How to turn employees into social media brand advocates
In this article, we discuss how you can turn employees into social media brand advocates. Before answering the question of the given topic, it is a prerequisite to understanding the basics. What is social media advocacy? This can be defined as a domain through which people can share brands and information of brands as a part of their everyday social lives at work or home, to an extent. This is when a brand is talked about on personal social media channels through Employee Advocacy or Brand Advocacy. We are here to talk about employee advocacy.
An employee advocate’s job is to grasp their social network or social media channels to throw a positive light on their company and help their organization reach a wider audience. Your employees are one of your most prominent social media assets. Encouraging employees to discuss your company on social media is a great idea. So, how does a company get this job done?
Choose the right people for the right job
Before turning employees into social media brand advocates, it is essential to identify potential influencers within your workforce. It is indispensable to choose excellent and the right candidates for your team of social media advocates. If you can look for employees who already use and enjoy using social media entertainingly and positively, you have won half the battle. No employee should be forced to share brand content on their channels.
Get Comfortable Employees
You need those employees to spread the word via social media channels, who are active users and are comfortable with various social media platforms that they will be using, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, etc. The platform use shall depend on their personal preferences as well as with the specifications/type of brand to be promoted.
Employee recognition for the company’s culture
Nobody works for free, and employees are not that good-hearted enough to promote your brand for free. There has to be something in it for them, such as rewards and incentives. If workers in your organization are satisfied in their workplace, they would be more likely to put the brand in the right spot online as well as offline. Therefore, creating an influential company culture and a fun environment works as well.
Educating your employees with the basics
Every employee has a different level of comfort with social media. Training everyone on social media in general, as well as on company policies and guidelines, gives a kick start. Start by getting everyone on board with social media’s best practices, like posting a simple story on Instagram with a caption related to your brand.
Regular content sharing
Sometimes employees may not be aware of the type of content to be shared on an online platform. Therefore, regularly offering new content can help them get an idea to work accordingly. This helps employees create a consistent social media sharing habit. The type of material to be shared could be a mixture of new industry trends in a fun format such as custom info-graphics, cinema-graphs, Snapchat stories, etc.
Setting guidelines
Guidelines help protect your company’s reputation and ensure against legal and security risks. Some instructions are just common-sense, for instance, avoiding vulgar and intolerant language. Employees may need to know not only what the message is but also the best way to communicate it. The guidelines should be easy to understand and followed. This will guide them on fundamental questions such as: What kind of language should they use to post? How often should they post? How should they respond and interact with the commenters?
These are just a few ways to get your employees to be strong candidates for being your social media brand advocates. Eventually, it’s all teamwork that can take your brand to reach new heights.
