As a former program admin, I’ve had both successes and failures with employee advocacy programs. The successes came from the lessons I learned when I had to start from scratch and relaunch the program, and I want to help you avoid the mistakes I made.

So whether you’re just starting out, already running an advocacy program, or considering a relaunch, this blog is for you.

Here’s What I Got Right and Wrong

First, let’s outline those mistakes I mentioned. Then we’ll discuss what worked well my second time around, as well as what I’ve learned as a customer success manager at EveryoneSocial, where I work with clients every day to maximize the benefits of their programs. 

Mistakes: 

• I didn’t involve leadership. 
• I focused too much on the benefits for the company, and not enough on the benefits for the employees. 
• I thought that if we simply asked employees to get involved, they would. 
• I didn’t provide valuable industry and thought leadership content. 
• I wasn’t keeping the program top of mind. 

As for what worked, here’s what I got right the second time around.

• Executive involvement
• Communicating the WHY
• Keeping the program top of mind
• A content strategy with a healthy mix of content
• User recognition and gamification
• Measuring and communicating success

Insider Tips for Running a Successful Advocacy Program

Ready to delve deeper to ensure your employee advocacy program is a success? Let’s go!

1. Get executive involvement.

Your employee advocacy platform can significantly enhance brand awareness, generate revenue, attract top talent, and more.

So why wouldn’t executives want to get employees involved and participate themselves?

Here are some ideas that worked for me, as well as numerous EveryoneSocial customers:

• Encourage executives to promote the employee advocacy platform during team meetings and town halls. Even a quick shout-out from the CEO or inclusion in the CMO’s marketing update can lead to increased platform usage.
• Ask executives to encourage their departments to sign up and use the platform. Their support can make a significant impact, especially when it comes directly from them.
• Executives lead by example and actively engage on social media themselves. This sets a powerful precedent. Here’s why
• Incorporate executives’ social posts into your content strategy, enabling employees to easily engage with their content.
• Create an executive-only group in EveryoneSocial with exclusive content to help build their social presence with ready-to-share content

Need some help convincing leaders of employee influencers’ value? Check out this blog. 

Note: These tips can apply to getting executives, leadership, team leads, etc. involved. Any top-down approach can help drive success.

2. Communicate the why.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as an admin is not communicating the why of employee advocacy.

I didn’t do this super well during my first program launch and it showed. We had the false idea in our heads that if we simply asked employees to use the platform, they would.

So the important questions you need to have answers for are the following:

• Why should the company want to invest in an advocacy program?
• Why should employees care about participating? In other words, what’s in it for them?

Don’t worry — I’ve got the answers to those questions. Here are just some of the many benefits gleaned from an active employee advocacy program:

Company benefits

• Greater brand awareness
• Increased brand trust
• Higher-quality leads, increased pipeline, and more deals won
• Reduced paid media spend
• Better brand positioning that helps the company stand out from the competition
• Stronger recruitment pipeline
• Higher employee engagement

Employee benefits

• Build professional and personal brand
• Improved knowledge
• Establish themselves as an expert in their field/industry
• Build trusted professional relationships
• Create new career opportunities
• Expand professional development opportunities 

Be sure to include these why’s in your internal communications from time to time as a refresh to keep users motivated. 

Need a little more data to arm yourself with? Here are 38 eye-popping employee advocacy stats you can share to back up the benefits. 

3. Keep the Program Top of Mind

How frustrating is it when you come across employees who say they didn’t know about your advocacy program — or that they forgot about it entirely?

On the other hand, you also don’t want to bombard your people with reminders about your advocacy program.

Finding the right balance of communication is important to avoid overwhelming people. Here’s what we recommend, along with some successful strategies + a cool customer idea.

My advice: Put EveryoneSocial everywhere.

Be sure to cover the basics: Send weekly content emails, share posts on Slack/Teams, and mark posts as important in EveryoneSocial. These simple actions allow users to stay updated without needing to log into the platform every day.

Another thing I did that worked well was to include shareable post links in regular internal communications, such as marketing, sales, and HR newsletters. If you have internal newsletters, consider adding links to the latest content for users to share.

You can also set up automatic content emails to send from EveryoneSocial, which will deliver shareable content — that users haven’t yet engaged with — directly tho their inboxes. Check out an example below.

Here’s another great idea I got from another program admin: Send a weekly calendar invite to all users, reminding them to log into EveryoneSocial and share.

You can also suggest that other team leads do this and let them decide if they want to add advocacy invites it to their team’s calendars. I know this won’t fly for every company and may require some approvals, but it can’t hurt to ask if this is something you can do to help drive activity.

Lastly, keep the program fresh by hosting an annual training refresh or reminding users about EveryoneSocial’s recurring user training.

Incorporate other social workshops throughout the year to make people feel equipped and comfortable sharing on social media.

Related: Did you know EveryoneSocial offers social workshops? Register for Employee Advocacy Hour.

4. Develop a content strategy.

You may not want to hear this, but employees should be sharing 30% branded content and 70% everything else. In other words, you need a content strategy.

I know it can be tempting to share all company content all the time in your advocacy program, but you need to mix it up a bit. Employees should be seen as experts at the company and in their field/industry, and the content they share should be varied and authentic.

Providing employees with helpful third-party news to share from EveryoneSocial can help your people be seen as trusted advisors in the space. Plus, it makes the sharing of company content more effective when it’s backed up by those industry pieces. 

In addition to company and industry content, it can also be beneficial to include professional development articles, as well as more fun content that users’ networks may find engaging. 

Remember, you don’t always need to link to something. Video and image content performs very well on platforms like LinkedIn.

Check out this blog to learn more about how the LinkedIn algorithm works. 

Don’t feel like the work has to fall on you to get all this content into the platform though. Recruit moderators to help with adding vertical, regional, product, and other types of content.

Do you find yourself getting requests from team members to add their content into your program? Consider bringing them on as group moderators, or, at a minimum, ask them to submit the content themselves. Adding their content to the platform allows employees to easily share it on social media, which will help drive more traffic to that content.

Another great place to source content is from your employees who are active on social media outside of your advocacy program. Identify these potential power users and encourage them to add posts into EveryoneSocial, so other employees can share that content as well.

A user-generated content contest is a great way to get more people contributing content to your program.

Keep it simple: Have users submit content for approval, and, if their posts are approved, they earn points on the leaderboard. Randomly select a winner from those who participate. You can even offer additional raffle entries if other users share their post. 

The number one piece of feedback we get from users across our customer base? More content!

Need help getting more content into your program? Learn more about EveryoneSocial’s Managed Services offering. 

5. Tap into the power of recognition and gamification.

Now that you’ve laid the foundation for users to want to use the platform — after all, leadership is encouraging it and they understand the benefits — how can we add additional fun and motivation to your program?

Here are a couple of ideas that I’ve had great success with:

Give recognition: Recognize top users regularly. Consider sending a content email at the end of each month or quarter highlighting the top users. Perhaps you can even get leadership or team leads to give shoutouts on company or team calls.

Take advantage of amification: Run leaderboard competitions. Even when there’s no prize, users love it! Be sure to highlight winners at the end. 

Here are some tips that have worked well for me — and have proved to work well for our customers, too!

• Keep the contest as simple as possible.
• Avoid having the winner simply be the person with the most leaderboard points. We all know there are those super go-getters that others feel they’ll never be able to compete with, and this can make others lose motivation to even try. However, if it’s an even playing field (i.e., anyone who qualifies is entered into a drawing to win prizes + top 3 get a prize), then you’ll often get more participation. 
• Set clear start and end dates for the contest.
• Announce the winners at the end and highlight them.

