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. {{current_slide_index}}
{{total_slide_count}}
More about our unique process
We’ve adopted the five by five communications term from the United States military. When communicating over two radios, a station may request a report on the quality and strength of their signal. Five by five means the signal has excellent strength and perfect clarity — the most understandable signal possible. Five by five is the predecessor to the term “Loud and Clear” or “Lima/Charlie” used by military units today.
To us, 5×5 is a process we’ve refined over the past 20 years to help us craft clear messages and determine how to best broadcast the message to ensure it reaches and resonates with the right audience—loud and clear.
More about our unique process
We’ve adopted the five by five communications term from the United States military. When communicating over two radios, a station may request a report on the quality and strength of their signal. Five by five means the signal has excellent strength and perfect clarity — the most understandable signal possible. Five by five is the predecessor to the term “Loud and Clear” or “Lima/Charlie” used by military units today.
To us, 5×5 is a process we’ve refined over the past 20 years to help us craft clear messages and determine how to best broadcast the message to ensure it reaches and resonates with the right audience—loud and clear.