Why Employee Advocacy Is Crucial for Building Your Brand

Employee advocacyEmployee advocacy is a marketing technique whereby an organization's staff act as spokespeople for the brand. Employee advocacy is a marketing technique in which an organization empowers and encourages employees... is being implemented more than ever and has become a key objective for many companies. And it’s not surprising – the results are very positive. In a world where everything is becoming virtual, and all things happen online, it’s imperative that you meet your customers on channels like social media. Social sharing significantly impacts businesses, and employees play a crucial role in this process.

What is employee advocacy?

Employee advocacy is the practice of turning employees into brand ambassadors who contribute to giving visibility to the company they work for. People trust people, and that is why it is so essential that you promote the personal brand of your employees so that they can reach the market in a much more direct and personal way.

This may imply that they share information about specific products, services, and campaigns or share the company’s culture on their social networks and/or other forums. But note, this always happens in a secure, controlled, and planned way.

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Why should you use employee advocacy to build your brand?

It helps extend your reach on social media

Creating a network of brand ambassadors from the social profiles of your employees who collaborate in promoting the company’s organic publications allows you to expand the reach of said content without having to invest in advertising.

Posts on social networks by employees generate 8 times more engagement than posts published by their employer. And they are up to 16 times more attractive to read than a social post published by the official account of a brand.

Additionally, employees of a company usually have more followers than the company itself (10 times more, according to a LinkedIn study), which immensely helps to spread the message that the company wants to push out.

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Increases employee retention

Today, company identity and culture are more important than ever. People spend a lot of their time working, and what better than developing a culture that keeps employees happy to increase their loyalty and sense of responsibility? Satisfied employees who feel acknowledged and looked after have positive attitude when it comes to enhancing their commitment to their job and the organization as a whole. This, in turn, affects employee advocacy as it encourages employees to be the best ambassadors of the company they work for. Nearly 86% of employees who participate in an employee advocacy program say it has had a positive effect on their careers. This contributes greatly to retaining the best talent and reducing turnover and the costs associated with it.

Increases public trust in the brand

Consumers want to know what the company’s employees think since they see it as a sign of transparency and closeness. Content shared by the team enjoys greater credibility for the public, increasing trust in the brand on their part.

And why would an employee share brand content on their social media profiles? Because this allows them to improve their knowledge in the sector, strengthen their network of contacts and obtain professional recognition by improving their personal branding. Ultimately, employees become “thought leaders”, becoming a beneficial point in the eye of the public.

Drives sales

Related to all the above points – Employee Advocacy helps increase sales because you capture more leads and convert them into customers because your employees become brand ambassadors for your organization on their social networks.

How to create an employee advocacy program

1. Establish your goals

It is important that before starting to implement your employee advocacy program, you set clear objectives and key performance indicators, which will allow you to see the results of your efforts.

Examples of common goals:

Improve organic reach
Increase social media traffic
Reduce your marketing costs
Get more social shares for your blog posts

2. Explain the benefits and value of the program to your employees

It is vital that your employees know what the employee advocacy program is so that they do not come to think of it as a boring and disguised corporate mandate.

Helping the company will not be reason enough. You have to show your employees what the benefits of becoming brand ambassadors are. For example, career growth and/or incentives.

3. Train your employees

The best way to achieve employee advocacy is by using a platform like Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social. Using a platform makes it easy to share social content with your employees securely, and increases the reach and visibility of your messages on social networks.

For this reason, it’s important that you educate your employees on how the platform works. The better they understand how to use the platform, the more likely they will participate. They must also understand how to use the specific social networks they will be using.

4. Create and curate content

You have to create quality content that is attractive to your employees: otherwise, they will not want to share it. Make content that adds value to your audience and also to your employees. Also think about curating external content by sharing industry news, external events, etc.

5. Review your program

Make sure you review your employee advocacy program weekly or bi-weekly to see how your employees are performing and whether or not the content you are providing them is adding value both to them and to the public you are trying to reach on social media. Most employee advocacy programs have a reporting section that facilitates the review process.

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Let us do the work for you

At Bora, we can help you channel the power of employee advocacy into your overall marketing strategy – providing valuable content for your employees to share, extending reach further, and overall building your brand on social media.