sharing. Let’s say an average employee has 1,000 social connections.
Here’s the potential reach of various levels of employees sharing:
- 50 employees = 50,000 combined network reach
- 500 employees = 500,000 combined network reach
- 5000 = 5,000,000 combined network reach
Needless to say, your company will reap many benefits in marketing, sales, and recruiting by getting employees to share content more consistently.
But why aren’t they sharing content or very often?
Employees Are Not Sure What’s Allowed
While it is inevitable in this digital age that your company has a social media policy in place, it should encourage and trust employees to engage in social media.
Yet, even if you have a modern social strategy, many employees still might be unsure if it’s okay to share on the company’s behalf.
If employees are not aware of the social policies or afraid they are going to do the wrong thing online, many will completely avoid getting involved at all.
Make your social policy accessible, easy to understand, make social media a part of work culture, and be clear from the start with new hires that sharing to social is valuable to the company and their professional development.
Employees Don’t Know Your Content Exists
Say what? No, seriously.
Large and enterprise companies probably have this challenge more than smaller businesses, but employees might not actually know your blog content exists.
Everyone is busy in their departments, job duties, and not everyone knows — or looks– for the content your organization is creating. Just hoping every employee or various teams know about the content and are sharing is not a good long-term strategy.
Instead, everyone needs to be aware within your organization and you must guide them to the content. This can be done through the use of company-wide emails, employee advocacy software, push notifications, or a combination of these items.
Making everyone aware and ensuring the content is easily accessible will help drive more attention and social shares by people in your organization.
Your Company Content Isn’t Interesting
Ouch! And while it might sting a bit too look at your current content and realize it isn’t very interesting, the path can always be corrected!
There are over 2-million blog posts published daily according to MarketingProfs and that number is only continuing to grow. Factor in all the other content noise employees are inundated with every day, you have to really grab their attention.
If you want employees to like and actually share your company content, it can’t be regurgitated fluff.
Many companies run into a content marketing problem where everything they create is just about themselves like new product or service updates, press mentions, etc.
Of course, this content is important to have, but your company should have educational content, original content ideas, employee stories, and a mix of media like video and infographics to keep things fresh.
Employees typically want to keep their professional social media accounts filled with knowledgeable and insights that helps build their online community. Would you want to spam your social connects with constant product articles?
Not Utilizing Employee-Generated Content
While your marketing team or executives might be the most active writers, your company must not overlook the value of employee-generated content or EGC.
Many employees want to be more involved and given professional development experiences. Plus, they also have some great ideas and insights to contribute.
When the content is created by individual employees, they are more likely to share their own and content that other employees contributed. They’ll feel more valued, motivated, and engaged when they see other employees are encouraged to get involved with content and sharing content.
And Edelman’s trust barometer research found that company experts are trusted 66 percent of the time. Not every employee will want to write or will be the best content writer, but give them the opportunity to be heard and voice their knowledge.
What’s in it for employees?
The obvious benefit of employees sharing the content is how it impacts your company and brand. But you can’t force employees to share with their personal networks (nor should you try).
Yet, you also can’t have the “Me Me Me” mentality. Make it clear within your policies and outreach to your teams how they can benefit besides the impact on the company.
What is the value for employees in sharing content? For one, it will help their networks grow, which impacts their professional profiles.
Additionally, their networks start to see them as insightful thought leaders. This can lead to new opportunities for employees like a guest speaker, podcast interviews, writing opportunities, and even job opportunities. You, of course, don’t want to lose your great employees, but you can’t stifle or hinder their professional growth
.
You can also offer incentives for employees who get involved and share. This does not have to be strictly monetary in value but could be things like free lunch, books, gift cards, extra vacation day, etc.
But do not lead with gamifying this experience, otherwise, you may see employees sharing and spamming just to win a prize.
Leadership is Not Setting An Example
If you want more employees sharing content to social, then executives and leaders should lead the way!
Not all executives will be active, but there should be some managers and company leaders sharing on social media. If none are sharing content or promote the value of social culture, then employees also do not have a reason to care either.
When leaders and managers are sharing, showing enthusiasm, and voicing their interest in social media, more employees are inclined to follow, recognize it’s okay, and value talking about the brand.
Now, not all C-Suite level leaders may be able to always be proactive, but it can go a long way it getting more support from the workforce.
For example, T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere is very engaged on social media and employees from the company are just as active and enthusiastic about the brand online. Vanguard’s CEO Tim Buckley is also fairly active and employees are also sharing content and about their company.
Final Thoughts
Employees sharing your company’s content is vital for expanding reach, driving clicks, improved social engagement, and much more.
Yet, it’s a common issue that content does not get the attention and social shares it deserves. Many of the reasons above will be contributing factors to the lack of sharing by your people.
But if you start to correct these items and put a plan in place, you’ll find your company content reach, employee engagement, and web traffic will continue to grow.
Learn how Dell got over 10,000 employees to consistently share content in a sustainable, employee-driven social media and content sharing program. Download the guide for free.