This post first appeared in Anthony Bullick’s Daily Post column.
As the popular saying goes, people buy from people. It therefore stands to reason that placing your team front and centre of your PR and marketing communications activity can play a key role in increasing turnover.
Understand every touch point of your potential customer’s buying cycle and place your team prominently at each one to build trust.
As a starting point, take professional headshots and action shots of your key personnel, with the images used across your website, social media, and other marketing collateral.
Insert staff profiles on your website including relevant professional qualifications and experience as well as personal information that helps build relationships or acts as a useful conversation starter.
This can also extend to linking to your expertise; for example, if you operate in the food sector, it may be advantageous to include a short Q+A on favourite cuisines or desserts.
A similar approach is required on LinkedIn, which is used as both a search and research tool. Empowering your team with training on how best to use the platform will ensure maximum returns.
The profile itself acts as a mini website, with an opportunity to place the person’s credentials front and centre through projects and awards. In addition. there are a range of functions such as the ability to feature key content towards the top of the page.
Position your people as thought leaders with expert commentary. This includes liaising with the media to comment on industry topics as well as drafting columns, sharing videos, or appearing on podcasts for key publications.
Publish on your own channels through blog posts, white papers, and e-books, offering tips and advice to add value.
Draft news posts about your employees to highlight key achievements such as internal promotions, new qualifications, and awards success. Extend this further by creating feature articles to provide behind-the-scenes insight such as ‘a day in the life of’ piece.
Share all content via your e-newsletter and integrate it into your social media strategy. Paid social media will help amplify the reach of the material to your target audience.
Consider offline material to cut through the digital noise, for example a print newsletter designed to look like a newspaper or magazine with the above content ideas repurposed.
Also take online reputation management into consideration and check the digital footprint of your workforce to see what content has been published about them, good and bad.
Finally, measure wider benefits including the impact on staff recruitment and retention, with a focus on people shown to increase a business’ efforts to hire and keep the best talent.