EP 262 - From Employees To Advocates: How EGC Builds Trust And Drives Results

We dig into how employee-generated content turns everyday work into trust-building stories that outperform brand posts and lead to real pipeline. Xandrina allday shares frameworks, examples, and a clear mantra: empower, don’t enforce.

ABOUT YOUR TEACHER 💛

Xandrina is a Social Media Consultant, Trainer, UGC Creator, Author and Speaker with over a decade of experience helping brands turn scrolls into action. As founder of Allday Marketing, she works with businesses to build standout social strategies, train in-house teams, and create social-first content that connects. She’s led global social teams, delivered workshops worldwide, and produced UGC for lifestyle, food & drink, travel, and family-friendly brands.

Connect with Xandrina: LinkedIn

EGC quiz: click here

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Employee-Generated Content Matters
• 1:16 Meet Sandrina And The Plan For Today
• 6:19 Defining EGC Versus UGC
• 7:36 Client Case Study: Media Kit Relaunch
• 12:11 What We’d Change And Repeat
• 14:06 Starbucks And Currys: People First Creative
• 17:22 Empower, Don’t Enforce Participation
• 20:29 Unprompted EGC On LinkedIn Milestones
• 24:00 Turning Moments Into Scalable Series
• 27:04 Remote Team Stories That Build Trust
• 30:06 Choosing Advocates And Content Pillars
• 34:12 Long-Form Storytelling On YouTube
• 37:04 Systems And Workflow For EGC
• 40:12 LinkedIn Video Campaign: Shaping Science
• 44:12 Measuring Impact: Top And Bottom Funnel
• 49:20 Overcoming Hesitation With Training
• 52:22 Recruiter Risk And Retention Reframe

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

What if your most powerful brand advocates were already on your payroll? What if building trust online wasn't about hiring creators but empowering your own team to tell the story Hey Rebel, welcome back to All Marketing School. I am Fab, your marketing BFF and head teacher at the school. In today's class, social media consultant Sandrina All Day dives into the world of employee-generated content in EGC and how to turn your team into a pending branded advocate. Together we explore how to identify what an EGC strategy could look like for you or your clients, how to tap into what's already happening organically, and how to measure whether it's really working. You'll hear real life examples, fresh ideas for building advocates instead of forcing participation. And my favorite takeaway from the class is you can only empower, not enforce. To watch the full replay with QA worksheets and every class and session recording, head to the link in the show notes and find out more about the all access pass. May today's class begin. Thank you so much, Alexandrina, for being here with me today on this fine day, with us on this fine day to talk about employee-generated content. I had no idea that there's actually five different acronyms for EGC that are all different things, one of which is also crypto related. I learned this the hard way as I was doing research for this session. So um, it's not crypto we're gonna talk about today, everybody. Just in case you're starting to panic, we are gonna be talking about employees and how to make the most of what we're trying to build with our strategy, which is mainly based on content and obviously storytelling over anything else. I will not talk too much about myself, I will actually get the lovely Sandrina herself to introduce herself, and also uh we're gonna play the game after that of the two truths one lie. So, Sandrina, may you just tell us a bit more about yourself and your journey? And then I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna read out loud and I'm gonna ask you which one is the lie and which one's are the two truths. Are you thinking about it yourselves?

SPEAKER_01: 2:19

Okay, hello everyone, and thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here to talk about EGC today. It's a topic I'm very passionate about. But uh, in a nutshell, a little bit about me. I have been working in social media for 10 years now, which is actually crazy because I think that makes me sound much older than I am. Um, but that is how long I've been around working in the space and I absolutely love it. I um this year started my own agency, all day marketing. So I'm the founder of that, and I cover every topic you can imagine within the social media space. I love it. I could talk about it all day on any topic. So that is kind of why we're here today, obviously, to talk about EGC. I've also been nominated for a social media award, which is actually on Wednesday, the award. So fingers crossed for that. I'm the author of Dear Social Media Manager. So if you haven't heard of the book and you are interested in learning more about social media, then definitely get a copy of that. And yeah, I guess without going into too much personal details, we'll go into Two Truths and a Lie, and then you can find out a little bit more about me on the personal side as well.

SPEAKER_00: 3:26

Which one is a lie? One, Sandrina started working in social media over 10 years ago. Chavu. She has a pet miniature pig. Three, she's currently doing a second house renovation. I would love for people to think about it, think about it hard, and then we'll have the answer. Is it one, is it two, is it three? Because Andrina.

SPEAKER_01: 3:50

I gave you all a little my rule worn out straight away, didn't I? So number one is true, and number three is also true. We are doing our second house renovation, and we might be crazy, but it will be worth it in the long run. And I wish I had a pet miniature pig, but unfortunately that is not true.

SPEAKER_00: 4:05

Oh my god, if you could have any any pet, would that be the one that you would chose if we could have any pet you wanted? Or is it more because it just sounded really cute?

SPEAKER_01: 4:13

Oh, it sounds cute. I mean, I'd have a farm if I could, but um, I love animals. No, we are desperate for a dog, but again, we can't have a plantable house renovation still, even though my kids do pester me on the daily for any kind of animal. But yeah, currently we are petless, but one day I'm sure we'll end up with a few.

