Not long ago, I wrote a piece called "Content Marketing's Dirty Secret Jay Baer Won't Tell You." In that post, I mentioned that Baer tells us about the future of content marketing lies in employee and constumer-generated content.
While I respect Baer and some ofther marketing professionals, I believe the future of employee-generated content is now. There's no reason why we can't create information such as case studies capturing how customer-facing employees fix real problems for real customers.
There's a couple things, Baer, leaves out of his post, "Cooperative Content Will Eventually Dominate Your Polished Content."
Here's what Baer and other marketers won't tell you.
Harvesting Employee-Generated Content
Before we talk about a strategy of reaping content your employees make and using it to build deeper relationships with customers, let’s be honest. Not all your employees are writers, some don’t care, and the ones that do, you’ll have to coach and entice. Additionally, some may not be in a position to develop content, simply because their position isn't customer-facing.
Nonetheless, here’s what you need to know:
- Identify customer-facing personnel who work through problems that arise between the company and its customers.
- Ask these employees if they would like to share their customer experiences on the corporate blog, or a blog designated for this content.
Once you have a pool of employees who volunteered, you’ll need to train them in three areas: 1. Writing, 2. Legal and 3. Observation. In other words, you’ll need to teach them how to write brief, 250 word case studies that capture the essence of their customer service encounter. Helping them understand some of the legal issues around writing such content, especially in regulated industries, will help smooth out approval processes too.
Here's more to consider.
- Teach employees how to be watchful and identify good examples of customer care will make for better, more engaging, information you can share later.
- Provide them with the technology to easily capture, organize, and submit content to a review board. Oh, and teach them how to use that technology.
- Create a review team of public relations and SEO professionals, not marketing professionals.
- Publish content consistently.
- Honor or reward employees for the best content, which will reward them for conquering the toughest customer problems and solving them.
Cooperative Content is the “NOW” of Content Marketing
Is this really the future of content marketing? He says, “I see the differentiator being based on which company can create the most topical breadth, driven by hyper-relevant, low effort content made not by journalists, but by large groups of employees and current customers.”
I say it can happen now. It should happen now. We have the technology. We need you to champion the frontier.
