If you want your organization to yield more influence in social media, or if you are looking for your employees to become more active in social media to raise your company's digital profile, this episode is for you.
Listen to all of my advice that you as a leader can do to push the ball forward on leveraging influence that can impact your entire organization.
Key Highlights
[03:31] Why and How Every Business Should Become More Influential
[04:24] Become The Influencer
You, as the leader of the company or brand, should be the influencer. Leverage your title and be more active in social media because you are indirectly representing your company or employee.
[06:22] Setting Yourself As A Role Model To Your Employees
[08:12] Leverage Others Content
Use your employee's success stories and use their content as part of your social media profile and make them a hero.
[10:37] The Importance of Having an Internal Training System
[11:42] Invest and Empower Your Employees
If you want your employees to do better and shine in social media, empower and invest in them.
[11:52] Ways You Can Empower Your Employees
[14:52] Investing in Tools, Technology and Other Programs
Find some tools or technology that can help your employees work and perform better on social media. You can also enroll them in some programs or additional training.
[17:21] Summary
Notable Quotes
Learn More:
If you want your organization to yield more influence in social media, or if you are looking for your employees to become more active in social media to raise your company's digital profile, this episode is for you.
Listen to all of my advice that you as a leader can do to push the ball forward on leveraging influence that can impact your entire organization.
Key Highlights
[03:31] Why and How Every Business Should Become More Influential
[04:24] Become The Influencer
You, as the leader of the company or brand, should be the influencer. Leverage your title and be more active in social media because you are indirectly representing your company or employee.
[06:22] Setting Yourself As A Role Model To Your Employees
[08:12] Leverage Others Content
Use your employee's success stories and use their content as part of your social media profile and make them a hero.
[10:37] The Importance of Having an Internal Training System
[11:42] Invest and Empower Your Employees
If you want your employees to do better and shine in social media, empower and invest in them.
[11:52] Ways You Can Empower Your Employees
[14:52] Investing in Tools, Technology and Other Programs
Find some tools or technology that can help your employees work and perform better on social media. You can also enroll them in some programs or additional training.
[17:21] Summary
Notable Quotes
Learn More:
Are you a leader and you're trying to figure out how to maximize your social influence for your company? If that's you, you're in for a very special episode of The maximize your social influence podcast. Welcome to the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help marketers, entrepreneurs and business owners grow their businesses using innovative marketing techniques, leveraging the concept of digital influence throughout digital and social media. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode number 207 of the maximize your social influence podcast. How is your week going? How is your quarter going? If you are in my digital first group coaching membership community every week, we have a group coaching call and I start with how is your week last week? What did you progress on? And what are your plans for the following week? So I know that we can't do this physically, but virtually, I want you to think of that when you hear this podcast. What did you accomplish this week? What are you going to accomplish next week. And because we're in q2, now, q1, I worked on created, researched, architected, and was able to launch my digital first group membership community, which are group coaching members of community. It's a long name. Anyway, I'm very I'm honored that there are so many founding members who join me and we continue to expand that membership, q2, you're going to see me release and I finally approved of the copy. And now it's going into graphical design, the preview of what my next book is going to be about. It's going to be called Digital first, I'm hoping it becomes the definitive digital marketing playbook. influencer marketing, yes, social media marketing, yes. But what I've realized with my clients, and in my group coaching community, that professionals and businesses and entrepreneurs and business owners still need help with the SEO, with paid ads, with email marketing, it all has to work together like the yin and the yang. And that is what I'm hoping this book becomes the definitive playbook for so when the E book is announced, well, you'll be the first to know obviously, you're on the fast track here as a podcast listener and subscriber. So that is my q2 plan. And hey, maybe I should report back to you on a weekly basis, so that you can help keep me accountable as well. Alrighty, so today, I want to talk about how and why leaders should become more influential. Now, I've been working quite some time with my friends at Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, the leading real estate network here in the United States. And actually, they have global a global footprint. And recently, we did a leader workshop. Now, if you know where to look, and you follow me on Instagram, and you see my stories, and you anyway, these workshops, you can actually publicly view the live stream as well. But I recently did a workshop that I think was really, really invaluable, which made me focus on if you're a leader, what are the things you can do to benefit your entire company becoming more influential, it's sort of talks about that I'm gonna like flip through the chapters of the age of influence, because it sort of speaks to number one, the employee as influencer, this notion of an employee influencer program. But it also speaks to why and how every business should become more influential. This is something that actually a big media property reached out to me and wanted me to write a chapter a blog post on which is going to be a synopsis of that chapter. And it's a theme that I think is really, really important. So today, I'm going to be talking about that theme, not in terms of a business becoming more influential, but a business leader. Now, this could be a CEO, could be an executive, it could be a sales manager or a marketing manager that wants to lead their team. Okay. But in essence, I think that there are a few things that you can do if you're in a leadership position, that can really help benefit your entire company and your entire brands, influential footprint on social media, so and digital media for that matter. So let's, let's jump right into it. The first one as I hinted that every