Companies in Silicon Valley are starting to leverage the personal Twitter feeds, Facebook profiles, and blogs of their employees for corporate promotions. By integrating employees into social media influencer campaigns, companies are acknowledging the value of their employees as spokespeople.
Twitter feeds for employees are uncontrolled, filled with personal information such as pictures of pets, boyfriends, and the lives of their kids. However, since work is a big part of their lives, the employees often include information on technology or products that they are involved with.
Big brands contract with us to map out which employees have Twitter feeds and to rank the value of the individual employee’s Twitter feed for marketing purposes. We then pitch the employee and try to get their cooperation in getting the word out about a marketing asset such as a YouTube video.
We use the same process with blogs. However, very few employees have blogs that are influential. Leveraging Facebook profiles is still in the beginning stages. However, we’ve seen some success with getting employees to join relevant Facebook Pages as Fans and then interact with the community on Wall posts.
Message boards are another hot area to get the help of employees. We map out the most active employees on relevant message boards and forums. Many of the forums are off the main corporate site.
These techniques are highly effective in companies with thousands of tens of thousands of employees. However, they can also work for smaller companies if the executive team gets behind the effort.
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Craig Oda, managing partner and product launch enthusiast
Tags: blogging, brand control, employee activation, facebook, social media, Twitter
RT