AMP Up Your Social Media #38: Involving Employees in Social Media Strategy with Tara Zoumer

AMP UP Your Social MediaTara Zoumer is the PR coordinator and Social Media Manager for TriNet, a cloud-based HR management partner. From cupcakes to Alzheimer’s care, Tara has extensive experience in in-house PR and marketing. Tara stresses the importance of communication and enjoys the challenge of figuring out how to best communicate a message and making sure that it resonates with the intended audience.  Tara recently joined AMP UP Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss the importance of including your employees in your social media strategy.

“We brought GaggleAMP on as a tool to help provide and approve safe messaging for employees…GaggleAMP gave us a way to make it easier to share.”

Tara offers this insight to the importance of including your employees:

  1. A Social Strategy. Whether you like it or not, the conversation about your company or product is happening online. You don’t have to participate in it, however the more you try to ignore it, you will find that you end up running into it anyway. Instead of ignoring it, you should embrace it. Social media offers a unique opportunity to be transparent and open and have a two-way conversation between your clients, your employees and the general public. Further, if you find that you have negative reviews, definitely do not ignore them. The most important thing that you can do is to respond to them. This shows that you care and that you pay attention to what is happening to your brand online.
  2. Employees on Social Media. Many companies worry that employees on social media may be a liability, but the benefits greatly outweigh the risks. The small amount of “rogue” employees who may be a liability on social media are worth dealing with because you are gaining so much more. Training and talking to your employees is huge, too few companies have a social media policy or training program. Establishing that is a very important step for any company.  Create guidelines, policies and training for employee that clearly lay out the company do’s and don’ts for social media.  Your goal is to make your employees familiar with what they can do on social media and help your employees feel confident and comfortable with sharing content on social media.
  3. Finding Success. A successful social media strategy should include a combination of content and messages; PR activity, news publication pieces, relevant marketing events, suggested content, industry relevant content, generic industry pieces and actions all help to keep your followers engaged, and employees eager to share. Further, listen to your employees. Find out who is active on social media and use them as internal ambassadors. Keep your social media approach with your employees simple; figure out what they will like and what they will actually use. Regardless of your company or your product, make your approach relevant and make sure you use the right tools.

Tara would love to hear from you! Chat with her on Twitter!

About Tara Zoumer

Tara ZoumerBased in the San Francisco Bay area, Tara Zoumer is the PR Coordinator and Social Media Manager at TriNet. With a BA in Communication from Chapman University, Tara uses her passion as a communicator to help individuals, companies and brands create and communicate their messages. From traditional PR campaigns to social media to guerilla marketing, Tara feels that advertising, marketing, PR and social media should be blended together to create a cohesive and powerful communication arsenal. A PR Coordinator and Social Media Manager by trade, Tara is also passionate about cooking, and even works as a chef on occasion, and is an avid traveler.

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AMP UP Your Social Media is sponsored by:

  • GaggleAMP - Empower your employees, partners and resellers to amplify your social media.
  • SafeLinks - Know when your links on social media messages fail before you lose out on the people clicking on them.

The FIR Podcast Network is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide.

Posted by Glenn Gaudet on 11/12 at 03:23 AM

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