While all companies can benefit from an employee advocacy program, it isn’t “one size fits all.” Organizations all have similar goals for beginning an employee advocacy program, like amplifying their brand’s reach or simplifying social selling, but the approaches they take for implementing the programs can vary. The approach should differ based on company size, employee and customer demographics, industry, how centralized the organization is, and company culture. While the program needs to be tailored to fit your company, there are some techniques and guidelines every organization can use to make employee advocacy work for them.
It must be opt-in advocacy
Forcing employees to advocate doesn’t work. It’s not authentic. You lose the passion behind advocacy if your brand advocates don’t truly want to amplify the brand. It is key to have brand advocates who are passionate and want to talk about your company on social networks where they can have a real impact on sales, recruiting and brand awareness. With that said, it’s also a good idea to make employee advocacy so easy to do, that any employee can participate at a basic level by reading and sharing company news. Believe it or not, frequency and volume does work and even more so when your employees authentically share relevant and helpful content with customers, prospects and job candidates.
That’s why employee advocacy programs need to be opt-in, with no repercussions for those who choose not to participate. Recognize and reward those who are advocating without penalizing those who aren’t natural born advocates. Just because some employees don’t talk about their company on social doesn’t mean they aren’t invested in your brand. By allowing them to view content and stay informed, they’ll appreciate the program and some of them may warm up to the idea of becoming advocates. Also, give them a good reason to join in the fun by having them suggest content that highlights the products and services they’ve helped to build or bring to market.
Do remember that no matter how convenient and simple you make advocacy, you can’t expect everyone to be on board. Respect that decision and focus on encouraging those who are advocating, while still supporting those who have chosen not to advocate. By respecting their decision to not share company content or advocate for the brand, you can earn their respect in return. Even if they don’t want to participate in a formal program, they’ll still be more likely to speak highly of the company for respecting their decision.
There is no one right way to advocate
Let your employees advocate in the way that makes sense for them. Not all employees will want to create their own content, but they might want to share company-distributed pieces. Some employees might not want to share company content with their Facebook friends, but their LinkedIn connections or Twitter followers might find it relevant.
Encourage employees to advocate in their own way. Give employees the content they need to stay up-to-date with company i.e. news, articles, and events, and then gives them the tools to share if they wish to do so. They can select which channels they’d like to share on, if any. Some employees might use it as a resource to keep themselves informed without actively sharing. That’s OK! They can use this information in face-to-face conversations if they’d like and eventually they may want to share particular pieces of content.
Not all departments advocate the same way
Don’t expect your accounting team to be as vocal about your brand as your sales team. Now, don’t count everyone out except for sales and marketing. Some of your strongest advocates could be working quietly away in a cubicle, just waiting for your support to start talking about your brand on social. At our company, our top advocate is a lead software engineer who has a busy day job coding. By making it easy for him to participate, he has become our most vocal advocate while excelling as one of our top developers. Typically though, sales and marketing team members are already writing and talking about your brand as part of their day-to-day jobs and can be a great place to start your company-wide employee advocacy program.
So when you’re setting up recognition and rewards for employee advocacy, you don’t want to have sales facing off with accounting. To encourage advocacy that’s fair for everyone, establish competitions or rewards for employee advocacy based on departments, geographies, or activities. This levels out the playing field at first. As your program picks up, you could make it company-wide, once all departments have a chance to get acquainted with social sharing.
Having a formal employee advocacy program or using an employee advocacy platform doesn’t force anything on your employees. It just makes it easier for employees who want to advocate to do so, as well as be recognized and rewarded for those efforts. Employee advocacy has the potential to amplify your brand’s reach and strengthen its reputation. In order to do that though, you need to tailor the program to your company and choose a platform that fits your needs and goals.
