You’re only as strong as your weakest staff member.
Does this quote ring a bell? That’s because some employees are great at what they do and some aren’t, and it’s the ones that aren’t that often leave a lasting impression on customers.
Interacting with followers online has become a necessary part of marketing for most businesses over the past decade. It’s a way of building awareness, trust, and loyalty, as well as keeping your brand at the forefront of your target audiences’ minds.
Amplifying the voices of employees who are dedicated and loyal to the brand, brings an authenticity to social media communication that can set you apart from competitors.
But interacting with people via social media plays a much bigger role in business than just sales or marketing: it’s a way to engage customers and employees and build a community.
Free-to-use image sourced from Unsplash
Employees can be a tremendous asset to a company in terms of offering online support and advocacy if you, as a company, foster a sense of belonging and create a culture to engage individuals. Furthermore, employees have on average, 5X more social reach than corporate accounts.
Social media employee engagement has thus become an essential part of building brand credibility—but not all employees will be great ambassadors. The key is selecting the right people and nurturing them to want to share positive posts.
With 64% of customers prepared to spend more with businesses they trust, it’s now more important than ever to engage your employees to stay ahead of the game.
What is an employee social media engagement strategy?
In short, it’s a plan outlining how to utilize your employees to shout about your brand on social media. However, it can be so much more than this. It’s also a way of boosting morale and building relationships between employers and employees.
An employee social media engagement strategy will normally identify tools you can put in place to motivate and encourage staff to share branded content on their social media channels. This could be company news, polls, competitions, or staff good news stories.
This strategy should also include ways of standardizing and distributing content to your staff, as well as tools for tracking performance so you can spot key performers.
Why is an employee social media engagement strategy important?
An employee social media engagement strategy is a way to strengthen your current social media presence. It involves leveraging those in your business to help grow your audience and increase engagement. This can help you avoid costly campaigns or enhance those you may already have running.
If you’ve looked after your employees, hopefully, they should already be your top advocates, so who better to shout about your brand from the rooftops?
This is why it’s important to invest in your staff’s wellbeing. These efforts might include training programs, an excellent healthcare package with QLE capabilities, or even a specially developed discount program.
Free-to-use image sourced from Unsplash
The more times your staff share links, the better your SEO rankings will be, thus improving your organic reach. What’s more, shared branded posts will also reach more feeds.
Ergo, creating a culture where your staff are happy to support your brand online is a great way to garner trust in your business and increase growth.
How do you create an employee social media strategy?
We thought you’d never ask!
Whether you decide to implement this as part of your in-house strategy or a broader outsourced social media approach, there are several key principles to make it a success.
The main hurdle is engaging and motivating staff to get involved. But, as each staff member is unique, there’s not necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach.
1. Conduct a staff survey
Staff feel more included in the workplace when their ideas and opinions matter. If you want your team to be engaged with your social media strategy, it makes sense to involve them in its planning.
An important part of onboarding new team members is ensuring they feel like they’re entering into a culture where everyone is valued. Surveying current employees can help make sure you’re doing this right and, if you are, should even reduce costly staff turnover.
It’s important to recognize staff requirements, such as the resources or social media assets they may need. It’s also critical to understand which social media platforms they use.
Gathering feedback may even bring in new ideas. We don’t all use social media in the same way, and pulling inspiration from a wider talent pool can help you collect the information needed to create the strategy that best fits your business.
2. Identify the social media platforms that suit your company
Social media platforms don’t all have the same demographic reach. Depending on your target audience, you should focus your strategy on the one(s) that will best help you find your tribe.
Furthermore, each platform has different features and ways to connect with people, and some are more limited than others.
Free-to-use image sourced from Unsplash
Below is a broad overview of the most popular platforms. It might be the case that you only need to focus your time on one or two of these.
- Facebook. With over three billion active users worldwide, Facebook can be a great place to start. The platform allows businesses to create a page, set up community groups (privately or publicly), share videos, and run adverts.
It’s important to understand its specific demographics. For example, 49% of its users are aged between 25 and 44, so it’s important to check whether this aligns with your target audience.
- Instagram. Instagram is the second biggest social media platform in the world, primarily engaging users via images and short videos (aka reels). It’s a great place to share good news, brand stories, staff recognition posts, and events. There’s also the option to sell products directly on the platform and build collaborations with influencers.
Over 60% of Instagram users are aged between 18 and 34, with slightly more male users than female. Again, understanding these key demographics can help you refine your strategy and pitch your content.
