You’ve taken every measure to ensure your employees are trained in areas such as customer service, safety and compliance, and legal regulations, yet you’ve left one area unchecked. Social media training.
You may think you don’t need to train your employees on social media because their jobs don’t involve the use of sites like Facebook or Twitter. Regardless of whether or not your employees are using social media directly for their jobs, they’re likely using it in some way. If you’re not training them in this area, you’re leaving yourself open to significant risk.
We’ve all seen the viral horror stories floating around where employees have posted something they shouldn’t have. It may be not only a nightmare for the individual who posted it, but for their employer as well.
Tackle these issues preemptively by training your employees in the area of social media.
Along with risk mitigation, training employees on social media can be a valuable way to build your brand to the public. When your employees are empowered to act responsibly on social media, they’re equipped to become your best brand ambassador. Rather than just defining social media as off-limits, train your employees to use it to your advantage.
Consider these tips when creating a social media training policy:
Determine Objectives
Before you begin developing e-Learning to train employees on social sites, think about why you’re doing it.
Do you just want to avoid a negative PR mess, do you want to keep your business secure or do you want employees to be active on social media in a way that’s going to impact your business positively?
Your objectives will guide the developing of e-Learning training content.
Create a Presence
Before you can actually begin adequately training employees on social media rules and tactics, you need a strong presence.
Choose a few channels you feel will work best for your organization and develop yourself on these sites. Take some time to get a feel for how conversations are flowing, what your audience is saying and what customers are looking for from you on social media. This will give direction to your employee training.
Train Employees on Your Business Identity
If you’re encouraging employees to be active on social media and be brand ambassadors they have first to know what they’re representing.
One important component of training in this instance is giving your employees a comprehensive view of your identity, from values to voice. If your business likes to be seen as friendly and personal, train employees on this. If you prefer your employees use social media with a tone that’s professional and knowledgeable, include this in training. Keep all of your social media training and messaging cohesive so employees know what’s expected of them.
Speaking of Expectations…
Training needs to highlight not only what’s expected of employees, but should clearly outline what’s prohibited, what’s against company policy and what could even be against external laws and regulations.
This is a good place to consider including assessments because you want to ensure employees are not only being trained in these areas but also have a clear understanding.
Scenarios are also an excellent social media training tool because you can pose a variety of situations to employees and ask them how they would respond.
Consider It a Long-Term Endeavor
Social media is constantly evolving, as are the conversations. This should be reflected in your training.
Keep social media training as part of your long-term employee development strategy and continually build on knowledge and information.
Do you train your employees on social media? If so, let us know how you do it.
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