As a business, your employees are your biggest asset. They are also an underutilized army of advocates for your brand, who can help contribute to creating value for customers with the brand content they post or share with others. However, you must approach your employees carefully when starting an employee engagement campaign.
Before we discuss the obstacles companies face during employee engagement pushes, let’s dive into why and how you should encourage employee engagement.
Increases Your Network
Your company’s network is the sum of all your employees’ networks combined. We often forget that employees can leverage their connections to increase the reach of your brand and its products and services. Usually, we leave the networking to the salespeople. But friends and family members of your employees are much more likely to trust the word of a loved one than a salesperson. You should never force your employees to recommend your product or service to their networks, but encourage them to do so if they feel comfortable.
Employees Feel Connected
By encouraging and providing employees who aren’t in sales with the ability to share a curated selection of company-related posts, you make employees feel appreciated and want to talk about the brand outside of the office. Part of helping employees feel connected is asking for their feedback or suggestions. When employees feel like they are involved in the company, they are more likely to want to share news about it. It also keeps employees in the loop about business developments, milestones, and what other departments are working on.
You can even turn this into a friendly competition with prizes for the person with the most creative post or who shares the most content relevant to their network.
Potential Obstacles
Employees Don’t Feel Comfortable Sharing
Employees are usually fine with sharing company news on LinkedIn, but many employees may not be comfortable sharing brand posts on their personal Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts. Those who are uncomfortable have a boundary between their work and private accounts that they do not want to cross, which is perfectly acceptable. Do not force anyone who is uncomfortable posting work news on their personal accounts into doing so. It will backfire and could wind up turning your biggest asset into your biggest liability, as those employees may no longer feel comfortable posting anything about the brand or may even no longer feel comfortable working at the company. You could lose your best employees over a poorly done employee engagement campaign.
Posts May Not Align with An Employee’s Personal Brand
Respect your employees’ boundaries. This includes not telling them exactly what to post. Your accountant and your marketing assistant have different personal brands, which means that a post you want everyone in the company to share may not make sense for certain people. While no one will find it odd if someone congratulates someone in another department, an employee’s followers may find it odd if your accountant keeps pushing topics unrelated to their job function.
Turning your employees into brand ambassadors is a great way to promote your business and boost employee morale, yet it can have the opposite effect if your intentions are unclear, your employees do not have a desire to help with your brand’s marketing efforts, or the employee engagement campaign is too aggressive. Proceed with caution and your employees can become your brand’s biggest advocates.
Author: Allison Lips