- TikTok. This platform seemed to appear from nowhere in 2020 and has grown in popularity ever since. It allows users to explore their creativity and become recognized in their own right. This can make it a useful tool for employees with a talent for sharing, and it can also be a great way to highlight your company’s values and ethos with fun and imaginative video content.
- Twitter (now X). With its famous character limit, this is the place to share short, snappy tidbits of information. Some Tweeters (Xers) have been quite creative in the past (see Aldi for some great examples) and created many a funny post that’s gone viral.
- LinkedIn. Most professionals will have a LinkedIn account, so this is a particularly good platform for engaging employees. It may even help you attract new ones and communicate with a B2B audience. This is a useful place to garner professional support, network, and share news or blogs that might benefit others in your industry.
3. Create content your employees want to share
Compelling content can, in itself, be a great motivator. This could be anything from sharing a short interview with employees while they’re doing their jobs, like packaging products ready to post out to customers, or posting ‘staff member of the week’ type content.
Don’t shy away from national news topics that affect workers in your region or industry either, as these can be great talking points. Don’t shy away from national news topics that affect other workers in your region either, for example, states announcing new reciprocal agreements or changes in employment law could benefit your staff and encourage organic staff interaction.
Free-to-use image sourced from Unsplash
You might also want to create a hashtag, such as #staffatyourbusiness or #weloveyourbusiness to get people onboard. You could ask employees to share their thoughts on industry topics, key events, or new products while tagging your company and using these dedicated hashtags to generate a following.
Good quality, engaging content might even mean getting various staff members to record videos to embed in your trigger email and give a personalized welcome to new subscribers. This helps newcomers get a more wholesome picture of your company than just sending out the standard branded emails we’re all bombarded with.
The more you involve employees, the more inclined they’ll be to become active members of your social media strategy. Allowing them to invest their personality into the company can help develop a culture where everyone feels seen.
4. Involve employees in product launches
Employees will often get to see or use a product before it launches, so why not also gather some early reviews from them? You could make the most of videos and creative imagery to showcase new products and generate excitement before they’re even out.
Product launches are a fantastic opportunity to show the faces behind your brand too. For example, why not introduce the team behind the innovative idea or share who designed the sustainable packaging or came up with the catchy name? Singing the praises of staff on social media shows you value them and gives a great impression of your business as a whole.
5. Be clear on your ethos, goals, and objectives
An employee engagement social media strategy will be more effective if it’s in line with your company goals and objectives. Some key questions you may want to ask before developing your plan of action may include:
- What do you want to achieve from the strategy? Growth? Sales? Increased engagement? etc.
- What message do you want to send about your company? Are you a sustainable brand? Do you have a great workplace culture? Do you support any charities? Etc
- What types of posts will help you deliver your message? Meet the team posts? Competitions? Facts or figures based information? Blogs? Funny posts?
- What tone best reflects your brand? Professional? Quirky? funny?
6. Have a code of conduct
Finally, you may do everything in your power to engage and motivate staff, but when you involve employees in your social media strategy, there has to be some expectations in terms of conduct. If staff are promoting your brand, you may require them to set up a professional account as opposed to using a personal one.
There must also be a standard in terms of what they can and can’t share when their name is linked to your business. Here are some examples of things you should mention in your code of conduct document.
No sharing of:
- Political opinions
- Racist materials
- Slanderous remarks about others, including public figures or competitors
- Sexist posts
- Anything that could be deemed offensive (weapons, alcohol, cigarettes, nudity, etc)
- Competitor products
- Spam posts
Once employees engage with your company on social media, they become brand ambassadors, and anything they share reflects on you.
7. Create a clear social media policy
As with the code of conduct above, a social media policy helps you set a standard for anything communicated online. Clear guidance on how to create posts makes the process easier for employees and helps break down any barriers to engagement.
In your policy, you could identify tools to help employees create content such as templates and hashtags, and have guidance on writing captions to keep a consistent brand voice.
You could include a checklist too including reminders like:
- Have you tagged the company?
- Have you checked the spelling?
- Did you share the post on other channels?
Final thoughts on Employee Engagement Social Media
Involving employees in your social media strategy is a great way to boost follower engagement. If you harness a culture of staff wellbeing, development, and recognition, you should have a solid team to lean on. Using ‘real people’ to talk about your business helps build customer trust whilst demonstrating the human side of your company.
As your social media efforts expand, collaborating with valued employees can also bring a host of fresh ideas and help you stay abreast of new developments, trends, and updates to each platform. This makes employee engagement a cost-effective tool to boost your current efforts.
So, what are you waiting for? Why not get started today?