💼  Why nobody’s posting

Too many employee-generated content programs get off to an inauspicious start: Marketing hands everybody a script, a deadline, and maybe a Slack reminder. And then wonders why nobody’s posting. 

G2’s Jenny Gardynski has a different playbook entirely, and it starts with doing … less? 

Meet the Master

Jenny Gardynski

Senior director of content and communications, G2

Lesson 1: Don’t hand out the social kit on day one.

Every single person I’ve interviewed about EGC, or employee advocacy programs, agrees on one thing: Start with leadership.

Gardynski points out that if you start an employee advocacy program from scratch “and you try to throw all this guidance at employees with no build-up or proof points, it probably won’t resonate.”

But if your C-suite is regularly posting great content on LinkedIn, employees will be more motivated and inspired to do the same. 

Plus, employees need to know what they’re advocating for. Gardynski suggests creating a smaller cohort of people who get early access to new tools and can give feedback, so people can be “real advocates and ambassadors.” 

Build up as slowly as you need to. Maybe you start by asking people to engage with leadership’s LinkedIn posts. And then “maybe that builds to, ‘Here’s a sample post, if you want to share your own,’” says Gardynski. 

And — this is going to be a hard thing for marketers to hear — don’t start off trying to measure impact or ROI.

“Adoption,” she says, “should be your first metric.”

Steal this: Get three execs regularly posting on LinkedIn before you ask a single employee to.

Lesson 2: Give employees a menu, not a script.

“This one’s a double-edged sword,” Gardynski tells me. 

On the one hand, having pre-written copy that employees can paste and share is fast and easy for employees, and might make them more inclined to post.

But on the other hand … imagine if you opened up LinkedIn and saw 10 identical posts from the employees of Acme Corporation, all promoting the new Acme rocket skates. It’s like a hostage video with better messaging — “it's very obvious that marketing sent them this. This is not their own voice.”

Gardynski’s approach splits the difference. Instead of providing a master script, “we generally give a few different options or key messages, and a few different sample options to choose from, but we always encourage [employees] to personalize and customize.”

Steal this: Be a coach, not a copy machine.

Lesson 3: Train AI on your own best posts to find your voice. 

Gardynski created her own AI skill — “just kind of done ad hoc with ‘Okay, here's my 10 top performing LinkedIn posts. Use this to inform my voice.’ Pretty simple.” 

She’s working on something a little less simple, a tool that she’ll roll out to employees to help them define their own voices — “you just follow the steps, and it will create the voice. The feedback we’re getting is that it’s been pretty spot-on so far.”

And a word of caution from Gardynski and co-signed by yours truly: “AI content always needs human editing.”

Steal this: Start by feeding your best LinkedIn posts to your AI tool of choice, and ask it to define your voice in three or four adjectives. Then have it draft one post, and edit that by hand.

Lingering Questions

THIS WEEK'S QUESTION

B2B companies are full of people with deep expertise, yet their content can feel interchangeable. What have you learned about helping employees make that expertise interesting to people outside the company?

—Karina Martinez, CEO and co-founder, DRAFTED

THIS WEEK'S ANSWER

Gardynski says: I think what makes employee expertise stand out in their social content is the same thing that cuts through all content in the age of AI: It has to be personal and authentic. Anyone can generate expert-sounding content, but what actually breaks through is something that only you could say – insights rooted in your real experience and perspective.

When we encourage our employees to promote any content on social media, we’re looking for them to customize it to bring it back to why it matters for them (and their followers). Personal anecdotes and behind-the-scenes details are what make content more credible and interesting. 

For example, when we launched a new research report, instead of sharing it in a generic post, I explained how my team built it, which findings resonated with me most, and why. I’ve observed several of our employees do this well — sharing a custom demo following a product launch for customers, recapping an event they attended and what they learned, sharing a sales tactic that worked for them personally. None of these things is a generic copy/paste post or filled with marketing jargon buzzwords. 

NEXT WEEK'S LINGERING QUESTION

Gardynski asks: In your experience, what has been the biggest driver of employee advocacy adoption — the thing that has gotten more employees on board with being brand ambassadors and sharing their voices and experiences externally?