SPEAKER_00: 4:31

Love that. And that day we're all gonna be on LinkedIn looking at your gorgeous new puppy and a pet miniature pink that comes with that as well. We're gonna do like we might as well do the farm, we might as well start it. That's all I'm saying. Exactly. Thank you so much again for being here with us today. And without getting too distracted by cute animals, which kind of makes sense since we're talking about social. And hey, even office pops are they're not employees, but you can kind of say they're part of office life. Um, what we're gonna cover today, I'm just gonna give us a bit of a run-through. There's a couple of things that I we want to leave you with. One is definitely how to help employees feel confident when it comes to creating content. I think that's incredibly important, but also identifying advocates and the diverse voices that we want to use within our strategy and also potentially some prompt and themes and even a bit of systems, because that's my love language. If you never met me before, hi, my name is Fab. I love systems. Definitely talking about how to incorporate yet a new avenue of content creation, but also comms, I think. There's a lot of more communication than we think and analysis and measurement. I have another quiz that is not for Centrea to answer just yet, especially if uh we looked at it before and you might know the answer. But employee generated content gets more engagement, which is amazing. Can we guess in 2025 how much more engagement would that be than general bland led content? Is it twice more? Is it five times more? Is it eight times more? Let's see if we can guess it. I am gonna indeed, I just like this bad boy. It is indeed eight times more, and I know it sounds big, it probably is because it is quite big, and it really jumped out at me to think about that. Human content, shock and horror, actually gets a lot more engagement and potentially even a lot more recognition as well. What is EGC? I'm just gonna break this down first very briefly for us before we get into a real example because I think that's where the magic happens. And Sandrina provided us with some. Just to explain to you the difference between user-generated content, which is the you and employee generated content, in that user-generated content can be customers, users, even creators, I would argue, that might use your products and services, right? So a lot of it is showcasing the experience of your brand from a consumer-led perspective. Whereas EGC, I think one of the reasons why it broke down and stepped away from user-generated content is because it became its own thing, right? And it's really about the people that work with you or for you, right? So it's more about the behind-the-scene action company culture, humans behind the brand. I just wanted to explain that. So the examples that we're going to bring here today and the conversation that we're going to have is really about that type of content, the one that forces us to engage more with customers. So before I should get into a couple of examples, I wanted to ask you, Alexandrina, yourself, can you give us one example of what you have seen that has been working or changes or positive results from companies, maybe clients, maybe companies you work with before that embraced employee-generated content.

SPEAKER_01: 7:37

One of my clients, we you know, they always promote their media kits from a corporate perspective, you know, on LinkedIn, that kind of thing. So they'll say, you know, we've got a new media kit that, you know. But often posts like that actually can be quite dull. And unless you know the company, you've been working with them, or that is actually something you're looking for, you probably aren't going to engage with that kind of post. We had to think about how can we position the launch of this new media kit, which also had new products in it. So it was quite an exciting time for the client. And they wanted to launch it and have a bit more personality and do something that was really going to pique people's interest and not just be a post that they're going to scroll past, especially on LinkedIn coming from the corporate page. So, first of all, they identified that you know, this is something that a lot of the team do want to speak about, especially the sales teams, because obviously that could generate leads for them, but also the wider teams, the supporting teams, like the marketing and the editorial teams. How can they then use this as a piece of content and make it their own? So we we created some imagery with the team. We actually got a giant media kit, like a physical copy printed, and it was like huge, absolutely huge. And we got that printed and we used it as a bit of a prop to create the imagery for the campaign. And then everybody had a selection of images they could choose from. So within the team, they could choose an image that worked for them. And then we gave them provided copy, but also encouraged them to tweak that as long as they had the call to action and the main points. We wanted them to use their tone of voice for this campaign, and that generated so many more leads than a normal media kit campaign would ever do because there was the personalized element, every individual tailored the post to them. And then sales had, you know, a ton of new leads. Some were existing clients and then some were new clients, but that then gave them a place where they could start that conversation. So, you know, what did was there anything that jumped out to you? Did you see the new products, that kind of thing? Whereas beforehand, they would have only got potentially a few downloads, whereas this gave them a lot more by doing it in that personable way, which is just great.

SPEAKER_00: 9:43

I have one follow-up question to that, which is a double question. So I'm going to start with we're going to start with the challenges, with the lessons. If there's one thing you now with Insight would have done differently about this campaign, and it doesn't have to be even about the content, it can be about anything from the behind the scenes to what will happen. What would it be? The one change that you would make.

SPEAKER_01: 10:08

So we did do two posts. The second time we did a post, there was actually less people who partook within the team. But I think maybe having more, so making it, you know, drip feeding that and giving different takes of it. So as well as having that, you know, could we use that imagery in a different way? Perhaps maybe using some of the videos and the B-roll and that kind of thing. So essentially stretching the campaign for as much as we could because we had that initial positive lift with the campaign. Normally, what we see with any type of content in marketing, not just EGC, is if something works well once, it works well again. So we should just be, you know, repurposing that content as as much as we can.

SPEAKER_00: 10:51

What if you want to do this again? What would be the one thing that you would make 100% sure you do it exactly the same, but if not, just almost the same?

SPEAKER_01: 11:01

I would say I loved bringing something that's normally a digital product to life. I mean, you know, normally actually saying that they do print physical copies, right? But they, you know, we never print something like this. So very much taking something and being like, how can we make this very different? So again, the the visual hook on social media is strong, not just you know, the copywriting, but what's going to make people be like, well, that's not something I expected to see in my feed, without being gimmicky as well. So I think, you know, it had it sat on that really nice line of being like, that's getting that natural intrigue. And I think that's what you can have fun with with EGC campaigns, which is different to just the campaigns that you'd put out from the brand perspective.

