Almost all businesses can derive huge benefits from having a sizable social media following. Among others, it can help expand your exposure, increase brand awareness, foster deeper customer engagement and build brand loyalty. It can also establish your expertise in your industry and help you meet your revenue goals. However, the challenge lies in building a social media following.
Since building a community around your brand takes a significant amount of time and effort, the best thing that you can do to set the wheels in motion is to tap an often overlooked resource ? your employees.
Your employees can be your best brand advocates. With the right approach, they can help you build a large following and help you generate substantial profits for your business. This is very much possible since majority of US consumers (more than 75%) rely on their friends’ social recommendations and take them into account before they make buying decisions.
How to Build an Instant Social Media Following
Encourage social media usage at work. Considering what it can do for your business, you should not ban social media usage in the office. According to a recent study conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute, social media has the potential of adding $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in value to the economy.
Provide basic training. This can help ensure that you will get the full benefits of encouraging your employees to engage in social media. Don’t expect your employees to instinctively know how to get the most from their social media engagement. Let them know what they should and should not do to bring them up to speed, increase your chances of reaping the potential rewards and avoid pitfalls along the way.
Set up accounts. Give your employees the freedom to choose whether they would like to set up a professional social account and associate it with the business or use their personal accounts in sharing company messages. They should likewise be given the freedom to decide if they want share company messages or not.
Keep it simple. Don’t make it hard for your employees to share company messages. Let them know when you have important news to share, and provide pre-crafted messages ready for sharing.??
Dedicate someone to handle your social media efforts. You can designate a member of your own team as your social media manager or hire an agency to handle the work for you. Both options have their own pros and cons so explore the possibilities and choose which works for you best.
