The backbone of any successful company is its employees. Your employees have a unique insider's perspective as they interact intimately with your brand, your customers, and your company culture. They are your most powerful advocates, especially when it comes to recruiting, building your brand, and shaping company culture.
Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter provide the space for every employee to become a brand ambassador by sharing their experiences and insights with their network. This is the essence of employee advocacy. Let’s understand it in more detail.
What is employee advocacy?
Employee advocacy is the organic promotion of a company, or its products or services by its employees through their personal and professional networks. Employee advocacy is when employees talk about their employer or the company they work for on their personal social media handles. In many cases, employees would go beyond resharing or reposing their company’s posts, but add their take on the post content and personalize it.
Here’s a simple example: Mia, a front-end engineer at a product company, shares a post announcing the launch of her team's product launch. She discusses its features and the impact it could have on users. This endorsement resonates with peers and influencers in her network, they engage with her post and reshare it, and the announcement about the product reaches a lot more people than just the announcement post by the company. Essentially, your company has gotten a wider organic reach. This is employee advocacy in action.
Types of employee advocacy
Employee advocacy can happen in many ways.
Advocating through social media
This is the most common, and perhaps most valuable tool for employee advocacy. Social media is more effective with younger demographics, who usually trust people more than brands themselves. Both customers and employees are active on social media, so it makes sense to use this channel for genuine, impactful advocacy.
Spreading the word with branded merchandise
A branded t-shirt, a cool coffee mug–these subtly promote your company whenever they're used. Useful and well-designed merch is always a hit with employees, and it's an easy way for them to put their affiliation with your company out there.
Contributing to company thought leadership
In these advocacy programs, employees contribute thought leadership articles and real-world case studies to industry publications and deliver knowledge sessions at industry conferences and company events. Employees help to establish your company as an industry expert, enhancing its reputation and credibility.
Employee advocacy could sometimes be confused with social advocacy and brand advocacy. People around you might unknowingly use one term for the other, because social media is one of the biggest channels for employee advocacy. But the three are quite different and its importance to understand the distinction between them.
Employee advocacy is when employees talk about their company or mention the brand on their personal social media handles. This gives the company more visibility through the employees’ network, and helps increase the company’s brand reach organically. Example: A company launches a new product and the employees talk about it on their personal handles, share their experiences about creating the product, their favourite features, etc.
Social advocacy refers to rallying people together to promote social causes and engage with the community. Example: A company partners with a non-profit to support their initiatives, and talks about the importance of working on social causes.
Brand advocacy is when customers talk about a brand or a product they like, promote it, and encourage others in their network to become a customer as well. Example: An individual reviews a product or a service they’ve enjoyed and shares the video or article on social media.
Popular channels for employee advocacy
Employee advocacy can be classified based on the medium through which employees promote their company. Traditionally, word of mouth has been the most prevalent form of employee advocacy and continues even today. Formal employee advocacy programs are now being orchestrated on other digital channels.
Even as social media advocacy has become synonymous with employee advocacy, other types of advocacy programs are also explained below.
Social media advocacy
The most preferred employee advocacy program is highly effective, enabling organizations to meet different end objectives. Employees sharing company posts helps increase brand awareness and reach, while employees sharing their work experiences on platforms such as Linkedin, Glassdoor helps enhance employer brand equity.
Employer brand advocacy
It involves employees referring qualified job candidates for job vacancies through employee referral programs. It helps you to acquire quality talent who are culturally fit and optimizes hiring time and cost.
Personal branding
This typically has a cascading effect. When employees showcase their subject matter expertise on social media or other channels such as newsletters, they give their employer wider visibility merely by association. The individual builds a personal brand and gains followers for their thought leadership, but is also known as an employee of the company, thus giving the brand also some visibility.
Why is employee advocacy important?
People trust people more than brands. We're more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend, a family member, or even a coworker than a faceless brand. And it's not just about familiarity. Content shared by employees gets eight times more engagement than content by the company itself.
Positive reviews and word-of-mouth marketing are major plus points for any company, and employee advocacy is one of the most powerful and genuine ways to build that trust and reputation.
Now, you might be thinking, "Hold on, social media use at work? That's like encouraging distraction!" But the fact is that 98% of employees are already on social media, and 50% of them are already talking about their companies online. So instead of fighting it, harness that potential and turn it into something positive for your brand.
