Are you one of the many HR, business leader or marcoms professional who has tried endlessly to get employees to share company content on their social media profiles?
Do you also look for inspiration, tips and ideas what to do to inspire employees to join your (employer) branding forces online?
I can tell you, you are not alone!
Most companies share this same struggle, wondering how on earth to get their employees on social media to share company content.
Why employees do not share company content on social media?
Most employees fall under one of the following three categories when it comes to their personal use of social media:
- Not active at all. Either they don’t even have social media profiles or they just don’t use them at all.
- Silent viewers. A whole lot of social media users ghost social media. They never post anything, hardly ever comment anything and only occasionally like a post. Often times their social media network is very small. Mostly just family and friends.
- Active social media users. These people actively both post and create content, engage with their audiences and spend a lot of time on their socials.
So, why don’t they share company content on their socials?
If a person prefers to be silent on socials, just view, they are unlikely to ever post company content either.
The more active a social media user is, the more they tend to care about what they post and how valuable that content is to their audiences and how well it fits their social media appearance.
The most common answer to this question is: the company content you are asking to be shared is not valuable for their audiences.
How to get employees to share company content online?
The simple answer is: either give them content that fits their preferred social media and is able to help them to add value to their own audiences. Or allow them to create the kind of company content they actually want to share.
Valuable content on social media does not mean only tips, advice and educational content. Valuable content is any type of content that triggers the attention of the audience, naturally engages them and gives the viewer whatever they came to look for on social media.
Social media users expect different types of value from different social media. You won’t expect the same from Instagram as you expect from LinkedIn, for example.
A few tips to get you started
- Active social media users tend to have social media preferences. Make sure the offered content can be repurposed to fit social media their preference.
- Either make the content ready-to-be-shared or give your employees free hands to deliver the intended message in their own way.
- Remember, that social media content is not sales content. If your company content is sales content, you’re mission of getting your employees to share it is likely to fail. Unless they are the sales people.
- Coach and guide your employees on social media if they are unsure how to go about.
- Understand the company content is like guest content on your employee social media. You have to make it fit their social media. Not the other way around.
Podcast-episode
In this episode of Building a Modern Employer Brand, I talk about the common struggle of not getting your employees to pitch in and share your company content on social media.
Episode length: 30:03 min
In this episode:
- Most common reasons why employees are not sharing company content on their own social media profiles.
- 5 steps to start changing the why not to “yes of course and I will!”
Social Media Examiner’s tips on How to guide employees to post more on social media >>