louise david

It's all about | word of mouth

Mass communication channels that allow ‘real-time’ information exchange are a powerful and exciting tool for colleague engagement.  Look past the ‘noisiest’ of the channels like twitter, youtube and facebook and go in search of online tools that you can adapt and adopt for your business communication needs.  Your can start to explore the possibilities opening up for internal communications within the context of your existing strategy.

Better still, you can use the opportunity to engage with social media to review and clarify your company’s current corporate and product positioning as well as your mission and vision statements. Make sure everyone knows what your company stands for.

Here are 8 tips to help you embrace social media in your colleague engagment strategy:

# Tip 1. Get help! You’ll need input from across the organisation, HR, legal, IT and operations for starters and it’s a cinch your marketing and pr department will want to take a view too. Set up an informal lunch session to brainstorm social media, use it to find your experts, enthusiasts and champions.

# Tip 2. Engage with your stakeholders from the get-go.  You can use social media techniques to do that, run surveys – set up a wiki etc. Put together an editorial team of employees, assign activities and set a regular schedule to discuss and share their findings.

# Tip 3. Think outside the twitter, youtube, facebook box. Internal communications can be well served by forums, wikis, blogs and fileshare applications to promote collaboration. If you don’t know about crowd sourcing – find out about it now.

# Tip 4. Don’t panic. You need to approach social media channels in exactly the same way as any other channel. Understanding the limitations and best use for each type. Remember you will be setting up a new way to share information and receive feedback – social media channels are conversation channels, so levels of mediation and responsibility will need to be agreed and communicated to manage them well.

# Tip 5. Review your communication policies and consider strengthening them to cover social media usage. Many organisations lock out their colleagues from using facebook and twitter on work time. There are internal versions of these channels which may suit your organisation’s culture better.

# Tip 6. Social media channels can be a fantastic tool in support of organisational change. If you are looking to put greater power and responsibility into the hands of your colleagues then setting up internal social media ‘clones’ could support your communication strategy in support of cultural change.

# Tip 7 Don’t be a bore. Be honest, open and inclusive. Listen and respond to conversations and let them evolve. Ask questions and offer genuine, consistent information. Your objective is to create opportunities for conversation with your employees and offer them channels for genuine two way feedback.

# Tip 8 Establish clear objectives and metrics to keep the numbereenies happy. Remember, to measure a successful engagement programme it isn’t just about ROI.  Use engagement benchmarking techniques to measure the full impact of using social media to expand your word of mouth reach.

Turn up, Tune in or drop out ...

Your people have already wandered off from the water cooler and found a more engaging way to spread the word. At the very least you need to find out where they are hanging out and what they're saying.

If you're really switched on, you'll join the conversations and maybe even set up a place where you can encourage them to happen naturally.

Make a start today - review what you know about social media and decide to find out more. That much is free!