How to boost Employee Participation in a Content Marketing Campaign?

Are you planning to kick-start a new campaign that needs the support of your entire team? Are you pondering over how to get your employees engaged in brand building and achieving the goals? No worries! You are in the right place. 

If you aim to “Grow Together,” it is essential for you to understand how you can keep everyone in your organization involved in your marketing activities and share knowledge. Well! When it comes to sharing knowledge, then there is no better way than producing a blog. 

As per the statistics, 72% of online marketers consider content creation as a powerful SEO tactic. You will be amazed to know that readers generate around 77 million new blog comments each month that further sell advertising. 

Things to know before Jumping In

Well! Getting content from all departments and teams is not a cakewalk. Of Course, it's not their cup of tea either. But to make the “Grow Together campaign” successful, it is vital for you to inspire team members to learn and share their knowledge with others by producing excellent content. 

Indeed, this might be quite challenging, especially to get the content from the team members who have excellent practical knowledge but do not know how to present it in words. I am sharing this because I have experienced quite a few hurdles while running a similar campaign as different team members come across different levels of difficulties which you have to manage while leading the campaign.

Yes! You are reading it right. At webdew we recently started a new content marketing campaign, wherein members of each team deliver technical content from their expertise with the sole perspective of sharing knowledge and helping others. This campaign's primary objective is not only to promote the brand and share knowledge but also to stripp up some enthusiasm to learn and grow. 

Those who were once just restricted to client projects are now sharing their experiences and knowledge with others. And when I say every webdian is involved in the campaign, I literally mean that. From operations to developers and motion graphic artists to digital marketers, every team member contributes to this campaign.

For instance, our developers no longer just write thousands of lines of code. In fact, they are now writing about it, explaining how someone can create a particular page on a website, how to make a web page responsive, and everything that a web developer can possibly imagine. It's like what they earlier used to put in the comments in their code; they are now putting it into words in a much refined and detailed way. And the cherry on the cake? Well, they provide screenshots and screen recordings for every step, so it gets much easier to understand. 

Incredible, right?

Today at webdew, developers, testers, motion graphics artists, graphic designers, HR, and digital marketers write their own blogs. Now, you must be wondering why and how?

Well, the answer to your first question is: “Why not?” I mean, they are the experts of their field, and who else can explain things the way they can. Right? And as far as the how part of the question, I will get to that in the next section.

13 Secrets to encourage Employee Participation in producing Content

If you are also interested in running a similar content marketing campaign that needs the support of your team members in the form of content, then I would recommend you to keep the below points in mind as it will surely help you run a successful campaign that generates results. 

Let's get started… 

Understand your Team Strong Suit

New ideas and initiatives always spark excitement, but only if it is in favor of both your team and company. Thus, before you get started with a new campaign, always keep your employees' skill set in mind. 

To get a clear idea, try to communicate with at least one team member from each team. It will help you understand their mindset and strong points that will further allow you to run a content campaign in a much easier way. 

Familiarize Team with Idea behind Campaign

At the time of announcing a content campaign, I would recommend you to make people familiarize with the organization's mission behind the campaign. Say if I talk about the Webdew technical blog campaign, then the management has taken good care of sharing the idea behind starting this campaign. 

Along with the management, I also tried to convince team members by sharing the benefits of writing blogs. I personally took meetings with the employees who were a little hesitant to write blogs. I explained how writing blogs of their own interest would help others solve their problems and help them learn new things and grow together. And yeah, they got pretty excited to write their articles. 

In the same way, you can also build a positive work environment and transparency in your organization by making people understand the reason and benefit of the campaign you are planning to begin. 

Assign Topics they are familiar With

“What should I write about?” It is one of the most common questions that might be an obstacle in your campaign. But if you allow the team to write articles on the titles they are actually working upon; then you can easily keep them more engaged.

Choosing titles in their own niche will not only help you in getting high-quality content, but also provide an opportunity for the individual to learn new things and boost their knowledge on the same concept. 

So, before the content team assigns the titles, ask the individual to share some ideas on what they are interested to write about. 

But make sure your content and marketing experts check whether the title they are planning to write is as per your target audience and having good searches or not. Moreover, you can use the Ubersuggest tool to check keyword searches and get some more ideas around the selected keywords. 

Say if your content team thinks that the topic or keywords are not relevant, ask them to share some more titles and select one from the list. 

Assign respective Deadlines

Getting blogs at the right time is as important as selecting titles to make the content marketing campaign a success. We all understand that everyone in the team is preoccupied with their own work, and asking them to write content besides other tasks is not easy. To get things done in time, you need to be a little strict with deadlines, and for this, you can always take the help of the operations team.

