ENHANCE YOUR CSO VISIBILITY THROUGH AN INCLUSIVE COMMUNICATION APPROACH
Sharing everything on social media is important. So go ahead and share it, if it is relevant enough to share it, then it is important enough for us to re-share. After all sharing is caring.
The idea of social media is a concept that is underpinned by the rudiments of human networking. If we look close enough at the parameters used across most social media platforms, we will notice that each platform has the element of “follower-ship”.
The number of followers an individual accrues on their profile is based on several factors such as type of content, interests, level of activities, and frequency of post, algorithms just to name a few.
These followers represent the potential of reach or the number of people we have the potential of engaging. Therefore, to iterate, these are networks of people who, one way or the other, share similar interests.
Against this background, Inclusive Communication is a deliberate communication plan that seeks to positively drive actual organisational social media engagement and reach through staff social media or online activity.
This approach pivots on the mere action of staff re-sharing organisational posts and online activities while leveraging on staff “followers-ship” to achieve this objective.
This model mimics certain aspects of the pyramid structure of network marketing or multi-level marketing to increase actual online reach, engagement and followers of the organization.
Pragmatically, a simple scenario where this model comes alive is in the example cited below:
Imagine, an organisation with 500 followers on their social media platform, has a staff of 10 with each staff, average 500 followers individually on their social media profile.
Now, this organisation shares a post, this post now has a potential reach and engagement of 500 people then if staff re-shares this same post, suddenly, the single post has a reach and engagement potential of 5000 just by a single act of re-sharing. This ripples to increase the actual reach and engagement of the post.
NB: Actual reach and engagement are directly related to the potential reach and engagement but not equal.
Another aspect of this approach that needs to be looked at is that this mutually benefits the organisation and the staff. With the benefits for the organisation:
- Content shared by employees receives eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels (by social media today)
- Brand (Organisational) messages reached 561 percent further when shared by employees versus the same messages shared via official brand social channels. (by MSL Group)
- 67 percent of employers and recruiters said that the recruiting process was shorter, and 51 percent said it was less expensive to recruit via referrals (Source: Jobvite)
For staff of organisations, this approach benefits the staff in a number of ways:
- It authenticates and awards credibility to the staff’s profile, especially on professional social platforms.
- It portrays employee support and commitment to organisation, which are desirable traits.
- There is an added value to staff’s personal brand. (social.colostate.edu)
Essentially, the growth of the social media platforms of an organization can be driven by staff involvement and not restricted to one unit or department. It is undeniable that online content consumption and social media sharing has become a natural part of our everyday lives, So this approach should be institutionalized in communication plans, it goes a long way to greatly enhance the corporate image, visibility, reach and contribute to the work of the organisation.
