Social media is a powerful tool that can be used to build the reputation and brand of the company. Anyone and everyone have access to social media today and it is possible for common people to express their views to a large audience of people. Social media has given voice to people all over the world and this includes people that are associated with your company. Be it your employees, contractors or people from the same industry, they all have access to social media and many times these people share views and content, related to the company that they work for. This is an opportunity and also a threat to the company’s brand. For this it is essential that the company have a social media policy for the employees.
Social Media – Opportunity
• Social Media can be used to build a company’s brand. As a part of the social media policy of the company, employees must be encouraged to build the reputation of the brand and market the company’s selling points through their social media profiles.
• If a new product is to be launched, employees must be encouraged to promote it through their social media profiles as soft promotion.
• If employees help promote the brand, it will get more visibility and positive endorsement of the brand by the employees and it will help build the reputation of the company to promote the brand.
Social Media – Threat
• Maintain a strict policy with social media activities of employees that are related to the company. It is better to brief your employees of the content that they are allowed to share on social media and more importantly the content that they are not.
• Unhappy employees can voice negative views regarding the company on social media. Keep a watch on the social media profiles of employees. This can be done by creating google alerts for your company’s brand name, subscribing to your company brand name’s hashtag on Twitter and checking the analytics for unusual increase in traffic.
• Sometimes hiring a service like BrandWatch is a great idea as it monitors the social media presence of the company and is beneficial for online reputation management of the company.
• As a threat, employee’s bad mouthing the company on social media or releasing sensitive material related to the products of the company or strategy of the company can ruin the reputation of the company.
Brand value of a company is very important and so is promoting the brand of the company. As mentioned above social media can be both a threat and an opportunity for the company, depending on how well you manage it. Social media is a great tool to build a positive reputation and promote the company’s brand. Getting employees to promote the brand through social media helps the marketing campaign as it offers more visibility to a brand and its products. If handled properly, the above mentioned threats can be negated and you can maintain the company’s brand reputation through social media. So making your employees your brand ambassadors on social media is a great idea and so is having a strong social media policy in the company.
