Social media marketing strategies and the training of your employees

Last week I posted some thoughts about the employee perspective of setting up a social media marketing strategy.

The employee factor is not the only one that requires looking at in your organization when engaging in social media marketing. There are more aspects that I will tackle in further posts but for now, let me share some more thoughts about the employee viewpoint.

So many are using social networking programs you may be surprised many of your employees or those in your department have no grasp of social media marketing.

Educate them on not only your goals, but how you think they can be achieved. Training is important for companies looking to humanize a brand and starting with social media.

Your workers should take some training on social media policies and strategies for your company, at least those that are in contact with the ecosystem of your company (customers, partners, press, etc.).

Social media training as a reward for motivated employees?

But as I said in my previous post: motivate other employees to participate too. The level and degree of training should depend from the public role of the persons in question. However, if you have employees that have experience in social media, are not in daily contacts with customers, etc. but want to play a bigger role in the social media marketing strategy of your company: why not give them a full training like your official spokespeople?

It’s a win-win because you don’t only want to value external customers but also internal customers: employees, and certainly those that show motivation and initiative. On top of that your employees acquire new skills.

Of course this might also mean that once they’re trained to join another business but isn’t that always a risk? Let’s be honest: there are many employees that learn through experience and training in a company and, once they have become experts in certain areas, decide to join a better paying company or start their own business.

But that’s not a social media training issue, it’s a HR issue every company has to deal with.

So why not?