7 Smart Steps to Engage Employees in Social Media

To unlock the potential you have in your employees, here are seven specific, organisational components that should be embedded in your process.

1.  Provide Education & Training

Social media, SEO, content marketing and online reputation management are the cornerstones to digital marketing.  Just because someone has a Facebook personal profile, has a modest following on Instagram or dabbles in the social space, that doesn’t make them a good marketer.

There’s such an opportunity, especially for salespeople, to attract and engage customers online but so few businesses choose to take advantage of it, many because they’re afraid of what their employees would do or say.

To win this game, train your employees to use proven social media strategies. Educating them will open their eyes to new possibilities. Training them will increase their willingness to participate.

2.  Provide Access to Social Media

Pragmatically speaking, your employees are already on social media at work. If you block these sites, you’re only cutting off a very lucrative source of connection to your customer. Blocking social media sites is the same as shutting off your phones or barring email communication.

Employees have smartphones and laptops at work so embrace that fact and leverage it. Listen to them. Let them bring you their ideas on how to engage more customers.

3.  Establish a Social Media Policy

The line between companies and their employees on social media is steadily blurring. Businesses today need a Social Media Policy that at once helps keep the company’s reputation intact while also encourages employee participation online.

Social media is a valuable communication channel, but it doesn’t change the basic rules of honesty, courtesy and respect that your company promotes and each employee represents in their day-to-day work lives.

While we recognise the importance of engaging in online conversations, we also recognise the need to provide a clear and purposeful Social Media Policy for all your staff to follow. It helps protect both the staff and the business.

Basic components of a Social Media Policy:

• Outline descriptions of the social networks and demonstrate how they benefit the company.
  
• Provide acceptable employee uses of social media and guidelines for social media use.
  
• Include protocol for when there’s a crisis and how to manage it.
  

4.  Give Employees a Reason to Engage 

Many social media marketing or advertising campaigns are more successful with grassroots employee buy-in.

Establish WIIFM (what’s in it for me) with your staff. Show them HOW they benefit from engaging and participating in social media.

Some employees will be active on Facebook, others on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn, and some will hardly know what social media is.  Adjust your expectations for specific employees and know that every single person has a contribution to make.

Motivate, recognise, and reward. You’re building a team of “brand advocates” who will up your social media game.

5. Weave Social Media and Content Participation into Job Descriptions and Pay Plans

Content creation and participation should (for the most part) be mandatory. Before you cry foul, consider this: you require employees to show up on time, right? You require them to perform their job duties, so why wouldn’t you gently fold in social media and content participation as part of their duties…and compensate them for it? Done right, it’s worth the effort you put in.

6. Make Content Submission Easy

With any employee initiative that involves change and growth, you need a super-simple process to avoid issues that arise. These tools will help bridge the gap between content creation and submission:

• YDMA CONNECT is our goto option, we can setup your employees to contribute to us directly. 
• Shared Google Docs are also a good option, depending on the technological aptitude of your team, we can provide them access to a content area in our shared Google Docs folder!

7. Track, Analyse, Show Evidence and Reinforce Value

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Employees need to see the fruits of their labour (and so do you!).

• Check in with results during sales meetings.
  
• Review key metrics like Facebook engagement and new online reviews.
  
• Ask employees for suggestions on how to improve.
  
• Recognise leads that converted into sales.
  
• Review results of the sales follow-through.