Creating content takes a lot of dedication. But getting your employees to create content is even harder. On this week’s Dear Katie, I was asked: I’d love for my employees to create content. When I bring it up, a few are always interested but nothing ever happens beyond expressing interest. Do you have any tips? 

Forbes actually had a recent article on this topic that found 86% of brands use user-generated content in their marketing – including employee-created content.

Firms can have employees act as an extension of their marketing team by creating content, how can you get them to create content? 

It’s challenging – but only if you don’t have the right processes, systems, and actions in place. 

So, where should you begin?

Progress Starts at the Top

Are you creating content? If not, it’s going to be hard to convince your team to do something you’re not doing yourself. You need to lead by example. For example, you should be:

• Posting about your latest conference
• Sharing your team’s wins on social media.
• Active on the platforms that matter most

If, you as a leader, take the initiative to create content and build an internal culture of content creators, you’ll have a much easier time getting your employees to follow your example.

But not everyone knows how to create content, so you need to factor in training, too.

Train Your Team on How to Create Content for the Platforms You Prefer

Creating multiple types of content takes a lot of time, patience and skill.

You might be active on LinkedIn.

Oftentimes some of your employees want to be as well, but often they are unsure of how or what to post. 

As a result, they lack confidence to even start.

What I recommend you do is:

• Assign someone to train your team on how to post, whether it be you or a consultant.
• Give guidance and tools to help employees remain consistent (more on this later).
• Provide tips on how employees can come up with ideas.
• Offer tips on engagement and audience building.

Training should outline your corporate dos and don’ts, along with what you would like employees to avoid posting. 

For example, you might want employees to avoid posting about new partnerships before the company does.

But I do caution you to limit your do’s and don’t’s so that it’s not intimidating every time someone goes to make a post.

Provide Resources

If you want your employees to create social media content, remove roadblocks by providing them with resources and support, such as:

• Post ideas. Build up a library of pre-approved content or templates that your team can easily use or adapt. Providing post ideas will reduce some of the friction in content creation while ensuring that messaging stays on-brand.
• Editing tools. If you cannot provide editing services in-house, consider at least providing simple editing software and training on how to use these tools. At the bare minimum, cover the small cost of these editing apps that are often very inexpensive. 
• Coaching. Can you provide your team with a coach who will check in, provide content feedback and support with the strategy?
• Equipment and crews. If possible, supply the equipment and/or crew to film at events and behind-the-scenes footage at the office. Bonus points if you can produce those finalized pieces for them, making it even easier to post content.
• Time. This is a huge one. Give your employees the ability to weave their content creation into their work schedules. Don’t ask them to do it after work on their own time. Make sure you’re giving them ample time – 30 minutes a week is not enough.

Once you’re done providing resources to your team, you can sweeten the deal.

Give Them an Incentive

One highly effective way to get employees to create content is to give them something tangible in return. Incentivize the process.

This could look like a lot of things:

• Leaderboard – you could give them points for posting or engaging
• Referrals – you could pay for any referrals they generate
• Monetary awards
• Prizes 

Just make sure that your incentive is something that:

1. Your employees value, and 
2. Fits your firm’s budget

A lot of firms say they want their employees to create content but few take the appropriate steps to make it a reality. 

Use the outline above to get started, and you can finally go from hoping your employees create content to watching their posts fill your feed. 

And, that’s a wrap on this Dear Katie question.

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Now I want to hear from you. Do you have a question? 

Submit it here

Until next time, cheers to your success!

Katie