Marketers have turned to all manner of social channels in their efforts to tap into the social media craze, from engaging in formal blogger outreach efforts to stuffing YouTube channels with videos in the hopes that others will embed link to them from their Facebook profiles. But marketers continue to ignore one group that, if approached correctly, could have a greater impact than all the rest combined.
Companies just don’t seem to recognize the value of turning to their own employees. I’m constantly bemused at the number of companies that don’t consider their own workforce a channel for promoting products and services.Of course, it is not unusual for an organization’s leaders to ask their employees to evangelize the company’s products or services. But the thinking is limited to face-to-face encounters with family and friends. When it comes to the social space, companies are generally more interested in restricting employees’ activities than in empowering them to support the company’s marketing efforts.
Employees, after all, have a vested interest in helping the company succeed. Marketing drives sales that leads to better job security. Plus, it’s just plain fun to work for a successful company. (Think the people working for Apple and Google don’t love to get up and go to work?)
But in focus groups, interviews and surveys I conduct for my clients, I’m constantly gobsmacked by the number of employees who are unfamiliar with all or part of the company’s product line and unaware of impending product launches.
The value of getting employees engaged as part of a strategic marketing effort goes far beyond the word-of-mouth your workers can create at PTA meetings, family dinners, and church picnics. Employees talking about the brand on Facebook, Twitter, and other social venues can reach hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of people with sincere, passionate messages.
At every company, there are employees sitting on the edges of their seats just waiting to be activated. I see evidence of them in social channels every day, employees conveying genuine pride and excitement about what they’re up to in their jobs or what their employers are doing.
In most organizations, employees are either restrained from talking to their online networks about work or they’re doing it in a purely organic manner. Consider a new-product introduction. How much knowledge do your front-line, rank-and-file employees have about the product and the campaign being launched to support it?
A short news article on the intranet doesn’t cut it, not if you’re going to employ models to integrate employees’ organic social networking as a resource for your strategic marketing plans.
Adopting these models requires a rethinking of a number of issues, from social media access policies to the role and mission of the employee communications department. Business- and product-literate employees will increase the reach of your marketing messages. Companies are loaded up with employees with limited business and product literacy and can’t access their networks anyway.
It’s difficult for a lot of organizations to see the benefits persistently networked employees bring to the company. First, you have to break through the paranoia that has been whipped up about the risks of letting employees talk about work online. They tend to fall into three categories:
- Productivity:Â Employees spending time on their personal online networks won’t get their work done. Actual evidence supports exactly the opposite. Employees get more and better work done when they have access to their networks. One University study found employees with unfettered access to their online networks were 8% more productive than their network-restricted peers. (The many ways open access enriches the company is a subject for a whole different post.)
- Network security: Employees will introduce all kinds of viruses, bots and malware to their computers and infect the network. The fallacy of this argument is evident in the companies that do allow employees access yet are not victimized by malicious code. These companies, from large corporations to hospitals, mitigate the risk through a variety of technical and behavioral practices. It’s not necessary to block access in order to protect your networks; it’s just the lazy way out.
- Illegal and inappropriate behavior: Employees who don’t understand or follow the rules will compromise our intellectual property or make statements in violation of the regulations with which we must comply. Other employees will engage in behavior that will damage our reputation. This is not a technical issue. It is a management issue. Paul Levy, CEO of one of Boston’s biggest hospitals, said the prospect of HIPAA violations would not prompt him to block his employees’ access to Facebook or other social sites, noting that it was just as easy to violate HIPAA in an elevator. Rather than focus on the excuses for blocking access, though, organizations should be exploring the various means by which those networks become an organizational asset. Why spend the money on recruiting a new engineer when your engineers (who network with other engineers) already know exactly whom the company should pursue? Which brings us back to marketing. Employees need only two things to become a marketing force: the knowledge to engage intelligently in conversations and access to the networks where they participation in those conversations.
In order to equip your employees to support marketing efforts, consider the following adjustments:
Make business and product literacy a priority.
Employees mostly know the products and services with which they work. Those employees who don’t work directly with products generally don’t know much about them. They can’t build interest in what they don’t understand. Take steps to ensure a solid understanding of the company’s product line and the marketing plans for those products.
Create an online resource of marketing materials.
A site on your company’s intranet should provide insight into the company’s various marketing strategies and provide employees with assets they can use when talking about the company and its products. Whether it’s a widget they can add to their blogs, links to resources they can share with their Facebook friends or photos they can post, these should be just a few clicks away.
Include an internal plan for all your launches.
Employees should share in the excitement of a product launch. When they’re pumped, they’ll share the excitement with others. Create a microsite on the intranet for the launch where they can get a sneak peak at collateral, from TV commercials to print ads. I worked at one company where we set up a booth in the cafeteria for every launch, staffed by marketing reps working on the product. They could show off the product itself, the materials being used to market it and answer any employee questions. The launch of a product or service or new institutional campaign should be as big a deal in the company as it is to external audiences.
Set positive policies.
Most online policies are filled with negatives, elaborating on what employees can’t do, shouldn’t do, will get fired for doing. Try a different approach. Let them know what they CAN do and the right way to do it. Emphasize authenticity, candor and transparency. You don’t want your employees to be shills or astroturfers, but nobody will fault them for genuine enthusiasm about a new product.
Recognize your biggest champions.
