How should Social Media Strategy be Established in Internal Communication?

Merve Bülbül // Allianz Türkiye - Agile Team Member

Social media has surrounded every area of our life. However, its effect on employee loyalty in business life is undeniable. So how? Let's take a closer look.

With the technology becoming efficient for organizations, more and more companies have started to integrate into various social media platforms to connect and interact with their audiences inside and outside the organization. Especially with the increasing participation of generation Y and Z in working life, the trend of digitalization has become inevitable in business environments as well.

When we talk about digitalization, we can show the use of internal social media as an example of the digitalization trend. Communication through social media channels can take place reciprocal, quickly and effectively. From the point of view of companies, it is of great importance to establish effective communication with employees in order to increase productivity, strengthen the employer's brand, attract and retain talents to the company in the agile working model. The use of internal social media makes both horizontal and vertical communication possible. From this fluid communication process, in-house social media can create social capital, information sharing, collaboration and innovation among employees.

Social Media and the Agile Working Model

The use of internal social media can also help to achieve more value in business outcomes as HEY teams.

With all these positive aspects in mind, companies are increasingly using internal social media as part of their internal communication strategies. As Allianz Turkey, we have been actively using external social media for many years, but we have also included it in our internal communication during the pandemic period. Due to the fact that Instagram is the most frequently used social media application, we opened our @tutkuylayuruyenler page in April 2020 as an alternative to our existing internal communication channels, open only to our colleagues.

The purpose of the foundation of our page, which will turn its third anniversary this year, was to make our colleagues feel that we have always been together. We aimed to be able to communicate easily from the mobile, to provide more penetration from announcements and other communication channels with shorter and more remarkable contents. In the first month of the launch of our page, reaching 80 percent of our number of employees motivated us to achieve our goals.

The contribution of communication and cooperation was quite large in reaching the number of employees that we aimed. With the communications we have made, we both have explained the purpose of our page and what it serves; and we have received the support of our administrators and ambassadors who voluntarily participate in our functions.

When organizations involve their employees in social media, it will be beneficial for them to ask for the support of managers. Thus, we can reach more participants/ followers; we can contribute to the greater adoption of social media use within the company. So, how can we involve managers in this process?

1. Learn: Find out what managers care about; and try to speak their language.
2. Tell: Demonstrate the value of company-wide engagement, tell your managers why you're doing it and how it will benefit the company, the team and themselves.
3. Interact:  Help your managers and their teams succeed on social media. Make their participation easy and meaningful. You can share sample contents.
4. Find a champion: Do research on which managers are actively using social media. If you can show that managers care about participation in social media, you can also reach a wider audience.
5. Support: Be ready to help them if necessary. Make sure that their efforts are appreciated. 

So what kind of path are we following on our internal social media account? 

We have based the content strategy of our page on content that can be communicated with all our colleagues. Along with important news about the company, our awards, messages from our Executive Board members, information shares about our Human Resources processes, we share interactive content, team photos from our colleagues, social events, and organize award-winning competitions. Thus, we encourage our colleagues to use their creativity, strengthen the emotional connection between them and the company, and enable interactive sharing instead of one-way communication. 

We can say that using this channel while performing processes’ communication and allowing employees to easily share their feedback through this channel contributes to organizational transparency, which increases the feeling of trust among employees. In addition, we also make shares to increase the internal awareness of our colleagues. We aim to strengthen the motivation of our colleagues with these shares.

Other employees who see their friends who are eager to share can develop a similar motivation over time; this encourages inspiration from each other and strengthens communication between them. At the same time, they know that when they share an experience or visual about themselves, it will be seen; this way their loyalty to the company increases more.

I am one of those who believe that success on social media is only possible by getting to know your audience well, keeping the interaction tight and measuring it. For this reason, while we measure the success of the page with the analyses we make at different periods during the year, we also carry out changes and transformations in our content strategy with the feedback surveys we organize; we try to keep the interaction high.

When we use social media correctly in internal communication, it is obvious that we can see many advantages. For this reason, I believe that carefully working on the social media strategy and developing activations that employees can participate in will make a positive contribution to employee loyalty and experience. In summary; Let's both use social media, encourage its use, and continue to make use of the content on social media and contribute to our business.
 

P.S. You can contact us by clicking here to share your experiences and ask questions about the agile working method.
 

References

(1) Men, L. R., O’Neil, J., & Ewing, M. (2020). Examining the effects of internal social media on employee engagement. Public Relations Review, 46(2)

(2) Ali-Hassan, H., Nevo, D., & Wade, M. (2015). Linking dimensions of social media use to job performance: The role of social capital. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 24(2), 65-89.

(3) Friedl, J., & Verčič, A. T. (2011). Media preferences of digital natives’ internal communication: A pilot study. Public Relations Review, 37(1), 84-86. 

(4) Cisco Blogs / Digital and Social / The Role of Executives in Employee Engagement: Crossing Your T’s and Dotting Your I’s