Most people in the business world rely on word of mouth to spread information about their goods and services. However, what most business leaders don’t realize is some of their most valuable assets are under their own roof. Employees can easily be used as company advocates, and there is no better way to use them than through social media. You can almost guarantee that most, if not all, of your employees utilize at least one social media site, and they are probably using at least one site during work hours. You can also count on your employees being the best cheerleader for your business thanks to their familiarity with the product, and the company culture and values. So how can you take advantage of this untapped resource?
Create Guidelines, Not Rules
Create a social media policy for your company before giving employees full reign. Most companies choose to tell staff what not to do when it comes to discussing the company on social media sites. Instead of following in their footsteps, lead by example. Show employees examples of good posts, solid profiles and worthwhile use of social media in workplace promotion. You should also include some form of social media training in onboarding, so that you can stop bad press before it occurs.
Find Your Best Advocates on Staff
To find the best advocates for your business, look for those who already talk about your brand on social media and ask them to help with your marketing efforts. You can use certain programs to monitor your company’s social media presence and determine which employees are your biggest assets. Over time, promoting your brand can become second nature to these employees. Just make sure you are encouraging, not pushing them into brand promotion.
Share Positive Statistics
When you show your staff statistics, especially positive ones, you can foster a sense of pride in contribution and a drive to do more. In this case, giving your social media advocates access to the actual data and showing them the positive impact their efforts have made will further bring success to this campaign.
Incorporate Social Media into Your Culture
Create a social media minded corporate culture. For instance, if you are using staff members to promote your company on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll need a company Facebook page and a business Twitter account. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to be promoted on social media if interested consumers cannot find you via the same medium. Make sure that these accounts are regularly updated and positively promote your company.
Encourage Employees to Be Themselves
Finally, you will find that it is important that you encourage your employees to be themselves as social media advocates. Remember, people who see their posts about your business on social media likely know them in person. Accordingly, it will be very easy for many of these people to know if your staff member is genuine or not.
Your most savvy employees are already using social media to promote your business; you just might not know it. Once you do, you can harness that positive energy, to market your company in an easy, virtually free manner with very few headaches.
