When businesses start using social media to promote their business, they tend to think of it as a free-standing campaign which has nothing to do with their personal activity on social.
Yes, the business is a separate entity; however, social proof comes from honest engagement with actual people from your organization. That’s why it’s so important to create a real conversation between yourself and your customers.
Business Accounts Aren’t Enough
It’s obviously the first step, when adding the social media component to your content, to simply add Facebook, Twitter, and other accounts specifically for the business. At the same time, though, people pay far less attention to posts from a business than they pay attention to posts appearing on someone’s personal page.
The reason for this is mostly because people assume that a business is trying to sell them something, making the content inherently less trustworthy and less interesting. When an individual posts something about the business, even if they work for the company, people will be inclined to pay more attention since it has to be more sincere.
Get Your Team Involved
The best way to get started with this strategy is to recruit everyone you can from your own organization to push posts from your business’ social accounts, and if possible, have them post their own social content independently.
They should obviously be under no obligation to do so, but you can simply ask anyone who is willing, to supplement your normal promotional posts with their own. You’ll see far more engagement; this is what will build your social proof.
The Snowball Effect
Once regular individual people are beginning to use their own accounts for you, the best-case scenario is when each of their followers and friends share your content, as well. You can ask your employees if they would also encourage their followers to start sharing content, but there will be a limit to how much they are willing to post for the company.
It’s important to remember that they do not have to use their personal social circle to promote the company, and everyone’s time is valuable. Either way, you should see a marked change in your social media engagement once the content is being promoted from real, individual accounts.
Stephanie
Stephanie is the Marketing Director at Talkroute and has been featured in Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur as a leading authority on business and telecommunications.
Stephanie is also the chief editor and contributing author for the Talkroute blog helping more than 100k entrepreneurs to start, run, and grow their businesses.