In the interest of being transparent, I’ll admit that I ran a contest or two that I didn’t think people cared too much about. That’s why I dragged out announcing winners. So I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who reached out to me to find out who’d won. 

Pro-tip: Do you have execs on the top of the leaderboard? Run a “Beat the Executive” contest. I stole this idea from a customer, but users loved it and so did their execs! 

6. Measure and communicate success.

What are your goals and how are you measuring success?

It’s so important to align your key metrics with your goals. Track user activity and results like clicks, engagements, and impressions within EveryoneSocial. Luckily, we make this very easy.

And shift pieces of your strategy if you aren’t hitting your desired goals. For example, if you want to drive more engagement on LinkedIn shares, try incorporating more videos, GIFs or image-heavy content into your platform that users will want to share to their personal LinkedIn accounts.

Take your tracking a step further with URL tracking by setting up parameters to allow you to see even more activity in your analytics tool like form fills, event registrations, leads, booked business, and more. 

Don’t be shy about sharing results and success stories internally. Sharing is a great way to prove value to leadership and to show users their efforts are paying off. 

I shared results with leadership quarterly and included results in content emails (the same one giving a shout-out to top users that quarter). Users love to see how their shares help drive results. 

Keep an eye on your top-performing content, too. I was able to share insights with our content team about posts that performed well to help them determine content topics for upcoming blogs, as well as generate ideas about new content to create.

For example, if your users share an industry news topic that generates a lot of clicks or engagements, maybe the content team can piggyback off that topic and organize a webinar or blog around it. 

Also, regularly ask your users if they have any success stories to share and broadcast those internally. 

Here are a couple of examples of success stories we’ve heard from customers.

• An account manager at a manufacturing company recently made a single social share that generated $136,000 in revenue.
• One of our program admins from the marketing department at a travel tech company shared a post that led to a former co-worker in their network seeing that content, reaching out to learn more, and then purchasing the product.

It’s amazing what just one share can do!

You can find these stories by asking your top users about their experience with your program, social selling, or just being active on social media in general. Sharing testimonials from your actual employees can be extremely impactful to get more employees active on social media and help you prove the program’s value to leadership. 

More Expert Tips

If you made it this far, thanks for reading along. I hope you found value in learning more from my personal experience running a successful employee advocacy program on EveryoneSocial. 

Want more tips and advice? Check out this webinar covering all of these topics and more.

The post An Inside Look at Running an Employee Advocacy Program appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Welcome back to the EveryoneSocial overview of ERGs for your workplace. If you want to start from the beginning, definitely check out the first post here, otherwise you’re welcome to begin with this second post.

When inclusion is a priority in your workplace, employee resources groups positively inform the metrics for any company’s objectives and key results, key performance indicators.

All of these acronyms relate to each other: DEI(B), ERG, OKR, KPI – it’s up to leadership and employee advocates to collaborate in defining how these measures of success inform each other and depend upon each other.

From day one, providing a common-denominator universal template of how qualitative OKRs and quantitative KPIs can help structure the creation and growth of any ERG will further enable advocacy groups and employees interested in workplace DEI activism.

The following table shows not only how OKRs and KPIs complement each other but how understanding these differences can help inform the structuring and alignment of ERGs with business strategies.

Aligning Employee Resource Groups with Company OKRs and KPIs

Business and Diversity Strategies

As discussed elsewhere in this guide, ERGs provide many benefits and exhibit what psychologists and systems theories call a multifinality of positive outcomes – in other words and in the context of ERG benefits, at least two birds for every stone so to speak.

Employee resource groups can become the catalysts of new recruiting efforts, professional development, leadership cultivation, and pillars of company community building, not to mention culture definition, etc.

All in all, ERGs have been the most effective method of aligning business and diversity strategies, in addition to enabling many other tangential but in no way insignificant additional benefits.

ERG Organization for Executive Sponsorship

As discussed throughout this guide, ERGs are fundamentally a bottom-up grassroots employee-led initiative, but that doesn’t mean that the c-suite can’t provide support, ideally upfront.

Said succinctly, leadership can clear the groundwork for grassroots participation to flourish; ground precedes grass.

Whether you already have an ERG ecosystem in your company, or are just starting your first group, talk amongst your vanguard group members as to who might don which lobbying role to most effectively involve executives and company leadership with ERG needs and goals.

Here are some key roles that employees can emulate in order to best lobby c-suite executives and DEI leadership for ERG sponsorship, funding, and publicity.

Business Alignment Heuristics for ERG Success

After considering how your employee resource group can best interface with executives and align with the business goals of leadership, there many ways in which you can shape the narrative of forward progress. 

Articulated as either a qualitative OKRs framework or quantitative KPIs metrics, the following ERG business alignment heuristics (BAH). By no means is this list complete, but take it as a starting point, or as a routine checkup, for how to get the most out of your ERG.

Identify the impact of your ERG with some of these BAH suggestions:

• New products, services, features, wins, renewals, and success stories in which the ERG played a significant role.
• Instances of when the ERG meaningfully impacted your company’s employer brand.
• Deal size and pipeline improvements attributable to or associated with the ERG.
• Engagement data comparing ERG members to non-ERG colleagues.
• Of course, how the ERG has assisted with DEI objectives.
• Recruiting statistics that ERG membership and activities positively influenced.
• Retention and promotion rates of ERG members compared to non-ERG colleagues.
• How the ERG facilitated lead generation, business development results, and relationships building in general – reach and impressions on social media.
• Reciprocity with another ERG chapter with a client that drives internal growth of your service adoption.
• Increase or penetration in market segments associated with the ERG’s identity.
• Consider your own BAHs that are unique to your ERG identity and company mission!

Some BAHs are more compelling than others, but there’s no way to know without defining your OKRs and also KPIs from rules-of-thumb criteria such as these. When expanding on your own BAHs for the purpose of aligning the ERG with company goals, keep in mind that sometimes it only takes one compelling case to sufficiently garner executive sponsorship. 

All five archetypal ERG roles can offer insights for what BAHs are worth investigating: make sure to solicit your strategists, evangelists, innovators, brokers, and mentors, for what they think is most effective and valuable about their group.

ERGs and Decentralized Scaling

Over a century old already, the employee resource group just keeps on giving and proving to be more valuable as markets and work norms change. 

What began as a corporate experiment during the civil rights movement has appreciated over time to provide new benefits that are amazingly exapted for digital workplaces, almost certainly unforeseen by its original sponsors and participants.

As of the COVID-19 pandemic, our society and workplace have forever changed, and the ERG is more relevant than ever.

Building Remote Community

For any business to successfully scale, the employees must be empowered to actively participate and build an inclusive workplace community. 

Without empowerment and community, workers are bound by only transactional agreements with their company, which is never sufficient for engaging and enabling them to give their best for each other. 

As the saying goes “missionaries, not mercenaries”. In the context of empowerment, a mercenary simply lacks (or refuses to engage with) a workplace community and subsequently never takes the initiative to innovate for the benefit of their entire company.

But just because remote offices and WFH jobs are more abundant than ever doesn’t mean the ERG has faded into the “Before Times” of pre-pandemic lifestyles. Quite the contrary, creating spaces of inclusion and digital communities of solidarity are more popular than ever and with less barriers to entry.

Digital workplace communities can be cultivated by empowering employees with access to a company advocacy platform, such as EveryoneSocial.

