Most B2B professional services firms know they need a solid content marketing strategy to connect people with their products or services. They regularly produce insightful blog posts, compelling case studies, and social media campaigns to draw people in and engage with them.

But in the rush to attract and retain customers, many firms overlook a crucial audience: their own team members. It's a missed opportunity that can impact everything from client satisfaction to innovation, market positioning, and talent retention.

Think of your internal content as the backstage crew of a hit Broadway show. While the audience may never see them, their work is essential to the performance. Similarly, the content you create for your employees shapes the service your clients receive, the ideas your team generates, and the reputation your firm builds.

Get it right and you can cultivate a more knowledgeable, aligned, motivated, and capable workforce.

Ready to peek behind the curtain and discover how content for your employees can become your competitive edge? Let's dive in.

Leveraging Employee Content to Boost B2B Performance

The content you create for your employees isn't just about filling internal knowledge gaps. It's a strategic investment that can significantly impact your firm's performance. From sharpening skills to aligning teams with your brand vision and improving client relations, here’s how employee-focused content can change the game.

Develop your Talent and Skills

Creating this kind of content showcases your company culture, supports employee learning, and builds a strong employer brand, all of which makes it easier to attract and retain top talent.

By investing in content that supports knowledge sharing, skill development, professional growth, and employee recognition, you're not just improving your workforce. You're building a culture of continuous learning and appreciation that is valued by employees.

70% of people say learning creates a stronger connection with their organisation and 80% feel learning adds purpose to their work. (LinkedIn)
76% of employees said they were more likely to stay with a company that offers regular or ongoing training. (Society for Human Resource Management)

By demonstrating your commitment to employee growth and personal development, you also strengthen your employer brand, making your firm more attractive to top talent in the competitive B2B professional services landscape.

These are the content types that are most beneficial to your knowledge and talent management:

Knowledge sharing and skill development: Training materials and educational resources are the heart of your employee content. In addition to basic instructions, offer content that discusses industry trends, innovations updates, best practices, and case studies.
Professional development: Fuel your employees' career aspirations by documenting clear pathways for growth within your organisation. Offer insights into potential career trajectories, highlight internal job openings, and share resources for leadership development. By mapping out these opportunities, you're not just supporting individual growth – you're cultivating the next generation of your firm's leaders.
Employee onboarding and experience: Create information that helps integrate new hires with onboarding guides and workflows to ensure their early days on the job go as smoothly as possible. Share employee experiences to help new team members see the job from a more relatable perspective.
Employee recognition: According to a 2023 report, employees who receive regular recognition have much higher engagement and productivity rates and are less likely to look for other jobs. Recognise your employees' contributions and accomplishments with spotlights on individual employee achievements and team accomplishments, as well as peer recognition stories.

Unify the Team around the Brand

Well-crafted internal content is the glue that binds your team to your brand. By communicating shared values and providing employees with the tools and knowledge they need to represent your company’s vision, you create a unified front that resonates with clients and prospects alike.

Remember, every employee interaction is a brand touchpoint—make sure they're all sending the right message.

Key content areas to focus on include:

Company culture and values: Create content that brings your firm's mission, vision, and values to life. Develop engaging materials that explain not just what these principles are, but how they translate into daily work and decision-making. Highlight how individuals or teams have embodied company values to achieve success or overcome challenges. For example, produce short video interviews with leadership discussing how company values guide their strategies, or employee stories that exemplify your culture in action.
Brand guidelines and training: Offer resources that help employees understand and apply your brand consistently. This could include style guides, training on brand voice and messaging, and FAQs providing information about your company's positioning and unique value proposition. This allows you to proactively address any points of confusion that could affect public perception of your brand.
Internal brand campaigns: Develop content initiatives that reinforce key brand messages across your organization. For example, you could use themed content series and create internal brand ambassador programs to reinforce key brand messages. Look for ways to promote consistency in brand understanding across different departments to unify the customer experience across the organisation.
Internal communications reinforcing brand positioning: Regularly communicate updates on company-wide initiatives that show how the firm is living its brand promise. Invite employee feedback and ideas on how to further strengthen the culture.

Boost Business Performance and Client Satisfaction

Great employee content doesn't just stay in-house. The ripple effect extends far beyond your office walls.

By equipping your team with the right information and resources, you're ultimately enhancing client service, supporting business development, and gaining a competitive edge. In the world of B2B professional services, where relationships are everything, this internal focus can yield significant external rewards.

Prioritise these content categories:

Client service standards: While you don’t want to micromanage client relationships, provide detailed guidelines and best practices for representing the brand in client engagements. Share case studies of exemplary client interactions to give employees examples to emulate.
Industry and market insights: Keep your team informed about the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in your industry. This knowledge enables them to provide more valuable insights to clients and identify new business opportunities.
Product and service knowledge: Create comprehensive resources about your firm's offerings, including their features, benefits, and unique selling points. This empowers employees to communicate more effectively with clients and prospects.
Client success stories: Share detailed case studies and testimonials internally. These not only motivate your team but also provide valuable reference points for similar client scenarios.
Competitive intelligence: Offer regular updates on competitor activities, positioning, and offerings. This helps your team differentiate your services and address client concerns more effectively.