brand should try to become more influential is become the influencer. Right? You as a leader, have a title. And therefore when you as a leader with a title publishes anything in social media, it is very powerful, because you are indirectly representing your company or your employer, and people recognize the fact that you are in a leadership position. What does this mean? Well, every leader that I've talked to has always wanted to Obviously better manage their employees and better meet objectives. But also better recruit and better retain. When you become more active in social media, you can utilize your social media presence as a magnet to attract recruits. I know in marketing, there are some CMOS, I'm thinking of Scott money when he was he was CMO of Ford Motor, there are a few others, I can think of Jason Miller over at LinkedIn, you know that the names don't come to my mind immediately. But maybe you've seen some CMOS that are really active on social media, they're blogging, what have you, and you almost want to work for them, you almost want to work at their company, because you did what they're doing. You agree with them, they're teaching you, they're engaging with you, they're lightening you and they are becoming a magnet for that company. They're becoming a magnet for their immediate role of about recruiting people and retaining employees. But also, they become an important magnet company wide for what they do. So use your social media presence, don't rely on others, to become influencers for your company, don't rely on all your employee influences you should become one of them is really the key message here. Related to this, when you get out there, and you become more active on social media, and you build a bigger community and you engage you be come to be seen as more of an influencer. This also sends a powerful message to all the other employees who work for you that now you're a role model. If they're not doing this, and you want them to, and they see you doing it, human nature tells us that a lot of them might look at doing it more seriously because their boss is doing it or someone they respect is doing it. So you really want to become that role model, carve the path for others to follow. That's sort of a theme I'm going to talk about throughout this relatively short episode, but hopefully packed with invaluable advice for you as a leader. So use your social media presence as a magnet and become a role model. Now, there is a lot of content out there, there are blog posts, YouTube videos, you can join my group coaching membership community, but for advice on profile reviews on content ideas, there's just a heck of a lot of resources out there. And hopefully, if you do not have that resource internally, you should build it. Right. You want your employees to easily learn about what they should do in terms of building a better profile, what they should publish in social media. That is really what an employee influencer program is about. And those that are successful, are the ones that have invested in their employees. If you don't have such a system, create it, right. hire people like myself, you know, have one or two become a member of the community of the digital first group coaching membership community, of course, but hey, there are other communities out there. But begin to build that program that is going to help foster and nurture and support all those employees and yourself who want to become more influential in digital and social media. I'm going to build upon that bullet point shortly. But if point number one is become the influencer, point number two is leverage others content and really make others the hero of your stories. And I'll take it one step further. Make your employees the heroes of your stories. In other words, if your employees have achievements, whether they're professional or personal, why wouldn't you want to share their content as part of your social media profile where we're now curating content, we don't have to have the burden of creating content always on our shoulders. We can repost stuff from our network, but I'm talking specifically now about if you're a leader from your employees, make them the hero, think how good it feels, if, from their perspective, if their bosses republishing their content, whether it's a new baby, a promotion at work, you know, like I said, whatever it is, professionally or personally, make them the hero. And there's other things you can do as well, not just in terms of reposting your employee content. But if you have partners, ecosystem partners, partners for your business. If you're in an outward facing like sales, you might have distributors or partners. If you're in marketing, you might have marketing partners, you might have agencies you work with what have you. Ideally, you want to help your employees create their own partnerships for their business to help them reach their goals as an employee of your company, if you are in that role, or I should say if your department is in that role, where your employees are expected to carve out relationships, whether it's resellers or agencies or whatever it might be. Why don't you help them carve the path by sharing content from strategic players in your community. If your marketers are trying to reach out to more influencers, make it easier by you yourself sharing influential influencer content and having influence to see the notification that you share their content. And maybe you become the spearhead that sparks a relationship between an influencer, that your marketing team has been dying to get hold of dying to get in front of. And that influencer that you have enabled as a leader because you carry clout with that title that you have enabled because you shared their content. Now, I talked about him becoming the influencer, this notion of having an internal training system, part of that internal training system should also be about proposing content. So that is another thing, another avenue, another channel of content that you can use. If you have that internal training system set up. When you leverage other people's content, we can leverage our employees, we can leverage our partners or we can leverage our corporate marketing content. So you know, we're all busy people. And executives, I don't know if they're any busier than other people they might be they may not be. But if we can leverage other people's content, it allows us to be able to engage through content, and engage with people that engage with our content, it actually gives us more time to engage with people. And we don't need to spend as much time creating that content, you still need to create content. But this will allow you to become more active more frequently, because you're leveraging others content. Point number three, and this might be the most important, they're all important. Invest, to empower your employees. If you really want your