Bob W.
Web guy / Social Media Manager / Web Apps / And some Wordpress for kicks /
Advice for training employees on social media?
From those I've talked with, many social media policies are being put in place, but there's a wide range of understanding among employees about the implications of social media. Does anyone do training to set a level of understanding? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Answers (9)
John P.
Management Consultant at CharterMason
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Given that we are all still working out how we want to live and work with social media in our working and personal lives, I doubt that this is a one size fits all prescription. Of course the rules that govern acceptable behaviour in normal work place environments hold true in social media: discrimination, bullying, disclosure of company confidential information should be covered the same policies that prohibited this practises in the physical office space.
What's more challenging is for the company to decide what it deems acceptable use by its employees and for itself in terms of how it want to involve itself in social media.
Once you've decided this, training can be developed to support the codes of practise and use that you've decide are going to be your company policies on social media.
One thing is for sure: it ain't going away!
Vijay V.
Founder at GunShot Digital
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Its Good to have Social Media Policy to begin with.
Its also important that the people you are training know the boundaries between using Social Media to promote the business and to chat with their friends.
Take the example of Zappos engaging everyone into it from the boss to the employees.
I mainly suggest that your train your employees about the brand values of your company so that they know what to keep up at al times. Also make sure they know the keywords if your are smaller company and loking to increase you online presence.
Good luck bob,
Vijay
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Christine H.
Have you grabbed your copy of my FREE Report yet? Get "Top 11 LinkedIn Profile Success Secrets" now at: vsb.li/QFe3RP
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Yes, it's imperative that the employees understand the corporate goals for the social media investment and be willing to implement accordingly.
Initial proactive review of their implementation and additional guidance as appropriate is also key to success.
Barbara P.
Communications Professional - Actively researching job opportunities
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Hi, see articles "How to: Help Employees Talk About Your Brand Online" and " Dealing With Employees Who Are Social Media Celebrities"
Links:
First of all, you need to clear your company philosophy and values to your employees. So that when they do interact with anyone they should be focusing on what can help out the customers rether than reading from a sheet.
I did write a post about What Makes A Company Beloved? see the link
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Julienne J.
Social Media Marketing Manager at Overstock.com
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Julienne J. suggests this expert on this topic:
Jennifer D.
As the SheEO, I'm obsessed with achieving gender balanced leadership and Australia's thought leader on gender diversity
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Hi Bob,
I just wanted to add the importance of tailoring your company’s social media strategy and your employee’s expectations and output to the social media platforms your customers are actually on. The temptation is to create a presence on every platform for maximum exposure, especially when you have a newish employee working on the project who isn’t as familiar with your core market as you are. But I didn’t find that was the best option for my business.
Sphinxx’s core customers are senior women in business and employers/managers/senior executives looking to get the best work out of their female leaders. So I had an inkling that a Facebook fan page was not going to be a worthwhile ROI/E for my company, because if you’re working 10+ hours a day when you get home you want to be with your family, or relax.
Regardless of this we persevered with a FB fan page for several months, but ultimately canned it because we had plateued at a number way lower then even a tenth of our engaged network number!
So when you’re training you SM employees, make it really clear who your customers are, what purpose your social media strategy serves, what the goals are, and what counts as a success.
