The Benefits of Employee Advocacy
- Better Employee Engagement. Today’s business reality is that disengaged employees are present in almost every organization. ...
- Increased Social Presence. Content shared by employees receives 8X more engagement than content shared by brand channels (Source: Social Media Today ).
- Humanize your brand. ...
- Foster Thought Leadership. ...
What is employee advocacy and why does it matter?
Oftentimes, when people think about brand advocates, they may think of external people, such as social media influencers. While this may be true, consider this: your employees know your company inside out and can lend a unique voice to your brand’s reputation. Employee advocacy has a lot of benefits for both the company and the employee.
What are the benefits of advocacy programs?
These programs offer benefits for both the brand and employee: brands enjoy increased awareness and controlled messaging while employees earn rewards and establish themselves as thought leaders in their field. Explore examples of successful advocacy programs in action, from AT&T to Boeing.
How can employee advocacy boost your social brand reach?
According to a recent survey by Hinge Research Institute and Social Media Today, organizations with employee advocacy programs have seen increased brand visibility, improved brand recognition and better brand loyalty. Go ahead and unlock employees’ brand potential to boost your social brand reach in real-time.
How do you get employees to become advocates?
There are a few ways that employees can become advocates. Some don’t even require a formal program and might already be in action in your company. Sending out swag and merch is a classic technique for enabling your employees to get the word out.
How does employee advocacy benefit an organization?
An organization benefits employee advocacy through increased reach and engagement. Customers are more comfortable engaging with someone whom they see as an expert with a product or service. And it's a no-brainer that your employees are the best people that represent your company.
What does an employee advocate do?
The general purpose of employee advocacy is to motivate and make it easy for your employees to participate in your organization's marketing efforts through performing activities and sharing company messages with their personal social networks.
What is an example of employee advocacy?
Examples of Employee Advocacy An employee image or information about an interesting project he/she is working on, and contact information is posted on the company website. Companies encourage their employees to tweet about the culture at work.
Why is employee advocacy on social media important?
A recent study found that employee advocacy benefits companies in three key ways: It positively impacts sales due to increased brand awareness and favorable perceptions (“brand sentiment”). It improves staff recruitment, retention, and engagement. It aids in PR crises and issues management.
What is employee advocacy in HR?
In simple terms, employee advocacy refers to the act of employees promoting the company through their own personal actions and through their own networks. This is often on social media. It is separate from paying employees to promote the organization (such as hiring a social media manager).
How do you advocate for employees?
5 Simple but Effective Ways to Advocate for Your TeamTell them you are their advocate. Great leaders don't make others assume reality, they create and communicate reality. ... Give public praise in front of senior leaders. ... Give private praise to others in organization. ... Recommend them for stretch assignments.
Why is employee advocacy vital for good branding?
The Benefits of Employee Advocacy Also, 76% of people say they trust content shared by regular people more than brands, so it helps to have the content coming from your team members instead of just from your company. Next, an employee advocacy program boosts employee engagement and morale.
What is Employee Advocacy?
In simple terms, employee advocacy is the promotion of a company by the individuals who work for it.
7 Amazing Employee Advocacy Benefits
Social media has become a primary source of information for people researching a brand or business.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are a great deal of employee advocacy benefits for those who implement an effective program.
Frequently Asked Questions
In simple terms, employee advocacy is the promotion of a company by the individuals who work for it. Check out the full article for how employee advocacy works and why it is such a successful marketing method.
Why is employee advocacy important?
Employee Advocacy is incredibly beneficial for any organization, no matter the size or industry, and using a tool to help with your program makes it much simpler and more effective. It not only helps your Marketing department but your HR team, Sales department, and PR department as well. Once your employees become more comfortable ...
What is employee advocacy?
Employee advocacy is a method used to promote your brand and initiatives through people who work for your company in an authentic and trusted way, typically on social media or other digital channels. For example, let’s say you want to promote your company’s upcoming conference. By having your employees post on social media ...
