Industrial Marketing Consultants for Manufacturers

Demonstrate the Benefits to Employees & the Company

For Marketing Team: More leads, more brand awareness, more website visitors, lower customer acquisition costs.

Encourage employees to follow, like, and share the company’s social media sites and posts. The company’s brand presence will be more visible, in turn attracting the right partners, customers, and employees.

For Sales Team: More conversations with decision-makers, more potential opportunities, increase in their sales pipeline.

For HR Team: Attract more employees, lower cost of hiring, faster time-to-hire.

For Leadership Team: Increase brand awareness, boost revenues, impact on the bottom line.

Communicate the Company's Social Media Goals & Mission

Why it matters, and ultimately what the overall goals are.

If executives are unsure of the goals or why it is important, why would other employees care to participate and be active on social media?

Additionally, being very transparent about the goals also encourages participation.

Not informing your fellow employees hinders the company culture and could generate mistrust in the overall brand.

Along with the transparency of the goals, share monthly reports of the employee efforts from social media.

This is helpful and encourages other employees who may be reluctant to participate.

Create a Social Media Policy

Define the social media platforms the policy applies to

Have a clear-cut social media guideline with the goal to empower employees with the right knowledge. A few things to consider when creating a corporate social media guideline:

Types of Customers: Identify the types of customers employees should NOT engage with online. Teach them how to recognize and avoid trolls and other negative comments that don’t warrant a response.

Hashtags: Your employees should know the recommended hashtags that they can use when sharing content on social platforms.

Brand Voice and Tone: Is there a corporate tone or language that they should follow?

Who to contact for questions

Legal and Confidentiality: Employees should know what information should not be shared outside the company.

Consequences of company violation

Disclosures: Employees should know whether they need to share any disclosures when sharing content from your company blog.

Create a Social Media Policy

Intel follows the 3 simple rules of engagement:

Other examples of clear social media policies include:

Intel Social Media Guidelines Xerox Social Media Guidelines

Offer Short, but On-Going Training

Are 3x more likely to share content

Socially trained employees:

Will yield 3x more impressions

Will generate between 30 – 50% more engagements

Source 2x the amount of clicks

Have the expertise to create influential content

Employee Advocacy Platform: A platform provides a centralized hub that’s dedicated to providing relevant content for employees and making it easy-to-share. Also, all of the content is pre-approved so employees can safely share the right posts to social media.

Make it easy to share content

Make it straightforward and easy for your employees to find the right content to share. Also, provide constant reminders if you have new and share-worthy content that you want their help promoting.
Here are just a few ideas on helping your employees with easy access:

Email: Most employees are active in their email inbox. Some companies use it to communicate with employees and to share important company news.

Company Intranet: Larger companies have a dedicated intranet where they house all company information, employee handbooks, and even content.

Blog Notifications or Newsletters: Some companies encourage their employees to sign up for their company blog newsletter. Any time a new article is published, they are notified.

Develop an “Employee Suggestion Box”

Develop a way for employees to provide suggestions on social media topics to a centralized repository or designated employee.

This could be as simple as a common email or using a communication tool like Slack, Yammer, or similar programs.

Give employees a reason to engage

Motivate, recognize, and reward (within reason).

You’re building a team of “brand advocates” that will positively impact the company’s social media presence.

According to Cison.com, McKinsey found that non-cash incentives such as recognition from immediate managers and leaders were beneficial as external rewards for employee advocacy.

However, you don’t want your employees to overshare. It kills their credibility with the audience that you want them to reach and to resonate with. A reasonable goal to set is to foster a small amount of advocacy relative to social media activities that reinforce the authenticity of the brand.