Carroll Community College, Maryland, U.S., created a different kind of employee social media advocacy program. Instead of a marketing team creating messages and then distributing them to employees to post, Carroll’s program, called an “employee impact initiative,” focuses on empowering its faculty and staff on social media.

“We wanted each individual to learn how to build their personal brand and how to leverage social media to the benefit of the institution and themselves, instead of being amplifiers of branded messages. Because you can tell [when a post isn’t authentic]. Authenticity is key,” says Chief Marketing Officer Maya Demishkevich.

According to a survey in Adweek magazine, people trust content shared by everyday people 76% more than content shared by brands. And brand messages are reshared up to 24 times more when distributed by employees instead of a brand itself according to research by MSLGROUP.

Carroll’s initiative offers training on personal social media use for voluntary staff and faculty. In its first year, the program has trained 20 faculty and staff members, including the president and his executive staff. Training takes place in three two-hour sessions over the course of three weeks. Participants start with assessing which of their values as a professional align with the values of the institution and then they answer the following questions:

• What are your goals and objectives in relationship to your engagement on social media?, and
• Who is your target audience?

Next is choosing the right platform (which Demishkevich found is most often LinkedIn) and identifying three to four core content pillars, professional or personal. Demishkevich stresses the importance of balancing both professional and personal content.

“[Personal content] helps to show a more diverse individual, a human being with interests and a personality,” says Demishkevich.

The last step is learning how often to post and how to schedule content. Following training, participants are invited to reach out with questions, and Demishkevich follows their accounts to like and comment on their content to show support. She plans to start holding coaching sessions where participants can take time to work on content together and build community around the initiative.

“Social media can be very lonely sometimes,” says Demishkevich. “You can be posting, and no one is liking or responding, but if you see that other people are experiencing similar results—you can support each other.”

An unexpected benefit of the initiative is that it gives participants perspective on the college’s marketing and communications, she says.

“It gives them a different appreciation for the work that we do as marketers and communicators, and now they value it more and can speak on our behalf within the institution,” says Demishkevich.

Next, she hopes to train a group of fundraisers from Carroll’s foundation.

“Once you have built this network of social ambassadors, you can share messages that are more organic about important institution initiatives, like a capital campaign,” she says.