Your staff can be a very important part of your social media marketing. However, if your business is suffering from low morale or an undefined culture, you need to work that out first. Employees who are “just not that into you” will never be effective Brandistas.
Assuming all is right with the culture and your team, follow these steps to make your employees into advocates and marketers for your brand.
One Chef, Many Sous Chefs
If you have a marketer of some kind, it is essential that this person, or department, lead the social media marketing. However, make sure while they are crafting the strategy, that they know you want room for everyone to be involved. Multiple voices sharing your content and singing your praises is better than just one. Work with the marketing team to decide who has access to social media channels. I suggest leaving the access in the hands of your marketer(s) and inviting others to create their own profiles.
Set Expectations and Excite People
Employees are most likely to share when they feel strongly about what you’re doing. Make sure your mission is clear. Roll out a new social media program telling employees what you’d like to accomplish (as in fielding 20% of customer service questions through social media) and how it will be measured. Present them with branded items from your company marking this program, such as an embroidered polo, t-shirt, or mug. Get excited. Have fun. Host a contest to incentivize those who meet the goals.
In addition to your goals, make sure each employee is empowered with the knowledge of how to make decisions on what to post. They should know that posts to their personal accounts could reflect on your company. Give them basic tone rules and expectations such as “never snarky, always helpful.” They can apply this mantra before posting.
Provide Training for Social Media Brandistas
Don’t assume everyone knows how to use social media effectively for business, regardless of their age. Get your employees trained on feeling comfortable with various platforms. In addition to how to use social media for business, ensure they know how to build a personal brand on social. This is part of their professional development and makes them a more valuable employee.
Give Them Content
Don’t (solely) spoon feed them content as that may discourage them from sharing on their own. However, a weekly email with content highlights from your marketing can make it very easy and quick to share. Make sure you also encourage them to share their own content, a nice mix of who they are and what they’re working on.
Show Off Best Practices
Catch individuals doing something amazing and call it out to the group so others have something to emulate and strive for. When an employee shares something meaningful (and not simply a retweet of your content), make sure you share that from your social media accounts too. It will make them feel good and calls attention to a great team environment.
You employees represent your company. They should be proud of the work they’re doing. Give them the training and amplification they need to feel confident in this role and it will pay off for your company.
What would you add to this list?
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