Keeping Your Company Connected – Inside & Out
It doesn’t matter how big you are; your company needs to be connected to the world it operates in. You need to be connected both externally and internally. This is tough for some companies to do in normal times and it’s doubly hard in the current era of keeping our distance and having many people working from home.
Of course, when I’m talking about connections for your company, it’s people making those connections, not the company itself. Even the official company social media channels and emails are connections people are making on behalf of the company. So, let’s look at some ways people are keeping their companies connected.
Hello Out There, It’s Me, [Company Name]
While not the only way to connect, probably the most visible way is the official company social media platforms and other marketing & messaging channels. This is one way to give your company a voice and build a community around it. But that community, for the most part, is people – not other companies. So, the rules of connecting apply, whether you’re speaking for yourself or on behalf of your company.
First off, what is the personality of your company and how does it reflect the people in it? Those of you posting on behalf of your company need to let your own personal humanity shine through. But, it needs to be reflective of the company’s personality, too – so it’s consistent to the brand regardless of who is doing the posting.
When you reach out to others on behalf of your company, you still need to make some kind of personal connection. And it has to be genuine. Don’t post support for #BlackLivesMatter or LGBTQ rights if, in fact, your company has never done anything for those causes or, worse, does not have a good track record of supporting the black or LGBTQ communities or companies owned by them. Yes, you can jump in if you see an issue that you should care about. But if you haven’t in the past, you better be prepared to continue to do so in your future. Otherwise, it is not a genuine connection and people will see through that fairly quickly.
It Starts at the Top
Being a company who wants to make genuine connections only works if the people at the top believe in it and support it. A startup FinTech company I’m doing some work with is making great connections in the business worlds they work in. The CEO has made writing posts on their areas of expertise a regular thing on LinkedIn. His posts get read and shared with thousands of people, all relevant to his company’s core. The company often shares his posts. Other top management members have started to create posts of their own. It is building both momentum and community.
I have also worked with a company where I tried to involve upper management in social media outreach and tried to get employees to be a part of sharing and posting on behalf of the company, sharing our expertise with the community. But the top management didn’t want to share. They felt it was somehow “giving away secrets” or “giving expertise away for free that should be paid for.” When the top doesn’t believe in connecting, the rest of the company feels no desire to put themselves out there, either. They didn’t connect outside of their immediate circle.
Internal Connections Are Important, Too
It’s not all about connecting to people outside your company, you need to connect internally, too. This is especially true right now, if your employees are mostly working remotely during this pandemic. One good example I heard recently was from Pfizer. They are huge company with a lot of employees working from home now. Employees already had enough Zoom meetings every day, so creating yet another video conference to connect everyone was not going to be received well. Zoom fatigue is real.
The answer? They started an internal podcast. It started as just 10 minutes or so each week, giving updates on what’s going on within the company. Very quickly it became a hit with employees. Soon different departments wanted to share their news and views on the podcast as well. So now they have no problem finding content to fill it up each week. Employees can download it and listen whenever it is convenient instead of everyone trying to get on a video conference at the same time. It’s a solution that works well for keeping everyone in this huge corporations connected.
Meanwhile, a smaller local agency I do some work with has a weekly Zoom team meeting. It’s half status meeting, half just checking in. There is a genuine interest from management in seeing how everyone is doing and what’s going on in their lives. Everyone is encouraged to share how they are dealing with their current situations and to share something they learned that week. For a small group, it’s the perfect way to keep those human connections.
How are you and your company doing? Are you helping it make connections both to the inside and outside world? What is working for you? I’d love to hear your story.
Mike McClure, staying connected
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