SPEAKER_00: 11:48

Love that. Thank you very much. And now we are gonna jump two feeds in first into a real life examples of campaigns. I did bring an example of some great employee generated content that I found. But first, Sandrina gave us a bit of sugar and spice from some examples that she loves. So we actually have I love that image, which of what I think is a video, so you might tell us through kind of what the video is about, but I love that it says mischievous music. So the first thing we see is a lady in Starbucks drinking a drink or about to drink a drink with mischievous, mischievous hello word music said there as well. And it says, When people tell me I need to lower my coffee consumption, which as a coffee lover, I a hundred percent resonate. If there's any other coffee lover, please uh give me a reaction, let me know that I'm not alone. Anyway, I was gonna say, tell us a bit more. What do you love about this and how did you come up with this and where did you find it?

SPEAKER_01: 12:43

Yeah, so I absolutely love this. Um, I I am a Starbucks girl, so I am familiar with their channels myself, but they created this campaign and it spans multiple platforms. So this video is actually taken from TikTok specifically, but essentially they've been putting their baristas, they've been putting their employees at the forefront of their socials, which is amazing. And you see this across all channels, they take a slightly different position for TikTok than they do to Instagram, but there's definitely a lot more people in their content across all platforms, which is great to see. But for this campaign specifically, it's called To Be a Partner, and people are basically showcasing their daily life, things that they find funny, conversations that they are having with the customers. So it's very personable. It is very much the interactions that people are having that are working, you know, in the coffee shops. And I think the Starbucks are trying to reframe, you know, their positioning and not just be about the fact that they're a big chain. And obviously, you know, we're gonna get Starbucks, but it's also people are buying from people at Starbucks, and it's it's recognizing the humanized element to essentially people run these coffee shops and putting that back into the content. So, as well as being able to see what the new range is from Starbucks, you can see who is making your drinks and their favorite things and just the humour, and like you said, Bab, that you love coffee, and I'm the same, I absolutely love it. I I feel like it is part of my personality, how much I love coffee. So I really see myself in the content, and I think if you can make people feel seen in content, then they're gonna stick around, which is obviously the aim of the game when you're on social media.

SPEAKER_00: 14:28

And I love this because it goes back to another uh favourite of mine when it comes to employee generated content, so you're not gonna be shocked when I mention this, which is uh curry PC World in the UK, because they came up with putting their uh employees, the people in the auction shop, obviously is a tech kind of like PC tech, kind of big electronic shopping can use and no curries, and they just put their employees, the people that are there, helping on the floor at the forefront. And I think that was probably one of the first brands, at least that I've seen, because obviously I do a lot of marketing, which means I'm not only looking at social and trends, that's people like Sandrina that do this really well. But that's probably the first brand that I've seen doing it not from a B2B perspective very well, but from a B2C perspective. So that's another example that comes to mind uh with me, which I'm sure you saw them as well, right?

SPEAKER_01: 15:18

Yeah, yeah, they're doing great, great stuff. I love it. They're very like tongue-in-cheek what curries are doing, and you know, even like I've seen ones where someone's being like, Oh, can I order a curry? And they're like, No, it's curries, but it's not that kind of curry. And it's just very fun. And again, it's humanizing their marketing, uh, it's making noise, it's getting a bigger portion of share of voice in the social media space against their competitors because they're you know differentiating themselves to their competitors. So I think they're doing a great job, both curries and and the agency that they work with as well.

SPEAKER_00: 15:54

With the brand, there has got obviously it's a it's not a franchise, but it's got lots of stores or it's got lots of employees, and it's something that is harder for some of us as marketers to fully not even control, but manage and coordinate. And there's a lot we're gonna see in a second that goes into building a nice system and process for this. What would you say is the only thing that we want to be mindful of, keep in mind, or even do to make something like this work for the scale of a huge company?

SPEAKER_01: 16:21

I think I guess recognizing, I think this actually is something that applies for big and small companies, to be honest, is you can't enforce EGC. You can only empower people, right? So you're gonna have your early adopters, the people who absolutely want to be in content and or want to take part or are happy to share their thoughts, their opinions, their ideas. But especially when we think about video content, not everybody wants to be in video content, and that's where we get with some of the biggest hesitations with my clients is people don't want to show up on camera and that kind of thing. And it definitely takes a specific type of person, a specific skill set, and that can be learned. And you know, confidence is something that I think builds over time, but essentially don't expect everybody to partake, you know, with curries if they wanted to get content from every store. Well, every store might not have people that are willing to be in content. So there might be one store perhaps that is the store that they get all their content from, you know, and it might not be something that they do with every store. They might have identified a store which has a lot of people who are willing to be in that, or there might be the situation where they actually have a team and they might be from different locations in curries, but they actually get them together for a content shoot day. You know, that could be the situation. It might not be actually that all of these work from the same branch. They might have just put their names in the hat and said, actually, I'd like to partake in this, and then getting them together. So I think it's identifying the people who are willing and obviously empowering and encouraging them, and then other people tend to follow because they see you know the successes and other people doing it, and then people will be intrigued, and then the conversation starts with them thereafter.

SPEAKER_00: 18:04

Amazing. And that, as you said, I'm obsessed with the fact that you iterated how it doesn't matter the scale of the company. Like, I think it's probably the poor court of the chat for now is you can only empower, you cannot enforce it. I'm sure there will be more, but that's the one that jumps out right now. Love that one, put it in my pocket. Um, another example of EGC, which in this case feels almost unprompted. It's actually not prompted, but it sounds like it is because Ruth Ann is actually celebrating uh her 10 years at the company called Quilik.