Improve Operational Efficiency

Want to turn your company into a well-oiled machine? Regular, purposeful internal communication does more than just keep your team informed—it gets everyone on the same page and working together as a team.

Internal communications align your workforce with company goals, standardises processes, and fosters collaboration across departments. By breaking down silos and creating a shared foundation of knowledge, you're not just improving efficiency—you're building a more cohesive, effective organisation.

Consider how these kinds of content support those objectives:

Internal communications: Company news and updates keep employees informed of your organisation's progress and growth.
Company performance and strategy updates: Whether your company is struggling or succeeding, your employees should always be among the first to know. Provide leadership messages and insights, as well as explanations of your company's strategies, goals, plans and performance, to illustrate the company’s direction.
Human resources information: Documents detailing your company policies and procedures inform employees of the expectations and standards that they have to meet. Meanwhile, content that details your benefits program and resources related to wellness and work-life balance promotes general well-being and increased employee satisfaction.
Operational and process guidance: Standard operating procedures and how-to guides for internal systems and tools allow employees to work more efficiently and waste less time working through technical difficulties. More general content, such as documents with productivity tips and best practices, helps improve their time management and outcomes.
Employee feedback and engagement content: Soliciting employee input demonstrates that you value their opinions and views, particularly when you share what you've learned with the company at large. Generate employee content with survey results and action plans, Q&A sessions with leadership, and forums for employee ideas and suggestions.

Amplify your Marketing through Employee Advocacy

Empowering your employees to become brand advocates unlocks a chorus of credible, passionate voices for your brand.

By providing them with the right content and tools, you can extend your reach, reinforce your market position, and tap into the trust that clients and prospects place in individual relationships. In the B2B world, this personal touch can make all the difference.

High-quality content is the cornerstone of any effective employee advocacy program. It makes it easier for employees to take on the role of brand ambassadors and thought leaders in their professional networks, on social media platforms, and through other channels.

To develop an effective program that increases your influence in the market, you will need to includes these types of content:

Guidelines for external communications: Give employees guidelines for maintaining brand consistency in external communications. Best practices and etiquette for professional use of social media posts ensures they present information appropriately.
Client-facing content for employee sharing: Encourage employees to read and distribute updates on company milestones and curated third-party content aligned with company values. These, along with templates for consistent client communications, can promote more productive client interactions.
Tools for personal brand building: Your employees represent your organisation, so helping them build professional profiles that align with your firm can enhance your reputation. For example, consider providing resources for developing professional profiles and training on thought leadership development.

Overcoming Common Challenges to Employee Content Creation

While creating effective employee content comes with its share of challenges, the potential benefits far outweigh the obstacles. By addressing these hurdles head-on—whether it's time constraints, relevance concerns, or measurement difficulties—you're paving the way for a more engaged, informed, and effective workforce.

Remember, in the knowledge-driven world of B2B professional services, your employees are your greatest asset—invest in them wisely and it will pay dividends later.

Time and Resource Limitations

Time is a precious commodity for both employees and organisations. Employees, already facing information overload and busy schedules, often struggle to engage meaningfully with internal communications. At the same time, businesses have to grapple with balancing resources between external and internal content creation, between allocating resource to billable hours and internal alignment, and ensuring buy-in from non-marketing departments.

To address these challenges, firms must make internal communications a strategic priority. Work to create a culture that values continuous learning and knowledge sharing by carving out dedicated time for employees to engage with content. One way is to actively encourage scheduled learning sessions and by incentivising engagement with employee content programs.

From an organisational perspective, seek to involve non-marketing departments in employee content creation to distribute the workload. Streamlining content creation processes also helps to smooth the way. Provide templates, examples, and tools that allow for efficient production.

By addressing both consumption and production challenges, firms can create a sustainable internal content strategy that resonates with employees and aligns with organisational goals.

Relevance and Value

Employees are unlikely to invest time and energy in your content unless it's specific to their jobs, aligns with their career goals, and provides clear value. They should be able to see what they have to gain, such as skill development for future career advancement or promotions.

To ensure your content hits the mark, start by tailoring it to specific job functions and departments, highlighting skill development opportunities that support career advancement. Explicitly demonstrate how the content will help employees perform better in their current roles and link learning outcomes to potential promotions or new responsibilities.

Personalisation is key. Develop learning plans that match individual goals and offer a variety of content formats to cater to different learning styles. Give employees agency over their training by offering a range of options to choose from, and actively seek their input on areas of interest. Consider using surveys or creating forums for employees to suggest topics and provide feedback.

