How Walmart Empowers Local Store Associates to Win in Social Media

Zachary Lones, Director of Social Media Marketing at Walmart, joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss how the organization empowers local store associates to use their unique voice on social media to reach their unique communities. Huge thanks to our amazing sponsors for helping us make this happen. Please support them; we couldn't do it without their help! This week: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Tailwind aCe Full Episode Details When employees feel empowered at work, you can expect to see a significant improvement in job performance, job satisfaction, and loyalty to the company. So, how can organizations use social media to empower their associates? Zachary Lones, Director of Social Media Marketing at Walmart, believes that it is "more important than ever to give your associates the voice and empowerment to speak up." Empowering local store associates at nearly 5,000 different locations to share their voices without much control from central marketing is almost unheard of in today's society. Yet, that is exactly what Walmart is doing on a daily basis in what could potentially be one of the best employee-generated content case studies the world has ever seen. In This Episode: 07:24 – How Walmart associates are empowered to use social media to reach their unique community 09:22 – How Walmart helps associates get up and running with different social media channels 10:33 – How many associates speak on behalf of the company 12:38 – The percentage of content shared by associates that is aspirational vs sales-focused 16:55 – How Walmart empowers associates to understand marketing and communications 21:30 – The critical indicators that determine whether or not a program is successful 28:18 – Why more organizations need to be open to the idea of allowing associates to connect with audiences via social media 33:52 – Who is responsible for engaging with audiences' queries on social media Resources Get the new State of Marketing report for free from Salesforce Find out more about the community at SocialMedia.org with a special form for Social Pros listeners Find out if your website is ADA & WCAG compliant with help from aCe Get $30 off of your Tailwind Subscription! Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.