The $0 Content Strategy That Generated 2.5 Million Reach (Employee Creator Secrets)

[00:00:00] What if I told you that instead of hiring expensive influencers, one company decided to train all 70 of their employees to become content creators? The company I'm going to introduce you today just revolutionized employee advocacy by moving beyond the please share our company posts to please build your own personal brand.

[00:00:23] The results, 90% participation, over 2.5 million in total reach, and a cultural shift that's making competitors take notice. This isn't just employee advocacy. It is the future of user-generated content strategy. If you've been struggling to compete with content creators or wondering how to scale platform authentic content without breaking the bank, this case study will change how you think about your biggest untapped resource, your own team.

[00:00:50] So make sure you stay tuned for this next exciting episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast. Digital, Social Media, Content Influencer, Marketing, Blogging, Podcasting, Vlogging, Tiktok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, Email Marketing. There's a lot to cover.

[00:01:15] Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neal on your side. Because Neal Schaefer is your digital marketing coach. Helping you grow your business with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach. And this is Neal Schaefer.

[00:01:47] Hey everybody, this is your digital marketing coach, Neal Schaefer. Welcome back to my podcast, episode number 430. Today, I want to share a case study that perfectly illustrates a concept I've been talking about in my book, Digital Threads. The challenge of creating platform authentic content and how smart companies are solving it in innovative ways.

[00:02:08] Now, assuming you've read digital threads, and if you haven't, you can find it on Amazon, you know that I advocate for something radically different from what most social media experts tell you. Instead of trying to become the media and trying to drive people off social media platforms to your website, I believe in creating platform authentic content. Content designed to keep people engaged on each platform according to how its algorithm works.

[00:02:34] This aligns with the original intent of social media, which was made for people, not for businesses. I've been saying for more than a decade now. But it also makes both algorithms and users happy. But here's the challenge that I also discuss in my book. To succeed with platform authentic content, you need to shift your mindset from promotional to conversational. You're not just marketing anymore. You're joining the conversation and developing relationships. And to really get traction, you have to compete with content creators.

[00:03:04] In fact, your brand has to become a content creator. And this is where most businesses, especially some of the smaller businesses that might be listening to this podcast, hit a wall. You simply don't have the DNA to be content creators. It's not in your corporate structure, your culture, or your skill set.

[00:03:22] And that's why we're seeing big brands like Disneyland, Nike, Glacier, and others actually hiring influencers and content creators to join their marketing teams. But what if you're a small business? You can't afford to hire a team of creators. Now, that's where my user-generated content framework comes in. In Digital Threads, I outline a three-step approach. First, leverage user-generated content from customers and nano-influencers through gifting strategies.

[00:03:52] Second, transform that into a brand community to scale your efforts. And third, reach out to external influencers once you have that foundation. But there's one source of UGC I mentioned in the book that often gets overlooked. Your employees. And that's exactly what makes today's case study so fascinating. So just last month, Buffer, yes, the social media scheduling tool that many of us, including myself, use, announced something unprecedented.

[00:04:19] Now, Buffer, if you've been following them for years, they are one of the most innovative companies out there, really transparent about what they do, their roadmap. They give so much invaluable information to help us all. But they announced that they are training their entire team of 70 employees to become content creators. Not just the marketing team, not just the executives, everyone. From designers to developers to finance professionals.

[00:04:44] Now, before you think, oh, well, that's just another employee advocacy program, Neil. Let me stop you right there. This is fundamentally different from traditional employee advocacy programs that I've actually advised and trained in the past. Traditional employee advocacy programs focus on getting employees to share company content. You know the drill. HR sends out an email with pre-approved posts and ask employees to share them on their personal profiles. It might not be HR. It might be marketing.

[00:05:14] It might come in a weekly newsletter, et cetera, et cetera. It may come in a Slack channel. Maybe they provided some personal branding training to get people more comfortable posting on LinkedIn. But what Buffer is doing is the complete opposite. They're not asking employees to share Buffer content. They're empowering employees to build their own personal brands and become creators in their own right.

[00:05:37] Now, I hope I don't pronounce his name incorrectly, but Sabrine Hazik, Buffer's senior brand and community manager, explained their philosophy perfectly. She said they believe that, and I quote, being creators ourselves will continue to set Buffer up for long-term success. By living the same creator journey as our customers, we can make better product decisions and connect more meaningfully with the people we serve. Now, this is brilliant for several reasons.

[00:06:05] First, it creates authentic advocates who understand the creator's struggle because they're living it. Second, it generates diverse, genuine content that no single marketing team could produce. And third, it builds individual employee brands while strengthening the company brand. Now, after I mentioned this, you might go and Neil, creators are not the market we serve like Buffer. Well, Buffer serves marketers, right? Yes, creators are part of their target customer base, I'm sure.

[00:06:33] But corporate marketing departments, enterprise marketing departments are also using Buffer. And those aren't all content creators.