By focusing on relevance and value, you create an internal content strategy that not only engages employees but also drives tangible business outcomes, fostering a culture of continuous learning where content engagement becomes an integral part of professional growth and daily work life.

Confidentiality Concerns

Professional services firms often handle sensitive client information, making it challenging to create content that showcases their work without breaching confidentiality agreements. This balancing act is not just ethical but often legal, with potential repercussions for mishandling information.

To navigate this, provide employees with clear, strict guidelines for sharing information–both internally and externally. These guidelines should explicitly outline what is and isn't appropriate to distribute to different audiences, emphasising the paramount importance of client privacy. Implement a system for labeling sensitive content, clearly indicating which items should not circulate beyond specific departments or the company itself.

Consider using anonymised case studies or aggregated data to illustrate your firm's expertise where there is an issue with client confidentiality. Regular training on data protection and privacy policies can help reinforce these practices, ensuring that all employees understand their role in safeguarding sensitive information while still contributing to valuable internal content.

Regulatory Considerations

By prioritising regulatory compliance in your content strategy, you not only avoid potential pitfalls but also demonstrate your firm's commitment to ethical and professional standards.

Many professional services firms, particularly those in finance, healthcare, or legal sectors, operate in complex regulatory landscapes. Failing to comply with these regulations can result in severe consequences, including legal penalties, substantial fines, and significant reputational damage.

But all firms need to consider standards and regulations, in addition to their own internal policies when creating content for their employees.

To mitigate the risks, implement a robust content review process. This process should include careful scrutiny of all content, especially in regard to compliance. Develop clear guidelines and train content creators on them, emphasising the need to seek advice from legal experts or compliance officers for sign off whenever appropriate.

Balancing Expertise and Accessibility

In B2B, we often grapple with the challenge of communicating complex ideas effectively. When a firm has deep expertise in a particular area, it's easy to default to overly technical language that not all employees can easily digest. While using industry jargon might be acceptable and even expected within some departmental groups, this approach can alienate and discourage employees from other areas of the organisation.

Moreover, in today's interconnected world, internal content often finds its way to external audiences through employee sharing on social media or other platforms. This dual audience - internal experts and potential external non-experts - creates a unique communication challenge.

To navigate this, aim for a balanced approach in your content creation. Use clear, direct language that's accessible to every employee, including those without a technical background. When industry-specific terms are necessary, include brief definitions or explanations to ensure clarity for all readers.

Consider creating content with layers of complexity - a high-level summary for general understanding, followed by more detailed, technical information for those who need it. This strategy not only improves internal comprehension but also makes the content more shareable and valuable if it reaches external audiences. By striking this balance, you create content that showcases your firm's expertise while remaining accessible and engaging to a broader audience, both inside and outside your organisation.

Collaboration and Competition

When individual expertise is highly valued, fostering a culture of knowledge sharing can be challenging. Employees in competitive environments often hesitate to share their expertise, fearing that doing so might diminish their competitive edge or make it harder for them to stand out within the company.

This reluctance can create silos of information, hindering overall organisational effectiveness and innovation.

To overcome this, leaders must actively promote the benefits of knowledge sharing and collaboration. Emphasise that contributing to the collective knowledge base enhances an individual's reputation as a team player and thought leader, often leading to increased visibility and career advancement opportunities.

Implement a recognition system that rewards employees for sharing valuable insights, whether through internal content creation, mentoring, or collaborative projects. Encourage cross-departmental collaboration to break down silos and demonstrate how diverse perspectives can lead to innovative solutions.

By framing knowledge sharing as a win-win scenario, where both the individual and the organisation benefit, you can create an open, collaborative environment that drives shared objectives and overall effectiveness. This approach not only improves internal operations but also positions your firm as a cohesive, forward-thinking entity in the eyes of clients and competitors alike.

Put Employee Content on the Front Burner

Your employees are your greatest asset and your strongest differentiator. By investing in high-quality, strategic internal content, you're not just filling knowledge gaps—you’re aiming to build a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and shared purpose. One that is capable of meeting the challenges of modern business and fueling a powerful engine of growth, innovation, and client satisfaction.

Your next step? Start small, but start now. Choose one area where an improvement in employee content could make an immediate impact in your organisation. Whether it's enhancing your onboarding process, boosting your brand advocacy, or improving client service standards, take action today to begin leveraging the full potential of your team.

In doing so, you're not just investing in content—you're investing in the future of your firm. And that's a strategy that pays dividends far beyond the bottom line.

If that sounds like an overwhelming prospect, remember that you don't have to do it alone. Whether you need help finding creative talent repurposing generated content, 1827 Marketing can help. Book a demo to learn more about our content creation services.

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The Hidden Power of Employee Content in B2B Professional Services