When I teach workshops and consult with clients, a common refrain I hear is, “We are having a hard time managing content.” That’s no surprise. Over the past 15+ years, the number of communication channels has increased exponentially, while the number of staff dedicated to creating content has not. Between websites, social media, email marketing, print collateral, and everything else, how can libraries keep up?
There are a few ways to address this challenge. One would be to reduce your number of channels. Especially with social media, sometimes less is more. If you have a social media channel that is getting low engagement, you could consider closing it. Or if you are duplicating the same content over and over, consolidating channels may be beneficial. For example, if you have a separate Facebook page for each library branch, you might consider folding those into one. I have used both of these strategies, and I found that fewer channels more carefully curated and monitored, actually yielded more overall engagement.
But what if that isn’t the solution? You could consider tapping into a larger group of library employees, leveraging their perspectives and expertise into employee-generated content.
What is employee-generated content, or EGC? It’s a subset of what marketers call user-generated content, or UGC. The difference is that UGC could come from anyone, whereas EGC comes from your employees. The latter gives you more control over the messaging, quality and brand voice of the content.
What are the benefits of EGC? Here are a few:
- Greater diversity of perspectives. (Age, gender identity, ethnicity, language, etc.)
- Different areas of expertise. For example, you may have a librarian who specializes in business resources, and another staff member who specializes in children’s services.
- More employee engagement and collaboration.
- A larger pool of content to draw on.
The key to a successful EGC strategy is structure and governance. Whether you are using this content on your website, social media, email, or elsewhere, you want some consistency and balance. For example, one enthusiastic employee could skew all of your content in one direction if not given some parameters. So you will want to put some important practice in place before opening the EGC floodgates.
Governance
A good policy is designed to protect the employee as well as the library. If you already have a social media policy, you can use it or expand it to include EGC. If you don’t have a social media policy, I recommend creating a EGC policy and making social media part of it. When developing or revising your policy, be sure to get feedback from employees, look at examples from other libraries and non-library organizations, and have your legal counsel review it. And, if an employee is creating content for the library, make it part of their job description and work plan. That way they can get credit for the work they are doing.
Here is some additional guidance from ALA, adapted from their social media guidance. 1. Make your EGC/social media policy publicly available on your website and link to the policy from social media platforms when possible. 2. Outline appropriate staff behavior and responsibilities. 3. Provide recourse for individuals to express complaints or concerns about content. 4. Clearly state the consequences for content that does not meet the policy.
While having a social media policy is necessary, the legal language can be intimidating to employees. So you may also consider creating guidelines or best practices to emphasize the positive aspects of content creation. When creating your guidelines, you can look to other libraries for examples, success stories and best practices. Also, be sure to celebrate employees who are doing a great job with EGC. You’ll also want to create a pathway to participation – let other employees know how they can become content creators if they are interested. If this feels like a lot to manage, you can create an EGC team and limit the number of members.
Content Framework
You’ll want to have some say over the topics that employees write about. So I recommend creating a content calendar with one over-arching theme for each month. Then divvy up the topics that fall under that month. Here’s a screenshot of a sample content calendar. You can click on the link to view a PDF.
For other content ideas, I recommend this great LinkedIn article, Everything You Need To Know About Employee Generated Content.
Brand and Style Guidelines
As I mentioned above, using consistent brand language is important. Of course we want employees to have some individuality in how they express themselves, but there should be some standards as to how things are described, spelled, etc. This also protects them (and you!) from accidental missteps. If you already have brand and/or style guidelines, make sure they are up-to-date, and share them with your EGC collaborators. If you don’t, you can ask other libraries for examples, or take my on-demand course, Strengthen Your Library’s Brand. You’ll walk away with a template that you can customize for your library.
Final Thoughts
When well managed, I think an EGC strategy can benefit a library and its marketing efforts. Just like a party, it is more fun when more people come! As long as it doesn’t get too crowded, and the guests follow the host’s rules. I hope these tips are helpful as you consider whether to adopt an EGC strategy at your library.
Cordelia Anderson Consulting 