Use Your Team’s Network to Grow Your Business

Everyone has a network.  If you think about all of your employees, all of them have a personal (family), social (friends) and professional (business) network.  Why not tap into that when you post content about your business on social media. It’s easy to get caught up in hiring marketing consultants, agencies and brand ambassadors to help you get your name out there and in many cases they do a great job.  However, one of the best assets to grow your social media, increase lead generation and brand awareness is right in front of you; your team!

Training and utilizing your team in basic social media skills will help grow your business and engage your team.  The best part about this, is that your team doesn’t have to do much to make a huge impact. Here are a few tips to think about: 

Training Team to use Social Media:

Social media is one of the most important ways to improve your business. Building your brand, getting exposure to the market, and not to mention passive and active lead generation all comes with building and maintaining your social media presence.  One best practice to enhance your social media is to train your team on the basics of all your social platforms.

Getting your team to participate and build your brand is less work than you think. It could be as simple as asking your team to share, like, or comment (or all three!)  on your company's posts on social media platforms. For the more creative members of your team, you could encourage them to make posts that show your company culture, workplace events and staff highlights. Also, teach them to use hashtags and how to tag their friends and colleagues so you’re reaching a bigger audience. The possibilities are quite endless which gets me to the point that any kind of social media presence whether it be simple reposts, or company deep dives is good for your company and it’s growth.

Content Communication:

Now that you’ve trained your team and they’re ready to go; what’s next? It’s time to communicate to them your content plan.  Sharing your content calendar or discussing your content plan in your all-staff meetings is a simple way to communicate your goals and get them involved.  Ask your team for ideas on what to post, especially as it pertains to workplace culture and team building.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the ideas you’ll generate.  

Communicate to them what your priorities are.  If you’re launching a new product or service, encourage everyone to like, comment or repost.  Did you just win an award? Share that with the team and email them a general post so that they can easily copy it and paste it on their social media channels.  Use your intranet as a way to communicate what’s coming up next and where you need their help. 

As we all know, communication is key to being successful in any endeavor so don’t be afraid to over communicate about content. In the end, your team is at least getting more knowledgeable about the company even if they aren’t sharing on their social media. 

Follow Through and Steps:

You’ve trained your staff to excel in social media, you created and implemented a communication strategy. Now, It’s time to reward your staff with a job well done. 

A good first step would be to track the progress of your staff and see how they’re impacting your social media presence.  Determine the easiest way to track this so it’s not overwhelming for you and your marketing team. We want to recognize the prolific posters and give them the rewards they deserve while at the same time encouraging your other employees. Rewarding staff with small gifts and prizes can really motivate your team to do more than you think.  Recognize top performers at your all-staff meeting, sometimes that’s all it takes. Short-term contests are also a great way to get the team involved especially if you have a big announcement to make.

Having a strong social media presence is extremely important for any modern business to thrive. Your team is a great way to help you bolster your current content strategy so that you’re reaching new audiences and potential new customers.  The odds are you won’t get all of your team to participate but what if you got 25% of your team to help. Think about the difference that would make to your brand and your content strategy. 

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If you want to learn more about the benefits of hiring a fractional business development leader, we’re here to help. Please call us at 443.226.0163 or reach us via email at john@dinkelbd.com to get started.