Social Media Makes your Best Asset Better
If your company doesn't allow its staff to use social media, you are wasting your most valuable business asset – employee expertise. Think about it: You trust your employees to operate your business, why wouldn’t you trust them to use social media to do their jobs even better?
According to Deb Mills-Scofield, a corporate innovation expert, some companies tend to focus on using social media to communicate externally and neglect the benefits these tools can offer on an internal level and with external partners.
"This is a short-sighted way of leveraging social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn," says Deb. "It's not just about reaching out to customers, it's about your own people and how they can best use these platforms to collaborate, inform and team build."
The corporate landscape is changing rapidly, notes Deb. Companies' external and internal communication strategies need to recognize a changing workforce and corporate culture by embracing rather than banning these social media sites.
5 ways Deb says using social media internally can increase its profitability, enhance its culture and bring fresh life to its social media strategy:
- Your employees will bring more than their lunch to work. New ideas, fresh perspectives and innovative solutions are often spawned by sharing via social media.
- If you build it, they will come. Attracting and retaining new talent is a challenge as it is. A prospective employee is more likely to be interested and engaged if the company has a technology- and "socially"-driven corporate culture.
- "We're a team" is more than just a company line. Internal communication via social media services or platforms connect employees across geographic and functional lines.
- Your network just got bigger. By allowing employees to reach out via social media, new contacts and partners for innovation can be identified more quickly and easily.
- Trust leads to higher performance. If your staff feels trusted to use social media tools appropriately, they will often perform to a higher standard.
This video will change the way you look at social media use today.
Deb notes that there are several ways for companies to begin an internal social media strategy. While many of the details are company and industry specific, all companies can benefit from a social media policy that clearly states the company’s expectations and consequences for inappropriate usage. Training and guidance on the best work-related sites to visit is imperative, as well as at-home guidelines that remind employees they might not be "on the job," but they are still representing their company. You will find they rise to the occasion!
For examples of various company social media policies, visit the Social Media Governance (http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php) website. To learn more about Deb and how she can help your company execute its plans, ideas and strategies, visit http://www.mills-scofield.com/.