Show employees exactly what evangelism looks like by spotlighting employees who do it right.
So, how does your company involve its employees in its marketing efforts?
Tags: Leadership, Marketing
This provides great information on how to empower your employees. I also think that if your company has a blog, you should invite people from various departments to do guest posts (granted they are capable of writing interesting content). The first company I worked at after college was big on employee involvement and it truly created a great atmosphere where people were genuinely excited about the launch of new products and services. Employees need to feel proud of their company’s services and they can only do that if you give them the tools and information needed to be an advocate of your brand.
Companies need to start understanding that social media is no longer just a supplement to regular marketing initiatives. It is now a necessity. I actually wrote a blog post today about 5 tips to convince your boss to engage in social media. bit.ly/aTOFtE
I particularly agree with “Set positive policies.” One of my favorite policies is from the 9,000-member Chartered Institute of Public Relations, a UK-based professional group for PR folks. I like it because it gets to the heart of the matter in a manner that respects an employee’s intelligence and judgment and credits them with a certain trust—something I think is lacking in many social media policies.
CIPR’s guidelines suggest the organization’s stated Code of Conduct as the cornerstone of any social media efforts — especially its three principles of Integrity (in social media: “Be real”), Competence (“talk about what you know.. be transparent”), and Confidentiality “maintain loyalty; don’t speak out of school”).
And by the way, I love the notion of “product literacy” in relation to educating employees. Great phrase.
Welcome to the Fix, Shel!
p.s. I think this is the first post we’ve ever run in 3 years that has contained the word “gobsmacked,” too. ; )
I think this post is great for employees that are passionate about their jobs. However, I don’t think many employees would be willing to promote their company on their own time without some type of incentive. If they did, I think some people might get resentful if they weren’t being compensated. “As a result of me posting x to my Facebook, my company has got 10 sales and I have received 0% commission as I’m a secretary,” and other examples.
This is a great piece.
I think it foreshadows something that is much bigger than just using social media to leverage employees for marketing.
You speak to the fact that social media is actually changing the way businesses structure and operate their communications, marketing and customer service. These new tools and technology are eventually going to change organizational structure, hiring, training … daresay how brands are managed.
Thanks for this. Great thinking.
@All Publicists, no company can insist that employees get engaged who don’t want to. There are, however, employees who are waiting to be given the permission to act on their own impulses to help a company in which they genuinely believe. That kind of desire is the very definition of employee engagement, and these are the employees who currently are not even offered the opportunity to participate.
There are plenty of other reasons for all employees to be business- and product-literate. But as for activating employees as a face of the company to the public, this is not something that a company can ASK any employee to do, no less insist upon it. That kind of thinking leads to Halliburton-style astroturfing.
What I’m proposing is simply that employees be taken seriously enough to share product and marketing plans with them, to remove constraints that prevent them from talking about the company and its products if they are so inclined, and to build channels into the company’s infrastructure that makes it easy for them to engage in the conversations they want to.
That said, employees who help sell product are compensated — what are they paid for if not helping the company succeed? The smartest companies will implement systems that DO recognize and reward employees who make a difference, not only because they deserve it but because it provides a model for how other employees behave (as in, “Oh, is that what gets you recognized around here?”).
The keys, again, are making sure employees have the knowledge they need to talk intelligently about products and services, and that they are not prohibited from sharing that knowledge appropriately.
There are plenty of other reasons for all employees to be business- and product-literate. But as for activating employees as a face of the company to the public, this is not something that a company can ASK any employee to do, no less insist upon it. That kind of thinking leads to Halliburton-style astroturfing.
optics help
Great points, Shel. I’m passing your post along to colleagues in both for-profit and non-profit organizations. One thing I see about what you’re talking about is empowering those in an organization who WANT to champion the services and benefits of the organization to which they belong. What better group of folks to empower than some of those who work for non-profits–many of whom opt to work for less pay than their for-profit counterparts because of the passion and share values they have with the cause. To empower that kind of passion could be very powerful.
Switching gears, for my colleagues who are corporate trainers/instructional designers, there are also opportunities implied here in working with Marketing counterparts to create internal education programs.
Yes – employees can be great brand ambassadors for your company. However, to that effectively, companies will need to invest in employee branding to ensure – employees are better educated about the organization they work in, everybody speaks the same language and also to highlight key messages that need to be communicated. Time and again we see that when companies actually do that, everyone sings the same tune and customers definitely feel more comfortable.
Having a background with non-profits, this makes me think of a common lesson for organizations trying to raise more funds or recruit new volunteers. What is the most successful method? Just ask! So many people would be willing to help out, they’ve just never been asked. They don’t realize that their time, money, and talents could be useful to an organization. Or maybe they do want to help out, but are unsure about how to get started.
There are people who actively seek out volunteer opportunities. They might be comparable to the employees who want, and are looking for ways, to promote their companies. But there are many people who have never engaged in volunteer service. Finally they get asked to help with a small project. By the end of the day, more often than not, they are remarking that they didn’t realize volunteering could be so much fun, or be so meaningful, or that their contribution could actually make a difference.
There’s no reason one’s employment shouldn’t elicit similar responses. Granted, they are for different reasons, but there’s nothing wrong with an employee feeling good about actively participating in the forward progression of their company’s vision and goals; to be “active” in a way that is beyond simply fulfilling the tasks for their daily pay.
Agree 100%.
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