Engage and inspire with internal content marketing

The human brain thrives on stories. Not just telling stories but listening to them. Always has, always will. Stories put our world into a context our brains can understand. Stories let us know our place in the universe.

In simplistic terms, your content marketing tells true stories to the outside world proving that your company is good. As a result, customers want to buy from you and new employees want to work for you.

After a new customer buys from you, your marketing, social media engagement, and customer service continue to tell the customer that your company is good, and your customer is now good by being a partner, of sorts, with your company.

But what happens to the new employee? Who and what makes your new employees stay and become old employees? What prevents them from becoming one of the 42 million employees who leave to find other companies to work for?

The answer is quite simple, actually, but it takes work. You must do some internal marketing—take all your content marketing skills and aim them inward at your employees. You must take all the true stories you tell your customers and continue to tell them to your employees. But more than that, you must make your employees part of the story.

Internal content marketing works. While many think it is benefits and bonuses which retain employees (and hey, those aren’t bad!), the real key to employee retention is making employees realize and feel like they are an integral element of the company’s overall story. Content marketing directed inward.

U.S. business lose a collective $1 trillion every year due to the expenses of voluntary turnover and an additional “$960 billion to $1.2 trillion in lost productivity.” All because employees aren’t engaged in their workplace. And the thing is, it’s not hard at all to engage with employees.

When employees helped set their goals, they were almost four times as engaged in the company. Get managers to give employees constructive daily feedback, and they become three times more engaged. Both instances illustrate how valuable communication can make employees more invested in the company.

One of the most effective ways to keep employees feeling like they are an important part of the company is to feature them as such. These are the talented people who keep your business running, so leverage their awesomeness on your social media channels. Show them off to the world to make your competition jealous and your customers impressed. We had a client tell us that every time we published content for them on their site and in their newsletter which featured an employee, they’d get calls from customers wanting to work with the showcased employee. And what do you think that did to the employee’s engagement with the company? Through the roof!

The good thing is more businesses are using internal content marketing to engage their employees. According to a Gallup report, engagement is going up: In 2018, 34% of workers said they were “involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace.” That’s up from 16.5% just two years prior. But there’s still a lot of employees to engage.

It’s also a privilege if your work cares about you. When employees feel really wanted, they’ll spread the good word about your business all over the world. This will attract more new employees and more customers. So, in effect, your internal content marketing is a valuable extension of your external content marketing.