Create brand lovers out of your employees

A recent study found that more and more brands are encouraging employees to become engaged with their brand on social media. And the results are substantial. According to “Employees Rising: Seizing the Opportunity in Employee Activism,” social media is “critical to employee engagement and fuels employee activism.” What does this mean for credit unions?

When employers ask employees to be brand ambassadors, according to the study, those brands found 50-percent of employees are happy to chat up their employer on their personal social media channels. In order to get to that point, there’s a lot of work to do from the leadership and marketing areas to get that level of engagement from employees:

Fix your culture: if social media has been frowned upon or even slow to adopt as a brand, you’re going to find that employees are scared to do anything for your brand. Take time (months even) to educate your employees that the culture has changed. And by educate, I mean hold several smaller-group meetings to go over what your plan is as a company. These smaller groups will be more open to ask questions and you’ll be able to make a stronger and honest connection to help ease any worries of your employees.

Leadership: all of these education sessions should come from the higher levels of the organization. Why? Seeing one of your leaders talk openly about sharing and being proud of your credit union solves three issues: 1) there’s buy-in from the top, 2) leaders have taken the time to educate themselves, 3) honest social connections is a priority. Having those three things happen will give employees the green light to know that they can breathe easy that they won’t be breaking any HR rules.

Provide tools and content: after the education and leadership chats, hand over best practices and social media sharing tools to employees to again give them the confidence and pride that your credit union is serious about connecting and sharing what’s happening behind the scenes at the CU. There should also be a somewhat steady stream of content employees are encouraged to share if they’d like. For instance, community events or special days you’re holding at the credit union. This is where your marketing department comes in.

Lastly, don’t expect that your employees will jump on board quickly to share your brand news with the world on their private social media profiles. And try not to get ticked when they refuse to do so. This is a choice of the employee, not a choice of the brand. It’s the credit union’s job to provide comfort, content and tools that employees can use if they want to. You might not see any short-term gains, but you’ll set the stage for long-term successes for your brand with employee loyalty, community pride and possibly reaching that younger audience you’ve been trying to connect with for years now. Good luck!