Transcript
Page 1: How to Engage Employees in Social Media for Sales Results

How to Engage Employees in Social Media for Sales Results

Alan SeeCMO, DocuStar, Inc.

by

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Executive summarySocial media is driving a wave of human interaction around the world and its use in the workplace has become an important discussion among companies. No one will question the rapid growth of social media and its impact on the customer experience, but many organizations still struggle with allowing employees to engage on social platforms due to risk and regulatory compliance issues. This white paper will examine three key competency areas in relation to the use of social media among employees: Strategy,

Processes and Technology. Highlighted are key components and detailed steps that will help employees engage in social media and improve the company brand.

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How to Engage Employees in Social Media for Sales Results

The average number of in-house social media employees today is 4.1

1. CMO Survey Report by Duke University, McKinsey and the American Marketing Association, February 2014. http://www.cmosurvey.org/results/

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IntroductionThe customer experience refers to all touch points people have from the moment they are aware of a need until they have fulfilled that need. At a high-level, social media has the potential to influence the customer experience when employees are able to engage in dialogue with the customer and begin building trust-based relationships over time. To make the social-ready transformation an organization may need to adopt a new mindset. Most transformations involve strategy, technology and processes and a social media transformation is no different in that respect.

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On average, when employees share something – anything – with their social networks, each one reaches 20 times more people than a typical brand sharing with the same number of followers.2

2. Unleashing Power Employee Advocacy, Social Media Today, April 3, 2014http://socialmediatoday.com/Beyond_Engagement/unleashing-power-employee-advocacy

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Competency Area #1: STRATEGY

Identify your goals and objectivesA solid strategy begins with goals and objectives. Many companies are trying to increase sales by improving brand awareness and the customer experience through social media. Others look at reducing costs by becoming more efficient. Whatever your situation, your social media goals and objectives should support your strategic marketing plan, which supports your overall business goals and objectives. Your goals should be supported by SMART objectives so that you can properly track your progress:

Spec i f i cMeasurab leAch ievab leRea l i s t i cT imed

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Create a social media policyThere are many challenges associated with social media, especially when it comes to a company’s social media use at work. Companies should encourage employee advocacy and engagement on social channels, but there need to be rules and guidelines. The use of the Internet can affect the way customers view a company’s products and employees. Negative comments or a hostile environment can tarnish the reputation of the company. Does your company have a policy regarding social media, blogging or posting information on the Internet? If one doesn’t exist, create one. Educate and train your employees and partners, and add it to the corporate employee handbook or intranet for reference. Recognize the importance of participating in online conversations but provide a clear policy – to help protect both the integrity of the business as well as employees.

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Address compliance concerns Is there a mandated compliance restriction in your industry? Discuss any confidential or legal issues that could harm the company’s image. Inform and provide guidance for your employees on do’s and don’ts.

Don’t let it collect dust Social media and technology are constantly changing, so social media policies need to be updated every few months. Ask yourself if it’s still relevant or helps your employees do their jobs. Do any legal updates apply? If a policy is developed well enough, it can support and empower employees to be more engaged online.

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SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY KEY POINTS DEFINE: Define what employees can/can’t do.

IDENTIFY: Identify corporate values and help employees understand the impact of their online behavior on their personal “brand” and the permanence of online posts.

REFERENCE: Reference other corporate policies that also may apply in the social media space such as confidentiality, discrimination and harassment policies.

INFORM: Inform employees who to contact if they receive a question via social channels about the company that they can’t or should not answer and who to contact if employees have questions about the policy itself.

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Competency Area #2: PROCESSES

Empower your employees and make it measurableSocial media is becoming more of a function of the company and less of a role of just one person or department responsible for Facebooking and Tweeting–more than just the marketing department needs to be active on social media channels. Employees, partners and distributors are the ambassadors for your brand, and empowering them to become brand advocates can go a long way to amplifying your company’s message. How do businesses leverage social media through their employees and partners? Companies can engage their employees by doing the following:

Grant your employees accessYour employees are already more than likely using social media while they’re at work. And let’s be honest: if you block access to these sites, you’re only doing damage by getting rid of a direct link to your customers. Embrace the use of technology and let your employees engage in online conversations.

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Source: The Rise of Social Salespeople, Forbes, November 5, 2012.3

3. The Rise of Social Salespeople, Forbes, November 5, 2012. http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2012/11/05/the-rise-of-social-salespeople/

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Meet them halfwayMake it easy for your employees to be engaged on social media. Gather existing company material and make it readily available for them to post and share.

Education and training

It pays to have a good foundation, and training is a critical step in engaging employees and partners on social media. Some of your employees might be socially savvy and will only need to be educated on corporate policy; others will need a complete guide to social media.

Lead from the frontIdentify company executives or employees who are already doing a good job on social media and highlight their activity. Use their success with social media as leverage to get others in the company involved.

Set realistic expectationsEach individual in the company can be a voice for the company, driving engagement from their profiles back to the company. Some will need to be brought up to speed on social media and how to use it professionally. Recruit interested employees but recognize not every employee will want to participate.

