Struggling to figure out how to market via the new beast of a medium we call Social Media? Look no further than the dude sitting at the desk next to you. Whether you don’t use it, kind of use it, or are really good at it. A good, FREE, way to start or add to your social marketing value would be to look on the inside. Your employees. We spend time and money trying to gain followers and fans of our brand’s pages, but there is another untapped network out there, all the folks who work for you. Yeah, I’m talking corner office, to interns, to the guy who replaces the urinal cakes.
We spend lots of money on media trying to make impressions and promote events at the right time and place. There is a media network out there that is already established that is cheap and easy to get to. Think about how many Facebook fans you have and how many Twitter followers you have on your company’s pages. That is where most people stop. Yes you need to cultivate those, but there is more potential out there. Now do some math with me; say of your employees the casual average users of Facebook would have 150 friends and Twitter would have 70 followers. If you send out a company email to your employees with a suggested status update or tweet and only 20 people choose to post it; 4,400 impressions just went out with your message in it. A status update does have less stickiness than some other forms of media, but it gets your message out there. Now you can’t force employees to post any of your marketing messages. You can only suggest if they would like to. When you think about it though, a large part of all of our personal social makeup is what we do 40 hours (or more) a week, so a fleeting post about what’s going on at work isn’t a crazy invasion of their “social media social lives”, and yet, the network it would reach is very large.
If you suggest status updates and/or tweets stick with awareness marketing and even trial marketing messages. Awareness could look something like:
“Here is a great opportunity to donate to the Haiti relief effort if you are looking for one…http://www.yourcompany.com/linktoyourhaitireliefeffortdonationsite.html”
“Check out 686 rider Louie Vito as he goes for gold against the world in the Men’s Snowboard Halfpipe on Feb. 17… check out his bio at www.686.com”
Trial messaging could look like:
“(insert your person of interest) will be at our downtown store for an autograph session next Thursday. We will have (a band) and (festivities) and huge sales on merchandise. Hope to see you there.”
“Buy one get one tickets on sale at (your website) for the video premiere of (your person of interest) taking place (date, time, location). Come check it out.”
Be aware of the frequency of what you ask employees to post. You don’t want to burn them or their friends out with your propaganda. If you try it, you might be surprised how many people do post your message and how far it will reach. So, looking for a network to amp up your social media marketing. Try looking to your employees.
