<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1314510808695425&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
on December 11, 2018 Internal Communications Industries Messaging Tools

What Internal Communicators Can Learn from Social Media Influencers

Subscribe to Email Updates

Social media has triggered an undoubtedly massive movement, with over 81 percent of Americans possessing at least one social media account. Just as our marketing departments have adopted to these newer, fast-paced ways to communicate to our customers, what can we as internal communicators learn from this?
 
Some of the best places to look to for inspiration come from those that have successfully maneuvered within the social media industry.  Social Media Influencers are people who often were relatively unknown before their presence on social media, and through the development of new communication techniques, became dominant online forces with audiences in the millions. Clearly, they must be doing something right, so here are some of the top things that internal communicators can learn from social media influencers.
 

Establish a Face

Fun internal communication teamOne of the biggest off-putting things that a company can do with media is to act in a way that makes people wonder if it’s being run by a company or a person. People aren’t able to form emotional connections with entities as they do with people, and when you’re looking for engagement it’s all about emotional connections.

Make it clear that your communications is being run by a person (or group of people) with distinct personalities. You can even go so far as to include a post every now and then with images of those running the account to definitively establish that human face. If you take notice of most social media influencers, they often feature images of themselves and provide first-person narrative captions.

Interact with Followers

Checking comments on the mobile intranetSocial media isn’t just a place to make a post every couple of days and then forget about it until the next time you post. Just as important with your employee communications is making content and interacting with the individuals who comment or engage with the message. It’s common practice among many social media influencers to respond to at least a portion of their commenters, even if they have millions of them. This is something that most businesses fail to do at a sufficient level both when talking internally and externally.

If someone leaves a comment, then take the time to provide a timely response that is personally catered to their comment. Leaving generic replies such as “thanks” or “we’re glad you liked our post”, can lead to some people thinking it’s just an automated response system at work, which points back to a failure to establish a human face.

Go Beyond Words

Recording an employee videoIf you were to look at any major influencer, it is almost guaranteed that you would see a mixture of videos and images as well as their standard text posts. This is because images, and especially videos, feel much more intimate and engaging to a viewer.

Make sure your company is regularly including images in your posts, and take the time to shoot a short video every now and then to boost your social media engagement levels.  To learn how to maximize your social media potential, as well as your other forms of corporate communication, contact us today.

Want to receive articles like this once a week in your inbox?  Sign up for our FREE newsletter:

Get More Stories Like This

Sydnie Fultz

Creative Content Manager