Internal Marketing? Use Social Media
It makes absolutely no sense to promise customers excellent service if the firm’s employees are not ready to deliver it. Therefore continuous internal marketing needs to take place.
Different organisations have delivered their messages to employees in different ways, many have taken to hanging up posters on back of house walls, some, including SouthWest airlines hang photos of staff parties, asserting that the airline is a fun place to work, others send email memos.
Yes, boards and back of house reminders of the core values the firm prides its self on are a great way to decorate, resulting in an enhanced ambience, however, today when most people walk glued to their smartphones, it is hard to believe that any of the posters ever get read.
If we claim that a photo speaks a thousand words, then at 25 frames per second, video adds up to 1.5 million words per minute, it would therefore be advantageous to be sending employees videos they can access on their smartphones during their commute to/from work, reinforcing the brand expectations and the services they are expected to deliver. The firm can create a series, a soap opera if you will to engage employees in a fun way with the brand. Here lies the key, a fun video on social media, will have comments from colleagues, likes, dislikes and shares.
Yammer, behind the firewall can be used by employees, it will have no public appearances, management can tweet achievements, employees can tweet experiences and messages across the firm can be transported at a tweet of a second!
Human resources can use podcasts to decipher complicated health insurance policies, give updates on benefits and retirement plans, announce competitions and winners, all information can be accessed at the employee’s convenience and during times they are fully focused on these messages.
It is a marketing firm that takes advantage of the new technologies that generation Y is obsessed with and hence through their engagement can send messages of expectations and of how the customer needs to be treated throughout their experience at the firm.
There is a lot of noise in the life of a typical employee, getting through the noise and reinforcing the brand values and expectations is becoming more of a pressing issue, therefore social media, short, fun videos, podcasts and internal tweeting have to be utilised, they are slowly becoming the only language that can filter through the noise.
