Employees are an important part of a company’s social marketing strategy, and CEOs are starting to notice. Companies want their employees to blog to take the roles of “ambassadors” for their company. These companies want employees to blog on sites like Twitter to show transparency and confidence in the organization.
SocialCorp, written by Joel Postman, explained how Zappos encouraged its employees to blog. Zappos, an online shoe retailer, encouraged its employees to use Twitter. Zappos showed off its employees’ initiatives by combining all of the employees’ “tweets” onto a page on their corporate website. These “tweets” were available for all publics to see. The company used friendly competition among employees, making it employees’ goal to gain the most followers.
Zappos demonstrated how serious the company was about transparency by giving employees the freedom to use Twitter. Zappos trusted its employees to represent the company. I think this was brave on their part, and it showed how confident the company was in the good judgement of its employees. In the blogs, employees posted about their work lives and recommended company products. They also addressed customer support issues through their posts.
Sun Microsystems is another company that has encouraged employee blogs for the past few years. They allowed any employee with an interest in blogging to start their own, and the blogs were linked publicly. In 2007, Sun Microsystems had 4,000 of its 35,000 employees actively blogging. This was a HUGE accomplishment! Through posting, employees helped the company become transparent to its publics.
Hewlett Packard used blogs as a way for employees to share thoughts, get ideas, and feel like part of the company. As the Cannes Film Festival’s official sponsor, HP’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region used the event to get its employees blogging. The company gave employees the chance to blog about the film festival. This event not only promoted HP, but it increased visibility of HP products and services, and made the experience “real” by including HP employees. In this example, employees helped gain awareness of the company.
Encouraging employee blogs sounds like a good way to improve a company’s social marketing strategy. I think that it is important for a company to be transparent. I think it’s great when employees can help be a company’s quick and easy solution!
