How to Drive Employee Engagement on Social Media

Active social media engagement by brands is a highly valuable marketing tool. With social media platforms offering hitherto unseen customer reach, any marketing strategy that forgoes social media is missing out on a big slice of the pie.

However, one key aspect of any social media strategy is getting employees involved. While you might have a dedicated social media team, having participation from all employees will boost the success of your marketing efforts.

In this post, we’ll run through 6 ways you can optimize your social media employee engagement strategy.

6 ways to drive employee engagement on social media

1.   Find out what your employees want

Before you can ask your employees to jump onboard social media, it’s best to ask them in what ways they would like to be involved, and across which platforms. You can do this via a survey sent out to all personnel, and draw up a plan based on your findings.

2. Tailor certain content to certain employees

It might be the case that not all employees are keen to share all manner of social media content. They will likely have their own preferences, based on their own tastes, or what works in harmony with their own personal social media content.

This doesn’t need to be an issue, however, as you can allocate the right material to the right employee. For instance, certain employees may enjoy sharing updates about products, while others prefer to share company news.

3. Provide a variety of content

Linked to the above point, employees will likely pick and choose the kind of company content they want to share. To ensure there’s something for everyone, focus on having a wide variety of content. This can range from blog posts, to video shorts, to announcements.

The important thing to bear in mind here is that employee engagement is not simply about promotion — especially from an employee perspective. Ideally, you want employees to feel like there is genuine interest and value in what they’re sharing, and that it’s not simply a fulfilment of duty. Naturally, they’re more likely to do this if content is of interest to them, which is more likely to happen if the content is versatile.

4. Run a competition

Social media contests and competitions can be highly motivating in getting employees engaging on social media. This could come in the form of a one-off giveaway, or run as a monthly event. Some examples include: a prize for the employee with the largest numbers of shares, or for generating the most discussion around a post.

5. Involve employees in product launches

Employees that enjoy their job will likely be excited when their company comes out with something new, and they’ll want to share it on one of their various social media platforms. When employees feel involved in, or as though they have a role in a product launch, they will have much more incentive to engage with the launch on social media. Consider allocating multiple roles for upcoming product launches, as well just generating buzz and excitement around it generally in the workplace. As a result, you’ll see your employee engagement soar.

6. Give employees something to show off

A great way to get employees excited working for a brand is by giving them free merchandise, such as t-shirts, hoodies, tote bags and pens. As employees wear their new merch with pride, they’ll also feel more as though their company is part of their identity - both online and off — invariably making them more likely to engage with the company on social media.

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