Finding the right influencer for your own company is not easy. A good solution is actually obvious: your own employees. These five tips show how they can become real influencers on social media.
4 tips for internal influencer marketing
1. Identify suitable ambassadors
Before you start, you should consider:
Who do you want to represent your company on social media?
Should it be a handful of selected employees who you have identified as particularly loyal to the company and marketing affinity?
Would you like all employees to be involved?
The choice of course depends on your objectives.
In general we recommend: Combine the two strategies. Put together a core group, but also include all other employees in the social media strategy. One possibility here is the naming of departmental communicators: They can exchange ideas with your PR department about the planned content, work together on the creation of the content and finally carry these measures as ambassadors in their departments.
2. Draw up a guide
In order to provide assistance to both the employees who are actively involved in creating the content and the other contributors and to coordinate communication with the corporate identity / communication, you must define guidelines. This includes topics such as the use of social media during working hours (when and for how long this is permitted), the visual language, tonality and wording of the posts, the posting frequency and guidelines on posting times. Assign specific role responsibilities to individual employees to avoid duplication of work. Determine where your influencers get the content to be distributed from and with whom the content has to be coordinated.
We recommend using an intranet or platforms for digital collaboration, such as Slack or Trello, for the provision of resources and for an orderly exchange. Here you can make your guidelines, the organizational chart with the roles assigned as well as photos, current studies on company-related topics and articles available to the internal editorial team.
3. Meet regularly
In order to be able to measure whether your activities are leading to success, you should schedule a regular meeting with the internal influencers. Get feedback, set KPIs that you measure at regular intervals and discuss further progress.
Through the meetings, the social media activity is anchored in the everyday work of your employees and will not be forgotten. Here, too, if you use the mixed strategy mentioned under point 1, you can invite your core group to pass on important information from the meetings to the respective departments - in the form of short, oral or written updates (for example through intranet news or as an internal reminder Newsletter).
4. Reward the commitment
Show your appreciation: You should reward the additional effort that your employees have to put in place. Show how important engagement is to you and give regular feedback, offer training opportunities and workshops or invite your influencers to a team event.
Another extra tip: make your website suitable for social media and offer influencers and target groups the option of easily disseminating information. One possibility is the front end of our PR workflow solution - the newsroom - by integrating buttons for relevant platforms (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) to share content quickly and easily. The buttons are in the upper half right next to your posts. In addition, all social media activities can be bundled in your press area, which makes it easier for your employees to stay up to date and, if necessary, to post interesting articles on their private channels. Bur best solution is dedicated employee advocacy platform where most of the processes are automated.
Please read more on employee advocacy here.
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