SPEAKER_01: 18:40

Quilik, I think it is. I don't know if I actually pronounced that right, but yeah. Um, we might have completely butchered the company. Yeah, okay. But essentially, a lot of people are creating content for companies, and I think it's slipping under the radar and not being noticed. And a lot of people do this, especially on LinkedIn, they celebrate their achievements, they celebrate their promotions, their work anniversaries, they might have delivered on a specific project and every now and then share those key moments. And that is EGC. And yes, you might not have a dedicated program, but it doesn't mean it's not happening, and it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be noted and highlighted and celebrated when it does happen. So even if you you're not in a position to run an EGC program at full scale, and full scale again for every company can be very different, but you could make a note of this. So if you're in the social media team or you're in the marketing team, just note down who is creating content when they are, repost it, comment on it from the brand account, show them some love from the brand's point of view and note this down, note how many reactions they get, if they get a few comments, even reach out to that person and say, Could you share the impressions with that post me? We'd be really interested to learn more. And also thank you so much for doing this. Because again, you know, she could be an early adopter in this program that you later then build out. So it's about recognition too. And I think this is a perfect example of this. Is probably not part of the strategy, but it's very off the cuff, very genuine. But it also shines a spotlight on the brand because at the end of the day, if someone's celebrating their 10-year anniversary with your company in 2025, wow, that is something to be celebrated. A lot of people don't stick around in companies for that long. So straight away, that's like, okay, there's a reason she stayed, and there's got to be some good things about this company that we want to talk about. So then also that could trigger content from your brand's profiles and platforms. But how could you then turn that into her story and why she's worked there for 10 years? What do you love about the company? What made her stay? People would care about that both internally and externally, and then you've got more content for your channels too.

SPEAKER_00: 20:56

We have a problem, everybody. So you're not giving me too many things now that I want to ask about. It's a real issue because I want to cover every single point that you made, and they're all different and all lead me to a different place. But I shockingly know what's coming up next, so I can actually select the follow-up for this that I have before we jump into the next example. A lot of people sometimes, even marketers, which again, we are I believe in the business of humans. That's that's my thing, I guess. I wrote a book about it, so I guess that's why I think about this, but um, but sometimes we still overthink it and we don't step back and be like, okay, let's actually think about the individual and how can we acknowledge and recognize? And then as you said, it might be the springboard for something else. And I think it's so important. So I wanted to iterate that because I will I love that. Um, and the other thing that the thing that I wanted to ask you was do you feel that if we want to go into that and explore that as something that can turn into a more call it systematized, but I mean like a more structured part of the strategy? Would you find that this content can be easier or harder, or maybe it doesn't really matter when it comes to we talked about obviously creating content with like a shoulday, or maybe just creating content that is more about interviews? Is there something that we can take from this and then turn it into a series? Almost kind of doing the opposite of coming up with a concept. Can we take this and turn it into a concept?

SPEAKER_01: 22:17

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love that idea. I think definitely like those milestones for our people. I mean, we sometimes they are acknowledging companies, right? Sometimes they're not. But um, I think a lot of companies do like to celebrate, especially when people have long tenure. But we and also like things like new starters. Some of the teams I work with, every time they have a new starter, they do a profile internally, and then some of those clients are now sharing those profiles externally. This person's joined our team, here's a bit about them. This is the things they like, this is what they're going to be working from. Please give them a warm welcome. That you know, if you might be a potential client of them, that kind of thing, then they're look really looking forward to getting to know you. So that's just a natural part of companies' uh businesses, but why not turn it into content? Because regardless of what any business does, we are all selling something. We're selling a product, we're selling a service, and there are people behind that. So if you're making a product, if you're selling a product, if again, if you're behind the scenes of a service, if you're the one delivering service, there are people in every business that is the foundation of every single business. So there is so much content that we could share about behind the scenes, about milestones, but also the big and small milestones, right? It doesn't have to be a celebration of um a work anniversary or something like that. It could be something about this really matters to this person because they've been working on this for six months and they finally sorted this process for the business. And that means we can actually save you costs as a consumer on your packaging because of this person's hard work. How amazing is this? Like you will save two pounds on your delivery costs with us now because this person has been working really hard, working with different suppliers to ensure we get the best costs for you. What an amazing story that would be! And that's just off the top of my head. But everyone would care about that, both internally and externally, which is exactly the kind of thing you should be sharing.

