Is your business serious about social media?

According to a survey from Statistics Finland, up to 70 percent of Finnish people between 16 to 89 years of age use social media. Social media is present everywhere in our society and it is used for communication, networking, entertainment, and searching for information. Social media is also an inseparable part of working life, especially for specialists. For this reason, it’s a good idea for any specialist organisation to help their employees to be proud of their work as experts in their field.

Social media is full of opportunities for strengthening your specialists’ expert brands or to help your organisation achieve more. It is a great place for conversation and for bringing out your expertise. Social media consists of networks between people, and this makes it a great place for organisations to get more visibility with the help of their personnel.

Employees can really help a specialist organisation shine. An expert who shares their wisdom with others can tell more about a company that a thousand words. With social media, you can shine a light on all the potential your company and its employees have: an idea from an employee can even lead to long and fruitful partnerships.

What’s your social media presence like?

For some people, publishing updates in social media is a pleasant task, others find it less appealing. For this reason, it is important to find a way to use social media in a way that comes naturally. Not everyone has to tell long anecdotes about how to combine work and family life.

A good place to get started is to share your organisation’s stories or materials that are meaningful for you. Your organisation’s website is a good place to start as it is often full of interesting topics. Sometimes just liking a post and having a social media presence are enough to stay involved.

There’s no need to force yourself to be more active on social media. An inspiring work environment and a meaningful job are good starting points for increasing your social media activity.

Here are some questions to consider about your own social media activity:

  • What things are so important to you that you want to share them on social media? Which channels reflect your work personality, and which are more personal in nature? How do you show this?
  • Are you dedicating a part of your work week to social media? Having a presence in social media is a part of working as a specialist, so be sure to dedicate some time to it, just like you would to answering e-mails.
  • Are your organisation’s resources in order? Are there any messages or texts from your organisation that you could use to build an online presence as an expert?
  • Are your company’s channels up-to-date and well managed? Web pages and newsletters are still a great way to reach people and share information.

Define your limits

Social media has blurred the line between “me” and “work me”. This division used to be clearer, but now you are in charge of defining what you want to share about yourself, what channel you use for it and how you express yourself. Switching between social media channels might not be enough for drawing a line: for instance, some use Instagram purely for work-related topics, and for others it is a platform for purely personal messaging.

My own favourite motto is that there’s no social media you that is separate from the everyday you. How you act in social media is a part of how you act in general. This is particularly important for specialists to remember, since the way your network sees you in social media is a big part of how people see you outside of social media. It’s always a good idea to be constructive and friendly – it will take you far!

If your organisation needs some pointers on how to use social media for your advantage or if you need an internal social media guide, we would be happy to help!

Communications Consultant

Minna Patrikainen

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