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As a marketer we’ve all been there. We craft the perfect blog post, organize a killer webinar or score a high profile article – riding the high we proudly include these “wins” in our internal newsletter or push out a note on our corporate social network to employees with a simple comment: Please share on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. (OK maybe we beg a little too).
And then we watch … and wait … and nothing happens.
Bummer.
Inevitably we get the question: “what happened?”
Our answer: “I guess everyone was too busy”. A quick poll reveals a common theme:
“It’s too much work to cut and paste all day long.”
“I don’t have time to post things on social.”
“Why bother I don’t have any followers?”
“I don’t want my team wasting their time on social.”
Translate: what’s in it for me?
Getting your team to share on social media has to put them first. So put yourself in their shoes and ask what would you like to receive and how would you like to receive it is a good start.
Tips to mobilize your organization on social media
Like anything, to get your team sharing they need to be nurtured – it’s not just about employees acting like robots pushing your agenda. If it is forced or mandated your engagement will be low and they’ll feel like you’re invading their personal lives.
To do it right you need to show social media can help with their personal brands and ultimately their careers in the long run.
Here are some tips to get you started.
- Start at the top – If you want employees on social media you need to do so yourself. It will help set the tone and educate them along the way as to what is appropriate and how to let their own personalities shine through.
- Feed them relevant content – Seed your employees with interesting and relevant content so they don’t have to spend the time finding it themselves. This will get them involved while the conversation is still fresh.
- Have fun – Don’t just push your own content on employees. As a rule of thumb keep company related media to less than a third of all content shared. Find something fun? Share it. It keeps the conversation fresh and employees more engaged if they aren’t just “parrotting”.
- Fit sharing into their daily routine – Avoid forcing another system on your team that they’ll have to remember to open and use. Instead put your content where they already go – their email. Use a tool like Circulate.it to distribute a daily email newsletter that makes it easy for your employees to share.
- Make it dirt simple – Don’t over complicate it for them. Some training and tips are always recommended, but complex certifications and software is death to any program. In fact – it shouldn’t feel like a “program” or campaign at all. Remember the average employee likely hasn’t used any kind of social media management software. Make sharing on social media one-click simple.
- Give them control – Some people keep their social media lives divided between work and personal. If employees only want to post personal stuff to Facebook – that’s fine, they should never feel forced to post on a specific network.
- Be authentic – this means giving employees room to find and create their own voice, their own personal brand and their own point of view. If you lock down and force only company approved tweets, customers will see through this pretty quickly. Help them with content to share, hashtags, copy ideas, but let them put their own spin on it.
- Share the results – if you are asking employees to share they should get something in return. Giving them a basic understanding of clicks, likes, retweets, follower growth, leads and other metrics helps reinforce the value to them. If they see people engaging, they’ll want to keep going. But, keep them in the dark and they will assume no one’s listening.
Social business is here to stay, but it can only be achieved with social employees. Your employees are your brand – now is the time to embrace them rather than hold them back. Your customers will engage with you at deeper level and ultimately become more loyal.
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