Building Your Social Empire One Employee at a Time

Social networking has created a disruption in the way business operates. The question now is not whether your company needs to adapt, but how?

In order to have a socially competent enterprise, you must build it.

According to a recent Microsoft survey of global, corporate employees, 68% are using social tools for communicating with colleagues. This means your employees are already tweeting, updating, and posting on a personal level. However, most of them do not fully understand the concept of social networking on an enterprise level.

The idea of internal social training may seem costly. Training your employees includes the cost of both the training, and time taken away from regular job duties. But, creating a socially competent, transparent enterprise — that is truly social at scale — is invaluable.

Where to Start?

Internal social training doesn’t mean a lecture on what they should and should not be doing. If you’re going to invest in your people, don’t skim. Becoming social at scale is a marathon, not a sprint.

1. Think interactive

Let them participate. People don’t learn by being lectured or watching a screen. E-learning provides an excellent training environment for this opportunity. Compared to traditional, instructor-led training, e-learning leads to a 60% faster learning curve.

2. Evaluate them

Ask questions to see if they’re learning. Quiz them. If they don’t pass the test, you know they haven’t learned what is needed to move on.

3. Certification

We naturally benefit from positive reinforcement of any type. In a study of positive feedback vs. constructive criticism in the workplace, 64% of those in the positive reinforcement group improved in performance.

4. Practice

Once you have invested in your company, let them pay you back. Social networks should now be a unified place for employees to connect, communicate, collaborate and voice their thoughts.

If You Build It…

If you provide the means for your employees to understand social networking on a professional level, they will create the social community, share a unified social voice and continually build on the internal infrastructure needed to survive the social evolution.

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Image credit: alexzel / 123RF Stock Photo

Jeremy Epstein

Jeremy Epstein is VP/Marketing at Sprinklr, a cloud-based software that provides Social Relationship Infrastructure to over 300 of the world’s largest, most social brands like Intel, Microsoft, Hearst Digital, and Virgin America. Prior to joining Sprinklr in February 2012, Jeremy was the Founder/CEO of Never Stop Marketing, an international consulting firm which served F50 clients such as Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft. The author of four books, Jeremy served as the lead instructor for Microsoft’s global Digital and Social Marketing training programs. He has spoken in 17 different countries and worked in Frankfurt and Tokyo. Jeremy has a B.A. in History and a double minor in Economics & German from Johns Hopkins University and studied International Relations and Marketing in Germany and Japan.

http://karmicallycoaching.com/ Vatsala Shukla

Delighted to read your post. Half a year back, I had approached a leading HR organisation with the offer to do workshops for employees on using social media for networking. They must have thought it was a good idea but did not take it further. Later, they advertised workshops on using social media to enhance the corporate image! Social media branding starts at the micro-level. Thank you for the validation, Jeremy.
Jon Baker

Interesting post, thank you. I totally agree and endorse the point about interactive, although am interested in your e-learning stat’s. I see very mixed results, what do others think?