Employee advocacy brings multifold advantages for both companies and their employees.
How does employee advocacy benefit companies?
For starters, it amplifies your brand's message and enhances brand awareness. Beyond marketing, employee advocacy is necessary for employer branding. With employees becoming your biggest advocates, your company culture and values exhibit a certain quality. You begin to attract in-demand talent and enhance morale among existing staff.
And let's not forget the most obvious benefit: employee advocacy drives sales and generates leads at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing campaigns.
Builds authenticity When your employees rave about your company, they bring a level of authenticity and relatability that your brand accounts simply can't replicate.
Increases visibility Your employees have a way bigger reach on social media than your brand does.
Humanize your brand 63% of consumers prefer to buy from companies that share their values. When you allow employees to talk about your brand on their networks, you'll add those values to your brand.
Cuts down the marketing costs Companies using its employees in advocacy can cut down on marketing costs and increase conversions by 17%.
Drives more qualified leads When your team members share the good vibes and show off culture online, it's seeding the minds of potential customers and future employees.
How does employee advocacy help employees?
Employee advocacy helps employees in their careers and also in the workplace. It supports them to build their personal brand, expand their professional network, and gain visibility in their industry.
Sharing knowledge and insights related to their work highlights their expertise and even positions them as thought leaders. Sometimes, it leads to exciting new opportunities both within and outside the company. Employee advocacy, on a personal level, sustains a deeper connection within the company.
Helps in growing your networks When you position yourself as an expert in your field by sharing your knowledge, and your online reach grows. Plus, building your personal brand on LinkedIn helps you connect with the right people.
Creates a positive company culture Being an employee advocate means having insider knowledge about the company and its goals. It's your chance to understand the big picture and see how your work integrates with the rest of the firm's goals. This can make you feel connected and more motivated at work.
How to set up an employee advocacy program
In a lot of instances, employee advocacy happens organically and sporadically. An employee advocacy program is important to streamline efforts and be deliberate about employee advocacy. It is also important to have a formal employee advocacy program if you want to measure efforts towards advocacy.
Here are the steps that you can take to get your employee advocacy program up and running:
Set clear goals and KPIs
Be clear about your goals—are you looking for more leads, top talent, a bigger brand presence, or maybe dominating social media?
Identify and appoint advocacy leaders
To really amplify your message, create a core crew of enthusiastic, influential employees – your own little "ambassador committee." These employees will get everyone pumped up about your initiatives, monitor the success of your program, and regularly give you feedback to make your program better.
Give training
Inform and educate your employees about the employee advocacy program. Tell them why you’re investing time and effort into this, what they’re expected to do, what the program goals are, and who they can reach out to if they’d like to learn more.
Prepare social media guidelines
Not everyone is a social media expert. Even if it seems like second nature to you, some of your employees might feel a bit lost or unsure. That's why setting social media guidelines is important. When your team feels informed and empowered, your advocacy program will nourish.
Make compelling content
Give your team content that makes them look like the experts they are – the kind of stuff they'll actually enjoy sharing.
Highperformr is designed precisely for this. With Highperformr, in addition to providing employees with content they can share, you can empower them to create content in their writing style and tone of voice, in a manner that appeals to their target audience.
Choose the right employee advocacy tools
Employee advocacy programs involve multiple teams, each with a unique role and specific responsibilities that ensure success. Orchestrating employee advocacy manually can be quite a challenge, and employee advocacy tools are essential to help plan, implement, execute, and measure employee advocacy programs. And the employee advocacy tool you use can have a significant influence and impact on the success of employee advocacy programs.
Employee advocacy clearly is an initiative that requires a lot of time, effort, and resources. If employee advocacy is encouraged by the management, nothing like it. But in a lot of organizations, the leadership may not be aware of the benefits of employee advocacy and the extent to which it can help businesses. Securing leadership buy-in for implementing and running an employee advocacy program can be a task. This guide with tips to help you get leadership buy-in and securing budgets to run an employee advocacy program.
