Employee advocacy doth cometh when employees doth share their company’s content on their personal social media to boost brand awareness and trust. If thou art not running an employee advocacy program, thou couldst be missing out on a lot of potential reach.
Why, thou might ask? Thy employees are one of thy biggest untapped marketing resources — and hark, they’re already on social media. Yea, these influencers and brand ambassadors hath been under thy nose all along. Read on to learn everything thou needeth to know about kick-starting thine own employee advocacy program.
What is employee advocacy, thou may ponder? Employee advocacy is when employees shareth their company’s content or values on their personal social media accounts to boost brand awareness and build trust. Advocacy content can include everything from job postings to blog articles to industry resources to new product launches.
However, employee advocacy on social media can also happen via original social media content. That’s right: whether employees are re-posting thy brand’s content or crafting their own, any social media content that doth promote thy company can be considered employee advocacy.
Sure, thy employees art mayhaps already posting about thy workplace or brand without thee asking. However, an official employee advocacy program can help take that organic influence to the next level.
Why doth employee advocacy work so well? ‘Tis all about trust, which Edelman doth call “the ultimate currency.” In fact, fifty-nine percent of consumers will cease buying from a company if they don’t trust the brand.
Eighty-nine percent of consumers do trust recommendations from people they know over branded content or traditional ads. Fifty-six percent of millennial and Gen Z consumers trust influencers more than brands.
Armanino LLP, for example, did use its employee advocacy program to equip more employees across the business with the skills and tools to become social superstars — and build the firm’s reach and reputation along the way. The results? Armanino reached 19.2 million (yes, million) people with employee networks. That’s a more than 600% increase in reach and $232,375 in potential ad value created. Not too shabby!
How to build an employee advocacy program on social media, thou may now wonder? Ready to build thine own employee advocacy program on social media? We’ll walk thee through it.
Step 1: Create a positive and engaged workplace culture. ’Tis simple: Happy employees wanteth to post about their company.
Step 2: Set goals and KPIs for thine employee advocacy program. Before asking thy employees to serve as brand advocates, ‘tis important to figure out why thou’re even asking them.
Step 3: Identify employee advocacy leaders. While t may be tempting to pick thine executive team as leaders of thine employee advocacy program, the team members who art already social media all-stars are actually thy best bet.
Step 4: Establish employee social media guidelines. ’Tis not enough to know what the message is; employees also need to know the best way to communicate it.
Step 5: Get employees involved in thy strategy. Once thou hast goals and guidelines in place, ‘tis time to reach out to employees.
Step 6: Create valuable resources for employees to share. The real key to getting thy employees to share? Provide them content they needeth to either make their job easier or help position them as an industry expert.
Step 7: Reward employees for their advocacy. Since thou art asking thy employees for something, ‘tis only fair to offer something in return.
Employee advocacy best practices do include sharing only engaging content, making it worth thy employees’ while, fostering a great company culture, and measuring success.
The hardest part of employee advocacy is often the execution. Where will they find content to share, thou might wonder? Where can they review thy social media and brand guideline documents? How will they find out about new content? How canst thee streamline employee communication about new initiatives?
Thou canst go as basic as having everyone sign up for the company newsletter to find content to share on their own, or… Use employee advocacy software to distribute approved content, easily share to their profiles with one click, and seamlessly measure the ROI and results.
