Your Staff May Be Your Best Online Tool Yet

You may be sitting on a pile of rich resources in your business and you may not even be aware of how good you have it. One thing that may be obvious to you is that technology is so advanced at this stage that you can pretty much leverage any tool that you want to advance your social media marketing efforts. However, there is one tool in your social media repository that you may not even realize you should be using.

What is this amazing social media marketing tool and why haven’t you figured it out so far?

It actually is no great mystery. The amazing social media marketing tool that you are sitting on and may not even know it is people! If you own a business, there is a good likelihood that you have a staff (or, at least, you work with other people). What may not have occurred to you is that you can ask your staff to get involved in your social media marketing efforts and, before you know it, your social media interactions will be buzzing. Most likely, you already have profiles on most (if not all) of the popular social media channels, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Just as likely is the fact that your staff have their own social media profiles independent of your business. That means that there will be little or no transition for them to start to get involved with the social media channels for your business. If you haven’t addressed this with them already, now would be an excellent time to do so.

As is always the case, people who you eventually hope will buy what you are selling will never buy anything if you don’t establish a relationship with them first. Your staff members are an extension of you in the business setting and their interactions with other people online can really go a long way. In fact, you should look at it as more of a necessity than a luxury. It would be a real shame for  you to miss such a great opportunity. Of course, it goes without saying that all of your social media profiles must be complete and compelling. Another advantage of marketing through social media is that it won’t cost you very much. In fact, it may not cost you anything at all.

The advantages

There are several advantages to getting your staff to work on your social media marketing. One good reason is that those social media channels will generate a large amount of traffic and some of those online connections will be sending communications to your staff members’ personal social media pages. That means that your employees will automatically become your brand ambassadors. This is all good! Leveraging your employees’ social media connections to benefit your online marketing efforts is brilliant. It is also a lot cheaper.

There are a few things that you and your employees should do in order to make this happen.

• Make sure that the social media profiles that you and your staff are using are top quality: The better the quality of your social media profiles, the more people will respond in a positive way. Another thing to remember is how critical it is that all of the social media profiles are complete. One of the many purposes of your social media profiles is to allow other people online to get to know who you are as a person and exactly what you stand for. When it comes to the profiles of your employees, they should be consistent with yours and that of your company.

• Establish an appropriate social network: It is very important for you to be discriminating when choosing your networks. The same thing goes for your employees and how they interact with your online connections. The rule of thumb should be that your staff members should connect with people online with whom they share a significant enough relationship. They should continue to grow those relationships over time.

• Share worthwhile content online connections: Content is King! That is so true and it can’t be said enough. If your content is top-shelf and relevant to the people with whom you share online connections, it will produce the desired results. You should share content in the form of blog articles, white papers, newsletters, etc. It is very important to remind your employees to be guided by WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). In other words, they should always keep in mind that their purpose is to solve the other person’s problems.

Conclusion

Your staff is one of your best and most effective social media marketing tools. If you don’t take advantage of their talents and their online connections, you are doing your business and yourself a tremendous disservice. Leverage them. Doing that is a sound business decision and it makes perfect sense. They will thank you for it and your clients and other online connections will thank you too! You are all in it together and building trust and unity among your employees and your online connections will take your business to the next level.

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