employees the shine out there in social media, there's a few things you can do. Number one, consider having regular lunch and learns, or wine tasting, virtual zoom calls, hire my brother Larry Shaffer, tercero lines, excellent virtual wine tasting, but that aside, come together and maybe once a month, maybe once every two weeks, maybe weekly. Talk about what you've been doing in social media. What successes have you had, what lessons have you learned, in other words, create your own Center of Excellence. And that way you can all share each other's experiences all learn from each other. You're sort of creating your own digital first group coaching community within your company. But this is something new as a leader, you're the one who has to spark this and get it out there otherwise, others may not follow. So this is one idea you can do to empower your employees with information. Another thing you can do is to hire a photographer and or a videographer. To follow around your employees whether it's in the office at home, obviously, we need to maintain social distancing. So this depends on a lot of factors with Coronavirus. It's still something you can do to provide them with social media content. A lot of companies before Coronavirus, had these like photo days, come in get your you know, profile photo taken by a professional photographer. And we will post you can post that on LinkedIn. Great idea. Let's take it one step further. Especially if they're an outward facing person like a salesperson. Why wouldn't you go to Craigslist, and I'm sure overseas you have like people per hour and, and other sites where you can find photographers and videographers find people where you can hire someone for a day for a few$100. And maybe every two hours they walk around with a different employee. And now your employees have several weeks worth of content that's going to look good that you have empowered them to publish because you funded the exercise to help them create it. It's a small thing you can do to help empower your employees with great content to share on social media that makes them look good that the one share right now I've probably mentioned this nerdery episodes if I haven't I'm really sorry. But I have gotten into a habit recently well before Coronavirus of one going on overseas trips of hiring a photographer to get some photos at some pretty cool sites. So I did this when I went to London last year or maybe it was the year before as well as Tokyo Japan and it's something I plan on continue doing and it's it's just going to Craigslist or maybe TripAdvisor in the case of overseas trips in finding people for 100 or 200 or $250. They'll basically create one or 200 pieces of content right a photos that you can use for your social media. You can add quotes. You can do whatever you want to them, but you have the palette you have the colors to work from that will allow you to be active, be there show up on social media on a daily basis. Another thing you can do is invest in tools and technology to create implement your internal technology, if it helps your agents perform better. So, before employee influencer, there was employee advocacy programs. And employee advocacy programs often revolved around the use of an employee advocacy tool. companies were investing in a tool, because it made it easier for employees to publish in social media. So you might be a small company. However, you know, size company, you are considering investing in tools and technology to complement what your company already has to help your employees perform better on social media. That's what all this is about. So maybe a $99 a month tool, which everybody would love to have, but they don't have the budget. Buying that and giving access to your employees, could be a huge time saver for them. And once again, it's all about empowering them and taking it one step further. I talked early on in this podcast episode about training, invest in additional training, personal branding, copywriting, storytelling, there's a lot of training that you can provide above and beyond this, just general, here's how to post you know, here's how to optimize your profile, here's how to publish content, really go out of your way to create something that your employees would love to go through, and love to serve you better. So, in the age of influence, I think I mentioned it, but there was one forward looking consumer backwards, good company in Singapore, it was their APAC headquarters for their consumer packaged goods brand. And they were talking about creating training programs for their influencers, training them how to take better photos, how to take better videos, everything that I'm talking about here, you could translate into a program where it doesn't matter whether they're your employee, or whether they're an influencer, you can treat them all the same. This is a component, or I should say, This sets the stage for a full blown infrastructure community, an influencer program that you can utilize, that I highly recommend you consider to create your own small army of nano influencers, have micro influencers, some might be influencers, from outside, some might be internal influencers, but invested all in the same program. And that I believe, is really where you see the ROI. So leaders, business owners, if you're working with others, I hope that this episode made a lot of sense, and gave you some ideas as to what you may want to do. If you want your employees to be more active on social media, this is the way to do it. I want to thank you for listening to another episode of The maximize your social influence podcast. As always, I am honored by every review every time some of you send me an email with your comments, or you post about it on social media with a screenshot. I can't thank you enough. So keep the reviews coming. Keep the subscriptions come in. I also I always like to give dedicated shout outs to people in certain countries, Bella Roos. I don't know who there is listening. But thank you for helping me trend we're now today we're a top 20 podcast in the the marketing charts. They're my friends in Finland. A big shout out if any of you from your vascular listening. Argentina, Portugal, South Africa, New Zealand, Japan, its Mati got the was imass, Denmark, Spain and Great Britain. Thank you all for helping to make this podcast rank in the apple podcasts marketing chart. I am not done by any means. This is the fire that keeps my podcasting going. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. And if there's ever someone that you'd like me to interview or a topic that you'd like me to cover on this podcast, feel free to reach out to me at any time. Neil Neal Schaffer comm you can follow the links in the show notes and find me there. So hey, thanks again. And wherever we are in the world, make it a great virtual social week, my friends. Bye bye for now. And sale nada