While businesses have plenty of options if they want to push their employees to do more social media sharing, CultureSphere founder and CEO Danny Gordon said the existing tools all take a similar “top down approach” — senior marketing and social media executives decide what’s worth sharing, then everyone else just shares it, or doesn’t.
Gordon said CultureSphere, on the other hand, is “the first social media platform that’s 100 percent inspired by employees.”
CultureSphere launched at the end of last month, and today it’s announcing the members of its advisory board: former Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett, Brocade CMO Christine Heckart, CMO Council founder Donovan Neale-May, consultant and author of The Social Employee Cheryl Burgess and former Mitel CMO Martyn Etherington.
Here’s how the (currently free) product works: Employees upload their own photos and videos into the company’s feed in the iOS app. Company-designated curators then go through the content and “unlock” anything they think is appropriate for broader sharing. Once it’s unlocked, any employee using the app can share it more broadly. Employees can also upload content that’s only meant for sharing within the company, upvote the photos and videos they think are best and can compete for the top spot on company leaderboards.
Now, if you’re not interested in turning your social media accounts into a promotional vehicle for your employer, well, employees have a say in whether or not they want to share (though I suppose a particularly cruel boss might make it mandatory). And you’ll probably be more excited if it’s your photo getting shared, or if you at least had some say in what was and wasn’t chosen.
“We’re really marrying all three generations in corporate America,” Gordon added, arguing that this allows older executives to tap into their younger employees’ creativity and social media savvy. He recalled one early customer telling him, “Wow, I had no idea all this amazing stuff happens in my company.”