Would you like to add a personal touch to your social media channels without spending a ton of time or resources? Try highlighting your team on social media!

We find that many business owners do not share employee highlights because they either don’t know how or don’t have the time. Or they think you should only use social to sell, sell, sell!

But, the great thing is that employee highlights are extremely simple to incorporate even while you are busy running your business. That’s because, believe it or not, you already have everything you need to create this kind of content. Plus, employee highlights can actually help improve your sales!

What You’ll Need To Create Employee Highlight Content

• A camera or smartphone for taking pictures
• Nice things to say about your team (We’re sure you have no shortage of this!)
• A physical or digital calendar

You likely have everything you need to start highlighting your team. Now, why should you make this content? 🤔 So many reasons!

1. It adds the human element to your social media strategy. Even if your product or service is amazing, people want to connect and interact with other people online—not just with what you’re selling.
2. It gives you the opportunity to brag about your team and others the opportunity to compliment them.
3. Your audience will love seeing behind the curtain, especially the stuff that is funny or shows the personal side of your team.

Ways to Highlight Your Team 

There isn’t really a wrong way to show your team members some love on social media. In short, whenever something noteworthy or even just mildly interesting happens to one of your team members, you can capture that and share!

Here are some topics you can build on:

• Employee birthdays, engagements, baby announcements, accomplishments, hobbies, awards, and any other milestone content your team is comfortable with sharing!
• New Hires
• Day-in-the-life content in the office
• Employee outings & events
• Employee “About” posts where you include some personal details + one question like what’s their favorite thing about working there.
• Silly stuff
• Relevant Holidays: Ex. On National Martini Day, restaurants can share a photo of one of their bartenders making one of their signature cocktails.
• Share reviews that talk about them specifically with a photo

And here’s a secret—you don’t need to rely on a holiday or big event to create employee highlights. Think about how you enjoy vloggers doing mundane daily tasks or watching Instagram Stories about your friends just living their daily life. Nothing of great importance is going on but you still tune in. In other words, don’t overthink it or believe that people “don’t care what we are doing” Just dive in!

Incorporate Your Team in All of Your Content 

You don’t have to wait until someone’s birthday to highlight them. Use your team members in posts that aren’t even about them to get fans familiar with seeing their faces. “Hey, that’s so-and-so from…!”

• Instead of only sharing photos of your product, share photos of your employees holding or using your product
• Have team members shoot short videos explaining a product or service
• Have team members take over your IG stories
• Share an inspirational quote or a tip and pair it with a photo of your team

None of the examples above are directly about any of your team members, but they still give you an opportunity to incorporate your staff more on social media posts.

This is where the calendar comes in. Plug in all of these ideas and holidays so you do not miss a post opportunity. You’d be surprised by how much a little planning will take the frustration out of creating this content.

How to Take Photos

You do not need to buy a fancy camera before getting started. We repeat! You do not need to buy a fancy camera before you start posting more photos of your team!

You might have heard “The best camera you have is the one you have with you.”? This is definitely true for employee highlights. Your smartphone will do just fine for most if not all of your employee highlight content! Use your phone’s photo editing tools and filters and you can get some great shots. Your fans will love the “real” aspect of the photo instead of a staged look and you’ll likely get more engagement.

Now, you also have the option of doing a professional photoshoot for individual staff photos and candid and posed group photos. Pipeline does this at least once a year, and it’s helpful to always nice images on hand to use in social media posts about our team or our services. This saves us time and ensures that we always have a good option to turn to.

If you aren’t a photographer and don’t plan to invest in professional photos – here are some tips for taking nice images for social:

• Take multiple photos so you’ll have options later – vertical, horizontal, up close, further away, etc.
• If you are taking a photo near a window on a bright day, make sure the person you are photographing is not standing directly in front of the window or their face will be dark in the image.
• Portrait mode is lovely! Give it a try for individual shots.
• Use your smartphone’s auto-editing tools. Most of the time, they are spot on!
• Photograph your team members however they feel most comfortable. Ask if they would rather sit or stand or if they want to be at their desk or in the breakroom . . . if they are comfortable, the photo will look more natural

Employee Highlight Examples

We hope you start highlighting your amazing team this week! For more social media tips & tricks stick around and browse our blog. Drop us a comment to let us know what you would like to learn more about when it comes to all things marketing! Thank you for reading. 😊👋

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Pipeline Social Media is a Digital Marketing Agency that offers three approaches to help you increase your social media presence: we can fully manage your social media accounts, we can teach your team how to do it in-house, or we can monitor/coach your team along the way and report back to you. Ask us about our Google AdWords management, web design, and SEO website packages. Contact: 678-814-4601 | 280 Country Club Drive, Suite 101, Stockbridge, GA 30281