The Hive and The Swarm:

Five Steps to Creating a Buzzworthy Social Media Machine.

The question of WHY your business needs social media has been answered and written about a million times over. You know you need it. There’s no argument. You’re already convinced.

The question now is HOW do you put it to work for your business?

Here’s a simple strategy for bringing your company social and creating a social media machine — I call it the Hive and Swarm concept. I use the beehive analogy because it fits perfectly for how I like to explain it. To date, dozens of clients swear by it:

Step One: The Hive.

Your first step is to create The Hive. This is the Mother Ship, the main source of all things social, the clearinghouse for all information and content regarding your company — both internal and external — from all sources social media-worthy.

The Hive is basically your social media department. If you don’t have one, now you do. You then delegate a dedicated social media manager to run the Hive. They will be the King or Queen Bee and establish and manage the primary social media accounts for your company — at least Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram — especially if there’s a lot of visual content related to your product or service — Snapchat, Pinterest, and others. They will keep the POSITIVE content flowing, to be shared, liked, tweeted, and retweeted by the rest of the organization, while quashing the negative content.

Step Two — The Swarm

Require all members of your organization to go social. Whether they deal directly with the public or not, they need to participate. They should create social media profiles specifically for the company — keeping them separate from their personal profiles, if or when necessary, or possible. They are all Worker Bees, and collectively, they make up your company’s social media Swarm.

For the Worker Bees, their job is two-fold. First, they must gather and originate POSITIVE information and feedback regarding the company and its products or services — let’s call it Pollen — from the outside world that gets gathered back at The Hive to create Honey.

Honey is the “product” of The Hive; it’s the POSITIVE information — or the positive SPIN on the information and feedback received from the Worker Bees — that is distributed to the Swarm en masse, and ultimately to the public at-large, by the individual Worker Bees.

So in effect, each Worker Bee does their share to contribute to the whole — that being, the production of Honey, the goal of the overall machine.

Step Three: Gathering Pollen

For the Worker Bees, gathering Pollen is as simple as using social media as they normally would but with emphasis on the company, it’s products and services, and it’s values. It’s merely a matter of participating, getting involved, or “joining the conversation” — sharing POSITIVE data and information and encouraging POSITIVE feedback from customers, vendors, family, friends, and the general public.

The Hive does the rest — it’s job is to gather and disseminate all of the POSITIVE information being generated or originated by the Worker Bees.

Here are a few suggestions as to what Worker Bees should and shouldn’t be doing to gather Pollen:

1. All Worker Bees should have Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts — whatever accounts The Hive has — to effectively gather information and feedback (Pollen) and to share POSITIVE information from The Hive (Honey).
2. All Worker Bees should post content, whether photos or messages, tweets and/or retweets DAILY. This should be a combination of their own info and info received from the Hive. Anything received from The Hive with a Share or an RT must be shared or retweeted by the entire Swarm.
3. If using Instagram, or even Pinterest, all images from the company’s website and/or catalog should be posted or pinned with appropriate links.
4. All Worker Bees are required to invite prospects, clients, and vendors, as well as their friends, family, and the public in general, to like, follow or friend them.
5. All Worker Bees are required to follow, friend, like, etc., all of their personal clients and customers, as well as the major clients, vendors, suppliers, etc., of the company.
6. Worker Bees can post only G-Rated content of themselves and their family and friends to their company profiles, but nothing questionable. They should save or limit all drama to their own personal social media profiles.
7. Worker Bees who are in sales can NOT post notification of sales they made, contests they won, etc.
8. Other than to welcome them as new customer, Worker Bees can NOT post information about prospects or clients without their permission.
9. This goes without saying, but Worker Bees can NOT post proprietary information about the company, trade secrets, etc.
10. Worker Bees MUST always share, favorite, and/or retweet all POSITIVE messages from customers, vendors, public-at-large, etc., regarding the company and/or its products and services — hashtagging keywords is a MUST.
11. Worker Bees should NEVER share, favorite, and/or retweet complaints or negative messages, NOR should they engage in any conversations or arguments where negative remarks can be shared. Negative remarks should be avoided at all costs. If you leave them alone, there’s a better chance of them getting “lost” in the sea of POSITIVITY created by The Hive.
12. Negative remarks or feedback posted to Facebook walls by clients or the general public should be deleted as soon as they are noticed. Again, do not engage in argument or conversation.
13. All Worker Bee profiles should contain the Worker Bee’s name — First and Last, or just First and Last Initial, position with the company, name of company, their company contact info, company links, as well as a professional photo or image relevant to the company or what they do.
14. Usernames or handles should all be uniform to contain some combination of the worker’s name and company name — i.e., BJones_XYZ, or JoeA_ABC. Provocative or suggestive usernames and handles like “BobJones69” or “SexyMuffin” are not allowed. (That should go without saying.)
15. The Hive should keep an updated and secure record of all company-related social media profiles and passwords. Worker Bee profiles should be deleted immediately upon termination.

