You Can’t Sing Social If You Don’t Know The Words

Social media can definitely be a double-edged sword. On one hand, the ability to turn your teams into large-scale, influential brand advocates who spread your message to others who then (hopefully) spread it even further, is huge. On the other hand, the fear that team members are going to say or do something stupid can be daunting. This tends to happen when people don’t have something of value to say. Not only can it cause them to remain silent, but the quest to have something, anything, to say is often why they end up saying something dumb.
You can prevent your sword from gathering dust — or cutting you — by exploring ways to roll out a social platform and strategy that distribute valuable, relevant content to your teams. Many Social Media Management Systems (SMMS) enable this distribution with highly-targeted content pushes (to small or large numbers of destinations where it is relevant) or content libraries and subscriptions that make information available to team members to browse and use as they choose.

Of course, the content must be organized into usable, relevant sections before it can be of any use or relevance to your end customers. Even the concept of a “content library” implies a level of organization and categorization, as opposed to a building filled with stacks of unrelated books and magazines. Content must be reviewed and sorted into topics, then made available through corporate “pushes” or employee subscriptions so it can make its way to ready, willing and appropriate audiences.

Regardless of which SMMS mechanism you choose to leverage, make sure that content empowerment, and the tools to deliver it, are part of your company’s strategy. Give your teams things to say. You can’t expect them to sing if they don’t know the words to your song.