This post idea came from a chat I had with a current client the other day, we were discussing the success of their corporate blog. The client is happy with the work that we have done to build the social presence of his company up. However, he then told me that he did have doubts about making his team members in his words ‘too famous’. He asked me what I thought about other businesses trying to poach his staff.
I have heard this one before, my advice was this, if you are committed to making your businesses more engaging online and using social media as part of a wider online thought leadership programme then yes you probably are going to get your competitors taking a look at the key spokespeople in the business. However, if your business is a good one and you look after your staff what have you got to worry about? If you keep them happy and pay them well enough they will stay.
When I am out and about attending or speaking at networking events I often here that Linked-in is the main network that everyone is using in business. There is no doubt it has grown hugely over the last three years. However, when I then ask what people’s experiences are with it, I get a mixed reaction. A lot of people then add that they get approached by recruiters all the time through linked-in. I tell them that sadly that is the nature of the beast, Linked-in is a great platform but as it encourages you to share your CV with the world it also helps the recruiters to do their work. Sadly, though I still see people complaining on twitter about recruiters not doing their job properly and offering them jobs that aren’t suitable that amazes me. Surely, you can tell.
So if you are now using social media to raise the profile of your business and your team should you be worried about your competitors stealing your best employees? No, not if you have a good business, because people want to work for the best companies it really is as simple as that. In fact, you will probably find you get more enquiries about vacancies within your team than people looking to poach members from it.
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