The platform is specifically designed for employee advocacy and communications. Users can create public or invite-only employee resource groups within their company, and ERG admins can moderate accordingly.

The digital ERG is perfect for companies with multiple office locations and remote employees. Employees engaging in ERGs on EveryoneSocial forge meaningful connections with each other. 

Whenever the all-team meeting convenes in person, the digital ERG member already knows who to get lunch with, to say the least. Upon arriving at an expo with colleagues, or when moving to a new office location, friendly coworkers are already on the ground when employees build a digital community together.

Digital Solidarity

Building DEI initiatives in digital workplaces might sound daunting and ineffectual, but if people didn’t care about remote group participation then apps like Clubhouse would not be as popular as they are. 

Working from home does not exempt anyone from office politics, and digital ERGs can provide safe places for individuals who might otherwise feel not only anomalous but also isolated.

On an employee advocacy platform like EveryoneSocial group members can share frustrations amongst their private group that might otherwise foment and affect personal performance if not alleviated through commiseration and conversation.

Inasmuch as ERGs help employees find like-minded and similarly positioned colleagues, the connections we make in group conversations can provide us with a sense of purpose, and invigorate our commitment to each other and the company mission.

Employer Branding and Employee Branding

How your brand is received and evaluated on social media depends first and foremost on how enabled your workforce is for social engagement.

As with the digitization of businesses over the past few years (and especially since the COVID-19 pandemic), the requisite to socialize remote workforces and employee resources groups is now paramount.

Ensuring that your ERGs and constituent employees have all the tools they need to build impactful personal brands will boost your company’s employer brand, and how clients and customers perceive your brand sentiment on social media.

Customer Equity

Of many benefits of investing in employee resource groups, from onboarding and enabling employees to opening up new channels for recruitment, how they boost customer relationships is also significant.

According to DEIB consultant Shelton Goode, leveraging ERGs for accessing a greater diversity of suppliers increases the lifetime value amongst demographics that reflect the resource groups.

More than 70 percent of the organizations I studied relied on their ERGs to build a workforce that reflected the demographics of their customer base; the thinking was that customers would be more loyal and would feel more comfortable if they did business with people who understand them.” – Dr. Shelton Goode

When companies invest in their ERGs and DEIB initiatives, they are investing in every stage of their employees’ tenure within the organization, augmenting retention, engagement, and empowering employees for their career advancement. 

Along with the internal benefits of supporting ERGs, outward facing value is also seen with the positive growth of brand sentiment and an increase in customer loyalty – combining those two things together and new opportunities for word of mouth marketing also follows. 

In short, ERGs exhibit many virtuous cycles: one valuable return results in another for both the employee and the clients and customers.

Recruiting

Finding the right talent for your teams is never easy, but social media and employee advocacy tools have changed the process. Enabling employees who are engaged in company ERGs to activate their social networks for recruiting has promising results.

By extension of its participating members, reciprocity with other company groups, and national chapters, every ERG has substantial reach on social media.

And when employee referrals have the highest applicant-to-hire conversion rate (only 7% of applicants are from referrals but constitute 40% of new hires) there’s no question that ERGs are of critical importance for finding the best talent that sympathizes with your company culture.

New hires that were recruited with the assistance of an employee resources group also have an easier time onboarding, establishing meaningful relationships, and staying engaged. Referral hires enjoy 47% greater satisfaction with their job and stay longer than an inbound applicant with no relationships or groups in the company.

When employee resource groups are activated for recruiting with the assistance of a workplace advocacy platform such as EveryoneSocial, not only are personal networks leveraged for referrals, but the combined reach of their ERG also extends into new talent pools.

In a survey of millennial applicants, 70% of Gen-Z respondents were 70% more likely to apply for a company that had ERGs, and a majority of Gen-Y respondents felt similarly. Across generations, over half indicated that the presence of ERGs in a company also positively affected their decision to stay.

Professional Development

In addition to friendship and inclusivity, ERGs provide opportunities for mentorship and exposure to new technical practices and professional skill development. In many organizations, both in situ and remote, teams can become myopic with their specific routine and not interface with members from other departments. 

No one wants to work in a silo however, and in order to learn new techniques from teammates and new horizons of professional advancement, everyone needs to mingle across company verticals and echelons. 

Through either ERG engagement in the office, digital ERG engagement, or a synthesis of the two, employee advocacy platforms are an effective way to maximize access and engagement.

Within the ERG, you can find yourself chatting eye-to-eye with either an intern, or an executive. Because conversations in supported employee resource groups are grounded with shared belonging, questions and inquiries can transcend organizational hierarchies and disciplinary gaps.

Aspirations and personal concerns can all take the floor in the ERG, giving leadership a grassroots perspective of how the company culture is faring. 

As a collaborative and supportive environment, employees can help refer each other to whoever is best suited for discussing career opportunities, how to aim for a new role, advance core skills, or advice for personal development in general.

ERGs for Onboarding, Engagement, Retention, Innovation

For every stage of an employees tenure, and at every scale of a company’s growth, the ERG provides value and support.

From onboarding new employees who are vital to the business, to inspiring all employees to do their best work, stay onboard, and collectively solve problems, the ERG is a holistic solution well worth investing in.

Onboarding

The beginning of a new job is one of the most critical times for any recent hire, especially for individuals from underrepresented groups. The first 60 to 90 days of employment are when new hires are under pressure to make a good impression, make a difference, and make meaningful connections. 

Even in a fully situated office environment, it helps to have digital tools to assist the onboarding process. According to DEIB consultant and CEO Shelton Goode, “At 90 percent of the companies I examined, ERG members helped new employees to get comfortable during the onboarding process.” 

Using a socially integrated internal communications platform like EveryoneSocial allows ERG members to effectively connect with new hires, whether they are in the same office or geographically distanced.

Engagement

Nothing fosters a motivating sense of purpose and mission quite like sympathetic colleagues and inspiring relationships. 

While most ERGs are structured around categories of underrepresented intersectionality, the truth is that everybody gets excited about shared interests, and passions often transcend identity.

Since employee resource groups are always inclusive, inviting peers to join and support various ERGs allow them to foster a sense of teamwork that extends beyond their workplace team, in effect gaining perspective on why they believe in the greater company and work hard for its values. 

In other words, through digital and situated ERG participation, more relationships can be found than if employees relied strictly on their vertical teams. And through these newfound and often interdisciplinary connections, many faces are put to the company name, supercharging engagement and excitement for participating in the greater organization.

Retention

Millennials crave two things – purpose, and options. ERGs positively promote the former, and temper the latter so young professionals are not inclined to prematurely jump to another job.

According to a Deloitte survey, 80% of Millennials prioritize and desire on-the-job training, continuous professional development from their employer, and formal mentorship in order to do their best work.

Over half of companies that sponsor and support ERGs, focusing on the retention and satisfaction of young employees is made an explicit priority. And it works, by organically growing their networks and internal growth opportunities, ERGs provide the purpose to keep young professionals onboard.

One such example is AT&T’s Black ERG, The NETwork which has more than 11,000 members. As a result of going all-in with their employee resource group programs, AT&T reported an 85.6% retention rate for its Black employees.

Innovation

Without diversity and new perspectives there is no innovation. Research has shown in glaring clarity that teams and coalitions that exhibit a richness of diversity across a multitude of categories (race, culture, discipline, gender, education, class, age, etc) are more resilient and effective at solving critical problems, and are more productive.

ERGs effectively operate as inhouse incubators or accelerators for inadvertent R&D, reducing the risk that your company is scaling strictly in terms of siloes. 

