By guest blogger, @austindressman
For many business owners and managers, social media isn’t so simple. However, odds are that over half of your employees engage on social media, at least once a day – to these employees, it is simple. In fact, it’s becoming even more of an essential part of internal communications for businesses.
Social media isn’t going away.
Gartner, one of the world’s leading information technology research and advisory companies, predicts social media will thrive in the coming years. By 2016, 50 percent of large organizations will have internal Facebook-like social networks, and that 30 percent of these will be considered as essential as email and telephones are today (Gartner Analysts Report 2013).
Consider this wall mural, painted by the infamous street artist, Banksy. Best known for his illegal – yet thought-provoking – social commentaries, Banksy illustrates the millennial generation’s fixation on social and mobile devices.
The overwhelming majority of the rising workforce in the global corporate community is connected on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It can be an incredible asset to use this, already established, connection when relaying information or working to create interaction between employees and their departments. Internal social media marketing may just be the most important part of your company’s marketing mix.
By creating a genuine resource for employees to subscribe and interact with, visibility and information retention improve. And in the process, you often gain a stronger group of brand ambassadors for your team.
According to Mashable, use of social media at work is costing companies up to $650 billion in profits per year. There isn’t much one can do to dissuade the rising millennial generation from using social media – so why not meet them where they stand?
Corporate training modules work best when they have a social component. It can be an easy way for your company to incorporate important training on company policy and other compliance issues in a less dross and time-consuming manner. This form of training is much more appealing to an already constantly “connected” generation of employees.
Will you meet your company where it stands? We would love you hear your thoughts on this in the comment section below:
What social media-influenced tools would you like to see used in corporate training?
