Over the past decade, social media has become mainstream within society. Each every day millions of users across various platforms such as Facebook and Twitter alike are sharing their thoughts and content. With this trend, it is essential for businesses to have an active social media presence. Companies must not only create content that is relevant to its consumers, but it also must strive to encourage its employees to be brand advocates.
Buffer Social conducted some research on employee usage of social media with some interesting results:
- 33% of employees post messages, videos or pictures about their employer from time to time with no encouragement from their employer
- 39% of employees have praised their company on social media
- 16% have posted something negative about employer
With only 39% of employees posting on social media this leaves 61% of your employees unengaged with your brand. So how do we work to fix this?
David Hassel, the founder of 15Five.com, a web-based employee feedback solution, offers five ways to solve this problem:
(1) Develop A Persona
A persona is a profile identity of your consumer. This profile includes the wants and needs of the customer. It should also include various personality traits that this persona has. By providing this resource to your employees, it'll make it easier for them to create messages that resonate with that persona.
(2) Make it easy for employees to share content
Trello is an incredible asset that any company could benefit from. It allows users to create tasks or lists in an organized fashion easily. In this case, 15Five.com utilized Trello to encourage its employees to use Trello as an open forum for social media content. Employees could post everything from videos to photos to memes. It encouraged a culture of open communication.
(3) Provide Encouragement:
The last thing you want to do is to make your employees feel as if this is something else that has been added to their workload. Instead, you tell your employees to not go out of their way to post content. Rather, whenever they see something of interest, they can post it to Trello.
"Empower employees to be themselves."- David Hassel
How then do most companies encourage their employees to engage on social media?
- 55% offer easily accessible tools for their employees to use in social media
- 50% provide messages about the employer for the employee to use on their social media channels.
- 35% allow employees to use social media at work
- 39% ask employees to stay alerted to social media posting about company
- 35 % provide employees with social media updates so that they can stay current with the tools
- 39 % provide training on how to use social media effectively
Why does this matter?
If you remember from before, only 33% of employees post messages, videos or photos without any encouragement. Brands who do encourage their employees to use social media have better results than those who don't. As they are providing their employees with the resources, they need to be successful brand advocates.
(4) Consistency is key
The person who ultimately, posts the content to social media must make sure that they maintain a consistent voice. Otherwise, you will have trouble maintaining a brand image with your customers on social media.
(5) Share Social Media Statistics with team so they can see their impact
Showing your employees the social media statistic will make them feel like they are making a difference. Everyone wants to be recognized for their great work, so why not praise the team for their efforts?
Does your organization encourage its employees to post on social media? What strategies does your organization use?
