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Tools To Help You Communicate Internally

December 21, 2010 By

We have talked about why to communicate with those internal to your company regarding your social media efforts, so let’s take a few minutes to talk about how to communicate the plan to your staff. You can decide if this communication is going to be one-way, letting them know your plan, or two-way, soliciting feedback and participation.

I would kick it off with a meeting to present your strategy, introduce the tools you will be using and go over any usage policies you are putting into place just so everyone is up to speed with what is going on and gives them an opportunity to ask any questions. The amount of detail you go into is totally up to you since you know your employees much better than I do. Go with what will make them comfortable without overwhelming them.

Also at the meeting I would encourage them to follow your social media accounts using their personal accounts to know what is going on and to get involved in your online community. If they are not using social media or have no interest in dealing with work on their off time, send emails with updates, add an area to your intranet (if you have one) or give updates in staff meetings and training.

The more you keep them up-to-date, the more likely they are to be enthused with the process and less likely to have a breakdown on the frontline, like we discussed a couple weeks ago. In that post, I also brought up the ideas of cheat sheets for those that interact with your clients the most. These can be simple instructions that are kept behind the counter or desk with information such as:

  • Social media account names
  • Current promotions
  • Basics of technologies being used to field questions

I know it sounds like a lot more work, but I truly feel that if you keep an informed staff, it will be much more of an asset in the future rather than a liability. What other ways could you use or are using?

Filed Under: Internal Use, Marketing

It’s Not a One Person Show

December 16, 2010 By

Previously we discussed arming your frontline employees so they know what social media promotions you are running in order to keep your customers happy. Beyond that, there are some other great reasons to communicate your social media strategy internally.

Happy employees make pretty great brand ambassadors. Even if they don’t use social media themselves, they may be able to share your content and promotions to those in their real-life networks. If they do use social media personally, they may be happy to pass along your message to their network. Just the knowledge of what is going on in your business may help them to be more content in their job and who doesn’t love a happy employee?

Maybe one of your employees is constantly reading industry blogs and news. If this person knows about your social media initiatives, he or she can start to share the information found which will assist in your content creation activities. This actually happened with one of my clients. While talking about how hard it is to keep up with their industry, they remembered that one person in the office was reading all the time. We decided to get him involved by letting him know the type of information we wanted him to share. It allowed the client to take advantage of a current activity to feed the new social media activity.

The addition of new responsibilities that social media brings is often overwhelming to a small business owner or marketing manager. Recruit from within to see if there is already someone on staff that is involved in social media and may be happy to take on the day to day responsibilities. Make that person part of your social media team and communicate the strategy so they know the guidelines and desired goals.

If you don’t want to hand over the reins, at least train staff members to be on the lookout for mentions of the company and/or product. As part of the training, make it clear if they are to engage the person directly or if they need to escalate the situation to someone else within the company. The more eyes the better.

Social media is not a solo act, get others involved. You may be pleasantly surprised at who you will find to join the team. How else can you get other people in your organization involved?

Filed Under: Engagement, Internal Use, Marketing

Arming the Frontline

December 8, 2010 By

If you spend time on Twitter, you have heard the complaints about someone trying to redeem a deal promoted through social media, but the cashier has no idea about said promotion. This can cause frustration on the part of the consumer which could very well lead them to express this frustration on the same social network the company is using to promote.

This goes back to the point that social media should not be isolated to one part of the company. Everyone needs to be aware of your social media programs, especially the frontline people that interface with your target market at the point of sale.

If you run a Foursquare promotion make sure your staff knows not only what the promotion is, but also an overview of Foursquare so they can talk about it to people that may not fully understand the concept. If I am not a Foursquare user and see a sign at the register promoting a deal for the Mayor, I may be inclined to ask what that means. If the response is something like: “I don’t know, it’s some thing the boss put there”, I’m not going to be very impressed. They don’t need to be experts, but they should be able to explain the promotion and the technology. At the very least, keep a little cheat sheet behind the register so they can reference.