Although ERGs are oriented around identity, somewhat paradoxically the act of collaborative innovation transcends subjective identity as well, allowing employees to participate in a community that amounts to more than the sum of its parts.

Employee resource groups are perfect platforms for open-door hackathons, or for whiteboarding sessions on new strategies and pitches. Just as ERGs provide important support for any scaling company, they are equally vital for a brand’s longevity by inspiring innovation and critical conversations amongst employees across the organization.

Conclusion: ERGs In The Digital Workplace

No matter what your workplace situation is, starting or supplementing an employee resource group program with EveryoneSocial allows you to make sure new hires know exactly who is there to support them, and how they can access their ERGs from any location.

Even if you already have a robust employee resource group network in a situated office, digitizing your ERGs allows for interoffice engagement and remote access to ensure that your DEIB initiatives are both scalable and effective.

If you have any questions about how the EveryoneSocial platform can empower your employee resource groups, please reach out to us and we’re happy to discuss the future of ERGs with your company in mind.

The post The Importance of Employee Resource Groups For Your Workplace appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

 “The social object that unites people isn’t a company or a product; the social object that most unites people is a shared value or purpose.” ― Nilofer Merchant

If you’re considering creating an employee resource group for your company to empower a diverse community of employees across disciplines and locations, this guide is for you.

Welcome to the employee resource group – a dedication of time, space, and resources for the purpose of intentional inclusion. Never prescriptive, establishing an ERG (ideally multiple) depends on both grassroots initiative and executive sponsorship.

This guide will help you understand the value of employee resource groups in two posts: the theory, and then the practice. This first post explores how ERGs provide value, and a follow-up post will show why ERGs are more relevant than ever in the context of digital workplaces and remote employees.

If you like to start with “the why”, feel free to jump to the second ERG post in which inclusion initiative strategies are offered for multi-campus, partially-remote or fully remote companies.

Take the time to peruse this first guide if you want a contiguous understanding of how the theory enables the practice of employee resource groups, as an understanding of context is important if not crucial for effective ERG initiatives.

Origin Story

“The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.” 

– James Baldwin

No two employee resource groups are the same, as their function and purpose depend substantially on the company culture and who is participating in the groups. Likewise, there is no formula or universal definition for the ERG, furthermore, the concept has evolved over time and continues to adapt to the changing landscape of digital work.

History is unambiguous however when it comes to where the ERG began – in response to racial tensions within Xerox, former CEO Joseph Wilson sponsored the first employee resource groups.

In their debut within corporate America, ERGs were initially called “Workplace Affinity Groups” which were implemented shortly after the race riots in Rochester, NY in 1964.

In collaboration with black employees, leadership at Xerox also launched the National Black Employees Caucus in 1970 to call attention to the problem of workplace discrimination and to ameliorate tensions within the office.

Fast-forward to today, ERGs are found in 90% of Fortune 500 companies. Typically voluntary and employee-led, employee resource groups assemble organically based upon the shared experience of employees. Common interests, backgrounds, and demographic factors such as gender, race, and ethnicity provide the foundation for ERG cohesion.

Inclusive Spaces

A haven of belonging and solidarity, the ERG provides a space for underrepresented employees to validate who they are.

Whether their shared identity is oriented around age, or mental health, or ethnicity, the ERG can stave off isolating feelings and offer commiseration from misunderstood difficulties that minority groups might face in the workplace.

Before employees can align with business goals, employees must align with themselves. The ERG is a place to reduce any cognitive dissonance amongst employees who might otherwise feel out of place or at odds with who they are while working.

By providing dedicated resources for employee groups to organize, employees can be themselves entirely and therefore do their best work.

Open to all employees to participate in, a healthy ecosystem of ERGs is the foundation of a positive workplace, fostering meaningful company values, helping to inform a company’s mission statements and goals especially in terms of inclusion, recruitment, and retention.

How employee resource groups can best accommodate intersectional categories of identity and belonging will be discussed later, but the long in the short is that any number of permutations are welcomed (and there are many).

For example within the same hypothetical software company, an ERG for single-mothers isn’t redundant alongside an ERG for women in tech. Each group exhibits its own unique intersections of lived experience that warrant their own respective groups.

Humanizing the Workplace

I got power, poison, pain and joy inside my DNA

I got hustle though, ambition flow inside my DNA

–Kendrick Lamar

By interfacing employees of different backgrounds in a myriad of safe spaces, the contradictions we all carry as individuals are open for new opportunities of conversation with others. What might be points of contention in the context of an ERG can become vertices of rapport.

But without such spaces, it’s easy to only ever see other people as a walking category, what they are, instead of who they are. Goes without saying, but belonging is not a box to check off once all the identities are accounted for within the company; belonging requires active cultivation through community building and inclusive social engagement.

Humanizing begins with reserving a space that allows employees to express the many dualities and contradictions that make a whole person, “power, poison, pain, and joy” to say the least.

While workplace rituals or company norms might be indifferent to who we are as individuals, the ERG opens the floor for all of our shared complexities to find relevance and commiseration. As Chloé Simone Valdary puts it, “To humanize a person is to treat them in a way that honors this complexity”.

The Big 8

As mentioned above, when considering intersections of characteristics and not just singular categories, there are a staggering number of possibilities for ERG formation.

Generally speaking however, the eight main characteristics consist of:

1. Ethnicity
2. Culture
3. Gender
4. Sexual Orientation
5. Economic Classification
6. Age
7. Disability
8. Religion

Computing 8 factorial (8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1) results in 40,320 possibilities of intersectional ERGs. And of course “The Big 8” is not written in stone either, so in reality, the permutations of characteristics and possibilities for group identity are infinitely diverse.

Groups, Councils, Mentors and More

Taking account of your company’s unique distribution of characteristics is the best way to begin organizing ERG titles and policies, but seeing what’s already out there can be helpful too.

Emulating the ERG charters of other companies can also open up the possibility of inter-organizational reciprocity. 

Creating groups that are already popular within your industry can open up opportunities for ERG engagement during virtual or in-person conventions and events as well.

ERG Examples

Every employee resource group begins with core organizers. The number of ERGs in a company and their membership size depends largely on the organizational structure and scale of the company. But no matter what, there’s never such a thing as too small when introducing a new group to the organization.

Just as ERGs are founded by organizers who are personally invested in the mission of their group, volunteers are central to their maintenance.

As discussed later, however, many organizations support their ERG volunteers with paid time, meaningful recognition, leadership development opportunities, and group budgets.

A few notable companies that sponsor ERG programs include Uber, Salesforce, Amazon, and Google.

Without listing the all 40,320 ERG possibilities derived from the eight main characteristics of employee identity, here is a list of some popular group titles across various companies:

• African, Black, American, Caribbean (ABAC)
• Asian Pacific American (APA)
• Latin American and Native (LANA)
• Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender Queer (LBGTQ)
• Millennials (MM)
• Women in Technology (WIT)
• Cognitive, Developmental, Intellectual, Mental, Physical, Sensory (CDIMPS)
• Boomers and Beyond (BAB)
• Single Parents and Caregivers (SPAC)
• Christian Employee Network (SALT)
• Jewish Employee Network (CHAI)
• Muslim Employees Connecting and Contributing to All (MECCA)
• Zoroastrian Employee Resource Group (ZORO)
• Sikh Employee Network (GURU)
• Hindu Employee Network (WAY)
• Inter Belief Network (IBN)
• Military and Veteran Employee Network (MVNET)
• And many more!

