Turn Employees Into Advocates [Social Media Tip]

Sometimes, it takes a little longer to create a following or get the reach you’d like from your social media content. Turning employees into social media advocates and getting them participate in sharing your brand’s social efforts can be a great way to start gaining fans and interaction organically.

If you are having trouble reaching your social growth goals, try getting your employees involved in your social media efforts and sharing your content. Your employees are already out there representing your brand, connecting with other industry professionals, consumers and some of your employees may even fall into your target audience. More over, people trust recommendations from other people, more than they trust any other brand message. According to the most recent Nielson Trust in Advertising report, 84% of respondents said they trust recommendations from friends and family over an ad or message coming from a brand. Your employees are an extension of your brand, and their social networks could contain contacts that can be useful to your business or product.

To get the most out of your employees sharing content:

• Create sharing/ posting guidelines. Encourage your employees by concentrating on DO’s more than DON’T’S.
• Make sure they are tagging you brand correctly and using the right hashtags. Ideally, you should take it a step further and adopt a full social media policy for your company.
• Provide help and resources. Knowledge is power, and the more knowledge and understanding about social channels your employees have, the more confident they will become in using them and seeing the benefits sharing brings.

A few ways you can encourage more employee social media content sharing:

• Create an internal social media influencer program or contest – prizes and competition motivate. The results will keep them sharing.
• Measure results and show your employees the impact they have.
• Highlight them! Share employee content to company channels, spotlight an employee on your social channels, or let your employees submit content pieces or ideas. Who doesn’t like sharing information about themselves, or a project they had a part in?

With the correct guidance, employee involvement could reap serious benefits for your business’ social media growth. Getting your employees to share will not only bring visibility and reach, but will solidify your audience’s trust in you – nothing looks better than a company who’s teams support it not only internally, but externally also!

<3

DhariLo

P.S. Get even more social media tips and best practices by visiting my blog www.dharilo.com. You can also find me on Twitter @DhariLo