Employees Expertise you’re Missing Out on

Your organization is led by experts and your marketing should be too. Read more about creating expert opinion leaders from among your employees.

If the term influencer has you running for cover, here’s one that you may feel more comfortable with – employees! We have an overwhelming amount of information available today, and help navigating the course is almost always welcome. Here’s where the role of the expert suddenly gains prominence. An expert saves us the effort and time invested in learning about, resolving and sometimes managing issues. As a society, we depend on experts to help us understand and process information.

Influencer marketing in its now traditional sense can be challenging for small businesses for many reasons; cost often making it to the top of the list. At a basic level, an influencer is someone who has managed to establish themselves as an expert. Now here’s the clincher, your business is full of experts! Your employees. Those valuable members of your team simultaneously sharing a gab and keeping the organization running? They know the business; they know what you are working on and why; your employees are reliable if not ingenious influencers! And the sweetest part of this whole deal? You’re already paying them!

Does that mean you can take every grubby employee and allow them to run amuck your social media accounts? Not quite. But put together some basic brand language training, a few position statements, and occasional content planning session, coupled with a few professionally taken pictures and there you have it – your swanky new influencer.

Not convinced? Here are a few compelling reasons why you need internally developed influencer marketing:

• With their unique combination of internal access and individuality, employees often hold more credibility and influence when talking about their brand.
• Positioning your employees as experts makes your clients trust your services and products. They are being delivered by experts after all!
• Thought leadership from within helps elevate your brand image in the industry.
• Developing communication skills helps instils a sense of recognition and ownership among employees and increases productivity.
• Your team’s willingness to engage with the brand on social media is a good indicator of overall sentiment towards an employer.

So how can you help employees establish themselves as thought leaders:

• Help your team recognize themselves as experts. Simply acknowledging that they do as part of their occupation possess information that may not be available to others is a good first step. Encouraging them to share this information is a natural second.
• Open your communication platforms to employees. Expert talks, FAQ-answering sessions, webinars, guides and comments on industry trends make opportune screen time for employees.
• Branding guidelines often exclude employees. You have defined what your brand is about and what it stands for. Define what your employees are about and what they stand for.

Your employees help the business grow and nobody can sell it better than they can. So, get going on your marketing game. Give your employees a platform and watch both them and the business thrive.