20/01 2010

Empower Your Employees to Win with Social Media

I mentioned in a previous post that I have been reading Seth Godin‘s book Free Prize Inside for a… I think… fourth time. In the beginning of the book is a quote that I have underlined another four times:

“If your goal is growth, marketing is all that matters–and everything you do is now part of marketing… Every product and every service can be made remarkable. And anyone in your organization can make it happen!”

This excerpt from the book hit me pretty hard when it comes to online marketing and using social media. The concept of EVERYTHING you possibly do in your company (both large and small) being connected to marketing is still an idea that is buried. I still have conversations with corporate employees or owners who are mistified that the PR side of a company doesn’t discuss anything with the marketing side or vice versa.

Every service you create. Every phone call you take. Every PR release and marketing campaign you run.

It is all connected to growing a brand… to growing your company. If you want your employees to talk about it. If you want every piece of your business to be a marketing vehicle… doesn’t social media make sense as a communication platform? Zappos has perfected the use of Twitter as an employee communication model.. Why can’t you? It is time to stop being afraid of the massive force of online communication. It is time to stop putting firewalls up because your afraid your employees are not being productive. They are not being productive for a reason… and it’s not Facebook. If they love what they do… maybe it is time to allow them to communicate that fact.. and if they don’t.. You probably have more problems than communication.