Employee Advocacy has all ready proven to be essential for companies in involving all employees in the brand, and with a strategical approach great benefits have come with it;
- Increased brand awareness
- Boost of corporate social media presences
- Expanded reach
- Cost savings in recruitment and talent attraction
- improved employee retention
- Access to new leads and potential customers, talents & candidates
Above is some of the benefits you`ll achieve from day one, but there is a plethora of great “side effects” which is quite interesting to look in to;
1) Dark social
Sounds a bit scary – but various research shows that up to 80% of all social media shares are done peer to peer. Not surprisingly as one on one messaging is peaking on SoMe, and seems to be preferred by many, when sharing content.
To take part and get your share of traffic on dark social, employee advocacy will enable you to get your content out there – and measure the effects!
2) Localization of content
Many companies are struggling in localizing their content, and in addition it`s a costly affair!
Why not involve local employees in these efforts ?
They can, when sharing content, add introductions in the local language, and use local social media.
For instance, you won`t get far in using Facebook in Russia, where vk.com & ok.ru are totally dominating. In Germany Xing is king over LinkedIn, and in Asia it`s a whole different ball game.
3) The perfect Litmus test
Your employees are without doubt the ones that know your customers best. They can convey your brand story with authenticity and trustworthiness, and they are 10x more connected with your existing and future customers and talents.
This scenario is the perfect sandbox for testing your content, various formats and tone of voice for your campaigns on social media.
Do pre-campaigns in your employee advocacy platform with split testing based on imagery, format, different text and CTA`s, and let employees choose which ones to share – and get live feedback from your target groups.
This will be a great – and potentially – cost saving addition to your social media spend!
4) Let employees boost your paid campaigns
If you frequently use paid promotions on SoMe, why not let all employees lend a hand in boosting your paid content ?
In most ad managers you`ll get a fully functional preview/feed view URL of your ad, and you can use this for employees to share via your employee advocacy platform.
5) Use your employee advocacy platform as your “digital social media policy”
If your company or organisation are in a highly regulated business area like pharma, legal, governmental, public etc., that calls for a more “strict” governance on social media, implementing an employee advocacy platform could be a great advantage.
Foremost to accommodate your employees to make it safe and compliant for them to involve themselves in your SoMe presences.
By introducing your employee advocacy platform as a safe place to share content from (or the only place to do it from), employees will feel at ease in doing so, and you will secure that all shared content is curated and in compliance.
6) Expand your EA efforts to include partners, resellers and sales dispensers
Activating your resellers, partners and sales dispensers with your brand, is equally important as activating your employees.
If you can provide them with content helping them to attract business and promote your brand it`s a win-win situation.
So besides leveraging employees, why not include them, and create a unified brand experience on social media ?
7) Use your employee advocacy platform to train employees to become “socially savvy”
In any organisation you have a minority of employees that are lightyears ahead when it comes to social media. They are driven by passion, curiosity and not least the benefits they get from being active.
In a dream scenario all employees would be equally active, but it would be a really hard and costly task to train all in getting there!
Instead, use the “built-in” learning by doing in an employee advocacy platform. As long as the flow is intuitive and transparent, you gain more traction than any training program could offer.
You`ll get valuable learnings and insights on which groups of employees are comfortable with social media – and which are not. Thereby accurately get to know where to offer special support.
8) Bring remote workers closer to the company culture
If your company has remote workers, or many small decentralized units, employee advocacy can be key to bring them closer to your company culture and ensure they have a feel of belongingness.
9) Get stakeholders and managements attention!
Employee Advocacy is a channel of it`s own – and not similar with your corporate social media channels.
It´s bridging your brand & content with the insights and professional networks of your employees. And it is great for recruiting stakeholders and management to take part – and involve them as campaign owners corresponding to their business areas.
For instance;
- In recruitment campaigns enroll specific stakeholders needing to fill vacancies, to lead the campaign.
When running lead generating campaigns, ensure sales management is on board.
10) Map and recruit the “real” thought leaders and industry influencers inside your company
Showing thought leadership and influence business critical agendas, is a strategic task for many companies.
However, finding the “real” or the right thought leaders/influences amongst employees can be quite a task. Finding employees having the professional knowledge – and an existing and listening audience, is not easy.
Employee Advocacy will help you map which employees that either have an existing audience and/or the professional knowledge.
And who might have the potential to recruit as thought leader/influencer!
I do hope you find this list useful – or at least think of the positive side effects/use areas of EA;-)
Feel free to reach out if we can help you get there!