Now, there are two ways to get things done in time. Firstly, you can assign the tasks in groups or give tasks to the entire team. I have tested both strategies honestly, and I believe that allocating tasks to all the team at once is more effective.

Sharing messages in groups and arranging meets will surely help you encourage employees to actively participate and deliver blogs in time. So, if you want your team to deliver the content in time, it is important for you to actively participate in the groups and give some deadlines. 

Get Updates and solve their Queries

To keep things more simple and aligned, I would recommend you take daily updates from the team. For this, you can have one-to-one communications or can also use group chats. Writing an article might be new to many team members. Therefore, you need to be supportive and try to help the team members in solving their queries and creating content. 

Say if any team member is facing a problem, try to have a word with them. Say if you are working from home, you can arrange a meet or can sit with them to resolve the challenges. This will not only help you in overcoming hurdles but also builds a strong relationship with the team members, which will further help you in running other successful campaigns. 

Re-evaluate Content and seek Requirements

In the first run, your content team might have to work a little more, but once the employees are in the flow to write blogs, you can see great results from your campaign. So, to ensure that the blog is good enough to share some technical knowledge, proofread the content and ask for the team members to share some videos or screenshots of their steps. 

Incorporation of videos and screenshots in blog posts will surely help you get more traffic to your website and also minimize the bounce rate. 

If the content is plagiarized and not of good quality, you can always ask the respective person to update the blog before the deadline. This tip will help you get things more sorted and produce high-quality content. 

Manage the Content Properly

No matter whether you are expecting content in slots or in bulk, managing the content in the proper format is something you need to work upon. Wondering, how? 

Well! Creating an excel sheet will surely resolve this problem. Ask the employee to write content in Google Docs instead of writing in WordPad or notepad. It will not only help you in running a smooth campaign but also helps you in viewing content from anywhere at any time. 

Here is the screenshot of my excel sheet. You can also create similar sheets to manage the content and run a campaign more effectively.

Take Approval from Expert before Publishing

There are some technical concepts that your content team might not be aware of that might further affect the quality of your blog. Thus, to get this thing sorted, I would recommend you to share the final edited version with the technical expertise and take their approval. 

They will surely recommend you the changes from a reader's perspective. This step will not only help you to get powerful content, but also encourage the respective team member to write another blog post. They will feel the authority on their blog, which will surely add value to the content and build a positive culture in the organization. 

Share the Content with your entire Team in Groups

Are you planning to run a content marketing campaign for more than 2-3 months? If yes, then you will surely need more than 2 blogs from a single team member. And for this, you need to build some excitement and enthusiasm.

Sharing the live link by thanking and congratulating them for delivering excellent content in front of the entire organization will help you encourage all the team members to provide more blogs in the future. 

Whenever you share the live link of a blog, try to show some variations in your message. It will help you in getting more shares and comments. 

With this single step, I got positive results. Team members are eagerly excited to flaunt their content writing skills on their social platforms!

Acknowledge their Contributions

This step might not be possible for every organization to implement, but it will surely create a positive impact on the team and brand reputation. Publishing content with the name of a technical person instead of a content team member will inspire them to deliver content in the future as well. 

So, if you want the team to help you in your campaign, it is also vital for the organization to give credit to the writer by posting content on their own name. 

Indulge in Public Appreciations

For encouraging employees to continue participating in your blog campaign, it is vital to appreciate good work after some time. I personally tried to create a positive culture in an organization by being real and appreciating good work in front of the entire team. 

It will not only inspire the appreciated team members to work more on the next blog but also inspire other members to give their best shot in future. 

Post Daily Reminders for Others

If you want the team to support you in your campaign, make sure you also take the initiative. If you build strong relationships with the team, you can expect a good response from their end. But sometimes, due to work overload, they might forget the deadline of delivering a blog post. In this case, reminders in groups play a great role.

By posting reminders with some gaps will help you build a connection and get blogs on time. 

So, try to be an alarm clock in the group instead of keeping quiet. Remember, the more actively you participate, the better results you'll get.  

Allow them to publish that Article on LinkedIn

Last but not the least, the latest secret to encouraging team members to deliver content is by giving them the opportunity to publish the articles on their personal LinkedIn profile. Some organizations might not feel too excited about this tactic, but believe me, I have seen excellent results by giving them the opportunity to write articles on their LinkedIn profiles. 

This tip will not only boost employee participation but also helps you expand your social networks.

The Final Verdict

Inspiring each individual to produce content within an organization is not easy. But if you follow the right strategy and approach, you can easily hit your targets.

Hopefully, the above tips shared from my personal experience will help you run your new content marketing campaign successfully by letting all the team members learn and grow the skills. But, still, if you want some expert advice, feel free to contact us.

So, what are you waiting for? Start investing more effort in your team to connect with them and align them with your goals. 

Editor: Richa Sharma

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