Digital Persuasion in Action Rule 5: Build a Digital Persuasion Dream Team by Ensuring All Staff are Members
In today’s digital world, cutting through the noise on social media is a constant challenge for brands. So how do businesses and organizations use digital platforms to create advocates for its brand or cause? Digital Persuasion.
Amber Harris, Discovery Communications Vice President of Communications and Social Media, sat down with Waggener Edstrom to discuss Rule #5 from WE’s Digital Persuasion study: “building a digital persuasion dream team by ensuring all staff are members.” And by ensuring all staff are members of one cohesive social strategy, the company’s message is spread broadly and accurately.
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And while it may seem counter-intuitive to get all employees in the same social media pool during Shark Week, Discovery Communications empowers its employees to engage and tell their own story on social media. Harris notes that the unified voice of employees is often more powerful than a brand’s voice – especially when it comes to CSR efforts.
Nowadays, people want real, oxygen-breathing humans they can relate with – not an automated system that spits out impersonal and disconnected communication. What better way for people to relate to a company or organization than through its employees? Amber explains that to unlock a meaningful social dialogue, it must understand that it’s about a larger conversation, not explicitly or only about the company. Through their employees, companies have a built-in group of brand ambassadors and need to empower and leverage their voices on social media.
Discovery Communications has four best practices for involving employees in social media storytelling: • Create a social media policy that emphasizes how to strategically engage with existing content.• Provide training materials and social media resources that help employees tell a cohesive story.
• For individual campaigns, give employees specific ways to join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
• Amplify employees’ content to help tell a broader story.
Enabling advocates to engage with a cause or organization through digital persuasion isn’t solely about content or visual aesthetics. It’s about being true to your brand and your overall story. Amber says that a “socially responsible company on social media must realize it’s about the larger conversation, and not about them.” Furthermore, building a social media dream team is about being the story you want to tell and empowering employees to do so in an authentic and powerful way.
And if your story happens to include Shark Week, you’ll be sure to make a big splash!
Consider yourself a digital persuader or interested in how you or your organization can become one?Download a copy of the Digital Persuasion study, a comprehensive report on the social media habits of online cause supporters by Waggener Edstrom Communications and Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication. Join the conversation – use #DigitalPersuasion.
