To increase their reach and visibility, many companies today recruit influencers. They hope to achieve a level of authenticity and approachability that they can hardly achieve with their own accounts. This is not only laborious, but usually also expensive. So could your own employees be a worthwhile alternative?
Users want personality; they want to feel understood and accepted. Compared to companies' social media profiles, which are mostly managed by professionals, private accounts appear more trustworthy and reliable. These are values that are important to users. Companies have also recognized this and want to use this fact to their advantage. So why not get employees on board? Facebook promotes private posts more than those from companies anyway, and the vast majority of employees already have their own social media accounts: a win-win situation.
Creating participation and motivation
What sounds simple quickly becomes complicated in practice. Companies do not have access rights to their employees' channels. Any attempts in this direction would quickly be blocked by the works council and co-determination. The initiative must therefore come from the employees themselves – voluntarily. Conversely, this means that enthusiastic employees have an interest in sharing information with their friends. Demotivated employees, on the other hand, do not. In order to successfully implement this communication strategy, employees must feel involved and not only be aware of their company's values and goals, but also identify with them.
The company's goal in this process must be to alleviate employees' often prevailing fear of posting something wrong. At the same time, they must be freed from the complicated coordination loops that are common in press offices so that they can act authentically and with a personal touch. If these principles are not in place, the communication strategy can quickly get bogged down in never-ending approval processes.
Designing new communication approaches
If companies want to build an interactive community on social media, they need to let their employees communicate. How this works in practice varies depending on the approach. Specialists can blog about their areas of expertise or accompany their everyday work with a story. The board of directors can also make personal appearances on social networks. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Inc., does this successfully on Twitter: with around 27.9 million followers, his Twitter channel has a significantly larger community than his company's comparatively "small" channel with four million followers.
The reason for this is simple: authenticity.
Providing employees with extensive training in social media and HR communication is an effective way to promote this aspect of your communication strategy. Unfortunately, these measures are not affordable for every company. If employees are still expected to represent the company, then at least a communication guide is needed. For those who do not come from the communications sector, terms such as "likes," "shares," "content," and "retweet" may be unfamiliar. It is therefore important that companies do not leave their employees to their own devices and provide them with the necessary media skills.
Promoting transparency through labeling
Finally, the question arises: Is it advertising when employees act as brand ambassadors on social networks? Traditional influencers are subject to increasingly strict legal regulations regarding the disclosure of sponsorships. But which of these conditions apply to your own employees? Facebook states: "It is a violation of Facebook's Terms of Service to use your profile to represent anything other than yourself (e.g., your company)." This statement leaves room for interpretation, to say the least. It is impossible to determine with absolute certainty whether an employee is no longer acting primarily in a private capacity.
Guidelines protect both parties in any case: companies and employees alike. They offer security and guidance, for example with regard to legal notice requirements. However, despite all the rules and regulations, it is important to remember that modern communication strategies only work with openness and trust. This allows companies to build on the positive development of their communication strategy.
Yours, Christoph Moss
Source citation:
https://www.facebook.com/help/201994686510247?helpref=faq_content
Image by Thomas Ulrich on Pixabay
