5 Team Building Ideas That Help Boost Marketing
Team building activities serve to encourage teams to connect, bond and build trust. This helps them to be more forgiving, understanding and supportive. So, is it bad for there to be an ulterior motive behind team building? Or more specifically, marketing motives?
Definitely not! Let’s explore the possibilities.
A retreat or a team building trip:
In general, when an employee posts about their non-professional life (like going away on holiday) on a company’s Instagram and Facebook feed, the post tends to receive a lot of photo love. We take pictures of new and interesting scenes and surroundings while the mundane daily grind back at the office isn’t that interesting. As a team, we’ve been away skiing for a week, visited the Scottish Highlands for a few days and traveled to Lake Garda, Bulgaria and beyond!
Each of these trips has not only been fun, but provided a chance to take amazing pictures of our team in different environments. Caption these with the reasons we went, the things we saw, the stuff we learned, and we get some great online content. Sure, there are costs involved, but my advice is to pick a budget you know you can spare, and see what you can do with this. It definitely boosts morale, bonds team members and gives people wonderful memories. There are also those “funny if you were there” catchphrases that inadvertently come out of jokes and discussion points of a team trip. Plus, it’s a chance to get invaluable images and articles showing the world that your team is tight-knit and connected – which can definitely sway clients, suppliers and potential recruits in your favor.
The company game (with a social media aspect)
This means quizzes and board games where you advance if you correctly answer questions relating to your work life, using familiar rules with adjustments that encourage photo taking and sharing. For example, you can do a team quiz for a prize that tests the team on things they should know – questions like “which clients have a bird in their logo?” and “what are 4 things we need to tell clients before we present designs?” makes the material relevant.
This provides a great opportunity to take group pictures and add captions that explain the type of questions asked. You can share all the questions in a one-page PDF or blog post, with answers upside down or available on request.
People will get the chance to see the things that you need to know on a day to day basis and know you’re using your team-building time for good knowledge reinforcement and learning!
For example, we once organized a Top Left Design treasure hunt – where poems were written as clues. Each time someone found a clue, they would take a photo and tweet it, along with the chosen hashtag for the game — #TLDTreasureHunt, in this case.
Twitter was full of these tweets, all linked together and displaying the team with random objects around Soho. One of the clues was to do a jig by the pig (near Bodeans in London where their logo is a pig) so we got a funny video of certain members of the team dancing which could also be shared. Teams can then create a blog post with embedded tweets and video, showing the whole experience.
Client breakfasts, client launch events, client round tables
If your clients are running events, support them! If possible, ask if you can bring someone from your team to attend. It’s a great networking opportunity for you to meet other contacts that work with your client, where you can proudly discuss your work for them and also sing their praises. This support will be appreciated and is a way for you to deepen the relationships with clients. It’s also a way for your team to enjoy a new experience out of the office, get to know your clients on a deeper level and help reinforce your connection with them.
Giving back
Most charities use events as fundraisers and encourage teams to participate. In the past, my team has done a ‘Muddy Run,’ a ‘Colour Run,’ and participated in the Gauntlet Games. We’ve run two MacMillan cake mornings – and each of them allowed us to announce when and where we were participating, share images on the day and give public thanks after. This is the type of content that unites the team and ‘gives back.’ The activities are also fun and everyone gets to try things they’d never normally do!
Herding cats and dogs
Images and videos of cats and dogs are one form of shareable online content that never seems to go out of style. Our team, between us, have eight cats. Much of our time is spent discussing their antics on our WhatsApp group. And then we’ll share the best pictures and captions on Instagram. While we want to make sure we have a good balance of cat images/videos with all the other content, sharing a bit of our lives and the animals we love gives people an aspect of our company that is true and very popular.
Team building for the sake of marketing
Generally – activities with the team create the stories you need in order to be interesting on social media. These experiences generate images and content that you can prepare and publish.
Note: It’s natural for some employees to be worried about unflattering pictures being shared, but this is usually down to their own insecurities. The only thing to be concerned about – is if your people are complaining about being “forced” to do team building activities. Then perhaps you need to look at bonding for the sake of bonding before you do bonding for marketing!
The more of this you do, the more you can show off your team and personality, and people watching you will feel they are getting to know you better – which in business, is only a good thing.
