I’m often asked, “How can we get our employees to share more on social media?” The answer is social media prompts.
The truth is that sometimes we all — even us social media managers — need a little push or inspiration to create content.
That’s why I’ve made social media prompts a regular part of the culture here at EveryoneSocial.
What Are Social Media Prompts?
Social media prompts are questions, ideas, suggestions, or anything designed to spark inspiration for a social post.
For example, a prompt could be a statement like, “Share something you learned recently” or a question like, “What’s the strangest thing that’s happened to you on the job?”
It can be challenging to figure out what exactly to share online, especially as a professional, but social media prompts simplify this by providing employees with a jumping-off point. Plus, giving your employees a prompt communicates that you want them to share on social media.
So try introducing a weekly prompt challenge, where you ask employees to create a post on a specific topic.
You may be surprised to learn that even when your people don’t exclusively promote company content like ebooks or blog posts, your brand still benefits from their increased social activity.
Why? Because it humanizes your brand when social users see the real people behind the company, and it helps establish your people as thought leaders. It also helps them expand their networks and develop their personal brands.
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What to Tell Employees About Social Media Prompts
Before you start sending out regular social media prompts to your teammates, do the following to ensure your efforts are successful.
- Communicate why you’re introducing social media prompts, and explain why creating social content benefits both employees and the company.
- Provide examples of employee-generated content.
- Demonstrate how to use EveryoneSocial to schedule an external post.
- Highlight what to consider when scheduling social content. Do they want to target a specific day for example, such as a social media holiday? Do they know when their audience is most likely to engage with their post?
- Suggest they add pictures or video since text-only posts don’t grab people’s attention in quite the same way.
- Provide suggested hashtags for employees to use.
Social Media Prompts to Get Employees Posting
There’s no shortage of social media prompts to share with your team to get them creating and posting. Here are just a few that we’ve had success with at EveryoneSocial.
- Reintroduce yourself to your audience. Tell your followers a little bit about yourself, including details they may not find on your LinkedIn profile.
- Answer a common question you get from customers, prospects. or peers.
- Re-share a post from someone you follow and explain why you found it interesting.
- Suggest one thing your audience should try today that has helped your productivity.
- What’s your favorite part about working from home? Bonus points: Share photos of your work-from-home setup, family, or pets.
- Create a top 5 list: top 5 books you’ve read, WFT tips, lessons learned on the job, etc.
- How do you reset when feeling overwhelmed?
- Who should your audience follow? Tag three accounts relevant to your industry that you think your audience should follow and explain why.
- Share something you wish more people knew about your role.
- Shoutout a tool you use on a daily basis and tag the company.
- How did you get into the industry/role you’re in today?
- What’s one goal you’ve reached recently and you’re very proud of?
- How do you track and document your wins?
- Share tips for success in your role.
- Share something that has inspired you recently.
- How do you structure your day?
- Give a sneak peek of an upcoming project you’re working on
- What advice would you give yourself five years ago? What do you know now that you wish you knew back then?
EveryoneSocial Inspires Employees to Post More
Social media prompts are just one way to get your people more active on social media — and start reaping all the rewards of activating employee influencers.
If improving employer brand, expanding social reach, and boosting employee morale (just to name a few benefits of employee influencers) are priorities for your organization, you need a pure play advocacy solution that’ll make creating and sharing on social media both fun and effective.
