I wrote in Professional Manager earlier in the week on the importance of providing your employees with something they can believe in, something that fuses employees together into something potent.  Research suggests that people draw motivation from a sense of belonging in a  community. They are senstive to subtle cues that suggest whether they and their group belongs in a perforamnce setting and respond to such cues with large shifts in motivation.

Now I've written previously about how the skills so common amongst community managers will be so crucial to such efforts, and the connectivity that social media provides is something that's craved by young people today.  In their personal lives they connect effortlessly with others, sharing and learning all the time.  Yet despite this a significant number of managers still believe that social media is a time sink and that it has no place in the workplace.

What a wasted opportunity, and sadly it's a wasted opportunity even amongst those that should know better.  Ajax Social Media has analysed the LinkedIn accounts of the employees from 50 or so leading digital marketing agencies.  These are organisations who exist to tell companies how to do digital well.  How many of their employees actually promote their employer with a link from their LinkedIn profile do you think?

They found that just 10% of employees had LinkedIn profiles that promoted their employer well.  That's 10% of employees working in social media type roles.  Now imagine if those companies had given employees the tools, the inspiration and the support to evangelise for them.  Imagine how much you'd save on marketing expenses if your employees are spreading the word on your behalf.

Now take that and multiply it by however many customers you have.  The message in our social age is clear.  Do something special and then give people the tools and support to shout about it from their desktops.