Grassroots Groups and Leadership Councils

Because every group will have a different notion of what constitutes success, which ERGs should form, and how they establish metrics should be up to the group organizers. But the responsibility is initially on leadership and DEI councils to make it known throughout the company that ERGs are encouraged and supported.

As Isaac Dixon suggests, however, ERGs without strategic integration can result in siloed resource groups that risk inciting regressive attitudes amongst employees who are not participating in group charters.

In order to best facilitate ERGs and align them with business initiatives, leadership DEI councils can oversee their resource groups to ensure that they are actively engaging in building a holistic inclusive company culture.

Just because ERGs need to be given their own agency and measures of success does not mean they are exempt from the universal goals set forth by an executive DEI council.

In short, creating a more welcoming workplace in which all employees can belong in their own way is the pluralism that DEI-guided ERGs can facilitate. 

When grassroots advocates coordinate with leadership councils within their organization, big-picture goals are attainable without compromising the particular needs of any group’s participants.

Funding

For many organizers, running an ERG is as time-consuming as a second job. In order to ensure that organizers are best integrating their efforts with their daily responsibilities, it is essential that leadership financially sponsor especially the ERG admins and anyone who is substantially committed to their inclusive missions.

While compensation for ERG participation could be gamed as an easy and potentially unproductive raise, it is nonetheless important for leadership to budget resources for sincerely dedicated resource group facilitators.

In order to prevent the gaming of ERG compensation, it is important for ERG admins and leadership DEI councils to establish accountability and alignment with the greater company culture and goals. When the grassroots volunteers and leadership work together, the ERG becomes valuable for everybody.

Providing financial support for ERG admins, facilitators, and dedicated volunteers can also involve conference sponsorship. Paying for interested employees to attend such events as the National Black MBA Conference, Corporate Counsel for Women of Color Conference, and AfroTech are all ways to validate the requisite time for maintaining successful ERGs.

Leaders and Mentors

Effective ERG leaders are anyone who is committed to humanizing their workforce and validating especially underrepresented colleagues. As the value of any resource group is closely associated with fostering inclusive belonging, solidarity, and cognitive polyphony amongst minority personnel, ERG leaders typically exhibit an exemplary character of their own.

Admins and ERG leaders often exhibit similar characteristics, also known as The Six Signature Traits of an Inclusive Leader:

1. Commitment: True for anyone who is engaged in an ERG, whether they are a participant, someone just checking it out, a facilitator, admin, or leader, it’s important to fully be there for the right reasons – the group’s specific mission. Regardless of one’s intended duration and amount of involvement, working with and especially leading an ERG requires commitment.
2. Courage: ERG leaders are willing to address the status quo, speaking up but also remaining transparent and vulnerable.
3. Cognizance of Bias: Fully aware of the privileges and pitfalls of cultural relativism, ERG leaders understand that projected biases are unavoidable, and therefore active listening is always prioritized. Embracing ambiguity and keeping an open mind is essential for effective ERG leadership.
4. Curiosity: An understanding that the boundaries of any group are always porous and never rigid allows ERG leaders to remain radically inclusive and interested in involving new participants while also continuing the dialogue about what it means to be a member of their group.
5. Culturally Intelligent: Often misunderstood as “with it” in the sense of already knowing what a different culture consists of. Quite the contrary, cultural intelligence is an acknowledgement that the positionality of different people is significant and therefore actively listening always precedes a presumption of what their norms or values consist of. To paraphrase Kwame Appiah, culture is not a proprietary gold nugget, rather a gold dust that rubs off on anyone who respectfully engages with other groups.
6. Collaborative: Inclusive leaders are first and foremost advocates who default to the assist instead of the score. Empowering others ensures that ERGs remain diverse and engaging for everyone.

Leaders don’t come from anywhere, however, and mentoring is proven to both ameliorate workplace bias and empower underrepresented workers who can then administer their own resource groups.

Integrated mentoring programs that can be facilitated by various participating ERGs are known to break down stereotypes within the company. In short, prejudice cannot withstand direct interpersonal relationships.

In addition to developing ERG leaders, integrated mentoring initiatives (often orchestrated by an executive DEI council) significantly increase the diversity of company management. Black employees, Hispanic, Asian-American women and men are all promoted by 9% to 24% with the implementation of integrated mentorship programs.

Lessons and Risks

There’s no doubt that creating and supporting an active ecosystem of employee resource groups within your company improves leadership development, drives bottomline results, forges new relationships, and ensures the alignment of diversity and business goals.

Some risks are real, however, and learning from past examples can help new ERG leaders to keep an eye out for counterproductive effects. The simplest is allowing ERGs to become siloes that speak to inclusion but rarely invite others or interact with other groups. In this case, the DEI council should assist with facilitating transparency and alignment between groups and brand strategy.

Most of the problems that surround ERGs result from not fully supporting them or encouraging employees to engage with them.

A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that many employees regard the enactment of ERGs as sufficient, presuming that all employees were then treated fairly. Inclusion is an ongoing process, and companies must walk their DEI talk in order to mitigate undesirable ERG ramifications.

ERGs Empower Everyone

Not everyone in the company will have an employee resource group that is made for them, but that doesn’t mean anyone is left out. Inclusion and belonging require an articulation of diversity, but don’t depend on participants adhering to any particular categories of personhood.

From their establishment to their growth and promotion, ERGs place the agency on employees to define DEIB priorities through dialogue amongst themselves and with the c-suite.

Through this process of ERG creation, new relationships are forged, managers are born and previously overlooked leaders are discovered within your workplace.

Enable Employee Agency

Since the emergence of employee resource groups in the 1960s, diversity initiatives have taken on various approaches, some more successful than others. Much later in the 20th century and into the 21st, implementing a top-down approach to diversity such that a specialist is brought in to announce the dos and don’ts is still seen in corporations of all sizes.

This commandments of diversity approach is the easiest way to check the box of diversity, but because these initiatives often involve outside consultants and are temporary, they might not enable employees to advocate for their own groups.

Furthermore, a command-and-control approach to diversity flies in the face of social science research which has shown time and time again that people are motivated by empowerment and encouragement.

While ERGs should always have executive sponsorship, they are entirely different from diversity training.

First of all, their purpose is different, even if both mandatory diversity training programs and employee resources groups can (in the best of situations) result in the same positive outcome of a more inclusive and less-biased workplace.

Because ERGs form organically and from existing relationships amongst employees, they are from the beginning driven by employee agency.

The responsibility of executives is to provide support in the form of positive encouragement for employee resource group formation and to make it known that compensation and budgets are available as well.

Compulsory vs. Voluntary

Training courses are often temporary and at worst an excuse for company leadership to ignore diversity-equity-inclusion-belonging issues within their workplace.

By no means mutually exclusive however, employee resources groups are nonetheless a safer bet for fostering an inclusive company culture and establishing a company framework for equity and diversity.

Studies have shown that the nuanced differences in how a topic is simply broached (not to say anything about the topic content itself) can have significantly different results on participants’ perception and behaviour. 

As research from the University of Toronto has shown, even when reading the same brochure explaining prejudice, when people were prefaced with an obligation to agree with it, they typically become more biased and discriminatory. Whereas those who were told they had a choice to think for themselves, their bias was reduced.

Starting DEIB dialogues from a grassroots position that is sponsored by executives is an entirely voluntary approach, and avoids any of the risks that come with a compulsory training campaign. Just as ERGs are never mandatory (for anyone inside or outside of any given group), voluntary diversity programs have been shown to yield consistently positive results. 

