What Is Employee Advocacy?
However, before we can get to the platforms, let’s understand employee advocacy.
What Is Employee Advocacy?
Did you know that more people rate a regular employee as being credible (53%) than a CEO (47%)?
Well, they do.
Employee advocacy takes advantage of this trust and allows employees to contribute to a brand’s marketing efforts. They can do this through activities like sharing company messages via their social accounts.
The employee becomes a brand advocate in several ways, including recommending company products to their family and friends. They can also represent company interests externally and internally. In some cases, employees who are experts on a product or service, become the company spokesperson.
But how do you encourage employees to take part in the program? Well, there are several ways to do that:
How Do You Improve Employee Advocacy?
If you’ve started an employee advocacy program without success, here are ways you can improve on it:
Be transparent: Tell your employees why you want them to take part in the program. Do not just set it as a rule and expect everyone to follow blindly. Instead, provide your employees with a logical explanation of why engaging with company content is crucial.
Use employees as experts: Let your employees try out the products and feature them on your social accounts. Nordstrom, for example, uses employees to showcase their expertise in fashion and style.
Image viaInstagram
If the employee shares this content, it could trigger a viral post as their friends and family also share the content on their timelines.
Make it easy to share your posts: Don’t assume everyone on your team knows what to share about your company. Instead, help them create or offer content suggestions they would love to share on their accounts. You could also provide pre-written content or direct links to content the team can share.
Offer rewards and incentives: Reward engaged and active employees to show appreciation for the help they’ve offered. You can also provide incentives to encourage others to join the program using contests or competitions.
Customize content: Don’t assume every employee will share the content provided. Instead, customize content to fit individual employees. Find out what every employee cares about the most and provide content they find easy to share.
Send reminders: Send reminders to employees to share and encourage them to be active. Sometimes they may just forget to share company content.
Don’t force: The employees know their audience and the kind of content they would love to read. Do not force them to post content that makes them uncomfortable sharing. Do not also force them to participate. It should be optional. Offer them the freedom to share how and when they want to.
Show behind the scenes footage: Share employee milestones, office celebrations, company outings, or videos showing a day in the office. Employees featured in the footage will want to share the content on their timelines leading to increased engagement.
Image viaInstagram
Now, that you have an understanding of employee advocacy, let’s dive into the tools: