Create a Social Media Strategy for Your Employees - Classy Career Girl

Create a Social Media Strategy for Your Employees Whatever you stand behind as a company, your employees are the embodiment of your standards and the culture of your company. Letting your clients in on your culture and allowing your employees to share the fun on social media is a great way to move forward and gain momentum. Each employee is a connection to the community around you. How To Create a Social Media Strategy for Your Employees Part 1: Why You Should One of the hardest parts of social media is proving that you are real and that people should care about you. The built-in social media advocate army that is your employees is ripe for the picking. If anything, you’ll be begging them to get off Facebook! Social Equity Prove to your audience that you are a real company. Show the real faces and people behind it by posting the actual faces of your company. Have regular contributors on social media. Show that youre more than a faceless company name. Showing the real rockstars in posts or encouraging those super-awesome employees to share some of their work and achievements is a great way to do that. That great sales member who attends every conference and stays late helping take things down? Show them off on your social to build trust in your company face. Boosts Branding Boost your branding with interactive traffic that matters. Your employees are a great way to get some ‘dark social’ started. Hit off that social equity and build out branding. You build brand trust off a variety of factors: technical branding, local SEO, reviews, and word of mouth. Taking advantage of the positive word-of-mouth recommendations that your employees spout and giving them a platform to spit out those recommendations is another amazing benefit that opening your social media to your employees offers. Show Off Kick-Butt Culture You know what people love? Awesome people. A great company culture will make better employees (which is great for your clients and you), so why not show it off? Letting people know what sort company they are dealing with right off the bat with your social media is incredibly helpful for client communication. Are you a firm that specializes in transparency, or customer service? Besides low cost, is there something that makes you special as a company? That culture that encourages growth and makes you and your employees amazing is something that customers should know. Give them the playbook on you. Talk About Achievements Getting employees as social media advocates?is wonderful content for your social platforms. Did your HR team win a prize for being the most kick-butt HR team in the city? Share that content. Similarly, if someone on your team is so great in their field that they get awards for it in the industry, show off the talent you have at your company. It builds the trust that people have in your company and is a great way to brag without seeming too self-promotional. [RELATED: 9 Social Media Tools to Enhance Your Content] Part 2: How To Get People To Do It Actively engaged employees who are comfortable in their jobs will post about your company in a positive, productive way. Defining what can/cannot be posted, posting your own things, and taking care of your employees will give you a solid base to grow from. Set Guidelines Clearly defining what can be posted?allows you to shut down inappropriate posts. “Working here blows” or whatever other offhanded comments could ?come along on social media. Steering the hashtags and conversations toward work related subjects with  onsite encouragement is also really helpful for any website refresher. Additionally, posting your own things and inviting employees to like them or tagging people in pictures is also a great way to get your employees invested in your social media. Make Sure Your Employees Actually Like Your Company Caring for your employees is also a great way to get people into your company online. A cared for, actively engaged employee is more likely to be involved in social media. This could cover a variety of needs that your employees might have. A  quiet place to live?(and sleep!), enough money to cover their living expenses, or a safe and comfortable working environment are a few. Social media is a great place to vent. If there are more people looking to vent instead of cheer, you might have some work to do internally before showing it off online. Make It Easy Make it easy for people to share your stuff. This means sharing pages on the site, showing off posts in internal emails, and just straight up asking people if they want to follow your company social for updates on when things go public. Making it easy for your employees to find and interact with your company online is important if you want them to be a part of your social media success. Part 3: Things to Watch Out For Social media success isn’t just about launching an army of employees out online. There are a few reasons to hold back. If you treat your employees like trash, productivity is a large issue, or you aren’t sure what sort of people you work with, don’t rely on them to vouch for you online. If You Underpay Your Employees You could never pay your valued employees all that they really deserve for being such rockstars every day. Before you get them online to post about your company, make sure that you are paying them enough. If your IP address is littered with searches and articles about  negotiating raises?and Linkedin updates, consider putting your focus into internal care before getting your employees to spill all over social media. The problem may not be with underpaid employees. They might just feel undervalued in your company or may not be connected to the superb company that you run. Work on those issues before letting them loose on the web. If Production Levels Are a Major Issue Encouraging your employees to get on Facebook more does not increase productivity. It may do wonders for your social media campaign if your employees actively engage in all company news and announcements. Conversely, it does not bode well if your employees already lack basic production skills. Laying out goals, expecting people to meet them,  scenting the office for concentration, reducing stress, and giving your employees more information gives them the power to move forward. If You Don’t Know Your Company Are you wildly uncertain if people will conform to the rules you outlined for social media posting? Are you also uncertain of the relationship your employees have with your company? Look before you leap. Like hiring a good employee, you should make sure they will represent you well. If your employees have social accounts full of wild nights in the club lights, they may not be the best fit for your accounting firm. However, if your employees fit right into your niche and demographic, then encourage away. An on-brand message can be very important, even when coming from an outside source. Social media engagement from your employees is a huge booster in your social equity and brand building. In addition, it can also be a great way to show off. On the other hand, if your employees are hooligans who hate their jobs, consider focusing your energy on making a better staff.