It’s no surprise that social media can help your company grow, and startups especially can leverage social media to accelerate their success from a young company age.

Research has shown that nearly 61 percent of startups implement social media marketing strategies, largely thanks to its low-cost nature. Even further, those startups identified customer acquisition and customer retention as main results from their social media efforts, meaning there is a direct impact on the company’s bottom line through social.

From your company’s early days, your employees can be your most loyal social following, helping to aid in your social success through their own authentic posts.

The problem, though, is that too many companies simply assume that their employees know what is/is not acceptable on social media, and the companies neglect to create any written rules or procedures for team members to follow.

Even if your team is full of tech-savvy digital natives, you cannot assume that everyone is familiar with all the social bells and whistles, or what you want them to do on social—you need to provide guardrails, in the form of social media guidelines, for them to follow when engaging in brand-related matters on social.

[Read more…] about Why Social Media Guidelines Are the Key to Unlocking Startup Employee Brand Advocacy

Sprout Social found that 69 percent of social marketers use—or plan to use—employees as brand advocates, as many budgets shift away from traditional brand marketing to influencer marketing. The reason is simple: people are 16 times more likely to read a post from a friend than from a brand. And your employees, with their on-the-ground insight into your company culture and the type of work your company does, have an unmatched authenticity.

A common employee advocacy problem, however, is that too often employees are asked to be brand advocates (or proactively try to become one) without understanding their company’s reason for being on social, and the role that social media plays in meeting the business goals. This has numerous potential negative effects, and can eventually result in your team completely stopping sharing company news and amplifying your content on their social channels.

That’s why you need to define and document your brand’s social media vision to ensure that your employee brand ambassadors are clear on what you are trying to achieve on social media and how they can support those efforts.
[Read more…] about You’re Failing Your Employee Brand Ambassadors If You Aren’t Doing This One Small Thing