You may have some of your own rules you want to add to that, or you may want to customize some of these to fit your particular situation, but you get the gist of it — social media is used generate and promote all POSITIVE information and feedback about the company, it’s product and services, and it’s values, from all sources.

Step Four: Make Honey

The Honey is the POSITIVE information about the company and it’s products and services, as shared by The Hive. It is a product of all the data, information, and feedback received from the individual Worker Bees’ social media exploits, as well as other sources, company, internal, and otherwise.

The Hive monitors all social media activity, gathering and disseminating only POSITIVE information, leaving negative information to survive on it’s own merit, which, if any, can be dealt with accordingly at the discretion of The Hive, based on your company’s predetermined process for dealing with negative feedback.

Negative feedback is always dealt with outside of social media — a simple “please contact us” in response to any negative feedback is sufficient. However, once (if) a negative situation is reversed, the complainant should be encouraged to share their experience socially. Thus making Honey out of negative feedback. If however there is no chance of making Honey, the situation should be avoided socially, at all cost.

The Hive’s primary goal is to MAXIMIZE the POSITIVE and MINIMIZE, DEFLECT, or DISABLE the NEGATIVE.

The Queen Bee’s job is to decide what’s worthy of sharing, tweeting, or retweeting and what’s not. The goal is to put a POSITIVE spin on everything — if Customer A told their rep they are extremely satisfied with the product or service, this needs to mass-distributed to Swarm, for all to share.

This is how The Hive MULTIPLIES and spreads all of the POSITIVE information about the company and it’s products or services throughout the organization to ultimately filter down to potential clients and the public-at-large.

Negative information and feedback is quashed by The Hive.

Step Five: Share the Love

Whether you have 10 or 10,000 Worker Bees, imagine the impact of sharing — via Facebook, Twitter, etc. — every POSITIVE bit of information and feedback about your company, and it’s products or services, individually and as a Swarm, 24/7, 365 days a year.

With all your Worker Bees generating and sharing ONLY POSITIVE content, this Hive and Swarm concept will quickly grow your company’s social media presence, and thus position your brand, online and off, as the brand of choice for whatever it is you sell.

The constant, POSITIVE flow of information will serve as a reminder to existing clients of why they’re happy doing business with you and why they should continue to do so. Prospects and the general public will see your company for everything that’s good about it, as the company they would want to do business with should they be in the market for whatever it is you sell.

At the same time all negative information will remain contained, in most cases to virtual nonexistence.

Conclusion: Honey Means Buzz.

The Hive (Social Media dept., Social Media manager) manages the company’s primary social media profiles and serves as the “source” for all content regarding the company. It gathers and disseminates ALL data, feedback, and information from all sources, as well as what’s gathered/originated by the Swarm and it’s individual Worker Bees.

The Hive distributes only POSITIVE information about the company, it’s products or services, and it’s values, via the company’s primary social media outlets, which are then picked up by the Swarm and distributed via the individual Worker Bees’ social media outlets, ultimately to prospects, customers, and the public-at-large, thus creating BUZZ, growing the company’s social media presence, and building the brand.

— P.

Phil Autelitano is founder/CEO of Mediarazzi, a leading developer and producer of TV channels and content for Roku and Connected TV platforms. www.mediarazzi.com @PhilAutelitano