What is an employee advocacy platform
An employee advocacy platform such as Highperformr is a software product that enables employees to create, repost, and share content. Employee advocacy platforms, also often called employee advocacy tools, are built to enable teams to come together on one platform, collaborate on social media content that they want to share on social media, and track analytics for their social media posts. Employee advocacy tools help companies streamline, manage, and amplify their employee advocacy efforts and it is essential for businesses to use the right tools that will help them run their employee advocacy programs smoothly and ensure success.
Employee advocacy platforms are broadly divided into two categories:
1. Tools for admins and program managers
Admin tools should include things like detailed reporting and analytics, content curation and approval workflows, user access controls with stringent roles and permissions.
2. Tools for your team members to access and share content
Employee advocacy tools should include web and mobile applications, news reader features, and robust (but simple) sharing options. It should also allow your people to connect all of the social networks they’re active on (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin).
Best practices to improve your employee advocacy strategy
Employee advocacy isn’t just something you implement and set on auto-pilot. It requires monitoring and the outcomes have to be reviewed periodically to ensure that the program is in line with the direction the business is taking.
You need to regularly update and improve your employee advocacy strategy so you can reap the benefits of employee advocacy.
Here are a few things you can do:
Monitor and measure success
Track analytics and monitor the success of the employee advocacy campaigns. That’ll help you understand if you’re on the right track and what exactly you need to do to make the program more effective.
Recognize and highlight successes
Be sure to keep employees informed about how the employee advocacy campaign has doing and what improvements or changes you hope to make in the employee advocacy program. Highlight successes, recognize advocates who are actively posting on social media, and motivate employees to beat the employee advocacy goals that have been set.
Offer incentives to encourage active participation
Employees can benefit quite a bit from being active on social media and posting consistently. Not many, however, are aware of this or are incentivized to be active on social platforms. Educate employees on the importance of employee advocacy and encourage them to participate in the company’s employee advocacy program. Give them an employee advocacy tool that's easy to use, introduce gamification, and incentivize them to participate.
Make content easy to share
Empower employees to easily share branded content. Employee advocacy tools with features such as reposting or crossposting across multiple accounts and platforms make it easy. Employee advocacy platforms such as Highperformr are also designed for employees to repurpose or tweak company content easily. For example, with Highperformr’s Social AI Copilot, an employee can take a company post, repurpose or tweak it to suit their writing style and tone of voice, and post it from their social handles.
Encourage authenticity and individuality
While employee advocacy programs are essentially designed to promote the company, its essential to ensure employees don’t just copy-paste branded content but also post content that is authentic and is their own. This could include their perspective or point of view (POV) on anything, their experiences, subjects they’re interested in outside of work, etc. This will help drive engagement and establish credibility.
How to measure success of employee advocacy
As with any other campaign or initiative, it is important to make note of what success looks like. What do you hope to achieve from the campaign, and how would you track and measure it?
This article dives deeper into each metric and talks about why it is important to track them and how it will help you tweak or improve your program.
Employee adoption: This is the total number of active users (those who have logged in and who post regularly) compared to the total number of users invited to your program.
Share-Rate: This shows you what kind of content your employees and their audiences are most interested in. It also helps you figure out where those
Reach: This will give you a good idea of how far your brand message is spreading through your employees' networks.
Interactions: An interaction could be anything from likes, favorites, shares, and retweets to replies, comments, or clicks on a shared link.
Click-through rates (CTR): This is simply a measure of how many people clicked on a social media post shared by an employee. It's a good way to see how interesting and engaging your content is.
Earned media value: Earned media value is all the positive publicity you get organically – through word-of-mouth from customers, social media fans, or your own employees sharing your content.
Examples of successful employee advocacy programs
Adobe humanizes the brand
Adobe was the first major brand to understand and implement employee advocacy when it was in its infancy, and other large organizations hesitated to implement social media in the workplace environment.
Adobe's basic premise in appointing employee brand ambassadors was that companies do business with people. Adobe considers employee advocates to be the faces and personalities behind its brand. Today, the company has approximately 900 brand ambassadors in different communities across the world.
Adobe briefs brand ambassadors on upcoming products and services. They start publishing online posts that generate conversation about the future launch. This helps them create a buzz before the launch, and by the time new products and services enter the market, enough people will have heard about them to experiment.
Besides briefing ambassadors, the company posts information on its intranet to enable employees to learn about the latest offerings and spread the word through their personal networks. The company leaders also provide training to its ambassadors and conducts live virtual sessions.
