There is no escaping social media, but it’s not just about sharing memes or funny cat videos! It is commonly used by many individuals and organisations in numerous different areas of working life: from advertising new jobs and networking with peers, to communicating directly with customers. Whether you have accounts with LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, as an employer you also have these fantastic tools at your disposal to engage with employees. People want to feel valued and that they are contributing to a broader vision – social media provides the perfect channel to help make this happen.
These digital platforms have become key to building relationships, but, as with other employee engagement methods, you still need a strategy. And, importantly, you need to stay involved since your employees expect you to not only post, but to also use social media for two-way communication. This makes it a true engagement tool.
Take a look at some of our ideas for enhancing employee engagement through the power of social media.
1. Tweet about your events To build excitement for your events, promote them on Twitter. For instance, if you’re taking part in an industry conference, ask your staff to get involved and retweet your updates. Also, Christmas preparations, fundraising and other fun activities create a perfect excuse for showing your followers what goes on ‘behind the scenes’, promoting transparency. If you have guidelines for staff to use your organisation’s Twitter account, they can also participate. But make sure all content is approved before it goes public!
2. LinkedIn job profiles Ask staff to contribute to your organisation’s LinkedIn page by writing a short paragraph about their job, how they got it and what advice they’d give to someone else looking for a similar role. Although some may be camera shy, most people are probably happy to help (after all it’ll also help raise their own professional profile).
3. Make staff your star bloggers Ask staff to contribute to your blog and to comment on others’ posts. Having articles written by a diversity of people at various levels of seniority also paints a picture of your organisation’s culture for the outside world. Encourage people to come up with ideas for the blog (e.g. A typical day in their job, comment on industry news, a project they’ve just completed). Why not run an awards scheme of ‘Star Bloggers’ to add an extra incentive?
4. Promote your PR Share the glory of any media coverage you get to encourage feelings of pride among everyone. There’s a chance your workers will share the link on social media, causing it to reach beyond your organisation’s walls. If you have video or images, that’s even better; this kind of social content is ideal for engaging people.
5. Collaborate on Facebook Setting up a closed Facebook Group can give a project team a private online space where they can discuss ideas and share information – from graphics to film. This is ideal for people based at different sites who need to exchange information frequently. Enabling people to collaborate using an innovative tool like Facebook supports them in their work, while giving it a feeling of informality, which is great for co-working.
Although the challenge is to stay on top of activity and constantly generate ideas, if you think ahead and tie it in with your business plans, you should find social media very a rewarding route to engaging your people.
We’d love to hear from you if you’re already using social media for engagement! Send your story to Anna Hill, Pure’s Marketing Manager: [email protected].
