Secrets to Employee Engagement on Social Media

Trying to increase engagement on your social media platforms? Easy – post things that your employees will love. That’s it…that’s the blog. I’M KIDDING! Keep reading for tips on a solid social media employee engagement strategy to help grow your overall social platforms, with more than just your employees.

In the past year or so, Top Floor majorly shifted our efforts to help increase our overall engagement and awareness on social media (props to Angela and Martha). In the past, I remember receiving emails and slack messages saying “we just posted about our next webinar, go give it a like!” It seemed unnatural, and it was. I get it, we were trying to match the algorithm: more interest = more views. Employees weren’t participating though, so our marketing team had to go deeper. I think we had realized “if our employees don’t even want to react, comment, or share our posts, who else will?” That’s when the magic happened. 

Our marketing team decided to create a social media employee engagement plan that focused on our culture. Naturally, if we see photos posted of our co-workers, we are way more likely to engage, and our numbers have proven just that. In turn, our posts are then spread to a wider audience, and guess what –  followers are enjoying these posts too! Here are the numbers to prove it:

Facebook engagements: increased 93%

Instagram engagements: increased 202%

LinkedIn engagements: increased 91%

Pretty exciting if I do say so myself! Don’t worry, I’ll share some of our secrets on how you can do the same.

Take Advantage of LinkedIn Company Features

Set your employees’ LinkedIn pages up for success.

• Provide branded cover photos. Check out the example on my LinkedIn profile.
• Leverage your employee’s insight! Take a look to see if they’ve posted anything valuable to the industry and share their post.
• Have employees that are comfortable in front of a camera? Offer live videos to your audience!

No more stale content… “That’s the way we’ve always done it”

If you’re to the point where you are struggling to get engagement, it’s time to switch gears. Think “would I want to engage with this?” Typically users are on social media to engage with friends and family, so how do we as businesses grab their attention?

• Employee accomplishments and anniversaries – show off the real awesome humans behind your company!
• Employee team building event recaps – we love to work with companies that treat their employees well, so show it off.
• Live streams – Live streams have proven to show high engagement rates, I’d encourage you to give it a try.

It’s okay to ask for a share!

In my opinion, as part of your social media employee engagement strategy, it’s not awful to ask them for a share. Especially if it’s every once in a while and for a major effort. As long as this tactic isn’t over-used, I don’t see any harm in asking!

Finding the time to implement a social media employee engagement strategy

I think the biggest complaint I hear about anything social media-related is the time commitment. Initially, it may seem easy “I just take a picture and make a post.” Sure, sometimes it may be that simple. However, I think you will find that the more time you spend branding your photos and writing copy that truly resonates with your audience will pose the largest benefit. Ways to help include using graphic design tools like Canva, starting small with only a few posts per month, or enlisting the help of your team for photos and ideas. 

We know you’ve got a lot on your plate though, that’s why you have us! We can help curate a strategy to match your business and take it from there. Seriously, let’s do it!