SPEAKER_00: 24:18

So, what we're trying to say is you might have to slip into their DMs. First of all, we need to learn how to pronounce the name of the company, otherwise, it could be an issue. But I think you already got some ideas for these guys. That's all I'm gonna say. U L I K, just in case. Uh, I'm not gonna butcher their name again, but I would say I think you got ideas for them. I will share them. And also, I wish I could say we synced on this, but actually, this is Fab being Fab, and Fab is me. Having an idea and remembering of somebody on Instagram, because that's another channel, right? That actually does incredibly well this and just plonking this extra uh example in that Sandrina has no idea about. So I'll talk you through this and then I'll ask you a question on it because it works well with um what uh you just mentioned, Sandrina, which is about the behind the scenes of the team and say, like, well, there's newspapers or anything else. And um, so shout out to Lidavi Social, which is a social media um uh agency that operates all around the world. I was trying to think about that bit, which you can see because they have a small but growing team that is all across the world and they really make it a big part of what they do. And if I had to say that they have a content pillar, if I had to guess, I would say that one of the pillars, if they use them, would definitely be team-related behind the scene content, which I think it's a real strength because on social, when it comes to Instagram, not all uh agencies and teams do that as much. The two examples that I love they do quite a lot of that. I think that's why I say it's a pillar because it's a lot of content that is about the team and not just what they do, the wins, like uh Sandrina mentioned, big or small, for clients and they're off, but they also show us you know a day in the life of one of them, like Ash, the social media manager, which obviously involves her dog as well, because we wouldn't love that, and cookies, which is even better as a good combo. And they also do a welcome to our office, a carousel they did, which I loved, where every single team member would share a little something about them and some of the things that they have in their own office, because obviously they all work remotely in different countries. Uh, so whether it's dogs, again, a notebook, a mouse, which I love because I have a trackpad, which is the my version of a mouse, and I cannot imagine my life without one. So, little things like that, they kind of give you that personal behind the scenes, which I think is so important when you're working with a team that, in one way or another, is going to have a touch point with you, whether it is the account manager, as you say, sometimes it's just somebody that actually, for example, takes care of the packaging or the delivery, whatever it is. And in this case, I think it's really powerful because it is somebody who will be managing your socials, is one of the people that will be actually your main point of call and you get to know them. And that's what I think. And I want to hear Xandrina's opinion. Let's be honest, you are we're all strapped up with time. If you're hiring an agency, you aren't hiring them to, I mean, it's lovely to have a chat, but to save you time. So you're probably not gonna have the time to ask them about their dogs or what's their favorite drink. But if you follow them on social as well, if you want to work with them, you get to know them a bit better, which I think is such a nice little human touch there in a very busy world. Sometimes we don't get to do, and especially in a remote world. So, what are your thoughts? This is why I love it. This is what jumped out at me, and I think it can be so fresh and refreshing as a visual medium in this case, obviously, very strongly for so many companies and in so many ways. What are your thoughts about these examples from uh Leadavi Social?

SPEAKER_01: 27:40

Yeah, I absolutely love them. And actually, again, with some of my clients, we've created similar concepts. We've done day in the life from the team, and they've shared like snippets from their day, and we've kind of had this side by side so that people can see what each of the people in different teams get up to, you know, a time stamps and that kind of thing. And I think it's really nice because again, it's giving a sneak peek behind the curtain and it makes you fundamentally it builds trust. And if you're in a business where, especially primarily when it's B2B, if you're connecting with other businesses, you're relationship building. So if you can build trust with people in advance, you're then going to potentially create inbound leads later on for your company, you're going to have warm leads, you know, warm contacts, and not always be relying on like cold help outreach and cold leads for your business. You're going to be creating that trust with the people who are in your community and in your audience, which is obviously what we all want to do.

SPEAKER_00: 28:39

In this case, I give us an example that probably most of the team is part of the actual concept and idea and everything. But as somebody very wise who might be the person I'm chatting with today said earlier, see, my brain is mum brain, but I still remember things. You can empower, not enforce, which I believe in. So, how do we empower the right employees? How do we empower the right people? A couple of thoughts that I had that I wanted to spitball before I pass it to you to tell us what you think as well, is that there are some people that you mentioned actually in a few of the examples we brought up today that might be natural advocates, and you can spot them just like our lovely Ruth Ann in the example of celebrating your milestone of 10 years at the company. I think also it's interesting to look at different roles in a variety of ways, whether it's the leadership role, whether it's what they do, whether it's uh their seniority. I think there can be a lot of power in that, and sometimes we tend to almost uh not think about it, almost, I think stereotype a bit. This is me coming and saying, like, oh yeah, it's only gonna be some of the youngest employees or the interns. Is that not? It doesn't have to be. And definitely something also thinking about who our audience might be benefit from hearing from. And I think that goes back to the question and your thoughts, and not just about how we choose the right employees, but also how do we choose the right employees thinking about. About who's gonna be best suited, but also how is this gonna fit with the concept? You know, it's like the chicken and the egg. Do the people come first? Does the concept come first, or is it a case-to-case sort of scenario here?

SPEAKER_01: 30:13

I think it is kind of both at the same time. And I think if you are going to be running campaigns or creating an EGC program, then you need to think about what your goals are essentially. What kind of things do you want to talk about? It goes back to you know marketing strategy 101. What are your content pillars, right? So what are your content pillars going to be for your EGC strategy? It's no different. So you need to be thinking about that and have that idea. However, I would argue in most cases, um, if anybody is willing to be part of your EGC program, which hopefully you'll have a percentage that are, then they will be willing to share their insights on any of those topics because there will be, you know, even if it's just to amplify the reach essentially of the conversation that you want to have, yes, they own their own channels. So if we're putting it through their channels, but if they are representing the company and especially if they're in a customer-facing role, they should want to talk about these things because it should matter to them. But again, we can't enforce, we can only empower, and that's something I'll always come back to. But I think with building the people who are going to become your employee, you know, advocates, your employee ambassadors, whatever, whatever you want to, however, you want to phrase the people who are doing this, you you do need to have people to be able to put this content out, essentially, and to feature in this content, because without them, there is no EGC strategy at all. It's just content, isn't it? And then you're you're missing the employees. So you definitely need to make sure that you're creating your group of advocates or raving fans, as I do like to come call them from time to time, which is one of my favourite marketing books, which I highly recommend because I do think the Raving Fans book is very applicable for employee-generated content. I think there's a lot of synergies there.