Employee profiles are their ownEvery company should respect any employees’ online activity as self-expression, however, employees who choose to identify themselves as a member of a company may be viewed as a spokesperson for that brand. It should be clearly

How to Engage Employees in Social Media for Sales Results How to Engage Employees in Social Media for Sales Results

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stated in their social profile, “Opinions expressed here are my own.” Even so, any post is a reflection of that employee as well as the company, so they should always act professionally.

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BE REALISTIC: Meaningful relationships are not built overnight

LISTEN:Understand what

your network is saying

PARTICIPATE:Jump into conversations – but don’t go

straight into a sales pitch

CREATE: Content is King. Be a resource – or find the resource

BE POSITIVE: View the process as an opportunity to help others

BE PREPARED: Spend time thinking about what information & insight you can share

BE PROACTIVE: Nurture and maintain your network

RESPO

NSIVEN

ESS

TRA

NSPA

REN

CY

AUTH

ENTICITY

TRUST

NETWORKINGFOUNDATION

NETWORKINGPILLARS

COVER YOUR NETWORK

Social Networking Basics

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Competency Area #3: TECHNOLOGY

Leverage social media toolsAll too often employees don’t know what to say and aren’t always up-to-date on company news, so they refrain from posting corporate content on social media. Social content distribution platforms, also called social employee advocacy software, can solve that problem and help

you reach your audience by empowering your employees, partners and distributors to become effective brand advocates. The platforms house a content library where users have access to a full inventory of posts that have already been created by marketing. An automated corporate approval review process within the online portal can also be in place to ensure compliance. Employees can track real-time metrics of likes and shares and marketing can track and report results on not only corporate social accounts but across participating employee accounts as well.

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Members of the general public trust ordinary people like themselves nearly twice as much as they do company CEOs. (2014 Edelman Trust Barometer)4

4. Who do people trust? Peers and Regular Employees Over the CEO, Edelman Trust Barometer, 2014 http://jackiehuba.com/2014/01/who-do-you-trust-peers-and-regular-employees-over-the-ceo-apparently.html

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How Social Content Distribution Platforms Work1. Load the content library with corporate content – social posts with

links to blog posts, whitepapers, webinars, etc.

2. Configure employee accounts and provide individuals their personal login for accessing the platform and linking their social accounts.

3. Encourage employees to post content from the content library to their social media channels.

4. Provide control (for highly regulated industries) and create automated process for approvals/edits.

Be sure to benchmark statistics before you start using a distribution platform. This allows you to track engagement improvement as participating employees advocate for your brand over time. The content library needs to be continually loaded—ideally with a combination of owned and third party content—in order to achieve success.

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The best advocates for a business are the ones who understand it; educated employees can help expand reach and maximize followers by tapping into their own internal networks.

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DOCUSTAR SOCIAL EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY CASE STUDY

CHALLENGEDocuStar’s social media presence was undersized and not positioned to help employees engage online or drive revenue goals. Total social reach was minimal with less than 1,000 collective followers for the @DocuStar Twitter handle and DocuStar’s active employees.

SOLUTIONEducate and train: Employees went through rigorous training to help them understand the value of social media to both their personal brand and the DocuStar corporate brand.

Lead from the front: As the most followed CMO on Twitter, DocuStar’s marketing executive was instrumental in inspiring employee participation, but the entire executive team provided full support for the social media transformation.

Develop content: New thought-leadership content was created and made available for employees to tweet and

share online.

Provide enabling technology: DocuStar developed a social content distribution platform (SpeakSocially) in order to make it easy for employees in each department to become social brand advocates.

Website Traffic: 300% increase

Online Leads Generated: 275% increase

Twitter: 650% increase in followers of @DocuStar; followers of key DocuStar executives went from 300 to more than 30,000

Klout: 70% percent increase

RESU

LTS

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ConclusionEngaging employees in social media marketing provides an excellent opportunity to reach your customers and build your brand. Remember: All company departments should be involved, especially sales. Executive leadership should articulate “What’s in it for me?” to non-marketing employees and set an example for engaging in social media. Providing a useful and clear social media policy for everyone in the company to follow will protect both the business and its employees. It will take time to materialize, but it’s worth it to expand your company’s social network by empowering your employees to become brand advocates. It will foster high engagement with your customers and followers in addition to building a close-knit company culture.

Next steps

Are you engaging your employees in social media marketing? As you work to build employee advocacy, DocuStar can provide an interactive social media workshop to energize your employee social engagement initiatives. Our SpeakSocially social content distribution platform can further accelerate your employee advocacy by making it easy for employees to share corporate social posts. You can request a “Social Media Networking for Sales Results” workshop or a personal demonstration of SpeakSocially at: http://docustar.com/marketing-resource-management/speaksocially/request-a-speaksocially-demo/

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@docustar

facebook.com/docustar

linkedin.com/companies/docustar

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google.com/+DocuStarIncCincinnati

youtube.com/user/DocuStarInc

1.800.426.7921

[email protected]

www.docustar.com

DocuStar provides businesses with web-based marketing resource and creative production management services, email and social media marketing tools, and digital print and fulfillment services. Combining 20 years of print fulfillment experience with business and marketing software, DocuStar is uniquely equipped to provide customizable solutions that are local, mobile and personal.

DocuStar, Inc., 1325 Glendale Milford Road, Cincinnati, OH 45215


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