Anyone who is working for a small business knows it’s tough to do it all. You can’t be the only  person who does your email marketing, your social media, your customer support, your sales, your product management, your search engine marketing and the hundreds of other things it takes to grow a small business. The good news is that social media is something that can be shared with all of your employees. It doesn’t matter what department they’re in, as long as they have an interest in social media you should encourage them to help spread your message. Here are a few things you can do to encourage them:

Find Your Social Media Pros – Here at VerticalResponse I have a list of employees who are active on social media. Every week or so I send them an email letting them know everything I plan to promote on Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn. I even go as far as shortening the links for them. This makes it super easy for them to spread our message to their personal audience extending our reach. If you’re already using our social sharing feature it’s as simple as copying and pasting the link we give you and sending it to your employees asking them to pass it on.

Encourage Education – There are hundreds of free webinars and whitepapers about how to use social media for your business. Pass on these resources to your employees and encourage them to learn how to use these valuable tools. Friday, Feb 26th, our CEO, Janine Popick, will be speaking on a webinar, How to Make Social Media and Email Work Together. It is part of the VerticalResponse seven part social media series. We have recorded every webinar and saved them here.

Have an Open Door Policy – Find the employee who is most excited about social media, this might be you. And ask them to become your social media lead. This person can field all the other social media questions from your employees, which can help them learn more about these tools that can help your business grow.

Avoid Blocking Social Media Sites – Your employees are going to take a break from work, and if they want to spend that time off on social media sites, I say let them. Encourage them to chat up your business while they do it. Problems may arise when your employees are so distracted by these sites that they’re not helping your customers. So your policy should always be, customers come first.

These are a few things that are working for us, does anyone have anything to add to the list that has worked for your company?

© 2010 – 2018, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.