How to Amplify Your Social Media Results With Your Employees

Posted on August 30, 2020 by Kiara Jackson

5 min read

Now more than ever, life sciences companies have to make their marketing investments deliver.

Sure a well-optimized website is a great place to start but your brand’s social media accounts need to be working hard too. However, there’s a very good chance you’re neglecting a commonly untapped social media asset—your employees.

Employees are a priceless resource. Posts shared by employees receive 8x the engagement compared to posts purely shared on your brand’s social media page. LinkedIn has found that while approximately 2% of employees reshare their company’s social posts, employees are responsible for nearly 20% of the overall engagement, making it a no-brainer to involve them in your social media strategy. We like to think of them as your in-house brand ambassadors.

The Benefits

In our digital-first world, leveraging employees as brand ambassadors in your social media efforts is a massive opportunity life sciences companies can’t afford to miss. You’re already doing the work to create social media posts. Now it’s time to harness the collective strengths of your employees and activate them on social media to amplify results.

When we say amplify results, here’s what we mean:

Boost brand visibility
Drive impressions, reach, and engagement of brand social posts (talk about a triple play!)
Maintain audience engagement—including your employees
Establish your brand as a trusted authority
Attract authentic, humanized engagement

The Challenges

Time and time again, we see life sciences companies falter when it comes to utilizing employee engagement to bolster their brands on social media. It sounds straightforward, but there are three primary obstacles that get in the way:

Lack of clarity. You don’t communicate with employees about marketing initiatives and goals. It’s unclear what the expectations are for employees when it comes to engaging with brand posts on social media.
Poor internal communication. In order to activate employees as brand ambassadors, you need social media guidelines and perhaps internal training. For example, show employees examples of appropriate, inappropriate, and encouraged engagements.
Don’t take initiative. Consistent streams of brand posts are great for your audience at large, but when it comes to employees you need to take the lead and gently nudge them when engagement opportunities arise.

_{*Pro Tip #1: On LinkedIn, notify your employees of an important post by selecting the Notify Employees button next to the post of your choosing. It’s really as easy as the click of a button!}

It might seem like we’re pointing the finger at you, but the truth of the matter is the road to employee engagement on social media posts runs both ways. Oftentimes, employees face numerous challenges when it comes to navigating this. Take a look!

Employee Sentiments to Feeling Stuck When Engaging on Company Content
Don't know what to share	Don't feel like my network of connections is relevant or matters
Don't want to "turn off" my own connections	Don't have the time to share
Don't use social media	Don't understand how engaging with company content helps me
Don't want to post work-related content on my personal social media accounts	Don't feel like my personal social media accounts are in alignment with company-related content

The Solutions

Now that we understand the challenges, let’s get to the solutions—the Grey Matter 3 Cs Framework. We suggest using this simple framework focused on: Coaching, Communicating, and Championing. This serves as your guide to effectively leverage your employees to create a bigger bang on social media.

The 3 Cs	Ask Yourself...	Action Items & Tips
*Coaching*	How are you arming employees with knowledge and tools to increase their opportunities for engagement?	Be transparent about the brand’s immediate and long-term social media goals. Keep employees informed of what content themes and campaigns are active and/or coming down the pipeline. Train them with quarterly social media updates or start with a social media on-boarding orientation. Offer up resources such as a Social Media Response Playbook, which outlines tips, general best practices, and guidelines of what to do and not to do. Identify social media savvy employees within your company who could coach their teammates. _{*Pro Tip #2: Resharing posts and attributing credit to the source is more effective than sharing alone. On LinkedIn this is especially true. Based on the LinkedIn algorithm, it’s best practice to copy the entire post and give the source credit by tagging them in the caption.}
*Communicating*	How are you setting up your employees for success in engaging on brand social posts? How are they being prepared not only today but also for the long haul?	Set weekly reminders to help employees engage more often and in a timely manner. Establish goals for each social media account you have across all platforms. Better yet, offer up a few examples of how you prefer employees to engage (i.e. include a link to the company website, company-approved captions of reshares, tagging the company, commenting on brand posts). Make it easy for employees to engage and share your posts by providing the following information: Direct link to the post you want them to share. Share some inspiration for what to post alongside the link. Simplify the process even more and write the post copy and encourage them to personalize it. *_{Pro Tip #3: Early engagement (the first 60 minutes after publishing a post) is crucial for maximizing reach. Get your team prepared to engage right away!}**
*Championing*	How will you offer employees opportunities to receive kudos?	Give recognition with a monthly internal newsletter highlighting the positive impacts employee engagement has had on the brand’s social media. The newsletter should call out specific posts with a higher volume of employee engagements and gleaming results. Show appreciation by sending thank you emails from Marketing recognizing individuals or teams who are making great strides. Encourage employees to share their behind-the-scenes experiences at work. Supporting authentic, off-the-cuff posts from your employees about their day to day work will encourage them to take pride in this work from team meetings to big wins.

The Metrics

Don’t forget that it’s your responsibility to offer employees a compelling reason to engage. The 3 Cs are foundational pillars in this process, but metrics matter too. After all is said and done, employees want to know whether or not their efforts are making a real difference or not.

Here are a few metrics to clearly measure the impacts of your employee engagement:

Post engagement. Are people clicking links, leaving comments, and resharing content from your advocates? What is the engagement per network?
Brand mentions. Do people associate your brand with a positive feeling or a negative one?
Website traffic. How much traffic did the content shared by employee advocates drive to your website?
Content metrics. Which pieces of content get the most shares and engagements from employees? How frequently are employees sharing certain themes of content?
Organic reach. How many people are seeing the content shared through your employee advocates?
Top ambassadors. Who are the most active ambassadors? How often are they engaging?
Audience demographics. Has there been a shift in demographics due to employee engagement? Are employees introducing a new group of fans and followers to your brand?

The Bottom Line

Don’t let overlooking your employees as brand ambassadors be a fatal flaw in your marketing plan. Now you can harness them to start amplifying the results of your social media strategy!

If you haven’t already, get in touch with us to learn more about leveraging your employees on social media. We want to help you set up your employees for social media success with a custom curated plan for training, empowerment, and engagement.

Need Social Media Help?

Grey Matter Marketing is a full-service, award-winning PR and marketing agency working exclusively with life sciences companies. With a knack for storytelling and content marketing that engages and drives action, we can help map out and execute your social media strategy. Because what you do (or don’t do) matters. For more information, contact us.