SPEAKER_00: 32:06

Agreed. I think your fans can and will be found in sometimes the most surprising places. So definitely that could also be internally, we just think about externally so much. So the question that I have for you, as I'm going to get into now one of my favorite things, which is the concept piece and this processes things very briefly. If you were to pick one person that you want to feature first or approach first or talk to first, who would it be and why? Something for you to think about. If you're like, I want to do this and I'm not on my own, or I have a client that I want to do this with, who would be that first person that you would approach and why? Have a letter think about that, especially as we're building on and on onto this. And with that, now I want to cover, as I said, systems but also concepts. So, very briefly, I find that themes a bit of a structure, and also trying to keep it authentic, which some of us may roll our beautiful eyes at because authenticity can mean so many gorgeous things, but also I think sometimes it's a bit like, what does it actually mean? But they are important now. The theme can help for me, at least, also with simplicity sometimes, straight lining, keeping things to the point. The structure is what I'm feeling strongly about because we got lots of things to do. If you're a marketer, you have enough on your plate, unless you hire a beautiful agency, like all day, for example, you're gonna have to do it all yourself, at least to start with, or you have to do some of it yourself. So, structure can help. And the authenticity, then my final point about this is think about it as sometimes we almost start with the production as the main thing we want to think about, and funny enough, UZC and uh EZC. Jesus, employee and user-generated content are actually very easy for us to tap into by just thinking about getting a phone out and just do the thing instead of overcomplicating it. So, with that in mind, when I asked you, uh Sandrina to pick some more campaigns that you got inspired by, you chose uh this uh Sanovi one, and that is who ignites your potential. I think is a great example that you can bring up for us to show us a real life concept. So, what did you love about this campaign?

SPEAKER_01: 34:13

Well I loved about this is I also think with this one it's interesting because they've chosen a different platform that I think than most would think to go to potentially, which is YouTube. So they've got a series of videos which is obviously under the title of Who Ignites Your Potential, and essentially it is their you know their internal stories. So it is all about you know the people who fundamentally make up the business, which which is the case for everybody, but it they're doing it in a storytelling manner, which I think is so important. And I always come back to storytelling in marketing as a whole, not just with EGC. So I think that telling these stories in long-form content really gets you to know these people in more depth, but also understand their stories and about them. And it's more about lifestyle is the wrong word, but it's about the breadth of who they are, the company, it's it's much more than just the surface level than what you see from most branded corporate accounts. So I think that's what's nice about actually going into YouTube and using it as a platform anyway for EGC. I think it's a different narrative. And then obviously, depending on the type of video content, you could then potentially repurpose that and turn it into shorts. So I think they've done something incredibly clever here, leaning into the storytelling angle, but also choosing YouTube as their platform.

SPEAKER_00: 35:38

Also, whether we do short form or long form and very clever to think about the combination of the two as well, with a form, you know, with something like YouTube and video content. I like systems, I like processes. I'm sorry, everybody. And they're normal for everybody, and I understand that whatever your flow is, I think understanding that we all have some sort of flow, it's really important. And your process might be incredibly, incredibly simple. Um, the one that worked when I worked uh myself at an agency was to think about five points, sounds like a knot, but actually the acronym will be CAM with two C's and two A's, so it will not work. But it's something along the lines of um we would first of all get people to create the content, then we'll curate it, but actually choosing and selecting a bit more, then we might do the adapting if needed, and then there will be the amplifying, which is where you distribute, and also you would measure as well what works. I also say there should be an extra C in there, to be honest. This is the simplest thing that you can do that actually can be quite structured, but I think you can also add another C at the end. So it's CAMC, which is the celebrating at the end. I'm just gonna steal it from what Sandrina mentioned earlier. So then you create that feedback loop with uh your ribbon fans, as you said, and you also celebrate it. Even if your process is a bit simpler, uh for a lot of people, it's at least five steps. And I think even when it comes to employee-generated content, there is this weird thing that we think, oh, it's just asking people to do a video. Whether you're doing the heavy lifting or you're asking your employees to do a bit more, it's more than you think. So I think this is my my part of the lesson here is it's always more than you think. So map it out, write it down, look at it. And if you've got nothing, ask yourself what would it look like for me. What are some of your thoughts about processes as well? Uh before we get into one more example that you brought us.

SPEAKER_01: 37:30

I think they are so important. I mean, I think processes are important in every aspect of business, every aspect of marketing, and then definitely with EGC as well. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of processes myself. I think you processes are fundamental because you essentially, as well as having the people that you want in your program, there is somebody who's going to naturally take this on and be the leader essentially of this as a project. Probably going to be someone within social or the marketing team that manages the EGC, you know, program. And therefore, you're going to have to have processes and systems in place to enable the sharing of content, the communication of ideas, the communication of feedback, how are you going to measure your insights from these campaigns? Are you going to be doing that manually? Are you going to use a tool? So figuring out your processes for all of this is so important because there's a lot of different elements to make a successful EGC program work, essentially.

SPEAKER_00: 38:32

And we have one final example as well, which is about is from LabEx Media Group and is about science. And I love the fact it's on LinkedIn and it's about science, something that I know very little about. So tell us a bit more about the post that you loved from Anita. Why did you love it? What is it about, and what does it teach us about uh employee-generated content?

