As 2015 is shaping up to be the "Year of Employee Empowerment" in social media more and more companies are wondering how they might benefit. Social media employee empowerment programs are proving highly successful at brands such as Lenovo, Oracle and Cisco where employees using their own social networks effectively become brand ambassadors. Increased reach and engagement are just two of the often-cited benefits for brands.
But how do you set up an effective employee empowerment program?
During a recent Brandwatch webinar called Social Monitoring & Gamification: Creating Employee Advocates at Cisco (the slides from the webinar are here) Brandwatch’s product manager Caroline Goodwin outlined one possible approach: Raise awareness of the value of social. She said organizations can do this by:
Putting social up on screens in the workplace where everyone can see social activity around the brand and its products and services.
Using reports to regularly show employees at various levels what is happening with social efforts and how they help the brand.
Integrating social facts and figures for the brand with other numbers employees are more comfortable and used to seeing such as sales figures or call numbers.
Enable your employees by:
Training them and providing tips and guidelines about what kinds of information can and can’t be shared about and around the brand. Also share how social media efforts are measured.
Promoting the type of content you’re hoping employees will share, the hashtags your brand prefers and any tips on the ways to share content from the company website.
Collating all of your employee’s social handles so you can accurately track their efforts. Goodwin says the surprisingly easy way to do this is to "just ask" for each participating employee's social handles.
Encourage healthy competition by:
Creating a table showing who has the greatest impact (either by using an existing commercially available tool or creating your own measurement) that looks at frequency of sharing, numbers reached, and numbers of responses and re-shares.
Harness the power of your advocates by:
Planning ahead, for example, by giving your employees a heads up on an upcoming marketing campaign and share the relevant hashtags and links to the content that will be going out in the near future.
Monitoring results by tracking specific links and hashtags and who is sharing them and how far they are going. Brands can also keep the momentum going by providing very regular updates to employees during the campaign so everyone feels involved.
Recognizing all participants once the campaign is over and sharing its success with all. But then also recognize the most successful social media advocates.
For all the time and effort many businesses put into setting up in social media it is surprising that many could not answer to the question: “What next?”
For some, the answer is: “We’re here and that’s good enough.” To overcome that notion I’d suggest it’s important to know the difference between “existing” in social media and “living” in social media in four key ways:
1. Planning
Existing: The plan is simply to set up on various social media platforms just to be found. This “set up an outpost” thinking is all about making sure that when people do find you on a site such as Facebook or Twitter that they are “driven” to your own website.
Living: This type of planning takes into account where your customers, employees and suppliers already hang out in social media. It carefully chooses and prioritizes which platforms make sense for your business. It takes a long-term view.
2. Presences
Existing: These businesses on social media have one-dimensional pages on Facebook or Twitter accounts that have a schedule of broadcast messages about your company, your products or your clients. Even the avatar is a company logo or a product. These pages don’t feel like they are run by human beings you’d want to interact with – they’re not and you wouldn’t.
Living: These accounts are run by people … people who make it clear that while they work for a business they are also willing to engage with fans and followers. The messaging from these pages/accounts feels genuine. Visitors asking questions here will get a response.
3. Commitment
Existing: Businesses spend just enough time and resources to set up and maintain their presences. The employee who’s doing the work on behalf of the enterprises has had social media added to their list of responsibilities and likely has had little or no training.
Living: Companies who commit to social media start with a solid plan, follow through with professional training and alter work assignments to create time for daily social media participation. The expectation from the C-Suite down is that social media is as important, if not more important, to the company’s future than traditional marketing, sales and customer-relations efforts.
4. Relationships
Existing: What relationships? Seriously, businesses who are only in social media for what they can get out of it don’t really want to relate to the “unwashed masses” … they just want their money.
Living: The biggest reward for businesses living in social media will be the relationships they build – relationships with customers, employees, clients and, yes, even competitors. Relationship-building is what puts the “social” into social media. Businesses here will monitor social sentiment and profusely thank their promoters and work with their detractors to resolve issues. Ultimately this leads to others becoming your company’s biggest promoters.
