This has probably happened to you: you're scrolling through social media, and you come across a post from one of your friends praising a new coffee brand they’ve just tried. The post makes you curious, and the next thing you know, you’re googling the brand. That right there is the social media advocacy at work.
You got influenced to try out a product, not by a paid influencer or celebrity, but by someone you trust. These days, brand engagement is not driven by flashy ads and expensive marketing campaigns. It’s real people, sharing genuine experiences, who create the most impactful connections.
Read on to learn how social media advocacy—everyday users championing brands—transforms the way audiences interact, trust, and engage with your brand.
What Exactly is Social Media Advocacy?
Social media advocacy is when people—not brands, not paid influencers—organically promote your products or services on their social feeds. These advocates are employees, customers, or even fans of your brand, sharing their experiences, opinions, and stories about what they love. This kind of endorsement feels more trustworthy because it’s personal.
Would you trust a slick ad or a glowing recommendation from a friend who’s all about how well a product worked for them? That’s social media advocacy—it turns real-life experiences into brand engagement.
But it’s more than just word-of-mouth on steroids. Social media advocacy makes your audience your voice. As a result, you reach a broader, more engaged audience.
It could be an employee sharing a behind-the-scenes look at their company culture, or a satisfied customer tweeting their enthusiasm about a product, these endorsements shape the image of your brand online.
Why Do You Need to Engage Customers Through Social Media?
Take a look at any industry, and you’ll find social media to be an important marketing strategy across all. Social media is the most effective and easiest way to reach a broad audience, fast. That alone had made the medium so powerful for brand engagement.
Increases brand awareness
Social media platforms are a stage where brands can amplify their presence and reach a global audience.
Remember when Air Asia used a Facebook campaign, called Friendsy, to offer a free flight to winners who could tag friends? That move significantly boosted their brand visibility and doubled their flights. It is also rumored that the PR value generated with this campaign was a whopping $1.5 million.
This kind of engagement helps brands become household names without the hefty price tag of traditional advertising.
Improves customer satisfaction and loyalty
When you engage directly with customers, it improves their satisfaction and loyalty. It paints the brands as something ‘humane.’ When customers feel heard and valued, they are more likely to stick around.
Chewy, the pet supply brand, is a case in point. They engage their followers by showcasing their charitable efforts on Instagram, which resonates with their pet-loving audience and strengthens customer loyalty. Perhaps efforts like these have positioned the brand as the leading pet eCommerce brand in the US, with a 36% market share, higher than all its competitors.
Reduces marketing costs
Social media is arguably the most cost-effective way to reach large audiences. Unlike traditional marketing channels, you can engage with customers on social channels without substantial financial investment.
This is especially true for brands just starting out. They don’t typically have the marketing budget to launch full-blown marketing campaigns. However, social media makes your product or service known; it spreads the word and attracts potential customers who seek the services you offer.
Increases website traffic and conversion rates
Social media can drive significant traffic to your website, as seen with brands like Wool and the Gang, which increased repeat visits by 362% through the skillful use of social proof on social media.
Sharing content on social platforms like LinkedIn that links back to your website is a great way to convert social media followers into paying customers.
How Social Media Advocacy Drives Brand Engagement
Social media advocacy goes beyond likes, shares, or mentions—it turns your audience into active participants in your brand’s growth. But how exactly does it drive brand engagement? Let’s break it down:
1. Trust-building through authenticity
Consumers these days are skeptical of traditional ads and paid promotions (and rightfully so, because not all brands want what’s best for their customers). In fact, 88% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know over any other form of advertising.
When a customer shares their authentic experience with your product or service, it holds far more weight than any polished marketing campaign. Social media advocacy builds that trust by encouraging real users to become your brand's voice.
It could just be an Instagram story about a dinner at a new restaurant or a LinkedIn post about a helpful software, moments of authentic interaction are golden opportunities for brands to engage in meaningful ways.
2. Amplified reach with networks effects
When advocates—whether they’re employees, customers, or fans—share their experiences with their networks, your brand exposure grows exponentially. One person’s post reaches hundreds, if not thousands, of people.
For a sec, think about a fitness apparel brand that has built a community of loyal customers who post pictures of themselves wearing its products. Each of those posts extends the brand’s visibility to the followers of that customer. This is the network effect in action—when your advocates talk about your brand, it naturally leads to more people being introduced to your products.
In the same vein, employee advocacy is a another goldmine. Employees are often seen as trusted voices, and when they share company news, milestones, or products on their personal networks, it adds another layer of credibility. These organic posts reach an audience far larger than the brand’s direct marketing efforts could alone.
3. Engagement through conversations
When advocates post about your brand, they invite dialogue, comments, and shares from their followers, which spiral into ongoing discussions about your brand.
Customer reviews or testimonials shared on platforms like Twitter or Instagram are like that. A simple post about a positive experience evolves into a thread of questions, feedback, and additional customer testimonials.
Conversations driven by social media advocacy also humanize your brand. It shows that people, not just corporate entities, are engaging with it.
4. User-generated content drives ongoing engagement
A steady stream of user-generated content (UGC) drives engagement continuously on social media. UGC includes any content—photos, videos, reviews, or stories—created by customers that share their experience with a brand’s product or service.
UGC acts as free content for brands to repurpose in their own marketing. When customers see others like them using a product, they’re more inclined to try it themselves and join the conversation.
GoPro, for instance, has mastered the art of UGC by encouraging users to share videos shot with their products. GoPro then curates and shares this content, amplifying the original posts and providing even more visibility for both the customer and the brand.
5. Social proof for future customers
Potential customers seeing real people vouching for a brand validates the brand’s promises and builds confidence in their purchasing decision. This social proof often comes as reviews, testimonials, or organic posts about the brand.
People tend to follow the actions of others, especially when those actions come from a trusted source. For example, when a restaurant consistently gets good reviews on Instagram (or even Google Maps) from its patrons, it builds trust and intrigue for new customers. Others follow suit, either by visiting the restaurant or sharing their experience on social media.
Make Your Customers the Carrier of Your Good Word
Don’t mistake social media advocacy for a fleeting trend. As more brands shift their focus from traditional advertising to authentic communication and community building, it’s clear that this approach is here to stay.
However, social media is a vast and complex puzzle. And it’s really easy to make mistakes that would tank your brand reputation and value in a moment. To do social media advocacy the correct way, first, choose the right tool. And we have the perfect one—Highperformr!
Highperformr is a comprehensive social CRM that takes control of your entire social media strategy–from content creation and publishing to optimization and analytics–all from a single platform.
Highperfomr’s dedicated employee advocacy suite empowers your employees to become the voice of your brand. It publishes and distributes quality, social media-ready content at scale and ensures that the right content reaches the right people at the right time.
See Highperformr in action and take it for a spin. Book a demo today.
