Shawnee Love   •  
April 7, 2011

Even if you aren’t on Twitter, chances are many of your employees have personal accounts. They are tweeting about the great restaurant they ate at or the cool effects in the movie they just saw. It seems to me to be a logical step to tweet about a fab new product they are launching at work or an amazing trip they won for scoring a huge new client. My point is that as employers, your employees can be wonderful brand ambassadors and have far more reach than your team of marketing people might. If you can remember the Faberge shampoo ad of the 70’s, where she told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on…, then you can quickly see why this works.

What I recommend is figuring out how to make social media work for you. The truth is, if your employees aren’t proud of working for you, then you don’t want them talking about you. But if they are, then their from the heart tweets and real life stories can be far more effective than the most expensive marketing campaign. If you know you have happy employees, then encourage them to use social media. Just remember to clarify your expectations on when and how to use social media so their real jobs get done (it is easy to lose hours with so much to see and say).

If you know you don’t have happy employees, but want your employees to be champions of your business, don’t make the mistake of telling them what to say on social media. Instead, try to figure out ways to make them happy. If you need some help with that, check out my other articles on creating an environment that attracts, retains, and motivates employees.

Be sure to drop a line and let me know what has worked for you, and I will include some of the more creative suggestions in future articles!