Make Social Media an Endeavor that Involves All Your Employees
Even for businesses that have a designated social media manager, social media should always be a team effort that involves all employees to some extent. If not, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to reflect all the nuances of what you have to offer.
Social media is a major undertaking, requiring a lot of time and creativity, and if the social media presence for your business is generated exclusively by one person and one person alone, then it’s going to be a lot of the same. Everyone has different ideas and different perspectives, so why not take advantage of that?
First, let’s take a look at why it’s good for your business to have everyone involved in social media, and then consider a few ways you can handle such a collaborative effort in the most efficient way possible.
Why Everyone Should Be Involved
A good social media presence depends on having a lot of content put out into the digital world on a consistent basis. Whether you have a full-time employee doing social media or you outsource your social media presence to a digital marketing company, whoever is doing your social media simply cannot be everywhere all at the same time. The more eyes and ears you have, the more rounded your social media presence will be.
Most people are on social media for personal use these days, so that means most members of your staff are going to know a little bit of what to do when they open up Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube. More importantly, they know the sort of stuff they want to see (and what they don’t want to see). Maybe you don’t realize what social media trends or popular types of content you’re missing until everyone pitches in. You also wouldn’t realize what unlikeable things you’re doing to digitally assault your followers until you’ve heard half your staff say, “Yeah, I don’t like it when business pages do that.”
This doesn’t mean that it has to be a collective decision what you will and will not do on social media. Most often, those calls really are best left up to owners and marketing management. But having input always helps, especially if those same team members are being asked to contribute content for social media — which leads to the second reason getting everyone involved is important.
More people means more content. More photos. More videos. More entertaining anecdotes about something a customer or client said. Basically, it means that you’re not limited in what you have to post on social media. And everyone is going to see a different side of the business, so the daily operations that one person is not involved with will not be the primary responsibility of another person. If you run a retail store, some of your best content will likely come from the people who spend all day on the sales floor or at the cash register.
How to Get Everyone Involved
Of course, it could become an overwhelming mess if you try to have too many cooks in the kitchen. You need some kind of structure in place. There’s no one-size-fits-all method for having a team contribute to social media, but here are a few ways you could consider doing it:
Have a weekly brainstorming session where people discuss what sort of content they could create that week while they’re working. Be sure to assign tasks to have all bases covered.
Set up a folder in Dropbox or Google Docs where everyone can submit content to the person who will be in charge of posting it.
If everyone is enthusiastic about helping with social media presence, set aside an hour once a month for a workshop where people swap tips and tricks. A staff member who is really good at taking photos on their phone might have trouble creating a graphic on InDesign or Publisher, and vice versa.
Organize a contest among staff members and award a prize for the person whose post gets the most engagement in a given week.
Give an employee a day to do an Instagram or Twitter takeover.
Using social media as an opportunity to spotlight your employees reflects your company pride in them – this makes employees feel appreciated and boosts morale. Take a photo at the next company happy hour to share a “behind the scenes” look at your business for your followers on social media. Tag your employees in the photos if they are willing.
There’s one added benefit of involving all members of staff in your social media presence: It could potentially get all of them more invested in the day-to-day operations of the company. Once they’ve adopted the mindset of “I want to show others what we do every day,” they’ll have a better appreciation of and enthusiasm for your mission and goals. They’ll be having fun while they help improve your company’s visibility and establish its brand.