Everyone in business should know that their biggest asset is their people. Yet few businesses know how their most valued asset can successfully help them to market their company. In this modern digital age, where every notable business has at least one website and social media page, it’s easy to become almost faceless behind the screen and forget the fact that people want to communicate with people, rather than computers.
That said, it’s important to take full advantage of the internet and all it can offer. Having a presence online is like having your very own company newspaper and is a great platform for pushing your content out there. This initially sounds great, however, it does come with an important responsibility – providing the audience with good content on a consistent basis, as opposed to filler content that nobody wants to read.
Content Fracking
John Bottom of Base One, a London based marketing agency specialising in B2B marketing, coined the phrase content fracking. This is comparable to the term most widely used in the oil industry whereby shale oil is extracted from the ground; – the parallel of content fracking, therefore, refers to the techniques we might employ to access the valuable content that lies deep within our organisations, i.e. our employees. More info & a great infographic on this can be found on the Base One website.
Utilising Human Driven Content
Human driven content is content written by people for people, as opposed to written in formal language (an example would be a technical manual). This often performs better than formal or branded content because it is seen as less corporate and jargonised and therefore is more likely to get noticed and shared by others; the holy grail when it comes to content marketing.
Cheryl Burgess’ book, The Social Employee (2013) is a compelling case for today’s business leaders to embrace social media in the office and empower their employees. During the course of the book, it becomes abundantly clear that social media interactions between brands and consumers isn’t going away and concludes that the brands that leverage their employee base in order to engage customers and prospects through social media are the ones destined to win the marketing wars.
The book also not only details the astronomical rise of the social employee but also outlines the innovative methods leading companies have employed to foster cultures of enthusiastic and engaged workers. It’s an ongoing conversation that will grow and continue whether or not we take part in it, but one thing remains clear and that is, if the resources are there to use, then it makes sense to use it.
Valuing our Employees
At VST we value the rich and varied life experience of our team members. Rather than employing the more typical telemarketing employee i.e. a school leaver between 18 – 30 years old with appointment setting or lead generation experience, we look for a range of ages, personalities and career/life experience. This diverse mix proves invaluable when assigning our team to projects matching their skills and business experience and helps to provide a more comprehensive sales support service. Furthermore, our employees are knowledgeable and smart, and therefore well equipped to have an active role in generating content for our social media platforms. Why wouldn’t they be? After all, they know our business better than anyone.