[00:06:39] And I will also say that if you serve content creators by showcasing your product or service in a way that other content creators will see, other people will see on social media, this is how you can compete with other content creators for Mindshare, even if your target market are not content creators.

[00:07:03] I hope that makes sense. But that's one of the points I want to point out here before you say, well, this is not relevant for us. This is relevant for any company if you want to get more Mindshare on social media, regardless of how many content creators are in your target market. So I want to now move on this case study so that we can learn if some of you want to try this or just you're curious and you want to figure out how did Buffer pull this off.

[00:07:28] So like with any great employee advocacy program, or I should say, I like to call them employee influencer programs, treating employees as influencers as what Buffer is doing. They didn't just send a company-wide email saying, hey, everyone start posting more. They built a comprehensive support system with three key components. And any successful employee advocacy, employee influencer program always has a lot of training and support built in. So first they created a dedicated Slack channel.

[00:07:58] Now you need a way to communicate, right? I mean, there are companies that try to do like every Friday, they'll do a lunch and learn and what have you. There's so much remote work right now. We need to be able to communicate with employees on the channels that we use for business. And I'm assuming that Buffer actually uses Slack. So they created a dedicated channel and this became their community hub where employees share ideas, celebrate wins, ask for feedback and support each other. And here's what's smart about it. They kept it human-led rather than automated.

[00:08:28] Real people were offering encouragement, sharing platform-specific tips and helping each other brainstorm content ideas. The channel became a place where someone from finance could get feedback on a LinkedIn post from someone in product development or where an engineer could share a creative workflow that others could adapt. It created this cross-pollination of ideas and genuine peer support. All right, second, they built what they call the Team of Creators Resources HQ in Notion.

[00:08:57] So this is basically their guidebook of how you can become a content creator, a comprehensive guide that covers everything from identifying your niche and picking a primary platform to overcoming common creator mindset hurdles, like your own Wikipedia, for lack of a better word. They included platform-specific best practices, content batching techniques, and even exercises for working through imposter syndrome and perfectionism, the two biggest barriers.

[00:09:23] And yes, even people like me face when starting to create content. What I love about this resource is that it's not overwhelming. They specifically designed it to avoid information overload, keeping pages short and interactive with prompts like identify your why with these questions. Now, this is on Notion. This could be a course, right? There's a lot of different ways to deliver the content, but the idea is to actually develop this content for your employees to make it easy for them.

[00:09:51] The third component is their creator cafe workshops. These are optional, beginner-friendly virtual meetups where employees can connect, learn, and ask questions in real time. And they're breaking these down into three waves. Foundational skills, needs-based responses to specific challenges, and eventually team-wide trend sharing. So no matter what level you're at in terms of your content creation journey, there is a place for you.

[00:10:16] Now, what makes this really work is they made it a company-wide expectation, not just an opportunity. So the CEO of Buffer, CEO Joel, set a clear expectation that everyone on the Buffer team participates in building their creator journey with managers supporting this work. Very similar to a lot of innovative small businesses are saying, hey, or the CEO is saying, hey, I want you to leverage AI for your work.

[00:10:45] And every week, I want you to report back to me on what new things you found out or learned about using AI. This is something that especially Michael Stelzner, I want to give him a shout out, over at Social Media Examiner has been very public about doing. I think other innovative small businesses should be doing this as well. And you should be doing this as well with content creation inside your company. But, and this is crucial, they're not mandating what people post about. This isn't about everyone posting Buffer-related content. A designer might share their creative process in Instagram.

[00:11:16] A marketer might offer industry tips on LinkedIn. Or someone might post about their hiking adventures on threads. The key is building the habit of creating and connecting consistently. They've also turned Buffer's own social channels into shared spaces featuring employee-generated content front and center. I.e., user-generated content, right? Another source of it. This gives employees a gentle way to ease into public content creation. They can experiment and build confidence while knowing their voice still sounds authentic.

[00:11:46] So what kind of results are they seeing? Well, the numbers that I hinted at them are impressive. 90% of their team is actively participating. They've generated over 4,100 total posts with more than 2.5 million in total reach and nearly 4 million impressions. The median posts per teammate is 43. Amazing. Which shows consistent participation across the board. But the quantitative results only tell part of the story.

[00:12:14] What's really interesting is the qualitative impact. Their community has started noticing Buffer everywhere in their feeds. People are actively engaging more with Buffer's launches and product announcements because they feel more connected to the actual people behind the company. Now, they're also tracking something they call creator confidence through surveys. And they've seen the average confidence score rise by two full points since launching the initiative. Now, I've always said, and this is primarily on LinkedIn, but this could be anywhere.

[00:12:41] Whenever someone on their profile on social media says they work for your company, when someone sees their content and sees that they work at their company, that is going to indirectly shape the way they look at your company. Because we're human beings, right?

