Employees are a company’s biggest social media asset, says Duncan Gilman – Dean of Students at Splash Media U. With organic reach for businesses declining across many social media networks, brands need an army of people – not posts – to be successful. And Gilman recommends that you should start by looking at your biggest brand advocates. The people who know your customer better than anyone – your employees.

But here’s the thing – people are busy. It’s going to take an act of God to get them to take on one more project or task, right? Maybe not, says Gilman, who offered these tips for getting employees excited about doing social media for your brand.

1. Make it fun.

Something that has worked well for Gilman is to create an incentivized “spy game” where the first employee to track down five online mentions of the brand wins the game. A game like this serves two purposes; it highlights a fundamental of social media – the importance of listening –  while also giving the team a deeper understanding of the brand’s online reputation. Gilman encourages everyone to go even one step farther and “think of the brand as a person. Each brand has its own personality and you want your employees to be familiar with it,” he says. Exploring the brand online will help your employees get to know your company better. Heck, maybe it’ll even be fun. It’s not a bad thing to know who the best cyber stalker is in your office.

2. Include employees in your brainstorming sessions.

If you really want employees on board and excited, they need to understand the why behind the work. Include teams from all different departments in these social media brainstorming sessions. By extending a personal invitation, you can bet employees will feel more invested in the strategy and the campaign will be more robust.

3. Make social media users the stars.

Shining the spotlight on employees who share may be the simplest and most effective way to increase participation across the board, especially in competitive cultures. For example, try highlighting a single employee each month as the star of a blog post or YouTube video. Gilman notes that this strategy has proven pretty successful for the simple reason that people like to be appreciated.

Remember, it’s easy for fatigue to set in unless you view your social media campaign as a process that needs constant refreshing, says Gilman. Consider these three tried and true tips as just a starting point.