<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none;" alt="" src="https://dc.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=396945&amp;fmt=gif">
Blog » Latest Articles
Nov 30, 2021 Tribal Impact

How To Scale 121 Social Media Training For Large Companies

 

Starting a social media training program comes with plenty of challenges. If it becomes a success, businesses need to find a way to make their social media training scalable so that more employees can benefit from it and spread the word about the business. 

The most obvious solution is to hire an outside consultant. However, bringing in an outside consultant isn’t always practical – businesses have to work around their schedule, which may not work with their own.  

And of course, this option gets expensive quickly, especially on a 121 basis with a large employee advocacy or social selling program. 

The alternative is to embrace internal resources. This is more cost-effective, but requires finding employees with the right skills and knowledge to help. How do you identify who these employees are? What skills do they need? 

 

Identify Your Champions 

The first step to successful internal 121 social media training for large companies is to identify your champions. Who really knows, understands and is already using social media, and is happy to help other employees with theirs? These are the people you want to get involved. 

Not all of these employees will have the skills to teach social media, but, just like social media skills can be taught, so, too, can teaching skills. 

Every person has a different learning style, and those doing the training need to be aware of that and able to adapt their teaching style in a way that best helps the person they’re talking to. This is easier on a 121 basis, because they’re only working with one person, but if someone doesn’t know where to start, it’s still a challenge.  

It’s important to have an employee social media training program that’s flexible enough to support different learning styles. Some people like to read instructions, others prefer to watch or listen, while some need to be walked through something to understand it. 

Not only that, but every team member comes to social media from a different level of experience. Some don’t even have a profile set up, while others may not know how to optimise their profile, or need some tips on day-to-day activities.  

When your advocates can share their knowledge on how to do these things with employees of different levels of social media maturity, not only will it reinforce and enhance their skills, but it means those trainees can then go on and share that knowledge with more employees, too. The best way to learn is to teach, after all. 

That’s why you need to start by training your trainer. Teach your social media champions how to share their knowledge with their colleagues. It’s faster, more efficient, and cheaper to do as you scale. 

 

Download our FREE Employee Advocacy Workbook and learn how to plan an advocacy  program in 8 simple steps.

 

Dealing With Disengagement 

In our experience, 10-40% of your organisation will take part in social media in some way. Which means not every employee will be interested in getting involved.  

Instead of focusing on encouraging those who aren’t interested in social media to get involved, focus your attention on those who do want to be a part of it. It will be an easier sell.   

Once they start to show the benefits of using social media, those who were previously uninterested might change their minds. If they don’t, you’ve still got a successful social media strategy – and social media training program – on your hands. 

 

Conclusion 

Scaling 121 social media training doesn’t have to require additional resources or an outside expert.  

Instead, it should be about training your trainers so that they can share their knowledge with as many of their colleagues as possible. The more trainers who are trained, the more employees who can get involved in your social media program, and the more benefits to social media you’ll see. 

 

New call-to-action

About Tribal Impact

Tribal Impact is a B2B Social Selling and Employee Branding Agency.

We're a team of social media strategists, trainers, coaches, content creators and data analysts who are passionate about helping our B2B customers develop and scale their social selling and employee advocacy programs.

Learn more about us here.

Published by Tribal Impact November 30, 2021