What if your company had a dedicated squad of social media promoters, content contributors, and lead generators? Seen as a trusted source of information, they are also highly experienced brand ambassadors.

Sounds like a dream team, right? If so, we have excellent news for you. The promoters you seek are among the employees you already have! With some encouragement and a set of guidelines, your staff can enhance your online marketing strategy.

Here’s what we recommend.

Step 1: Set Ground Rules

• Create a clear social media policy. State how employees should talk about the company on their accounts. Include information on how to protect the company’s reputation, avoid legal challenges, and prevent security risks. Basic social media training may be necessary.
• Share your social media mission. State why employee participation matters. Enthusiastically recognize the work of positive influencers.
• Do not force participation. The best shares come from content that your employees find genuinely useful or entertaining. The goal is quality, not quantity.

Step 2: Promote Internally

Have your employees follow all social media accounts, subscribe to e-news, and know how to find marketing-related website content. Provide instructions on how they can receive alerts when new content is published.

Step 3: Encourage Employee Participation With These 5 Ideas

• Share social media content: When the company posts to your business profiles, encourage employees to share on their pages. Suggest they add some introductory text about why their networks will find the post noteworthy.
• Tag a contact in a social media post: In the comments section below a post, employees can @-mention a contact that might be interested in the content. They don’t need to give a sales pitch, just a tag, which creates an alert in the contact’s feed.
• Forward e-news: An employee sees a how-to piece or “in case you missed it” bit of news and instantly knows someone who would find value in the article. It’s a goodwill gesture that can encourage new subscribers.
• Invite friends to become fans: Employees should note when a personal contact interacts with shared company content. At the right time and without being overly solicitous, they can invite them to follow the company page. Each social media site has invitation functionality that makes this easy.
• Provide content: Not all content has to come from the top. Encourage your team to contribute. What are their ideas? Would they be guest bloggers? Can they make a behind-the-scenes video? When their networks see that they are spotlighted or given the company microphone, you’re almost guaranteed an uptick in traffic.

Get Help Flexing Your Marketing Muscles

Your social media dream team has been there all along! Now, it’s a matter of activating your army, and Ideal Solutions can assist. Contact us today to get started.