Don’t Outsource Your #1 Resource

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When I encourage leaders to go all-in sharing their Story, this is what they initially think I’m saying…

“So you want us to hire your
agency to do marketing for us…”

No, that’s not what I’m saying…

All-in on communicating your Story isn’t a function of outsourcing your communications. It’s more about finding the best and most efficient vehicle for sharing emotionally compelling stories that build brand, buy-in, and engagement.

And being 100% transparent, many times, the best and most efficient way to communicate your brand story has nothing to do with hiring or outsourcing to an agency.

It means empowering and supporting your people to share your Story. When you do this, you create an ARMY of Storytellers.

Why You Shouldn’t Outsource Your #1 Resource

First, let’s make clear what empowering “your people” to be Storytellers means. By your people, we mean two overlapping groups.

• Users: those who use your products and services. This group is shares UGC (User Generated Content)
• Employees: those who work for and with the company. This group is shares EGC (Employee Generated Content) 

And it almost sounds ridiculous to mention, but the most important part about these groups is that they include PEOPLE.

And we humans like people more than we like brands. We are far more likely to trust, like, and connect with other people.

The crazy thing is, it’s not even close with it comes to BRANDS vs. PEOPLE. 

But don’t take my word for it. Let’s dive into the data:

1️⃣ Brand and Influencer content isn’t as effective as user-generated content:

• Data shows that the effectiveness of influencer content is declining while user-generated content is growing. In fact, consumers find UGC (user generated content)  9x more impactful than influencer content. (Stackla, 2019)
  
• 79% of people say that user-generated content highly impacts purchasing decisions (Stackla, 2019).
  
• 84% of consumers value recommendations from friends and family above all forms of advertising.
  
• 77% of consumers are likely to make a purchase after hearing about it from someone they trust (Source: Nielsen).

2️⃣ Employees, on average, have many more followers than company social media accounts:

• On average, employees have 10 times more followers than their company’s social media accounts. And when you multiply this across the entire org, this amounts to potentially 10,000’s of untapped followers.

3️⃣  Employees brand messages are re-shared more:

• Brand messages are re-shared 24 times more frequently when distributed by employees through employee advocacy vs. the brand (Source: MSLGroup).
  
• Content shared by employees receives 8X more engagement than content shared by brand channels (Source: Social Media Today).

4️⃣ Leads developed through employee advocacy better convert than other channels

• Employee advocacy leads convert 7x more frequently than other leads (Source: IBM).

5️⃣ EGC is more effective, more relevant, and COSTS significantly less than other forms of content. 

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I encourage you to reach out here If you want to learn how to get started with Employee Generated and User Generated Content.

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