5 Ways to Engage Your Employees on Social Media

First of all, let me make this clear – your employees ARE on social media during working hours, whether you like it or not. They are leaving comments, posting, tweeting and pinning, and that is not a bad thing. According to two studies mentioned in Forbes “digital connectivity appeared to boost metrics like productivity and retention.” Social media connected employees are able to find work-related information faster and they are better at responding to inquiries in a timely manner. When your team is on social media anyway, why not take advantage of that and convert your employees into company’s advocates?

Employees are in a unique position to share company’s culture, news and values in an organic, non-promotional fashion.

When employee advocacy program is executed correctly, your team can:

• Share unique view of your company;
• Boost organic reach for your business accounts;
• Connect with clients and respond to inquiries faster;
• Create content that is non-promotional and authentic;
• Attract other quality employees to your company;
• Humanize your brand and bring in new business.

Most businesses today have a dedicated team that takes care of company’s social media content posting and managing. Whether you are outsourcing this task to an agency or you have someone in-house, not engaging your employees on social media can limit your business’s reach (especially when Facebook keeps on sharing updates like this one). Encouraging your employees to share your company’s culture and news, and actively participating in co-creating content can be the one strategy that makes all the difference in your digital marketing. Obviously you don’t want to add a social media manager title to every employee, and you don’t want to create more workload for them. What you want to do is to create authentic, organic interactions between people who work for you and your business.

Here are 5 easy ways for you to engage your employees on social media:

1. Encourage your team to take pictures at work and share them on their social media

Your employees have a very unique view of your company and their insider information can help to humanize your brand and attract high quality new hires and even new customers.

2. Encourage participation in online discussions about your brand

Allow your team to build their own personas within your company by responding to online questions, sharing your business posts, and participating in online conversations with your clients, vendors and fans.

3. Share your photos of your employees and write blogs about them

Social media is a great place to celebrate your employees and their achievements. Show your team doing their daily tasks, feature an employee of the month, welcome new hires. Sky’s the limit!

4. Educate your team on social media best practices

Even if you have an office full of Millennials who can teach you a thing or two about the latest Snapchat filter,  it is still your responsibility to educate your team on social media best practices. Once you open an opportunity for your employees to talk about your brand online you need to make sure they are aware of any controversial topics they should stay away from when mentioning your brand.

5. Keep it fun!

There is a fine line between encouraging employees to be more vocal about your company online and making them feel they now have another job chore. Posting to social media (especially when it comes to posting to personal accounts) should always be a voluntary act. Keep it simple and fun and let your team create their stories in their own voice.

Do you have an employee advocacy program? If yes, what would you add to this list? Let’s chat!