The Concept of INTERNAL Content Marketing for Employees

Image source: http://workasone.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/delete-dilemma/

This post explores the idea of using Content Marketing to increase internal efficiency of employees.

Employees of B2B companies are under pressure. Everyday everyone of us must consume a massive amount of content. We need to interpret that content, rework the content, and deliver output to others.

The number of information channels we need to manage is increasing every day. Not only the classic channels like e-mail, phone calls, or paper mailings are putting us under pressure.

Society itself drives us to join the social media networks around us, for private use, but increasingly employees need to be active on professional social networks.

The effect of this to many is an overflow of information, where employees are missing crucial pieces of information which they need to function within the organization, project or strategy.

The concept of INTERNAL content marketing

The basic principle of content marketing is to have methodic approach to understanding the business issues of buyers. It is also about providing insight and answers to their business issues through creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to a clearly defined target audience, with the objective of driving sales.
OK, let’s cut that sentence short : understand buyers, provide answers that help them through content, to sell more.

Everyone in your company has special needs when it comes to content.

They have different interests, and will only listen to what helps them in their daily work. They might see the general broadcast messages of the management that tries to get them aligned with special programs or strategies. But as in many companies, there are so many programs and strategies being communicated that they’ll only listen with “one ear”, or miss it all together.

What if we would apply the principles of content marketing to the benefit of an internal organization?

What if we would apply this for internal communication?

Or what if we would use this principle to improve the overall efficiency of an organization?

Do we apply content marketing like we apply it to our buyers ?

In an internal organization how would that be set-up ?

Is it that as easy like listening to the needs of your employees and give them the answers, in the language and keywords they are used to ?

Would we be able to break through their clutter in this way ?

I think so.

Setting up INTERNAL content marketing

Organizing the internal information flow in such a way that content is filtered through, to match the personal content needs of employees is the goal.

What if we would have a way of probing the content consumption of users, and needs, and apply filters that filter out the content to their personal consumption pattern?

Large organizations have so many internal content that people needs these filters. Current technologies like marketing automation systems and internal social media platforms exist, and can create these filters.

If applied in a smart way, this can work. Maybe they have not yet been applied like this.  Maybe they have. I don’t know.

But I think in an ever growing content driven world, these are the systems of the future.

What do you think?

Warm regards,

Tom De Baere