Adobe's employee advocacy objective is to get as many people in the program as possible and have a high user rate. The success metrics include the number of groups created, the average number of people being followed by employees and overall engagement rates. Another important feature of Adobe's employee advocacy program is Adobe Life Blog. The employees are encouraged to write for the blog offering behind-the-scenes professional life at Adobe. The advocacy program humanizes the brand and enables the company to achieve social media campaign goals around social volume, engagement and impact in the community.
NVIDIA highlights high performing work culture
NVIDIA is in the news because of its advanced chips powering AI(Artificial Intelligence) models and its stock price performance. Although technical competence is at the core of company performance, a positive work culture has contributed equally to making it the tech giant it is today. The company brand advocacy program includes current employees highlighting the positive impact of the organization’s approach to work, for which it has a dedicated web page.
Committed and motivated employees publish job openings through their social media accounts, broadening employee sourcing to attract the best and brightest.
97% of NVIDIA employees say it is a great place to work, and they promote the company's culture and work practices through social media and blog posts.
Its CEO, Jensen Huang, believes in transparent employee communication and a work culture that values reasoning and learning from each other, encouraging employees to be willing brand advocates.
Thermo Fisher, the world leader in serving science with annual revenue exceeding $40 billion, struggled with brand awareness outside the scientific community. This hindered its ability to attract quality candidates for its many divisions around the globe. The company is present in 600 locations worldwide, and it would have cost them millions to build and scale the talent brand globally.
Thermo Fisher launched an employee advocacy program focused on talent acquisition. The LinkedIn advocacy platform provided a steady stream of curated content for its employees to post on their social media accounts. Industry talent connected with Thermo Fisher employees would interact with the content, enabling the company to attract quality talent naturally.
After the program's launch, 18% of hires worldwide mentioned engaging with their company content, and becoming aware of the company's potential job opportunities. The success of the Thermo Fisher employee advocacy program encouraged sales teams and other functions to collaborate with the marketing department to produce and publish relevant content, helping the company boost its reach by 62%.
This article dives deeper into each metric and talks about why it is important to track them and how it will help you tweak or improve your program.
Employee Advocacy Made Easy with Highperformr
Highperformr is built for teams of all sizes, and is designed to make employee advocacy easy, efficient, and successful.
Here’s what you get with Highperformr:
Maximized employee engagement:
Highperformr ensures that employees are consistently posting to generate demand. This requires two things: a system rich in content to enable multiple posts from across the company and enough employees connecting their handles. Highperformr's workflow facilitates both, making it easy to distribute the company's content across social media. This comprehensive approach ensures the platform is the last mile connection for content distribution, making it super easy for employees to stay engaged and active on social media.
Guaranteed widespread adoption:
Highperformr's seamless integration with existing workflows and CRM systems ensures easy adoption across the organization, making it a superior Oktopost alternative.
Extensive content distribution:
Highperformr's native Social AI helps repurpose content based on different personas and users, with automation features like crossposting or auto-repost, ensuring your content reaches the right audience consistently. Oktopost doesn’t enable content teams to have a repository for social media managers to generate ideas for their go to market teams.
Consistent publishing at scale:
Automations in Highperformr save social media managers time by facilitating consistent publishing at scale, making it easier to manage multiple social handles.
Efficient team collaboration:
Highperformr supports unlimited users, enabling seamless collaboration on content drafts, sharing drafts, and managing quick, frictionless approvals. This is a significant improvement over Oktopost, which charges customers per user, making large-scale collaboration expensive and complex.
Extensive visibility and distribution:
Highperformr enables the broad distribution of sales and marketing collateral across social media platforms, leading to better audience engagement.
Granular analytics and AI insights:
Highperformr provides detailed insights into the impact of social campaigns and ROI, helping businesses understand audience interactions and refine their content strategy based on performance data.
Comprehensive audience insight:
Highperformr’s advanced analytics gives you a consolidated, enriched view of your audience who engage with your posts, and consolidated list of your competitors’ audience as well.
Personalized social post idea generation:
Highperformr’s native Social AI copilot helps users turn raw ideas into social post drafts, and generates drafts tailored for each user based on their personal writing style and tone of voice.