While compulsory diversity training can trigger a backlash, actually reducing the managerial ranks of minorities (declining by 3% to 11% over five years), voluntary programs have the opposite effect: increasing 9% to 13% of minorities in managerial positions over five years.

If you’re exploring options to supplement an ERG ecosystem within your company, avoid tactics of top-down control and focus on three basic principles: engage managers, expose them to different groups, and encourage accountability for progressive change.

When ERGs Work Best

Company goals for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are better served by empowering employees to engage with different groups, increasing contact, and sponsoring mentorship.

The post Employee Resource Groups In The Social Media Age appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

The numbers get more impressive. For example, video ad spending rose 30 percent from 2015 to 2016. And, eMarketer says digital video will grow by double digits through 2020 going forward. That will reach an astounding $17 billion spent on online video ads by 2020.

This surge in video viewership and viewer expectation, can be attributed to the launch of Facebook Live.

Here are this years’ top social media trends

Facebook Live

In April, Mark Zuckerberg created a simple Facebook post, and then, he was live. It was the launch of Facebook Live. Turn on the video on your phone, point it at your face and start talking to your audience on Facebook — in real-time. It is one of the biggest changes to social media this year.

Numerous Platforms Have Launched Video Sharing

The launch of Facebook Live has been a springboard for the use of video in marketing. Some companies have refined their platforms, creating interesting and engaging access to their audiences. Now, brands have multiple options to select from (and there’s no doubt that using numerous platforms is ideal). Take a look at some of the latest additions.

Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories takes using this photo-focused website to the next level. It allows users to create a photo sequence that lasts about a day. In November, the company launched mentions, links, and inline versions of the Boomerang tool in Stories.

Kevin Systrom, the CEO of Instagram, had this to say about the creation of Stories: “We like to say Instagram makes the world feel simultaneously large, in the sense that you can connect with anyone, and very small in the sense that you’re right there with them.”

Instagram Live

Then, Instagram went ahead and took things even further with the launch of Instagram Live, which lets users broadcast video to followers in real time. The video is available while you are streaming without any access afterward, though. Kevin Weil, the head of product at Instagram, said the company pivoted here. “Instagram should be all of your moments, not just your highlights.”

Snapchat Memories

Snapchat Memories is another tool for video. Snapchat, which rebranded to just Snap this year, allows users to access backups of snaps and automatically pull together those snaps based on location, though it is searchable as well.

Twitter Live

Brand new to the video market is Twitter. It is now possible to broadcast directly from Twitter. And, brands are already using it, including the NFL. The move comes after Twitter purchased the video app Periscope. Now that the two are integrated, it is possible for Twitter users to create and broadcast video easily. Sara Haider, who is the head of Periscope, said this of the process: “Twitter is about real-time and what’s happening in the moment. Live video creates experiences you can engage in and be part of.”

It’s still very new — as in out of the box. However, it is likely that brands with a strong Twitter following already will find this tool exceptional when it comes to making use of live video feeds.

Here’s an image of how to do it, according to Twitter:

One thing is clear: video is one of the most powerful tools for brand marketing, brand development and web presence growth. Without it, along with social media analytics tools and social media listening tools, brands will have a hard time embracing and engaging their audience effectively. It may just be time to update that marketing campaign for 2017 to include more video, more vibrant photos and plenty of live interactions.

How the Rise of Videos Will Impact the 2017

The growth of video on Facebook and the other social media platforms has been mirrored by the rise of video marketing in general. Among even senior executives, 59 percent say that they would rather watch the video when the video and text are available on the same page. Video has become a cornerstone of successful digital marketing, and brands who want to thrive on social media need to embrace it.

The prevalence of Facebook and the growing popularity of video means that in 2017 we expect to see strong growth in video sharing. As the trend builds, however, competition for attention within the space will increase alongside it. This will naturally drive up the quality of the videos and the cost associated with producing the content to the standards that customers come to expect.

Video Content Quality Expectations Will Increase

Once the production of video content reaches its peak saturation point, most brands with a strong social media presence will be creating and posting high-quality videos on a regular basis and videos will become expected, reducing the efficiency as a novel marketing tactic. We expect video content by 2018 will be less about about novelty but more about substance — just like we saw with blogs and other content marketing tactics.

And like Gary Vaynerchuk says, “Give value, give value, give value, then ask for business.” This holds true for video marketing as well to all your marketing efforts. If you are not providing valuable, informative and free content for your potential customers, they will not see you as authorities that they can trust with their business.

Fact Checking is Coming

Facebook came under fire for its algorithms trending fake news during the American election, and potentially skewing the election. Regardless of the validity of the accusations, according to Pew Research, as much as 62 percent of U.S. adults get their news from social media websites like Facebook. And, 18 percent say they do so often. Considering this, we have to wonder what Facebook is going to do to protect the authenticity of its product.

In a piece written by Mathew Ingram for Fortune, he writes, “Regardless of what it calls itself, however, the reality is that Facebook is doing its best to host and distribute an increasing amount of news from companies (including the Washington Post) through features like Instant Articles, which hosts fast-loading versions of mobile stories for mainstream news sites.”  He continues, “The company claims it cares about the fake news problem, but if it’s not a media outlet, then why should it? If a story is being shared a lot and clicked on a lot or is generating a lot of comments, what difference does it make to Facebook whether it’s fake or not?”

On December 15th, Facebook released this statement about the problem. Among the steps they plan to take include:

• Making reporting hoaxes and fake news easier to do
• Flagging stories as disputed. This is a key component of fact checking.  This could become a part of the platform. Google is already experimenting with that feature.
• Informed sharing, as in learning what the community is sharing, can help minimize the spread
• Disrupting financial incentives for spammers is also a target, so those creating fake news can’t profit from it.

What Does This Mean for the Content You Produce?

As a brand manager or company owner, you have to wonder about your own content publishing. What does it mean if Facebook begins to take this path? What happens if publishing standards on Facebook change? This could limit the reach of certain marketing initiatives.

What can you do about it?

• Always publish high-quality content. There’s no excuse for shoddy work. It’s really as simple as that.
• If you are publishing through Instant Articles, and we agree that you should keep doing so, be sure your content is not meant to be clickbait. In other words, provide value, not a headline that’s meant to scare or threaten a reader in some way in order to force them to open the file.
• Your marketing is still very important. Carefully use social media listening tools and social media analytics tools to gather information about your audience and tailor truly beneficial – and newsworthy – content to your reader.

Quite frankly, boosting the quality of content and news through Facebook helps brands. And, in the long term, it benefits Facebook as well. While fake news is still out there, your content doesn’t need to be.

Integration of Social and Ecommerce

A significant change is coming to social media that any brand, especially small brands, need to take advantage of to capture a larger market share. Social media is no longer a jus fun place to hang out. We’ve seen brands blossom here, but the goal has always been either to get a customer to know your brand and visit in-store or visit your website.

Now, a break in that process is coming. Customers will more readily and more effortlessly be able to see your social media page and buy directly from it. The integration of ecommerce and social media will be an incredible component of marketing in 2017.

People Are Buying on Mobile Devices Constantly

Most social media happens on cell phones. Most people don’t leave home without their mobile phone. They browse the internet in the car, at their desk at work, and even waiting in the doctor’s office. That’s led to a significant increase in the number of people buying using their mobile devices.