SPEAKER_01: 38:54

So I'm very biased because LabX are LabEx Media Group are one of my clients, and this is a campaign um that I put together. The um the idea and the concept behind this one essentially was shaping science is one of their products. So it's a video product and it's a video first product for LinkedIn. So it's a LinkedIn video product that they've created, and I thought, okay, how are we going to promote this? Obviously, LinkedIn is one of the perfect choices because it's a LinkedIn product that we've created, but also how can we get our people in it and how can we really think about this idea and this narrative of shaping science, which as a company, they are shaping science, but also all the clients that they work with are shaping the future of science and discoveries and research. So it's an incredible industry as a whole. But what was so nice about this campaign is I had this idea and I didn't know if it was going to land and I didn't know what people were going to think about it, and they were so receptive in every aspect that I said, why don't we talk about it? And just to have it really simply, we created a short form video, and the short form video said, you know, we I think I can't remember which order we did it, but essentially, we are creating we are shaping science, you are shaping science, together we are shaping science. And what we had is every individual who took part of this campaign, they filmed themselves saying those phrases. And then we, the social team, edited it together, and then we put together this snippet, and that was kind of like our promotional trailer, as such, for this product. And it was just such a different way to launching a new product than the company had done previously, and it just felt so natural with it being a LinkedIn first product to do it this way, and it just was incredible. The response that every individual had for sharing it. Um, Anita was part of one of the sales teams. Everybody had a great response, whether they were in sales or not, if they're in marketing or different elements of the company, it just was really, really well received by everybody. And we all posted on the same day, and it just really did create this ripple effect, so much noise. We were all commenting and it just grew and it snowballed, and we had amazing, amazing discussions, conversations, and that did lead to sales off the back of that campaign, which is incredible.

SPEAKER_00: 41:12

Talking about sales, or not be remiss if I didn't ask one final question, which is about measuring impact. There can be lots of metrics, there can be result metrics like engagement, sentiment, and all these good things, but it can also be performance metrics like participation, content, volume, and all the good things in there as well. My question to you is what would be if you had to pick two most important metrics for you to measure impact and that most employee generated content campaigns should focus on, which ones would it be? Which one would be the top two that you would choose?

SPEAKER_01: 41:45

I think we should go for top of funnel and bottom of funnel and think about it from those aspects. Um really you'd want a middle of the funnel, but if we're gonna go to, I'd say top of funnel, thinking about your impressions and your reach. So, how you know what is the volume of that? What does that look like? And also then comparing those metrics to your brand channel metrics, because I think it would be interesting to just look at the disparities between the two. And then for bottom of the funnel, I think looking at you know what pipeline that essentially brings in, what leads that brings in, whether that's you know, in um a new email for your email list, or whether that is a sales lead, like thinking about that bottom and the bottom of the funnel and thinking about you know what where it's going to impact the business the most.

SPEAKER_00: 42:26

And again, they will always be different. Like remember that whenever you're looking at any kind of campaign, they'll always be different. But I think looking at all of this is such a nice combination. I also love the idea of kind of looking at um, it's less of a hard metric, it's less of a metric or impact. But once again, refreshing who is um willing to do the content, who is enjoying it, who has been all of these things can really help you to understand also who is being part of the program. And I think personally I would say it's okay if some people might not be the right fit or they might just try, but it might not be for them. It's really about empowering, not enforcing. This has become, as I said, the port course of the day for a reason because I think it's really important too. So, a couple of things that we covered today, we definitely looked at focusing on less is more and finding the right people that we can empower. And then you can always expand and explore other things. And hopefully, with the examples that we brought you today, you've got, like, in my opinion, some great examples of type of structure and even kind of authentic ways to take what might be already there, or just think outside the proverbial box sometimes. And sometimes the concepts will come from the right employees or from what happens outside of your plans as life happens. Don't forget to start building a process, as doesn't matter how simple it is, whether it is you know starting from creation all the way to measurement, what does need to happen in between to make it successful for you? And something that Sandrina mentioned quite a few times is don't forget to celebrate the impact and share with your people as you go along. The other thing that I wanted to mention as we're wrapping up the class in itself is Sandrina does have as well as her LinkedIn, which will get you to remind us where it is, EGC. Honestly, I love acronyms, but they they do my head in. He has a lovely quiz that you can also check out as well if you want to, if you want to figure out how to make this type of strategy work for you specifically. So why don't you tell us about where can people find out more about you on the linked to the in and also about your quiz too, please? Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 44:28

Um, so if people want to connect with me, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can search my name, which is Sandrina Alday, it starts with the next, and or you can just search social media tips on LinkedIn, and that is my handle on there. And then I have created a new quiz, which essentially um it has it's really quick, it takes less than five minutes, but it will give you personalized insights on how you should build your EGC strategy and areas you need to focus on because every company is stronger in some areas than others. So when you're thinking about how I'm gonna build this out, um, what does that look like? Even if you're just in the idea stage and you want to pitch this to your team, your C-suite, if you take the quiz, it's going to give you more personalized insights on where to start, how to start. So take a look at that. Fab's got the link, and she hopefully, yeah, you'll be able to access that. But for anyone listening, it is egcstrategy.scoreapp.com. So you can access it there. And yeah, hopefully you'll find it valuable. But if you have any more questions on EGC, feel free to message me on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00: 45:34

Thank you so, so, so much for being here with us today. So, sending you all the love as well. If you are with us right now, I'm just gonna send lots of love. Thank you for taking the time to answer all of my questions. I appreciate that. My questions, I'm not the only ones. I'm gonna prioritize live Amy's, and then I've got two more from Eleanor from the classroom who couldn't be here with us today. So she was like, Oh, can you please ask these questions? Of course I have the lovely Amy who's here with us, which I think it's probably something that will cover what a lot of people are thinking anyway, which is uh working with high trust companies, but they are actually quite hesitant to do this, and especially their B2B kind of company uh she's thinking about. Do you have any tips to get them on board or to get any, I guess, hesitant companies on board? Is there anything that we can do? Say, ask, what can we do?