Do employees need to be careful with disclosure rules?
It’s true that employees do need to be careful with disclosure rules passed by the FTC, but disclosure from employees doesn’t take anything away from a true employee advocate if they’ve been built as an industry thought leader among their peers.
Is employee advocacy hard work?
It’s true that setting up an employee advocacy program is hard work, but always remember to keep the above benefits in mind while working on these advocacy efforts. Everything will pay off in the end.
Why is it important to have an employee advocacy program?
The reason it’s important to attach a person to your employee advocacy program is to emphasize that advocacy is a part of your company and not a one-off gimmick. It also helps to personalize the experience.
What is an employee advocate?
An employee advocate is someone who: Generates positive exposure and raises awareness for a brand through digital media or offline channels. Recommends a company’s products or services to a friend or family member. Represents the best interests of the company both internally and externally.
Why do employee advocacy programs fail?
As we mentioned, one of the most common reasons employee advocacy programs fail is a lack of internal communication. Slack is a popular messaging system for businesses that allows teams to quickly communicate with each other in real time. Plus, you can create group “channels” so individual teams can group message each other.
Why is social media important for employee advocacy?
As we mentioned earlier, one of the biggest benefits to using social media for employee advocacy is the ability to boost your organic reach. Monitor the reach you get through your content shared by advocacy, and compare it to your brand’s social reach. It’s also helpful to look at reach per network as well as combined.
What is employee retention?
For the most part, employee retention was all about compensation, benefits and general happiness within a specific role. Fast forward to today, and the story is much different. Company culture is a priority for both employees and employers. In fact, 80% of businesses plan to improve their corporate culture in 2017.
How many employees are engaged in 2016?
If your employees don’t feel engaged, it’s going to be difficult to get them to become genuine advocates. According to data from Aon Hewitt, only 24% of employees were highly engaged in 2016, and 39% are moderately engaged.
Is employee advocacy important?
But the reality is with the hiring market becoming increasingly competitive and changes to the way consumers shop, focusing on employee advocacy is more important than ever. In many ways, employee advocacy is like social media marketing.
What is employee advocacy?
Employee Advocacy is the action of employees advocating for your brand.
What are the prerequisites for Employee Advocacy?
You can’t have advocacy if there is nothing to advocate for. Therefore employee engagement is a prerequisite for employee advocacy.
Why does Employee Advocacy Work?
The reason employee advocacy works is highly linked to why it is important. It includes four important stakeholders of running a successful business.
Why is Employee Advocacy Important?
Now that we know what employee advocacy is and what it builds on, we will dive into why it is important.
What are the benefits from Employee Advocacy?
Now we know what Employee Advocacy is and why it is important. The next session will deep dive into the benefits of running a structured approach to engage and encourage your workforce.
What is Employee Advocacy?
Employee advocacy is a business strategy that enables employees to contribute to a brand’s marketing efforts on social media and other networks. Simply put, employee advocacy is the promotion of a brand or company by its employees.
Why is Employee Advocacy Important? (Benefits)
So, what happens when your employees become active brand advocates? Here are some major benefits of employee advocacy:
Some Best Employee Advocacy Examples
Let’s take a look at how some major brands leverage employee advocacy to improve their communication, marketing, sales, and recruiting.
How to Build an Employee Advocacy Program?
Setting specific goals and objectives that lead to measurable results can give your employees a clear idea of what the campaign objectives are.
How to Measure Results of an Employee Advocacy Program?
Tracking your content analytics is crucial for evaluating and improving your advocacy program’s success. Here’s how to see if your employees have a direct impact on your marketing efforts:
Employee Advocacy Best Practices
Here are some tips to help you get the most out of employee advocacy in your company:
Top 5 Employee Advocacy Tools
To manage and track employee advocacy programs with ease, you can use employee advocacy tools/platforms. Employee advocacy programs focus on managing your campaign, communication between teams, curating content, etc.
Why is employee advocacy important?
