Encouraging your employees to participate in the business’ social media activities can often be a challenge.
One way to gain employee participation is by creating a ‘social associates’ program within the business.
A social associate is an employee who is willing (and able) to promote your business on their own social media sites.
When employees do participate in social media they can become your best advocates by saying great things about you online and recommending you to their friends.
PR News has provided some great tips to help you build a community of employee brand advocates.
Before nominating employees as social associates you need to provide them with social media training.
If employees are inexperienced in social media they may not be able to communicate your messages effectively or may not represent the business correctly.
Here are some tips for what to include in a social associate training session:
- Social media code of conduct: Make sure employees understand how to correctly represent the business on social media. Set down rules they must follow and inform them of the consequences of breaking these rules.
- Social media course: Enroll your employees into a social media course or conduct a training session with them on how to use each platform.
- Content: Prepare lots of approved content such as status updates, discussion topics and links to articles, which employees can post. It may be a good idea to include this information into a content calendar.
- When to post: Instruct employees on how often they can post about the business.
- Tone of voice: Inform employees of the correct tone of voice to use in their posts and how to respond to comments appropriately. This is especially important when employees need to respond to negative comments and resolve the issue effectively.
- Who to report to: It’s a good idea to have one social media manager within the business to organise the social associates and train them.
- Measurement: Instruct employees on how to record the success of their social media activity in order to determine if the social associates program is effective.
Social associates can help your business to reach a wider audience of potential customers and build your brand awareness.
When employees demonstrate their passion for the business online it can help to position you in a positive light and assist with the delivery of key messages to your target audience.
Read the full article here.
Need help training your employees to use social media? Download our free ebook Your Guide to Social Media Success.
Sydney Public Relations Agency, CP Communications provides specialist media, traditional and online PR strategies that get amazing results. Contact us today. For more great tips visit our website www.cpcommunications.com.au.