• Adobe reports that Black Friday’s online sales record hit $3.4 billion this year.
• That’s a 17.7% increase from 2015.
• Black Friday traffic was up 220% over a normal day, according to Qubit.
• Mobile sales hit $1.07 billion this year on Cyber Monday – that’s a 34% increase from 2015 according to MarketWatch.com.
• Of the sales taking place on Cyber Monday, 31% of them were done on smartphones or tablets.

Ecommerce’s transition to mobile is easily proven, but how does this translate into the marketing plans for brands? As noted, the integration between mobile devices, social media, and ecommerce is rapidly occurring, creating a sense of urgency for brands of all sizes to take advantage of this market or be left out. The good news for small companies, even those with limited budgets, is that it may not be difficult or expensive to be a key part of the process.

The Ability to Buy THROUGH Social Media Is the Change to Watch

Customers want the easiest way to buy. They want to buy from the brands they trust. And, if you’ve worked to develop your social media campaign, you know that brands build trust through social media. Keeping this in mind, consider the following.

Nicole Jennings, the senior vice president of paid digital media at PM Agency makes a point when she says, “Consumers have found that they can receive the same, if not even more, customized experience from a brand on mobile that they may not necessarily get across other platforms.”

For more discussion for on social media trends for 2017, please check out the full webinar here.

The post Here are this years’ top social media trends appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

As a business owner, these highly motivated and driven people are who you should hire for your company. Recruiting leaders and achievers who will make a profound positive effect in your business is something that you must seriously invest in.

While you can hire specialists who can do the dirty work for you, below are basic things that you need to know about this job position.
 

Talent acquisition is NOT recruitment

While both job functions are technically the same, each serves a particular purpose. Recruitment is responsible for filling out job vacancies, while talent acquisition is a long-term strategy that focuses on finding people who the company can groom into leaders and executives. Companies pursue talent acquisition if they are looking to fill out a position in high demand but with a skills shortage in the job market.

Another reason why businesses employ talent acquisition instead of recruitment is to build a stronger and more productive company. Instead of hiring employees for the short term, why not acquire the best talents who will produce the best results over time?
 

Talent acquisition is proactive

Another difference between recruitment and talent acquisition is the nature in which employees are hired in the company. Because they are hiring an employee due to a vacant post, recruitment is reactive. Until someone resigns from their position, there is nothing more that recruitment can do.

Talent acquisition takes a more proactive approach because its initiatives lie in predicting a need in the future. As they look forward to time and anticipate roles to be filled out later, talent acquisition must find talented people who they feel can make an impact in your business once the need arises.

By lining up talented candidates for an anticipated future role in your company, they are responsible for pooling leaders who can help expand your business.

Developing a successful talent acquisition strategy also depends on how well you promote your brand.

You need the full effort not just from your HR department but also from your marketing team. Showcasing the strength of your company culture to potential talent helps them form a positive association with your business.
 

Talent acquisition is a skill

As mentioned, looking for talent personnel over a period is a talent in itself. The person managing your acquisition strategy must not only know where to find talent but also needs to determine the best people for the job based on different factors.

Not all companies have the money to pay nor the culture to attract the best talent on board. The reality is that businesses work within a budget and have a distinct culture that appeals only to some candidates. Therefore, the talent acquisition head must organize everything into consideration and find the best possible talent who will be a great fit in the company.

Also, the person must collaborate with your department heads to determine the kind of talent you must hire over time. In line with that, he or she needs to have a general understanding of how each department works and the temperaments of the managers running each. Having the patience to deal with the needs of all departments in the company is critical for your strategy to work.
 

Talent acquisition is all about flexibility

As mentioned earlier, talent acquisition requires you to build a plan about anticipating job vacancies to fill out with leaders who will help grow your business. Because the future is uncertain, you will need to adjust your strategy to accommodate changes that come your way.

For example, the gig economy has paved the way for people to make a living through multiple income streams. More importantly, it has changed how some employees treat the opportunities granted to them. Talents are in constant search for higher paying jobs and will leave your company immediately if the opportunity arose.

You can try and keep them on board in the hopes of retaining them, but the decision is up to them. All you can do is be thankful for the work they put on as part of your organization and move on to the next candidate.

Aside from accepting the idea that you may have to hire part-time and remote employees, your talent acquisition leader will have to deal with the fact that market is becoming more fluid than ever. Things will continue to change, so he or she needs to embrace and adapt with the times. To help out your acquisition head, you need to prepare contingency plans to manage employee churn.
 

Conclusion

Talent acquisition is a crucial part of the growing business. By finding leaders and executives who will bring your company to greater heights, you can rest assured your future will be in good hands.

As important as talent acquisition is, however, you also need to focus on the present. Recruitment complements the things that talent acquisition cannot do, which is immediately filled out job vacancies with employees now. Therefore, striking a balance by developing strategies for both ensure your business will employ the right people for the right job for a long time.

Lastly, the person who will manage your target acquisition strategy must have the organizational and analytical skills to design a plan in the hopes of nabbing leaders who will make a profound impact on your business. More importantly, your business needs to have the right culture to attract talented people who are in tune with your values. Ultimately, working together with your talent acquisition head is guaranteed to produce the best results.

Learn how staffing company, Kelly Services, got their recruiters and HR people active on social media to boost the talent pool and attract new business. Download this free case study.

The post What Is Talent Acquisition? appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

There’s nothing worse than someone who reaches out to your LinkedIn profile only to spam you with lists of their prices and services.

As a sales tactic, it just won’t work.

But your LinkedIn profile can be an extremely valuable tool for your sales initiatives.

And it can be a very successful way of asserting yourself as the right choice for your customers and prospects.

All it requires is for you to make a decision about “what you want to be famous for,” which in itself can be quite a difficult decision.

True experts are not a jack-of-all-trades, they are a master of one. A clearly defined, narrow niche, a niche in which they can dominate.

Sourcing and sharing great content from others as well as writing some of your own is one important element of a successful social selling strategy. Engaging with influencers and your wider network on associated topics is also a vital part. Both of these are part of your active social presence.

Equally important, (or perhaps more important), is your static social footprint.

Your profile pages should be filled with words that describe what you do and why.

This is typically your LinkedIn profile (not surprisingly) and your Twitter profile too, along with any other profiles which are appropriate to your industry or the industries of your targeted companies.

Your LinkedIn profile counts.

Your LinkedIn profile is one of the, if not the most important pages on the internet for your personal brand.

Because of LinkedIn, unlike your own website, is an impartial forum for people to talk about you and your business.

And it is one of the most dynamic and fast-paced business environments with literally hundreds of millions of updates every day.

Not to mention, LinkedIn is usually a prospect’s first port of call when they’re looking for a new supplier, consultant or employee.

So, spend some time developing your LinkedIn profile.

Make sure that you understand, and many people don’t, the difference between “what you do” (your career history) and “why you do what you do” (your summary).

Be sure to include all of your past jobs, even those that no longer seem relevant. You never know when those old jobs might hold relationships which will unlock a whole world of opportunities today.

And never write in the third person (no matter what your Blue-chip company guidelines might say) because contrary to popular belief writing in the third person doesn’t make you sound professional, it just makes you sound pompous.

Fill everything out.

Finally, fill-out everything which you can. Education, employment history, causes (things which matter to you), publications, everything.

The more you fill out the more chance you have of creating that “common ground” on which you can build a relationship with your prospects.

Be the expert.

So, how important is your profile?

Well, it’s the most important thing you can do in terms of developing a personal brand.

It’s there as a footprint on the internet 24/7. It’s the platform you have to describe what you do and why and it’s the place where people can start to formulate an opinion about you and your competence.

