Getting your staff online

Staff members can become your greatest brand advocates. They can highlight company news, increase the exposure of a business and offer a unique perspective on the inside workings of an organisation. But getting them using these social networks is a different matter entirely.

Here’s four ways to encourage new staff members to sign up, use and benefit from these social networks.

Introduce social media

Encouraging staff to join an unfamiliar social network is often the most challenging task. While it’s all well and good explaining how their activity on Twitter or LinkedIn can benefit the organisation, you may find that some employees will be reluctant to invest their time into a profile if it seems like they’re signing away their image and time for the sole benefit of an employer.

Explain how one particular social network will add value to their personal lives, grow their professional network and increase their knowledge. Demonstrate its worth on a personal level, rather than framing the usage of these platforms in a corporate point of view. Sit down with interested team members and provide training on each social network; highlight the features of each site and the tools you can use for each site.

No fear

The nightmare scenario, for any agency, is having a client associate personal tweets with a company’s attitude or philosophy. While personal tweets have never, in my experience, influenced a client-agency relationship, there are more than enough examples on the internet to appreciate the dangers of having a staff member associate themselves with a company account.

So, offer some guidelines to any team members who decide to enter the social space. Be clear about the issues which can arise from sharing your personal life online, but be careful not to put off any potential team members with horror stories. As long as you give staff sensible guidelines about what they post online, there shouldn’t be any major mishaps.

Encourage staff online

Encourage new Twitter members with retweets and @ mentions from the official company account. If you’re new to Twitter, it can feel like you’re talking yourself. By engaging with staff, you’re not only giving them additional coverage (and followers), but also providing a quick taster as to the benefits of this particular social network. In this way, you can encourage staff to pursue their social media activity.

Don’t force the issue

Never force a team member to post an update or retweet a message on your behalf. While it’s acceptable to ask politely if someone can share your message or link, never forget that you do not have jurisdiction over the content of another person’s social media account. It is their personal profile and the last you want to do is to hijack it for your own corporate means. There are two reasons for this:

Staff may become unhappy that their personal profile is being hijacked for company means and leave the site entirely.

Social media thrives on personality. If a personal account becomes nothing more than a megaphone for company updates, it’s not likely to attract as many connections, defeating the object of the exercise.

In an ideal world, you want staff to become company advocates on their own terms; posting content and retweeting updates when they feel it is of most interest to them and their followers. This is how, as an organisation, you’ll get the most benefit.