Using Social Media to Build a Stronger Workforce
With all the divisive and inappropriate material on social media, managers may shy away from involving employees in developing their online presence. Besides having employees like the company Facebook page or follow your brands on Instagram, there are many other ways to turn your workforce into online ambassadors.
Using Social Media to Highlight Wins
You can use social media to share the progress of colleagues working on the key projects and celebrate important wins by tagging employees that made it happen on Instagram and Linked In.
Using Social Media in Unique Ways
When it comes to juggling your company’s social media presence, concentrate on mission-critical tasks. If you’re in HR, that might mean ensuring that job postings are updating on Linked in. IF you are the CIO, you can get creative with how you use social media. Post articles and blogs to keep your team up-to-date with what’s going on in the industry and highlight individuals and teams that are performing above and beyond expectation. Knowing their efforts will be noticed helps keep employees on track with the priorities set by the company.
You can also use social media as a recruiting tool. Encourage employees to share job posts and referrals on their social media pages or to share good news about company expansion, new products and other milestones.
Communicate and Delegate
Using social media in conjunction with collaborative apps such as Trello or Slack helps you delegate and collaborate with entire teams or breakout group in innovative ways, no matter where you go.
“In order to create winning teams, you need to change individual perspectives from ‘This is not my responsibility,’ to ‘Hey, my teammate in trouble, let me see where can I pitch in and help us get this win,’” from Grow Your Staff, a web-based outsourcing firm.
Other Ways to Expand Corporate Culture Online
Use social media to promote your culture and keep employees feeling connected to the organization and each other.
- Promote your culture. Social media provides a perfect opportunity to soft sell your company. People who are considering job posts at your firm will check out your social media presence. So, make sure to highlight the things that make it a great place to work — without sounding like marketing spiel.
- Don’t overlook the niche networks. Don’t just stick to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Your IT team might be pleasantly surprised to see company posts on GitHub and StackOverflow and may even want to participate. Marketers can be encouraged to check out company guest posts on Moz and Warrior Forum. This could give you an edge over other companies with fewer outlets for employees to participate.
You probably have some social media experts in your workforce. Encourage everyone to brainstorm ideas on how your company can expand its social media presence in positive ways. Some employees with became brand evangelists and share developments that shed products and services in a positive light. Allowing employees to talk share work experience in a responsible way can garner positive looks by clients, employees and vendors.