Top 5 Ways Your Workplace Could Embrace Social Media

Written by Tomer Garzberg

Firstly, it’s important to realize what Social Media really is. The inner critic in all of us is resistant to change. Change makes many feel uncomfortable. Couple that with the unpredictability of Social Networking, and you have a nice case for the old block via firewall mechanism.

Is Social really your enemy? Just like in the real world, making a fool of yourself is likely to be social suicide – the same goes for online. How can you actually embrace Social as a tool to perhaps even drive new business?

Here’s the Top 5 Ways Your Workplace Could Embrace Social Media:

1.       Surveillance: What better way to satisfy the Facebook and Twitter related itches of your employees than to get them to perform surveillance tasks? Set aside a few minutes a day where everyone gets Googling/Facebooking/Twittering, looking for mentions of your company, interesting industry tidbits, and prospective new business.

2.       Brand Mentions: Using the collective access of your employees, you can instantly increase the reach of your message. Get them all to Tweet/Facebook a message to the world about your company, or your new blog, or some new promotion and instantly increase the exposure of your brand. Step and Repeat.

3.       Competitor Tracking: There’s nothing like healthy competition. Get your employees to check out what the competitor is up to online and have them all report back to you. You’d be surprised what you dig up and the potential opportunities that may appear.

4.       Marketing Research: Ask each of your employees to find 3 of the most engaging Facebook brands, YouTube brands and Twitter brands and have them report them back to you. It’s a great excuse to get something productive out of YouTube at least!

5.       Viral Recruitment: The best part about Social Networking is the networking aspect itself. If your employees are going to be actively updating their statuses, you might as well allow them to say something like “Like our BRAND for an exclusive discount” or something along those lines. Why? Friends listen to friends.

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