I wasn’t able to attend the first day of the 4th IMMAP Digital Summit because I was on vacation with my wife. I’ll try to see if I can still make it to the second day. Anyway, I was following the tweets and the online conversations about the keynote presentation of Jeremiah Owyang. He raised a lot of important points that have been actually raised before by various speakers but I think it’s good to hear it from him since it adds a whole lot more of credibility and weight. Anyway, one of his points is that “everyone in your company can be a customer touch-point” because of social media. This cannot be farther from the truth and this just reinforces the idea that companies should seriously develop their own social media policies. More than the policies though, companies should also equip their employees with the proper tools so that they can be effective touch points in the event that customers reach out to them via social media. Let me elaborate after the break.
INTERNAL COMMUNICATION IS KEY
If you want to leverage your employees as touch points, internal corporate communication is crucial. In order to equip your employees properly, you need to give them all the information about the latest promos, products, product problem resolution statements, etc. Set up an internal communication system. An internal mailing list from your Corporate Communications team or an intranet blog should do good in spreading the news.
EDUCATE THEM ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA
Not everyone is social media savvy yet. A simple internal seminar on how the popular social networking sites work should do the trick. I’m pretty sure a lot of people already are on Facebook but not everyone understands how Twitter works and how it can be such a powerful business tool especially if you combine it with third party applications like Tweet Deck and your mobile phone.
GIVE THEM RESOURCES
Another very important thing is to give them resources that they can refer to or direct queries to. Not all of your employees will know all the answers but you can ask them to direct customers to a certain website, customer support number, customer support e-mail address, or something like that. Each time there is a major problem, come out with a statement and make sure to post it online and send the link to your employees. That way if someone asks them about the issue on Twitter, Facebook, or Friendster, they have the response ready (just by pasting the link to the official statement).
GIVE THEM A CHOICE
Lastly, make sure to give them a choice. Don’t force your employees to become marketing tools. We have to respect their privacy and not everyone is cool with the idea of talking about work on their personal Facebook or Twitter accounts. The best you can really do is to just offer them tools, education, and other resources that they can refer to and use should they decide to take up the cudgels for your company on their personal networks.
Remember — it’s not just the policy, it’s also how you train, educate, and arm your employees for social media marketing.