If your frontline isn’t capable of communicating and executing your social media promotions, it may be time to either evaluate your promotions or your frontline. What are your thoughts from either the consumer or business point of view?

Note: While working on this post it prompted me to write a few more posts on communicating your social media efforts internally, so stay tuned.

Filed Under: Customer Service, Foursquare, Internal Use, Strategy

10 Ways to Use Social Media Internally

February 5, 2009 By

I thought I would do something a little different this month in honor of my 10th year anniversary of running VillageWorks. I am going to do a series of 10 posts and each post will be a list of 10 related to the Internet marketing and social media. I’m sure a lot of these have been covered on other blogs and probably contributed to my thinking. I apologize in advance for not referencing a blog if I share some of the same thinking. Please feel free to add a link in comments.

My first list is going to be ten social media tools you can use internally at your company. Social media tools do not have to be public facing to help your company communicate. Sometimes communicating effectively internally goes even further than communicating publicly. Your employees can take the information and disseminate it through their own channels as a cohesive message. Also, if employees feel they are part of the conversation at the company, you will see more loyalty and better productivity.

Here is my list of technologies to consider using in-house and some ideas for use:

1. Blog
Companies can use blogs internally to open conversations between upper management and employees. A blog is also useful for product development and in educating the company about an upcoming marketing initiative. Blogs are more effective for communication than email since it eliminates the need to answer the same question more than once and allows for feedback from the group.

2. Wiki
A wiki is basically the Web 2.0 version of the Intranet but gives the user more power to manage it. A wiki can be company-wide or separate for different departments. It allows people to share information and documents in a centralized place. It allows for greater collaboration and helps keep the knowledge within company walls.

3. Social Networks
Social networks, like an internal Facebook, can be helpful for employees to share information, but they can also be powerful if you have channel partners or a developer network. If you allow the members within these groups to communicate with each other as well as your company, you are providing value that will differentiate you.

4. Opinion Site/Suggestion Box
Companies are setting up these voting systems and suggestion boxes that allow customers and the public to make product or service enhancements and features suggestions. The public can then vote upon these suggestions and the company can decide whether to pursue the feature or not. Imagine using this internally for everything from product development, to Human Resource benefits, to food items to have in the vending machine.

5. Microblogging
Twitter is a great way to network with people as well as great place to go and get answers to your questions. I often tweet a technical problem I am having and almost always gets the answer. Imagine having immediate access to the knowledge within your company that allows you to jump online and quickly ask a question and allowing anyone to respond. Where instant messaging is one-to-one, microblogging is one-to-many.

6. Audio/Video
Share the footage of a recent keynote speech or presentation that the CEO did or disseminate marketing and product information to the sales force using downloadable audio they can listen to while traveling. Sharing this data gives everyone a sense of belonging and gets everyone on the same page with your corporate messaging.

7. Photo Sharing
Posting pictures of the latest company picnic or event can be fun and go a long way to making people feel good about their jobs and the company. Take photos at trade shows, of clients using your product or service, or even fun candid shots around the office to keep up morale.

8. Widgets
While public facing widgets are often advertising based, there is a huge opportunity to use them internally as more of a tool. Keep track of your sales quota or project milestones on your personal dashboard so you can get an immediate glimpse of the situation. You can also display important upcoming dates including open enrollment, trade shows, and employee birthdays.

9. Forums
This is probably the tool that people are most familiar with since they have been in existence in one form or another for a long time. Employees can collaborate through treaded discussions to solve problems and work on products together. It will also become a knowledgebase of information overtime.

10. Bookmarking
People within your organization do research on various topics and often bookmark interesting and important pages in their browser. The drawback is that they cannot be shared with others throughout the organization if they are saved in the browser. By using a Web based shared bookmark solution, employees are able to see bookmarks from other people within the organization.

While some of these may have overlapping features and don’t all belong within the company at the same time, it is worth the time to investigate which ones make the most sense for you and your company. It all comes down to what your internal communications plans are. Are you currently using one of these tools online? If so, let me know in the comments how it is working for you and your company. Did I leave a tool out?

Filed Under: Blogs, Internal Use, List of 10 Series, Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,