Why being undressed online could be killing your business!

Encouraging your staff to dress up their online profiles will help reflect your company’s values and expertise in the global market.

They say first impressions count, and that’s never more true than when it comes to social media. You may be a Fortune 500 company with the smartest offices, the best legal brains, the highest level accountants, but what about your image online? What are your members of staff posting about themselves, how are their stories reflecting your company and its expertise?

If you were presenting your staff to important clients during a business meeting, you wouldn’t dream of letting them turn up with dirty shoes or an untucked shirt – it’s the same online. Your staff could be letting you down with their ‘undressed’ approach to their online profiles.

Believe it or not some companies have employees who have profiles that look like this! Worse still some are at senior management level!

It is these profiles that potential clients and investors will inevitably look to before making important final decisions about doing business with you. If your staff are only partially dressed online, they won’t be reflecting the quality of the business or the expertise within the business and that could cost you dearly.

I see high profile companies that spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on brand marketing to make sure they have the right image and that the brand is talking to their audience. But they forget to look at whether their digital online presence is portraying the same message.

Just as in the real world, in today’s increasingly important virtual world, your staff are your assets. It is their LinkedIn profiles, as well as your own, that speak volumes about your company, its values, and the way you do business.

But without being all ‘Big Brother’ about it, how do you encourage your staff to dress up their online profiles so that they sit in line with your brand image?

Here are my top 5 tips:

1.     Image comes from the top down: a good online profile should begin with the CEO and management team. If the dress code is right at the top level, then this will filter down through the company

2.     Give staff the tools they need: spend time looking at online profiles as part of staff inductions. Highlight key points and how this will benefit not only the staff, but the company too

3.     Set aside training days: updating online profiles takes time and it’s not something everybody always has time for. A couple of hours every so often to train staff in online etiquette should be enough to keep their profiles neat and tidy

4.     Create a staff training video: this is a quick and informative way to highlight key points and show how easy it is to create and manage a complete online profile

5.     Encourage online networking: the more your staff use LinkedIn and other networking sites, the more they will realise the value of having a really hard-working profile. This could create more lead generation, higher sales achievements and will raise the company’s profile within the global online community – all great incentives for dressing well online!

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Alison Teare is a qualified,  marketer with more than twenty-five years’ business and management experience, in both the public and private sectors, at local and global levels.

A social media expert, Alison is a trainer and speaker who regularly provides advice to businesses to guide their social media policies and strategy. She developed an integrated Social Media Management programme which enables businesses to co-ordinate a successful implement their own sustainable social media presence.