[00:12:56] So, the more of your employees that post that also mentioned in their content or in their profile that they are an employee at your company, this is how it builds brand awareness and mindshare for the content creator of your employee, but also indirectly for your brand. And this is just a great case study of that in action with Buffer.

[00:13:16] So, I believe what Buffer has done represents the evolution from traditional employee advocacy to what I call employee creator enablement. Instead of asking employees to be mouthpieces for company messaging, they're empowering employees to build their own voices and audience. Now, this approach solves multiple challenges simultaneously. For the company, it creates authentic brand advocates who generate diverse and genuine content.

[00:13:44] For employees, it provides professional development and personal brand building opportunities. And for the audience, it creates more authentic, varied storytelling that can never be replicated by a single corporate perspective. This ties perfectly into my platform authentic content framework because each employee is creating content that feels natural to them on the platforms they're comfortable with and in their own voice. They're not trying to drive people away from the platform to a corporate website.

[00:14:12] They're adding value to the conversation happening on that platform. And then Buffer is able to use that as user-generated content, which is the next social chapter after I talk about platform authentic content. Now, you might be thinking, that's great for Buffer, but I don't have 70 employees or their resources. But here's the thing. You don't need to replicate their exact system to apply these principles. If you have even three to five employees, you can start small.

[00:14:39] Create a simple shared space, whether that's a Slack channel, a WhatsApp group, Instagram DM group, or even just a regular meeting where team members can share content ideas and support each other. Provide basic resources and training. You don't need a comprehensive Notion database. Start with a simple document that covers the platform basics, some content ideas, and addresses common concerns about posting. And you add to this over time as it becomes a more valuable internal asset.

[00:15:08] And most importantly, make it about personal brand building, not company promotion. Encourage employees to share their expertise, their interests, and their perspectives. The company benefits will follow naturally. I have not said anything about employer branding, but this is huge for employer branding of treating every employee as an employee for life. And this is definitely going to also indirectly help your recruiting and your retention.

[00:15:37] Now, for B2B companies especially, this can be incredibly powerful. When your sales team, your customer success team, your developers are all building thought leadership in their respective areas, you're creating multiple touch points and authentic connections with your target audience. So I believe what Buffer has done represents a significant shift in how we think about content creation and brand building. They've recognized that in today's creator economy, authenticity beats polish. Personal brands amplify company brands.

[00:16:06] And employee voices are more trusted than corporate messaging. And we've always known this, right? The data has always supported this. I've been talking about this for years. And now Buffer has really, in an innovative way, put this into action and we can all learn from it. So this approach also acknowledges something I talk about extensively in digital threads. That social media marketing today is not about a business with a social media presence.

[00:16:36] It's about using social media to develop relationships with others. And if you can leverage your employees to help you indirectly do this, by turning every employee into a content creator, instead of you trying to be the media and compete with content creators, Buffer has essentially built their own media network. It's also a defensive strategy against the creator economy. Instead of competing with creators for attention, which you have to do, they're creating their own creators. How meta is that?

[00:17:03] Instead of trying to hire expensive influencers, they're developing influence from within. So here's what I want you to think about as we wrap up today's episode. Look at your team, whether that's two people or 200. Instead of seeing employees as potential brand ambassadors who can share your company content, start seeing them as potential creators who can build their own audiences while authentically representing what your company stands for. Start small.

[00:17:30] Pick one or two employees who are already comfortable on social media and help them develop their creator skills. Provide support, resources, encouragement. Bring in experts, trainers, speakers like myself to help if that is required to help accelerate this. This is something that I have done for companies, but for a very large company. Celebrate their wins. Learn from what works. And remember, this isn't about control. It's about enablement.

[00:17:56] You're not trying to manage every post or ensure every piece of content mentions your company. You're investing in your people's professional development while naturally building brand awareness and authenticity in social media. Sorry to say, but the creator economy isn't going anywhere. The demand for authentic, valuable content will continue to grow. Traditional advertising effectiveness will continue to decline.

[00:18:21] In this environment, companies that can authentically participate in the conversation, not just interrupt it, will have a significant advantage. Buffer has shown us what's possible when you stop thinking about employee advocacy as sharing company content and start thinking about it as building a team of creators. The question is, are you ready to make that shift? Well, that's all for today's episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

[00:18:47] If this episode inspired you to think differently about your content strategy or employee engagement, I'd love to hear about it. Connect with me on LinkedIn or any of the social platforms where I'm active or drop a review in whatever app you listen to this podcast. It provides me invaluable feedback, but also helps others discover this show. And remember, in the creator economy, authenticity is not just a nice to have. It can be your competitive advantage.

[00:19:14] So until next time, keep creating, keep connecting, keep growing your business through strategic digital marketing. This is your digital marketing coach, Neil Schaefer, signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast.neilschafer.com.

[00:19:36] Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilschafer.com to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First Group Coaching Membership Community. If you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on Your Digital Marketing Coach.