What is Employee-Generated Content?
Marketing in digital age has evolved significantly, and companies are constantly seeking innovative ways to attract top talent and engage their employees. One strategy that has gained considerable attention is employee-generated content (EGC). EGC refers to content created and shared by employees on behalf of organizations. This blog post explores importance of EGC in realms of recruiting and employee engagement.
Employee-generated content encompasses various forms of content such as blog posts, social media updates, videos, testimonials, and more. It is an authentic representation of employees' experiences, insights, and perspectives about their work and organization they belong to. Unlike traditional corporate marketing messages, EGC offers a genuine and relatable perspective that resonates with potential candidates and existing employees.
1. Enhanced Employer Branding: When employees share positive experiences on social media or other platforms, it boosts organization's employer brand. Prospective candidates are more likely to trust the opinions of current employees rather than just company's official statements. EGC serves as a powerful tool to showcase organization's culture, values, and employee satisfaction, thereby attracting top talent.
2. Expanded Reach: Employee-generated content has the potential to reach a wider audience compared to traditional recruiting channels. When employees share content on personal networks, it exposes organization to a diverse pool of candidates who might not have otherwise come across company's job openings. This amplification effect can significantly increase reach and effectiveness of recruitment efforts.
3. Authenticity and Credibility: Candidates often look for authenticity and credibility when considering job opportunities. EGC provides a glimpse into real work environment and company culture, offering candidates a more genuine perspective. When potential hires see employees advocating for organization, it builds trust and confidence in company, making it an attractive place to work.
EGC for Engagement
1Empowerment and Recognition: Encouraging employees to create and share content empowers them and recognizes their contributions. When employees feel valued and appreciated, engagement and satisfaction levels increase. EGC provides an opportunity for employees to showcase their expertise and perspectives, fostering a sense of pride and ownership in organization.
Peer-to-Peer Learning and Collaboration: Employee-generated content promotes knowledge sharing and collaboration within organization. When employees share experiences, insights, and best practices, it creates a culture of learning and encourages others to contribute as well. This exchange of ideas and information enhances employee engagement and promotes a sense of community.
Internal Communication and Transparency: EGC can also serve as a powerful internal communication tool. By encouraging employees to share updates, achievements, and project highlights, organizations can foster transparency and keep workforce informed. This transparency leads to increased trust and stronger connections between employees and organization.
Implementing an Effective EGC Strategy
Create Guidelines and Policies: Establish clear guidelines and policies regarding EGC to ensure employees understand what is appropriate to share and what should remain confidential. Provide training and support to help employees navigate process effectively.
Encourage Participation: Actively encourage employees to generate content by providing incentives, recognizing efforts, and creating a supportive environment. Make it easy for employees to share content by providing user-friendly platforms and tools.
Showcase and Amplify: Once employees create content, showcase it on relevant platforms such as the company's website, social media channels, or internal communication channels. Amplify content by sharing and promoting it to reach a wider audience.
Employee-generated content is a powerful marketing tool that can significantly impact recruiting efforts and employee engagement. By harnessing authentic voices of employees, organizations can build a strong employer brand, attract top talent, and foster a culture of engagement and collaboration. Implementing an effective EGC strategy requires clear guidelines, encouragement, and amplification of employee content. Embracing EGC not only benefits organization but also empowers and recognizes valuable contributions of employees.
Significance of Creative Quality in Marketing Effectiveness
In today's challenging economic climate, marketers are placing greater emphasis on quality of their creative efforts as a means to stand out from competition.
According to Marketing Week's Language of Effectiveness survey, which involved 1,400 brand-side marketers and was supported by Kantar, an overwhelming majority of respondents (75.5%) believe that creative effectiveness plays a pivotal role in overall success of a campaign. In fact, 14.2% of marketers consider it to be most crucial factor. Only a marginal 3.2% believe that creative quality holds no influence at all.
Interestingly, importance attached to creative quality by marketers is on rise. Approximately 60% of respondents have intensified their focus on creative aspects in past year, with 19.5% indicating a substantial increase. A mere 8.7% claim to have reduced emphasis on creative quality during same period.
This emphasis on creative effectiveness holds true across different types of businesses. Both B2B and B2C companies recognize impact of creative quality on campaign success, with 80.9% of B2B companies considering it to be important overall, and 81.6% of B2C firms sharing same sentiment. Even companies operating in a combination of B2B and B2C sectors are closely aligned with industry average, albeit to a slightly lesser extent at 70%.
However, there are slight differences when it comes to changes in focus on creative effectiveness between B2B and B2C marketers over past year. About 63.1% of B2B marketers have witnessed an increase in emphasis on creative effectiveness, while 54.9% of B2C marketers report the same. This disparity may be attributed to fact that 31.3% of B2C marketers state that focus on creative effectiveness has remained unchanged since last year, compared to 26% of B2B marketers.
It is possible that B2B marketers are recognizing value of creative effectiveness more than ever before, especially as they gain a deeper understanding of significance of brand building.
Despite industry's growing recognition of the importance of creative effectiveness and its increased focus on ensuring success of creative endeavors, measuring creative effectiveness remains a challenge.
Surprisingly, only 52.6% of marketers have established analysis methods to measure creative effectiveness, which is a relatively low percentage considering its perceived significance. Alarmingly, 31.2% of marketers lack any means of tracking creative effectiveness at all, be it gauging emotional responses or influencing customer behavior.
While marketers indicate an increasing emphasis on creative quality, percentage of those who claim to be able to measure its effectiveness has actually decreased slightly compared to previous year (57.8%).
Marketing Week has published several pieces of content based on Language of Effectiveness data, including a report. In coming weeks, publication will delve further into topics such as role of market share as a metric.