Organic reach is no longer what it used to be, even a year ago. This means your brand needs a rock-solid social media marketing strategy.
Resharing some of your top-performing content on a consistent basis is a good start, and this applies to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn as well. But it is only a starter strategy. More is needed.
A crucial piece of growing your company page is engaging your colleagues and employees. Of everyone on social networks, from the famous celebrities down to key influencers, these are some of the most influential groups of people that can help you with your LinkedIn marketing – your colleagues and employees.
According to LinkedIn Business Solutions, while only 3% of employees share content about their company, those shares are responsible for driving a 30% increase in the total engagement a company sees.
Brand messages are reshared 24 times more when posted by employees.
Leads developed through employee social marketing convert seven times more frequently.
[Related: 7 WAYS SOCIAL MEDIA CAN BENEFIT MENTAL HEALTH]
Activate Employees As Social Brand Ambassadors To Market Your Brand
By activating your employees as active brand ambassadors for your social media channel, the increased engagement will boost your LinkedIn content while simultaneously increasing the visibility of your company page on LinkedIn.
Nowadays, it is the quality of engagement and brand awareness, no longer revenue or traffic, that are most important. By showing that you already have a vibrant community of people interacting around your posts also serves as social proof, in much a similar way to how a profile with a large following is likelier to be taken seriously as a brand.
Let them or rather empower them to help you so they can boost your brand in a way that influencer marketing can’t.
Here are a few of our best practices that have worked for us in really getting our colleagues and employees involved here:
Simply encourage them to engage with your content.
This sounds simple enough, right?
Encouraging your colleagues and employees to engage with your post will help to spread the content to their networks, thereby increasing your company’s organic reach. It should be no surprise that the people closest to you could end up being the biggest asset in amplifying your social marketing strategy and growth.
Less than 4% of your Facebook friends will see your post in their news feed. Besides, in most likelihood, they haven’t even looked at the post in their feed. Many employees don’t understand what a difference a few likes and comments can make. You might be surprised how willing they are to help if you just ask.
According to Buffer Podcast’s “LinkedIn for Business,” 42% of LinkedIn users have between 300 and 999 connections. Now multiply that by the number of employees at your company and you have a lot of potential organic reach.
Having each employee engage with something as small as one like and comment on a post can, over time, mean exponential return on the investment of time.
Crowdsource using online collaboration tools.
We’ve started using Slack to get employees engaged. Anytime we have a new article out or something on LinkedIn that could use an extra boost, we quickly drop the link to the post onto a Slack channel, tag our team, and then ask them to like and comment on the post. It’s super easy for them to go right in and make an impact.
Send out a weekly internal newsletter with relevant links.
You can include the stories and post highlights for employees to share. If employees and colleagues understand the importance of sharing, they will be much more likely to do so. Once again, Slack comes to the rescue by facilitating employee engagement and crowdsourcing the social media campaign to the wider staff team.
Encourage them to invite their friends to follow you on Facebook.
Here is another thing you can crowdsource. If you have a company Facebook page, Facebook offers a feature where you can invite your friends to like the page. If you can get enough employees to do it, it can give a sizable initial boost to your brand page.
Click on: “Know friends who might like your page?”
Invite your friends to the (your company page)!
Click “Select All” or manually select everyone you want to invite. The red check next to each selected item becomes a blue circle with a checkmark.
Click “Send Invites” and you’re done!
Invite your friends to host a Facebook birthday fundraiser to support your cause.
If you’re active on Facebook, it’s easy to set up a birthday fundraiser in your name. This is crowdfunding at its best, at least where Facebook is concerned.
This guide will take you through all the steps needed to set it up.
Originally published on https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leverage-employees-drive-social-media-engagement-your-naruse/