If you are interested in attracting more business online, reaching new customers, and building brand exposure, did you know that you can use your employees to help you reach your digital marketing goals? Empowering your employees with your strategy and the business goals you would like to achieve online, how it benefits your customers, and why it’s important can be a very powerful considerations when supplementing your traditional marketing strategy.
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Social media is an instrument of communication that facilities social behaviour. It’s a social medium and there is no better way than empowering your employees to help you promote your business values and culture on the social web.
1. Remove the barriers
Your employees are people and it’s natural to be social. They care the most and work the hardest if the people above them remember that. Create a mind and culture shift in your business organization to ensure top management is accessible, approachable, and visible. Your employees will go above and beyond for a brand that considers them valuable and part of the team. Treat them with respect and you will pave the way to being successful on the social web.
2. Engage with them on a regular basis
Host regular meetings where your employees can hear and talk to management about new priorities, initiatives, business goals, and the overall plan behind them. Allow your employees to submit feedback and questions. I have also found that an intranet that is focused on connecting your employees on a social level and that is free of jargon can help as well.
Another method you can implement is by creating an internal blog where top management and employees can share valuable industry insights and news to get everyone on par with what’s going on in the industry.
3. Educate your employees on social media
Review and discuss your social media strategy with your employees, encourage participation, and share your goals. For people not familiar with social media, give them guidance and educate them on social media. For starter employees, show them how to follow and share your status updates, and like your Facebook page. For the intermediate, show them how to embed videos and using location based services such as Foursquare to build awareness. For the advanced people, show them how to do guest blogging, and Twitter chats. The channels explained above will change depending on the channels that you use.
4. Use your employees as brand ambassadors
When you create or curate content to share with your target audience, include your employees. If you are creating a showcase video of your services or products, use one of your employees in the video. Discussing a work day in your company? Use a new employee to do the talking on exploring ways to improve your services or products. You can also use your employees in your traditional marketing promotional campaigns so that you can get the ball rolling and keep the viral spin active.
5. Encourage social networking
Help your employees to get the name out on the social web about your company by participating in social networking activities. Is anyone in your company part of a sporting event? Provide some branded material to the team to get the talk going.
6. Gamification
People are motivated by prizes and acknowledgements. Be sure to acknowledge your employees that are active on social media with promoting and helping your social media campaign find ground. A nice way to do this is by implementing a gamification strategy where your employees can earn points on participating and taking part on any social media activities related to your social media strategy. Reward them and make them feel special.
When your employees feels that what they are doing is valued, they will want to talk about how good it is to work for your company. Make it a positive experience to work for you and it will pay off.
