Increasing Employee Involvement in Social Media Marketing

 

Many businesses these days understand the value of social media marketing, but one area that they often don’t take advantage of enough is employee advocacy. Getting employees more involved in social media marketing offers a lot of value like increasing brand engagement, winning new customers, and recruiting talent. However, your employees first have to understand social media, why it’s useful, and how they can help so your business may benefit from their involvement.

Giving employees free-reign without any training, supervision, and guidelines for social media can at best be ineffective, and at worse, detrimental to your brand. With these tips, you’ll be able to increase employee involvement in social media marketing while helping to protect your business from negative publicity.

Before employees get involved in social media marketing, it’s essential to have a social media policy. It should be clear and easily accessible so they know what they can and can’t post as well as repercussions. Don’t make the policy long and overcomplicated though because it could prevent employees from participating. Make it straight to the point so there’s no room for confusion, yet don’t be overly restrictive.

Explain to employees how social media works and how it can benefit the company. When they’ve come to understand social media’s importance, it’ll be easier to get their input on content ideas. Sharing the various aspects of your business will give your customers a better understanding of your brand, products, or services.

Although there should be one person that’s in charge, social media should be treated as a team effort to encourage employees to get involved. The social media manager, coordinator, or specialist should motivate and filter all of the company’s content and social media, but they shouldn’t bear all of the responsibility. When employees feel like they’re on a team, they’ll be more likely to participate in social media marketing.

Having a weekly, biweekly, or monthly meeting is a great way to instill team spirit and get valuable feedback from employees. A social media meeting also allows a time and place for employees to get involved rather than them putting all the effort on them to brainstorm and submit ideas when they have other tasks on their plate.

A quick way to increase employee involvement in social media marketing is by offering incentives like cash, a gift, or an experience. For example, you can create a competition with weekly or monthly challenges where the employee who shares the most content on social media is awarded.

Sending out an internal social media newsletter allows you to highlight the best pieces of content you’ve generated lately so employees are aware of new content they can share. The newsletter can also report results of your social media marketing, such as increases in website traffic, leads, sales, etc., as well as positive customer comments, to increase employees' motivation.

Once the initial excitement wears down, employees can slip back into non-participation. That’s why maintaining consistency with creating content, on-going training, having regular meetings, and keeping them informed through newsletters is crucial for ensuring employees stay interested and involved.

Social media marketing is an ongoing process and it requires more than enthusiasm to get employees to participate. You need to develop, implement, and evolve your strategy to reap the benefits of employee advocacy on social media. The responsibility of your social media marketing shouldn’t rest solely on one person, it should be a team effort so your business is represented more accurately on social media rather than through just one perspective.

 

Call 407.682.2222 or schedule online a free 30-minute social media strategy session today!