So, are you merely “existing” in social media or are you “living” there? And what other ways would you suggest businesses get more from and put more in to social media?
As Social Media becomes a scapegoat in workplaces because “employees are spending too much time on it” or “they’re not representing us well with it” I love to tell this story about a scary new technology in the workplace
The new-fangled technology was not to be trusted … so much so that the boss set it on a desk in the middle of the office where he could see it through the window in his door. Now he was sure he could keep an eye on it and monitor its use by employees. You see he just knew employees would be tempted to spend too much time on that contraption, would not use it for work purposes and, worse, would use it to give away company secrets. What possible good purpose could this technology be put to?
Well that “technology” was the telephone and the timeframe? The start of the 20th Century.
You see humans have always mistrusted the new and suspected it would lead to “no good.”
So how should organizations regulate Social Media in the workplace? They shouldn’t … at least not in ways different from the way they regulate computer and telephone usage.
3 Ways Businesses Can Erase Social Media Fears:
1. Explain: Tell your employees all about Social Media (including some of its pitfalls such as “Your tweets will live on forever … be careful”) and then explain to them that their use of company property (computers etc) to engage on Social Media is stealing unless they are doing the company’s business.
2. Train: Are there things they could legitimately do to help your business on Social Media? Absolutely! So train them in the types of messages around your company, your products and services that you strongly suggest they use when the opportunity is right. Show them how to use Social Media to monitor for mentions of your brand and/or product and then train again on how to direct those messages or respond to them.
3. Ingrain: Make sure every fiber in their body understands that Social Media is a public space. They should not say anything they would not be willing to shout from your rooftop in front of you or their mother (whoever carries the bigger stick in their minds).
If you, like me, believe that businesses blocking access to Social Media and other websites is wrong please consider checking out StopBlocking.org and supporting its work.
Remember, Social Media, like most things can not truly be suppressed or held back. Why not embrace the change and have smart employees acting as your eyes, ears and mouthpieces?
Beware of people claiming to be experts and offering dubious training
It seems a day doesn’t go by when there isn’t an email solicitation, a tweet or a Facebook status update offering the services of “a Social Media expert,” “a Social media guru” or “a Social Media marketing authority.” But who are these people?
With the notable exception of a few universities and some fairly new institutes and academies there is not a lot of professional teaching of Social Media going on. So how is a business or individual to decide which “expert” to hire?
In Microgeist’s excellent blog post What a Social Media Expert Should Be explains that a Social Media Expert, SME, will likely need to be well-versed in (among other things) the wide range of Social Media tools, the correct way to use each of these tools, a broad knowledge of trends in the rapidly changing world of SM and be able to offer a wide variety of options for any given client.
But there is more to consider … and it really is more about the SME’s approach to Social Media.
A flyer I recently saw promised that in less than a day a particular seminar would teach participants how to “gain the competitive edge in Social Media” and “position yourself as an expert.” It goes on to say that in just a few hours seminar participants will learn to “leverage the power of Social Media marketing to grow your business.”
This seems counterintuitive because Social Media is about:
· Being social, not being a marketer or a salesperson.
· Helping others, not gaining a competitive edge (presumably at the expense of someone else – a decidedly anti-social approach)
· Growing your relationships, not growing your own self-interest (business and otherwise).
Yes, Social Media is a powerful new tool for connecting with others. And it will by its nature allow relationships to sometimes lead to commerce. But when someone offers a seminar lasting a few hours and promises to make you an expert and show you the “secret” of using Social Media to grow a business … be careful.
Many of these people are well-intentioned, but some are just in it to make money and grow their reputations. Before spending your hard-earned cash here are
5 Questions to Ask Any Prospective Teacher of Social Media:
1. What are your credentials to teach Social Media?
2. How long have you been in Social Media? (And where can I find you in Social Media – which platforms?)
3. How successful have your past seminar participants been?
4. Among past students who recommends you and where can I contact them?
5. What is the potential for follow up once the course/seminar is over? (Will the instructor be available for further consultation?)
An unsatisfactory answer to any of these questions should be your first red flag that you are dealing with someone who wants your money more than your Social Media success.
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