Your best content creators are already on the payroll!

By Ayanna Reyes

When brands need fresh social media content, their first instinct is usually to look outward. Find an influencer. Schedule a photoshoot. Spend an unreasonable amount of time scrolling through Instagram in the name of “research.” Meanwhile, some of the best post ideas might be brewing three desks away.

The more I work in this industry, the more I notice how much personality gets left behind when posts only focus on what the brand has to say. Employees have opinions, expertise, stories, and probably a few work-related hot takes they’ve been waiting to share. It’s an opportunity worth pursuing. 

Your team knows things.

Often, businesses make the process harder than it needs to be. Social can drive sales, for sure — but you have to address what scrollers are thinking about.

Don’t sit and wonder, “What should we post next month?” (Because you’re always planning ahead, right?) when you should be consulting the people around you — “What have our customers been asking lately?”

For example, an HVAC technician probably answers the same questions about air filters, strange noises, and suspiciously warm rooms all summer. A software developer knows which features are constantly overlooked. A skilled server knows exactly which menu items contain common food allergens. These professionals don’t need to be experts in broadcasting or filmmaking to be your brand’s content creators. They already have the interesting part — something worth talking about.

(And please, this does not mean gathering everyone in the break room and announcing that they’ll now be participating in TikTok dances. I’ve tried. Things got awkward quickly.)

Let your team sound authentic. 

You’ll find a key advantage to employee-generated content: It gives brands a chance to sound human.

The problem starts when you polish someone’s answer until it sounds like it went through six rounds of corporate approval. Somewhere along the way, the personality packs its bags and leaves.

Give people a prompt, not a script. Ask what they wish customers knew, or get a little messy and invite them to share an industry viewpoint they’ll defend forever. That’s usually where the good stuff is.

At WideFoc.us, we often ask our community managers, ad strategists, designers, and others to create videos about topics they’d genuinely love to talk about. For instance, one of our community managers shared real-world tips for tackling controversial topics on social media. The responses worked because they sounded like us — personality included.

Marketing can take it from there. 

Asking coworkers to contribute doesn’t mean handing them the social media passwords and wishing them luck. Make sure that you have the right policies, procedures, and style guidelines in place, and the right personnel taking ownership of quality control. Not everyone is going to know the ideal Reel length or why Instagram changed the dimensions again when we were all perfectly fine before. Leverage the abilities of those who are privy to this information. Staff can just tell their stories. Leave the algorithm-induced headaches to marketing — they will clarify what goals should be, how often to create these posts, and how they’re performing.

Start with the staff you already have, and add specialists as needed. 

Sometimes, the strongest concepts come from the people who already understand your business and hear directly from your customers every day. You might even discover that your receptionist is surprisingly good on camera, or someone in accounting has been waiting for a big break this entire time. Give them their moment! That’s what I enjoy about social media strategy. Sometimes the best ideas happen when you stop trying so hard to “come up with content” and start paying attention to what’s already happening around you. With all of that said, sometimes recruiting professionals with a proven track record of success goes a long way towards boosting a brand’s visibility. If you need help turning what your team knows into content your audience wants to see, let’s chat.

Community and Influencer Manager Ayanna Reyes has years of experience in social media marketing and influencer strategy. She genuinely enjoys building connections between brands and people, helping companies show up online in a way that feels natural. When she isn’t sourcing creators or managing campaigns, you can usually find her at the gym, planning her next trip, or playing pickleball.