Social media is a phenomenon that has the capability of benefiting and impacting businesses on a wide-scale level. To maximize this kind of exposure, it’s important for a company to be fully invested in social media beyond a marketing team or social media manager. As a recent example of companies using social media to their advantage, the recent Unicorn Frappe creation from Starbucks infiltrated various social platforms as customers persistently posted these vibrant drinks throughout Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Most importantly, not only did the customers post about this new imaginative product, but the baristas did as well (especially on Instagram).
Whether their hands felt permanently stained from “unicorn blood,” referencing the colorful flavoring, or they posted videos of hilarious rants due to the immense lines, Starbucks employees were directly involved in publishing social media content about their company. These videos and posts evolved rapidly and inspired reactions out of the customers themselves, which boosted the overall publicity of the product itself.
While this example shows the impact of social media marketing through the employees’ perspective, other companies, whether big or small, can view this movement in terms of motivating their own staff members to become involved in social media marketing. We offer three tips to drive your company and its employees to become more involved in social media: the use of an organizational tool, individual recognition of employees on social platforms, and informational sessions.
Enable a Single Point of Contact
It is more convenient and simpler for employees to participate in a company’s social media profiles if there is one application available that can manage multiple platforms of social media simultaneously. While there are many solutions available, we’ll review one with which we’re familiar and have several clients that use as well.
Hubspot allows various (approved!) users to access social media profiles, enable a browser extension, and schedule posts through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These features are helpful to overall marketing strategy as they allow users to map out future posts, track analytics, and enable further time for customization.
Employees can not only organize posts in advance (which adds convenience) but also evaluate feedback and make changes, which may motivate them to improve their skills with social media. Hubspot offers many other functions beyond social tools for engagement and performance. However, what we’ve outlined here are key elements that can be useful to motivate employees to directly participate in social media marketing.
Recognize Individuals
Recognition of employees is an important piece for motivating involvement in social media. By formulating posts on social media that personally acknowledge the accomplishments of staff members, executives, or other employees, they will feel more appreciated and willing to share/like more material. If employees are individually tagged on company pages, they will most likely share this recognition on their personal pages and from there, more connections can be formed. It could be as simple as a Facebook post on a company saying, “Check out this new blog” with a personal tag with whomever wrote it. Overall, this activity encourages employees to become more involved in social tools, as their efforts are appreciated by their company and promotes engagement with their peers.
Training Employees
Since social media marketing is key in today’s world, and almost everyone can participate, a training session involving select employees can be very effective. Whether there are certain hashtags that employees should always include at the end of every Tweet to boost reach or an advisement to not schedule posts too close together in time, a fundamental guide to social media insights is helpful for employees. On the other hand, employees may also construct new ideas, phrases, or photos for social media platforms which can foster discussion, be quite enjoyable for everyone, and prompt further inspiration for the marketing teams driving social media strategy. It’s important to teach your employees how to effectively post to social media, but remember to also allow for individual creativity.
The common phrase “It is all about who you know” is vital in relation to motivating your company to become more involved in social media. Essentially, teams of employees can become a company’s biggest supporter as related to social media marketing. It should not be a tedious task, but rather insightful and enjoyable for staff members. This is possible due to organizational platforms such as Hubspot, designations of individual recognition, and informational sessions to support content creation and understanding. These few tips are some of the fundamental backbones regarding the encouragement of social media marketing performance and will lead to more promotion and engagement for companies across social media platforms.
Alexis Ahern authors the column “Lexi’s Lexicon” and is an Account Executive for Milldam Public Relations.