No one makes decisions without Googling them first (and if “Googling you” leads nowhere…they simply won’t buy from you.

Googling is about minimizing risk, and if your competitors have information that’s one click away, they’ll choose them.

People want to know that you are knowledgeable about what you do and your personal brand is the most important tool you have to demonstrate this and the biggest influencer of this tool is your LinkedIn profile.

Want more tips about selling on social media? Become a trusted leader, discussion igniter, and knowledge magnet in your industry with this social selling starter kit.

The post How To Use Your LinkedIn Profile For Sales appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Social media is undoubtedly one of the premier channels for customer engagement. According to reports, social media engagement takes up about 28% of the total time spent on the internet.

However, just because your content is published on social networks, doesn’t mean you are guaranteed to get enough engagement. In fact, having a substantial amount of followers will not guarantee a boost in conversions or sales.

Unfortunately, social media networks are full of distractions that can prevent your target audience from hearing your message. There are cute kitten videos, memes, private messages from relatives, and a lot of socialization going around.  Of course, there are also competitors who are out to steal your target audience’s attention.

In time, businesses had to be creative with their social media campaigns. Whether it’s about using emojis to order pizza or hosting social media contests, brands needed a way to create a positive reaction in the social community.

In this article, you will learn some of the best psychological hacks that will increase social media engagement.

1. Show Them Proof

Social communities are highly susceptible to the bandwagon. If a particular post, for example, has thousands of likes and reshares, then people are more likely to trust the information as well as its source. Realizing this trend, companies seized the opportunity to build social proof that establishes their credibility as information providers.

Digital marketing experts identify five types of social proof:

1. Celebrity Social Proof – Advocacy of famous people such as actors and social media celebrities.
2. User Social Proof – Positive reviews or testimonies from past customers.
3. Expert Social Proof – Endorsement of subject matter experts and other authorities in a niche.
4. Wisdom of Friends – Recommendations of friends, family, and trusted people.
5. The Wisdom of the Crowds – Proof in numbers (likes, comments, re-shares, re-tweets, etc.).

Out of all these types of social proof, the wisdom of the crowd is one of the simplest to obtain. All you need is a social media tool or plugin that allows you to display the number of shares or likes your content gets.

Just remember that this strategy can be a double-edged sword. If a reasonable number of likes can build trust, having zero can discourage the audience from even reading your content.

As for the other types of social proof, each strategy requires a lot of research, planning, and outreach. Guest posting in established blogs, in particular, is a popular course of action. By leveraging the credibility of influencers, you can instantly gain social media engagement, exposure, and a way to win part of the audience’s trust.

2. Imply Urgency

Fear can be a very powerful and convincing emotion. Apart from losing something, most people are afraid of missing out on significant opportunities. They don’t want to be left out; especially when it comes to something that they truly value.

You can tap into this fear by inspiring the sense of urgency. A time-tested strategy is to create limited time offers that give the audience two options – to take action or miss out.

Another strategy is to focus on the negative. For example, if your company sells online security solutions to businesses, then you can emphasize the dangers of being vulnerable to security threats such as data loss and a ruined reputation.

3. Use Visual Psychology

Numerous studies have shown the link between particular visual content and their effect in a website’s conversion rate. These studies look at different visual elements such as colors, typography, and photographs. For example, Signal v. Noise managed to increase conversions by up to 102.5% by adding an image of a person.

Keep in mind that visual psychology has numerous applications. By determining the specific needs of your business, you should be able to come up with a strategy will work for you. In color psychology, for example, using the colors blue, purple, and green can help catch the attention of the female audience. The color blue also generally denotes “authority,” and can be used to cultivate the users’ trust.

Another strategy is to use human images to get the attention of your audience. Remember that humans are innately drawn to the gaze of other people. Therefore, you can use human photos to highlight individual elements such as a CTA or special offers.

When it comes to social media posts, feel free to combine different colors and visual elements to achieve the effect you want. Apart from image sharing websites like Pinterest and Instagram, you can also apply visual psychology on featured images that are shared in networks like Facebook and Google+.

4. Give Away Gifts

Lastly, nothing motivates action more than the promise of rewards. Take note that, before every conversion, users need to know what’s in it for them. Giving them a straight answer in the form of discounts, freebies, promos, and free resources is an excellent way to boost engagement in social media.

A rule of thumb when trying to increase social media engagement is to offer something that is highly appealing to your target audience. Remember that even overused tactics like free eBooks and coupon codes are still very useful in generating engagement. While there’s no need to resort to unique antics to get your audience’s attention, you should be willing to explore out-of-the-box ideas such as letting them decide where to donate for charity or featuring them on your corporate blog.

Conclusion

Take note that social media engagement is all about inspiring action, not just impressions. By tapping into psychological triggers, you can help your brand stand out from all the noise and be visible in the social space.

Looking for more social media tips? Learn how to get all employees to actively engage in social media marketing on your company’s behalf to boost brand visibility, increase leads, and improve pipeline.

The post Use Psychology To Increase Social Media Engagement appeared first on EveryoneSocial.

Pick your favorite source and you will find all of the data behind why you should be leveraging social media to sell (Forrester, LinkedIn, etc.).  

But recently, those of us in the field have started to see a backlash to this concept. Social Selling is just a fad, this is just a buzz word, no one has time for this fluff…

Social selling isn’t going anywhere

The problem is that the practice of social selling is not going to go anywhere. There are over 2.3 billion social media users globally and that number is expected to continue increasing.

It is becoming more and more evident that those who do not add this to their current selling skill set will fall too far behind to catch up.

With Millennials becoming more of the decision makers than any other generation, you either need to adjust or find a new job.

What the naysayers don’t realize is that social selling does not mean directly selling your products on Twitter or LinkedIn.

While there are industries that can do that, most will not see success with that strategy. Social selling means building digital relationships and being visible in your ecosystem so that when someone is ready to make a decision you will be top of mind.

Think of it like a networking event, the payoffs are in the connections you make and that takes time to develop.

You meet someone and exchange business cards (connect on LinkedIn), share a few emails to stay in touch (comments on LinkedIn posts and Tweets), invite them to lunch to remind them of why you are connected (Send a direct InMail with an interesting article), and answer questions when they call you looking for advice on a decision (via email).

“Social Selling” is just a new way of building and maintaining relationships, and the best part is you can do it anytime from anywhere.

What does it mean to build digital relationships and be visible?

Listening, being engaged, and being helpful. It’s that simple. The most important thing you can do for social selling is to be helpful and connect on a personal level.

Comment on your connections’ posts with thoughtful insight that shows you read their article. Send them comics that are related to a conversation you had.

Reach out to them when you see there is news about their company and see how that impacts them.

Be the friend you would like to have and you will see the benefits, both personally and professionally.

When you pair this “relationship building” with your own frequent posting about your company and industry, you will stay top of mind.

This will help you become the trusted source they are looking for when starting their purchasing process. Or perhaps they need advice on what companies to review, you will be the source they know is an expert in that field.

Invest your time in this modern day communication and you will start seeing modern day returns.

Remember, you aren’t expected to close deals on social media or even schedule meetings. You are only expected to form relationships and keep them. Let the other skills in your selling toolbox do the rest of the work.

Any other name but “Social Selling”

So, perhaps using the term “social selling” isn’t the right word.

It makes the assumption that you are selling on social media when in reality, you are just being a decent human being.

Whether you want to call it Social Helping, Digital Relationship Building, Influencing, or any other mouthful… just do it.

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