Why I Encourage Every Employee Branding Themselves on Social Media

Maximum exposure is one of the foundations of a good marketing strategy. The more eyes you can put on your content, the better. As the CEO our founder of your company, you’ve already done everything you can to highlight your work and advance the interests of your organization across the web. Your LinkedIn profile is decked out with as much relevant rich media as you can pack in, and you have links and relevant content all over your Facebook and Twitter. At the bare minimum, your first degree network knows very well what you do and how they can take advantage of the newest “limited time offer.”But what about your employees? Depending on the size of your company, you could have a small army of individuals available to help you expand your reach to thousands of more people across the web. How can you encourage your employees to represent you well on their own social media profiles, and what are some steps they can take to advance your branding within their social networks? Here is a list of pro-tips that can help you turn your employees into branding ambassadors on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Quora, and LinkedIn, without intruding on their own social media experience!

A few general tips before we get started:

Make sure all of your relevant company profiles are all set up completely and active. If you have your employees reference or link to a site that’s garbage, it’s not going to get you anywhere!Be honest, open, and transparent about what your company does. People don’t want to put their name on something they know little about.All of the following suggestions should be optional for your employees. You shouldn’t force anyone to represent something online that they aren’t keen on doing. Instead, build a company and a branding that they can’t wait to share with their friends!Ok, let’s get started. Here’s a simple guide for 5 different platforms to help leverage the social networks of your employees to promote the company. I’ve taken examples from one of my employees, Kristian, that I will share with you all the way through!

Step 1 - Ask & Answer Questions on Quora

Quora is a fantastic way to advance the interests of your company by answering questions and linking back to your online assets!Let’s start with how to properly set up a Quora profile for your employees.

1. Make sure your employees have included their position and a link to one of your web assets in their Quora Profile. In this case, Kristian’s profile links directly to our website. You could also have it link to a company Quora page, a LinkedIn page, or any number of online assets that you wish to promote.2. Your employees should have a good profile picture. It’s a little hard to see in this example, but you can go directly to Kristian’s profile to have a better look if you’d like. The bottom line is to have something in which your smiling, your face is clearly visible, and it looks inviting to anyone who happens to visit the profile! 3. Make sure your employees add their skill sets in their “Know’s About” section! As you can see here, Kristian has added Digital Marketing, Google Analytics, and Google Adwords, which is what he focuses on at Purr Traffic. 4. Finally, notice that Kristian has written on 26 different topics so far. The key here is to make sure you and your employees are answering a diverse range of questions, not just those that are specifically related to your company. Provide value to people, and they will respond by taking note of your brand. Once your employees have set up their profiles, and begun answering questions, you can have them promote their own content in order to help raise the popularity of your company! For example, at Purr Traffic we have our employees upvote roughly 30% of each other’s content, and include a tag at the end 30% of the time that links back to one of our online assets again. Here’s an example of such a tag from one of Kristian’s posts:

Step 2 - Pimp Your Profile Out on Facebook

Facebook is a little more personal and can be tricky to utilize as marketing platform via your employees. They probably aren’t going to be willing to change much about their profiles just for the sake of advancing the company’s interests, but there are a few small things you can ask them to do that almost anyone will agree to.

As you can clearly see, Kristian has added that he is a Google Analytics expert at Purr Traffic. He’s included a link that directs to our Facebook page, from which potential clients can find all the information they need to get in touch with us. Also, make sure they properly select which information is public on their profiles. This can be done by clicking on “Edit Profile” at the top of their page. Here you can see that Kristian has appropriately selected Purr Traffic as public information on his profile:Also, your employees should list their skills in the “Professional Skills” section, as Kristian has done here: Finally, one good way to utilize Facebook is to have employees share content that is relevant to your company as much as they are willing. Of course, if your employees are excited about what they are working on and are able to like leaders within their individual assignments, they will be far more willing to take a personal initiative on their social media!

 Step 3 - Activate your LinkedIn

To get started with LinkedIn, encourage your employees to take their profiles to the “All Star” level. This is going to drive more traffic to their pages, which in turn will boost the number of people that are able to see your company’s content. To learn more about how to boost the performance of your profile, you can watch this. Here’s what you need to know about optimizing your employee’s LinkedIn profiles:

1. Profile picture is key here, just like it was on Quora. The picture is engaging: Kristian is smiling, and his face is clearly visible. Ideally, your employees will use the same profile picture across their platforms for the sake of consistency and image.2. Kristian has listed his skill set as the first part of his description line. This makes it easy for people to see exactly what he does without having to go sifting through his profile. Making it easy for people to identify what they’re looking for is going to raise conversion rates and help promote your company.3. The company name is clearly listed on the very first part of the profile. Without even looking at the rest of Kristian’s profile, people know that he specializes in Google Adwords and Analytics, and that he works at Purr Traffic.4. Encouraging your employees to develop a large network will help attract more eyes to your content when they share it!5. Finally, the key here is to make it easy for people to contact you. Kristian has included an invitation and his phone number within the first couple of lines of his profile. Anyone who needs digital marketing work done will be much more likely to give our company a call rather than some other professional whose phone number is hard to find!

Here are some tips for your employees to maximize on the description of their position:

1. Make sure their title is specific. “Digital Marketer” says almost nothing about what someone does. When a potential client spot’s your employees profile on LinkedIn, you want to make sure they know exactly what she/he does.2. Use real numbers in the description! Again this is about encouraging your employees to be concrete in describing their work. “Ghostwriting content for Quora” is a lot less descriptive than “Ghostwriting content for Quora and generating 500+ views per day.” People who are going to be looking to hire you want to get a taste of some of your results; having your employees list some in their company descriptions is a great way to put that information out there.3. Encourage your employees to put as much rich media as they can in their profile to drive traffic to as many of your online assets as possible. Here, Kristian has included a link to our Quora page, which is awesome!

Step 4 - Rock out on Twitter

1. Once again, profile picture is the same across platforms and engaging.2. Ask your employees to include their position title and a link to one of your online assets in their description. Here, Kristian has linked to our Twitter page.3. If your employees are willing, have them post relevant content on a daily basis! Kristian posts material related to entrepreneurship and digital marketing on his Twitter daily by using Buffer and Quuu, which we will discuss below.

Step 4 - Maximize on Instagram

A few general notes about Instagram. If you’re really keen on utilizing instagram for the sake of promoting your brand: Set up a posting schedule and allow time throughout the day for your employees to follow through on it. Curate content for your employees to post. Make it easy for them. Set up a google drive and put in 5 pictures a day or something that you would like them to post. They can choose what speaks to them and promote that. Document cool work experiences with the insta storyHave your employees go through relevant hashtags, find potential clients, and follow them. They will most likely get a follow back, which means you have more eager eyes on your content!

1. Again, consistent, good profile pictures are key.2. Have your employees include their position and title in their description. They can also link to any of your online assets there. Kristian has linked to our Instagram page here!

 Step 5 - Boost Your Ratings on Glassdoor

Encourage your employees to leave you a review on Glassdoor!It’s good to encourage your employees to leave anonymous reviews so that they’re more credible. So that’s it; go out and encourage your employees to promote your brand on their social media! Good luck! Deepak Shukla, Managing Director @ Pearl Lemon