Employee Advocacy Program: Benefits and Best Practices

You’re planning to launch an employee advocacy program on social media but you don’t know where to start? Don’t worry, we’ve compiled in this blog post key steps to make your program successful!

Employee advocacy  is a powerful way to drive brand awareness, boost sales, build trust, and optimize employer branding initiatives.

For that reason,  90% of brands  have plans to start an  employee advocacy program  or have already implemented a strategy to encourage employees to become brand ambassadors.

With the emergence of remote work and social distancing restrictions, people are using social media more than ever before. For that reason, employee advocacy on social media is becoming one of the most effective ways to improve business performance.

What is Employee Advocacy? 

In a nutshell, employee advocacy is the promotion of a company by its employees. By sharing company-related content such as company news or product updates, employees contribute to the company’s image and they significantly facilitate  social recruiting efforts .

Employee advocacy  is a great way to boost your brand image and recognition all while helping your employees build their thought leadership.

However, you cannot  make your brand ambassadorship program successful  without a concrete strategy. You need to craft a structured plan for your program and make sure your employees are on board.

7 Steps to Implement a Successful Employee Advocacy Program

According to  Entrepreneur , social media content shared by employees gets 8 times more engagement than content shared through the brand’s own social channels and is shared 25 times more frequently.

However, building a successful employee advocacy program can be a tall order for organizations. However, there are certain steps that should be followed.  Efficient change communication is one of the biggest prerequisites for driving employee engagement and leadership buy-in.

If you manage to get your employees on board and help them understand the benefits of employee advocacy, they will be more likely to engage with the program and drive high ROI.

Here are  key steps that will help you empower your employees to help you  boost your social media strategy :

1. Identify your brand ambassadors

Decide which employees are going to participate in your employee advocacy program beforehand.

You can either get started with a small group of users and scale up your program later on or you can invite all your employees to take part in the program right away.

Your strategy will depend on your  company’s culture, size, and organizational structure . You may want to opt for the first option if your employees are not familiar yet with personal branding tactics.

Starting your employee advocacy program with a smaller group of users will help you educate the participants and rethink your program if needed.

However, employees who are not invited to join the program may feel excluded from your branding efforts which may affect  employee engagement at your workplace .

By inviting all your employees to become brand ambassadors right away, you make employee advocacy  a company-wide effort .

Activating all your employees not only strengthens team cohesion in your organization but also helps you improve your brand’s reach and web traffic right away.

💡Whichever option you choose, make sure that team leaders are on board so they can share personal branding best practices with their team.

2. Set Specific and Measurable Goals

You need to set clear goals before you actually start your employee advocacy program.

What are your expectations, what  KPIs do you want to look at  to measure the success of your program? Do you want to empower your employees on social media to  boost your content marketing strategy , increase traffic to your website, and generate leads or do you expect your employees to c ontribute to your employer brand ?

Setting  specific goals  beforehand will help you start your program in the right way and keep track of your progress. Make sure that the KPIs you choose are clear enough and relevant to your business.

Too many employee advocacy programs fail because of a lack of metrics.

Share your goals and KPIs with the whole  organization  so everyone is on the same page and able to evaluate the results achieved so far now.

💡Don’t forget your employees! Make sure that your program helps them build their personal brand and position themselves as experts in your industry. Define with your employees the personal objectives they want to achieve by participating in the program.

3. Plan your content strategy

Engaging internal content is key when it comes to employee advocacy. Think about it: how can you expect your employees to share company-related content  if this content is not engaging?

The key is to include in your program content that is  relevant to your employees and their networks .

For example, you may want to share company news, product updates, tips, and best practices with your employees.

Don’t forget to use  in-house content  but also  third-party content  that will sound less promotional. Indeed, Internet users tend to be fed up with corporate messaging:  83% of Internet users would like to be able to filter ads they see .

To make your employee advocacy program engaging, share with your employees blog posts, press releases, infographics, and videos. According to G2Crowd ,  videos shared on social media generate 1200% more shares than text and images.

💡 Related:  Tara Hunt on How to Build a Great YouTube Marketing Strategy

That’s not surprising that social media platforms keep updating their algorithms to push more videos into users’ news feeds. Remember what  Mark Zuckerberg  already said back in 2014:

We see a world that is video first with video at the heart of all our apps and services .

Use an  employee advocacy  platform  to make it easy for employees to find  the right content . Create channels that users can subscribe to to make sure they get content they are interested in. Give them the opportunity to  like and comment on content they find interesting.

Remember that you have to make it easy for your employees to find content related to the industry and their expertise so they can easily share it to their personal networks. Your  content distribution  is the key to driving adoption and engagement.

💡Did you know that your employees could contribute to your content strategy? Your employees are proud to be associated with your brand so give them the opportunity to share their own thoughts and experiences, and invite them to create their own posts!

4. Invest in a Proper Training Program

Some of your employees may not be familiar with  personal branding  tactics and others may be willing to share company-related content with their networks but may feel insecure about the information they actually can share.

To make participation in the program easier for your employees, you may want to implement a structured and customized training program.

This step is critical when it comes to  planning an employee advocacy strategy , it will help you overcome barriers that may hold back your employee advocacy program.

Be  creative in your training plan: for example, you can host webinars and workshops, grant access to online courses, or even organize an off-site event for the official launch of the program.

The idea is to help your employees build their  personal brand on social media . Think about it: if your employees position themselves as  industry experts , they will be able to build brand trust in a successful way.

Your training program will depend on your company culture and, of course, your budget!

6. Gamify the experience

If you want to drive more engagement with your employee advocacy program, it is important that you gamify the entire experience.

Healthy competition among employees is always welcome. So make sure that your employee advocacy solution provides interactive leaderboards and gamification functionalities that will boost employees’ motivation to participate.

With Haiilo, employees can see how well they stack up with their colleagues in driving traffic and engagement . Using gamification, you can:

• Increase usage by making it fun
• Offer perks for the most active ambassadors
• Create leaderboards for more awareness
• Reward employees with different trophies

7. Implement the Right Technology

Planning, implementing, and managing a successful employee advocacy program is impossible without the right technology. Luckily, there are solutions designed to  make advocacy marketing more efficient , streamlined, and easier for employees.

If you are considering implementing an employee advocacy program in your organization, consider one of these  7 best employee advocacy solutions  currently available on the market.

Business Drivers for Employee Advocacy Programs

As mentioned earlier, employee advocacy has many benefits. More specifically, it can impact the performance of your marketing, sales, and HR departments.

Engaging your employees in promoting your organization’s content not only boosts marketing, sales, and  employer branding , but it also encourages employees to create their own content and humanize your brand. Here are just a few statistics that prove that point:

• According to  Fast Company , leads developed through employee social marketing convert  7 times more frequently than other leads .
• According to  Hinge ,  87% of employees  recognized that employee advocacy contributed to expanding their professional network, and  76% believed  that it helped them keep up with industry trends.
• According to  LinkedIn  research, companies whose employees share their brand’s social content see a  lift in the views that their job postings receive .
• According to  Kredible , on average, an employee advocacy program involving 1,000 active participants can  generate $1,900,000 in advertising value .

Furthermore, it engages employees more deeply in your company mission and aligns employees with your  core company values . The image below is the perfect representation of how employee advocacy can impact your overall business success.