Content is still king - especially for your advocacy platform.

It is, therefore, essential to have a content strategy that helps you plan, create and manage your content effectively and efficiently. It determines the type of content that needs to be created, targets it to the relevant audience, and ensures that it aligns with the business objectives. 

The content strategy for your advocacy program should aim to ensure a continuous flow of new and exciting content so that there is always enough content on the platform. This will keep your users engaged and encourage them to share relevant content on their social media profiles.  

Define a content strategy suited to your advocacy program

1. S.M.A.R.T. Goals: Make sure your content strategy goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, no matter what topics you choose to post about. 
2. Thought leader: Position your entire user base as notable experts in a specific industry and manage your brand reputation by helping others with their knowledge and insights. 
3. Build your audience: Your Haiilo Advocacy brand ambassadors can help you widen your audience by continuous message sharing that has to be consistent and timely. 
4. Informal and proud: Don't be afraid to be informal, proud of your employees or share selfies. Not every piece of content has to be perfect. Show your vulnerabilities and connect with your audience on a deeper level. 
5. Content Analysis: Remember to constantly review the best-performing content (and the content that is not performing that well) and create actions based on the data. Adapt your content strategy where needed.

Create engaging content 

Your content does not always have to be brand-related. Often, interesting insights with your tailored message can be far more engaging than expected. Some of the most engaging posts include industry insights, employee features, job postings, and content on diversity, sustainability and innovation. 

• Select brand-generated content such as press releases, blogs, social posts, and content exclusive to the advocacy program. Elevate localized content streams (copy and assets) with marketing teams and agencies where applicable. If some of your employees are sharing great posts e.g tweets, you can share the tweets as posts on Haiilo, which will also benefit the user that has shared the original post.
• Integrate content from other channels to deliver fresh and engaging material consistently. Import RSS feeds from external blog sources (partners, industry publications, etc.), bloggers in the community, or other social media channels such as your company's LinkedIn page. Encourage image and video submission from external events (e.g. Charity events, conferences), as well as everyday team life. By providing relevant third-party content, users are more likely to start sharing your company's content as well.
• Consider a lead who can set up a steady stream of content for Haiilo publication that is localized and tailored for the region. Dividing responsibilities between different business units (e.g Marketing, Communications, Sales and HR) or introducing Channel Managers can help you lighten the workload of content creation. By sharing the content creation responsibility, you also have a higher chance of engaging more users. Showcase what an ideal post looks like. Create exclusivity and include users more in the content creation by encouraging employees to submit more and specific content. Allow users to request content on certain topics, for example, by introducing a form on your intranet where anyone can request content.
• Develop a calendar to schedule content and identify key themes, campaigns, or business initiatives. Align with content creators to schedule weekly themes, monthly articles, or verticalized months to highlight different departments and influencers in that space. Coordinate content internally with product launches, marketing campaigns, and other promotions inside and outside of the advocacy community. Additionally, informing users what content is coming up in Haiilo can create hype even before important content is published.

Further tips & tricks

• Publish on behalf: Use the Post on Behalf feature to represent a wider range of internal stakeholders when publishing relevant content on the advocacy platform.
• We have a few tips on what to keep in mind when creating content, which content themes are popular and what your users could write about, if you want to include them in the content creation:

• If you want to have compelling content,...
  
  • Write posts in the third person for shareability.
  • Hook readers in with the first line. 
  • Say more with fewer words to make your copy easy to read.
  • Format and space the text to improve readability.
  • Stories make you memorable – always include a learning at the end. 
  • Include a ‘call to action’ or pose a question to encourage engagement. 
  • Make it visually appealing and add images: square assets generically outperform horizontal ones on Linked In.
  • Optimize the “Write something about the post” section with a clear call to action to share. Adding sharing message suggestions helps users get started with their first shares. 
  • Include links to drive traffic to the main piece and add UTM Tags to the original source URL if you want to analyze your social selling ROI on services such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.
• The most successful content when it comes to building brand awareness, driving talent consideration and boosting acquisitions through social media fits into the following categories:
  
  • Insights into your business.
  • Giving your people a platform. 
  • Demonstrating your employer's value proposition/brand values.
  • Sharing value with your audiences. 
  • Showing your celebratory culture. 
  • Offering a glimpse into life and work at the company.
• What should they talk about? Give your users some pointers or guidelines on how to write content and encourage them to...
  
  • Shout about company culture
  • Share thought leadership
  • Give insight into their team
  • Share insights into life in the office
  • Talk about your benefits
  • Celebrate your networks and communities
  • Share personal insights (where comfortable/appropriate)
  • Celebrate personal victories, their work achievements or achievements of others

Check out this blog article to learn more about how to create a successful communication strategy.
Check out this blog article to learn more about how to create more engaging internal content.
Check out this blog article to learn more about the rise of employee-generated content.