Content Marketing: Creative Team Introduction Done Right

Behind the scenes of scandiweb’s Team Stories

Most business pages contain a team section. Usually populated with professional photos of those in charge, accompanied by some description that tries to make corporate slang sound exciting, such pages often fail to deliver any insights into who these people actually are.

Sometimes, however, a business will go the extra mile to make their team page representative of the values and capabilities of the team. Check out the creative approach used by Electric Pulp. The team members appear relatable, approachable and cared for, which concurrently conveys positive messages about the businesses. That’s some creative employee introduction.

scandiweb is currently in the process of telling our own team’s story and putting effort into doing it right. We want to have fun new employee announcements. In this article, we’ll go over the process, tools and limitations, methodology, results, and benefits of scandiweb’s experience. Keep in mind that the insights should be applicable to other projects as well, such as AI marketing automation.

The Content Writing Process

Each employee is invited to either attend an interview or fill out a Google form with 14 questions, half of which require extremely brief answers (Name, place of birth, position, and the like). The other 7 questions go more in-depth, asking things about their tasks, strong suits, hobbies, and achievements. For those who chose it, the interview is based around the same questions, however, the flow of it deviates from the list, since the interviewer can pick-up on some themes present in certain answers and naturally switch to another question.

Question & answer example

Once the interview/form is complete, the employee has done their part, and it is the copywriter’s turn to compile the answers into a story. After the draft is ready, it is sent back to the employee for review before it goes to publication. With the subject’s approval, the story is then compiled with 4 other stories of people from the same department (i.e., Designers, Developers, HRs) and published on our blog, as well as added to scandiweb’s Meet the Team page.

Methodological Musings

People

scandiweb has over 450 employees, which means that getting every story for team introduction is a mammoth task. Not only does every person have a story to tell, but they also each have their own personalities and quirks, which greatly affect the process.

Some people are shy or busy and submit one-word answers to important questions, while others like to talk about themselves at length and end up answering the same question with multiple paragraphs. It is possible to work with both kinds of information; however, in the latter case, it is often heartbreaking having to pick and choose from a wealth of interesting information because of the word count limit, which we’ll get to momentarily.

Offering the two options of either filling out the form or doing an interview is also crucial, as some people’s preferences differ—some like to chat, others to write. Generally, it is more time-consuming for the person to write since, without time constraints, people tend to craft their words more carefully, which, in a work environment as busy as scandiweb’s, was a reason for many people opting to do the interview!

Standardized Story Structure

There is a 250-word limit per story. This is crucial for engagement from people who do not want to share much—if others have thousand-word stories, you could feel intimidated and rather not share.

Furthermore, there is a similar structure for all stories, which consists of:

1. A strange/funny childhood belief
2. Their position in the company
3. The main tasks that constitute their day-to-day
4. The soft/hard skills which make the person good at these tasks
5. Their hobbies/interests/achievements
6. Favorite aspect of working at scandiweb

On top of this, they are also asked for advice they would give their younger selves, which is added disjointedly from the story.

Maintaining such a structure has multiple benefits. It alleviates the copywriter’s task since coming up with unique stories for each of the 170 people would take ungodly amounts of time. It also helps put everybody on equal footing—senior devs and newcomers can have their stories side by side and be equally interesting.

Make It Fun

Bland stories won’t be read. Finding a point of relation is imperative for taking regular stories above and beyond the industry standard. How will you make your team stand out? With great visuals, like Stink Studios? Or let them address the reader directly, like Blue Fountain Media?

scandiweb decided to go with the tried-and-tested idea of having people share something fun but personal, which is how the idea of weird childhood beliefs came about—often hilarious and deeply personal, this produced such gems as:

• “I used to believe cotton candy was made from actual cotton”
• “I thought that the clouds are static and only appear to move because the earth is rotating”
• “My grandfather convinced me that rocks could grow when placed in the water by periodically replacing the rock in my experiment jar with a bigger one when I wasn’t looking.”
• Many, many others—read the stories to find out!

These beliefs are something most people’s closest friends usually wouldn’t know, so it was great to get these out in the world, and people had fun sharing them. In fact, there has been plenty of feedback stating, “I only read them for the beliefs, but end up staying for the whole stories!”

People were also asked for the advice they would give their 10-year-younger selves. However, in retrospect, the question should’ve been phrased differently, as far too many “Invest in Bitcoin” answers were received.

Here are meet the team examples in scandiweb Team Stories!

• Meet the Project Managers
• Introducing the Designers
• 5 Edgars, 5 Developers
• Here come the Executives

Results & Benefits

There has been great feedback, especially from the employees themselves. Averaging a 72.3% read rate after 17 episodes, it is clear that people are interested in and enjoy reading fun new employee announcement stories about their colleagues, partners, and themselves! Many people also enjoy the interview aspect—it’s great to take time out from a busy day to spend 20 minutes having a friendly chat about things you are passionate about and sharing some laughs.

With the lowest read ratio of 66% and the highest of 79%, the team stories tower above all other types of articles in terms of reads.

Furthermore, there are multiple business benefits. Clients have the opportunity to learn about and connect with the people working on their projects! The stories also make the team page considerably more welcoming, which can have a strong impact on potential employees—you can find out what kind of people work here and find like-minded friends before even having started work! Similarly, in a company as big as scandiweb, it is sometimes difficult to get to know other team members outside your direct periphery, especially if you’re not the most social person; hence, the stories enable an indirect way of getting to know your colleagues!

What are other fun ways to welcome new employees? Read on and we have examples for you.

5 fun ways to introduce new team members

Aside from what we’ve decided to go for, here are other great ideas for a creative team introduction. Below are “Meet the Team” bio examples to give you some inspiration.

1. Share a snapshot of their skills

Do you know those game characters with skill levels readily available on the screen when you view their profile? You can do that, too, with your team members. If you have developers and designers with a 10/10 skill level, go flaunt it! And this is just the first of such fun ways to introduce new team members!

Inspiration: Digital Marmalade

2. Go paint with pictures!

A picture paints a thousand words, so use it to your advantage. Words aren’t always necessary to send your message across. If you want to communicate how talented, creative, smart, and quirky your team members are, show them as they are—no need for complex studio setups or over-the-top copywriting.

Inspiration: Stink Studios

3. New people joining your team? Announce it!

Maybe you hire by batch or new leaders are joining your executive team. When your team is expanding, make it known and take the opportunity to discuss what the new members bring to the table.

Inspiration: 360i

4. Create humorous, fictional bios to make things more interesting

Fiction stirs the imagination. And humor makes things a lot more fun. Combine them, and you’ll create positive feelings in your readers that will increase their interest and confidence in your team members and the organization as a whole. Your creativity in pulling this off will speak for itself.

Inspiration: Zulu Alpha Kilo

5. Let your team members talk about their passion and mission

If members of your organization have very distinct roles or they each have personal and professional missions they want to accomplish, showcasing those will make their personalities and values shine. And instead of the usual headshots, consider being more creative in visually representing your team members. How about using caricatures, creative portraits, cartoons, or sketches? 

Inspiration: The Correspondent

And there you have an additional 5 fun ways to introduce new team members.

Conclusion

A dynamic and engaging team page can make a world of difference. It is also a fun process that can raise team morale, serve as regular content, and bring long-term benefits to your business! When creating content for your team page, don’t forget to make it attention-grabbing and entertaining, or else the page will be neglected, and your work will have been in vain!

We’ll add more to this article when we encounter new fun and creative team introduction ideas.

Interested in more information about content marketing? Check out our growth marketing services here. Looking to make your content stand out? Have your own insightful experiences to share? Get in touch with us by filling out the contact form below!

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