How Social Media Turns Your Employees Into a Secret PR Army

Let’s do some math.  Say you have 1,000 Twitter followers. Your daily tweets reach those 1,000 — if you’re lucky.  Now let’s suppose you have 1,000 employees, each with an average of 1,000 followers.  If they start retweeting your updates, you could suddenly be reaching 1 million followers.

Leveraging employee PR power is no groundbreaking concept, but its potential is higher than ever thanks to the proliferation of social media.

Step one is to get your employees collaborating more effectively in the workplace.  Better teamwork and access to a steady flow of company news are essential ingredients for cooking up an educated and passionate workforce. After all, for your untapped PR army to get out there and show the world your brand, they first need to become your best, most loyal fans.

Our latest tool, HootSuite Conversations, is an internal communication platform that makes this possible. Think of Conversations as your very own social network, enabling employees to form groups and talk amongst themselves in real-time. Old hierarchies and departmental walls break down.  Information is shared freely instead of getting cooped up in email inboxes. And it all happens securely and privately.  

Best of all, appropriate messages and updates can be amplified at the click of a button to Twitter. Employees can share product news with their own followers, extending your reach well beyond office walls. And all of this happens organically, within a single dashboard where messages are read, composed and - when and if the time is right - pushed to Twitter.  

Real-time messaging, Twitter, and Facebook are anything but distractions in the workplace. When used in the right ways, they are the next generation of productivity tools and the key to tapping the PR army that’s already on your payroll.    

(Image: Horia Varlan)