Employee advocacy software can help you supply approved content to staff, communicate instructions and measure results.
What is employee advocacy?
Employee advocacy is a relatively recent practice helping businesses expand their audiences and improve their bottom lines. Employee advocacy uses trends in business culture and social media to create strong public images and motivate team members. If you're interested in learning how to increase employee engagement and improve how the public perceives your organization, you might benefit from learning about employee advocacy. In this article, we review what employee advocacy is, why it's important, types of employee advocacy and how to begin an employee advocacy program of your own.
Why is social media important for employees?
Social media is a highly effective form of employee advocacy because it directly engages new audiences and allows your employees to use their own voices on your company's behalf. Typically, companies provide employees with general directions or guidelines for advocacy posts to ensure they represent the company as intended. Companies may choose to create competitions for most successful posts or set collective goals for their teams.
Can you offer rewards to employees?
Your company might decide to structure a rewards program, as part of social media initiatives or separately. You can offer bonuses, gift cards, or a paid day off to employees who successfully engage the public on the company's behalf or contribute ideas to your program. Aside from some time and energy, this might be the biggest expense in starting your employee advocacy program.
Better Employee Engagement
- Today’s business reality is that disengaged employees are present in almost every organization. So, HR leaders are beginning to engage employees innovatively using collaboration and advocacy tools and technologies in today’s digital workplace. In my opinion, employee advocacy and empl…
Increased Social Presence
- Content shared by employees receives 8X more engagement than content shared by brand channels (Source: Social Media Today). The ‘Always-on’ content helps you to increase your social engagement of your content and advocates. So, don’t underestimate the united power of employees’ content amplification in today’s modern marketing world. Unleash the power of empl…
Position Your Employees as Thought Leaders and Industry Domain Experts
- The onus lies with the business leaders to explain the advocacy goals to every employee brand advocates without fail. Precisely, communicate ‘What is in it for me (WIFME)‘ value proposition to your engaged and trusted employee brand advocates. This, in turn, builds a trust among employee brand advocates to advocate on behalf of your brand online. It is imperative for organizations to …
Humanize Your Brand
- The research study reveals that employees have 10X more followers than brands’ social channels. Precisely, your employees have a great marketing potential to amplify your branded content. If employees amplify your content across their social channels, it is a great way to humanize your brand. This, in turn, can help you generate more brand awareness, wider reach, qualified web visi…
Increased Brand Visibility, Improved Brand Recognition and Better Brand Loyalty
- Trust becomes essential in today’s business and people trust only family, friends and peers at the time of purchasing. Your employees have a great marketing potential to amplify always on content that increases brand awareness of your organization online. According to a recent survey by Hinge Research Institute and Social Media Today, organizations with employee advocacy pro…
What Is Employee Advocacy?
7 Amazing Employee Advocacy Benefits
- 1: Larger Brand Presence and Social Media Reach
Social media has become a primary source of information for people researching a brand or business. Visibility on social media is a key aspect of any marketing campaign and using your employees’ social media presence will exponentially extend your brand’s organic reach. An impr… - 2: Greater Trust, Authenticity and a Humanized Brand
Increased reach and engagement are not the only employee advocacy benefits. When brand content is shared by peers, the people reached by that content see it connected to an authentic human being, rather than a nameless and faceless brand. Employees who deal directly with cust…
Conclusion
- In conclusion, there are a great deal of employee advocacy benefits for those who implement an effective program. These include improving your brand’s online presence, greater reach and engagement on social media, creating a stellar brand reputation, increasing employee engagement and productivity, recruitment and improved sales, conversions and re...
References and Resources
- Edelman: 2020 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study EveryoneSocial: The Benefits of Social Selling GaggleAMP: Employee Advocacy: What’s in it For the Employees? HubSpot: 71% More Likely to Purchase Based on Social Media Referrals [Infographic] LinkedIn: Making the Case for Employee Advocacy: A Pocket Guide MarketingProfs: Why Social Media Marketers and Brand M…