SPEAKER_01: 46:24

Yes, absolutely. Hesitation is one of the most common barriers to EGC. Um, a lot of people are scared to get involved, don't know how to start. And I think fundamentally it comes down to training. I think a lot of people are hesitant because they don't know, they don't have the knowledge about EGC, they don't know what it involves. So to them, it's this mythical, um, strange concept that they don't really know much about. And it sounds scary. Putting themselves out there, you know, on this platform, on social media, putting their face to camera, especially if they're not used to doing that, it's this kind of big concept. And then people have to get past the point of fear. So I think training is a big one, and then also um recognition of your people, so recognition of what they're doing well, um, if perhaps there's been examples of EGC that have come naturally, like that example earlier we spoke about, things like that. And also then once you get going is recognizing people and celebrating them throughout. So then if you have your early adopters, other people are more likely to then join the program at a later date because they feel, okay, this is safe, I can be seen, I can do this.

SPEAKER_00: 47:33

I love that. I love that. Thank you so much. We'll add one final bit today, actually. It might be that one of these, or even a combination applies to you the most. I think I always go back if I'm working with a client when I was working with clients at the time. I would always ask myself, what is the main objection that I think they might have if you know them well enough? Because it might be then you want to lead with the answer to that objection. Whether it is too much work, whether it is we don't even know where to start, whatever that might be, or we can't do this in a safe, easy way. And then you can use some of the incredible uh advice that Alexandrina gave you to give them the first answer without even having them to ask the question or think about it. But if you can figure out the main objection, it will already, I think, chip away some of the lack of trust that they might have. Now, two more questions. I think a couple of them are a bit like we kind of covered them probably, but I just wanted to kind of voice them in case we did. This is very interesting, actually. It's very specific. Can we utilize employee-generated content properly on the user's account without running the risk of having more recruiters reach out to them? Is it the best way to just have the content sent to us and we're posting our main account, or what should we do? That was a very specific question, I think.

SPEAKER_01: 48:44

Yeah, that is a specific question. I think with that, um, I mean, the great thing about employee-generated content and employee advocacy programs is by utilising, you know, uh your team's say LinkedIn, for example, and using their profiles, you are amplifying the reach much further than you can with just your own company profile. And on LinkedIn specifically, it prioritizes individual profile posts versus company page posts. So that is something to know. If you want to get the full remit and the full reach, especially on LinkedIn as the as a primary platform, then you are going to want to use your employees' um profiles. But also, I think coming back to I think a point I made earlier is you shouldn't really be worried about any negatives with this. I mean, if you've given people clear guidance and that kind of thing. But essentially, recruiters can reach out to people at any time, right? People can poach people from companies whenever they want, whether they, you know, so people are getting DMs from recruiters either way. Yes, they might get more opportunities, but fundamentally, if you are giving people career progression, you know, a fair salary, they're happy, they've got a good work-life balance, they've got flexibility, all the things really that everybody wants from their employers, them doing employee-generated content is actually going to give them more fulfillment and purpose within work because they're going to feel valued and recognized. So, if anything, that's going to make them want to stay and be loyal because they're showcasing that they're a fan and that they're proud of where they work. They're not actively necessarily looking to leave. So, even if a recruiter DMs them, you know, if you think about it from a relationship point of view, you know, people are, you know, in relationships. Just because there's millions of other people, it doesn't mean they're gonna leave you. You know, if you're happy, you're happy, right?

SPEAKER_00: 50:31

If you understand an innovation, I think is very well said. And again, it's good that you know, we voiced the the fear in itself, but it's also good, I think, to reframe it. So thank you very much for that. Final question that's really good. How do you, or is it possible, Aladd, build a culture that encourages employee generating content without asking them all the time or making people record it or making creating time for it? I think we've got some examples of that throughout, but is there maybe something there that comes up to mind that can bring it together? We definitely got some real examples of that too.

SPEAKER_01: 51:01

I guess you bake it into the culture, right? So depending on what the program looks like, depends on the frequency you want to set out with these posts, but your early adopters should see the value in it. And also if you're placing recognition, something I've spoken on before, not today, but you know, having incentive, you know, incentives for your team essentially. So why should they do it? Whether it be it helped them with their career progression, it could just be a shout-out, it could be peer feedback, or it could be, you know, financially incentive. Some companies want to do that, some companies don't. It could be that you go into a competition to win something, like a gift card. You know, there might be an incentive. So I won't worry about um again the hesitation and how that makes people feel because essentially the people who understand it and once they they know the training and they've got the guidelines, the right people will want to be in the program. There'll be other people in the company that won't. You're not gonna have every single person of any team want to do this and want to be creating content and be sharing content. But there are also platforms and systems that can help you essentially make it as easy as possible for your team to have the content and then just post it. And then, really fundamentally, to post something, it only takes a few minutes. And then if they edit it, it might take them a little bit longer, but it's not taking them massively away from their day-to-day tasks.

SPEAKER_00: 52:18

Thank you so much again, especially for answering all of these extra questions. I really appreciate it. If you haven't already, go and check out uh the quiz as well. It's going to be incredibly helpful, I think, to answer anything else that has it in being comment. And that is it. I hope you enjoyed our latest class in session. And if you want to access one of these sessions, don't forget to check out our all access path where all our accredited short courses, all of our short training, on-demand workshops live, as well as every single plug-and-play template we've ever created to make marketing better for marketers just like yourself. I will be remiss if I didn't remind you to be kind to yourself and others and encourage you to never stop learning because practice makes progress. And until next time, class is