Do My Employees Need Social Media?

Recently, while talking about social media with a client, the topic of empowering employees with social media as a business strategy was discussed. Allowing employees to share their company affiliation and actively exchange information in such an open and informal way initially gives a lot of business owners an uneasy feeling and with good reason. Its tough to monitor the content employees are delivering via social media outlets: Ask Dominos Pizza.

The reality is that social media is open to anyone and a motivated person can do something malicious whether they are an employee or angry customer. That being said, there is a tremendous benefit to your company by giving employees access to tools that show them how to use social media to promote what they do both directly and indirectly.

If you have a website, one of the most notable affects social media can have on your online presence is inbound linking. Having each employee posting a link to your website from their social media profile adds relevance to your site which is good for SEO.

Also, employees social networking on your company’s behalf increases the amount of exposure of your business, essentially expanding your sales force and in many cases a sense of taking ownership of the company’s mission to grow and expand via the internet develops.

There’s no real way to monitor all content being put out, however, there are steps business owners can take to protect themselves against social media smearing by irresponsible or disgruntled employees.

1.  Create a clear detailed company policy on social media usage and ensure this policy is given to all employees and agreed upon with a signature.  

2. Hold employees accountable who violate this policy as necessary.

3. Flag or report inappropriate, dishonest, or potentially damaging materials to the site that holds the such material. This is key as most sites are generally accommodating to such requests.