By Joshua Snape, | 3/28/2018 3:07 PM
Recent studies indicate that the employee social advocacy phenomenon is on the rise in today’s fast-paced digital arena. All kinds of businesses from small to corporate are trusting their employees to be their company’s brand advocates via social media channels.
A successful employee social advocacy program is fueled by your employee’s connectivity. By recruiting current employees to be brand ambassadors or advocates you effectively create an additional marketing team that will work for you round the clock.
To be effective it’s simply a question of empowering your employees to share positive content about your organization with their existing networks.
4 Ways That Encouraging Staff to Become Brand Advocates is Good for Your Business
1 – Boosts Engagement
By implementing an employee social advocacy program, you can successfully encourage and create increased engagement from your employees. This then builds a culture of positive involvement and togetherness within your organization. It’s good to note that employees of socially engaged companies are also much more likely to believe in and stay loyal to their company.
Engaged employees also tend to be much more motivated to present a better face for your brand. They will be perceived by your customers as more knowledgeable and professional as they share interesting content about your organization’s products or services with their networks. It can also create an improved customer experience.
2- Increases Social Presence
According to socialmediatoday.com, content shared by employees receives 8 times the engagement of content shared on brand channels. Make no mistake, employee brand advocates will greatly increase your brand’s social media presence!
Even without your encouragement, training, and guidance chances are that your employees are already posting positive content about your company. So, why not take advantage of this amazing resource? PLUS, on average employees have 10 times the number of connections as a company has followers. This means that your content will reach 1,000s more across various social networks.
To give an example, Fujitsu increased its reach from an estimated 1 million via its existing corporate social channels by 70% within 6 months of launching its employee social advocacy program.
3 – Humanizes Your Brand
Not only will employee social advocacy increase your brand’s exposure, but it will also humanize your brand. This is a key goal in order to be effective in digital marketing, because it makes your business relatable and significant to customers and prospects. It’s been noted that emotional branding is more important than ever! So, how can you create a relatable brand? There are 3 easy ways to do so:
- Create an emotional connection with your audience
- Build trust and recognition through transparent values and ideals
- Be passionate about you mission (often shown by a clear mission statement) and by being honest and upfront with your customers
All three of these goals can be exhibited simply and effectively by implementing an employee advocacy program because, as shown time and time again, people trust people not vague businesses.
4 – Benefits for Employees
A clearly communicated program should include ways that brand advocacy benefits them. Their taking an active role will help them personally by positioning them as thought leaders and industry experts. It could also become a point of commendation and acknowledgement in their performance appraisals and career advancement.
How can you help them appreciate the opportunity? Provide them with education on how sharing your company’s content will positively impact their personal brand.
You could also create a smaller, core team of employees who have really bought into the concept and have them act as advocates within the company for the program. Ideally, the team will be made up of key individuals from each main department in your company. These individuals should not necessarily be department heads because you want this initiative to be about positive peer influence.
Make sure you and your management team reinforce that by giving your social advocacy superstars plenty of commendation to create an atmosphere of appreciation and celebration over the commitment of your employees to the cause.
With this approach, your employees will soon be willing and enthusiastic participants.
All of these benefits add up to something that every business loves, the opportunity to do more with less. Employee brand advocacy is a way to increase your brand exposure at minimal cost.
Your employees are a marketing asset with the ability to broadcast your company message further and at the same time enhance the authenticity of your brand. They are the most powerful asset that you have in your digital marketing toolbox. Make sure that you identify, nurture, and train your future brand advocates and unleash this secret marketing tool without delay!
For assistance with creating an effective employee social advocacy program do not hesitate to contact us today!
Joshua is an accomplished writer, blogger and marketing consultant. His successful track record includes sales and marketing across four continents—Europe, N. America, the Middle East and Africa. Josh is also a successful entrepreneur and established his own marketing consultancy in Cyprus, which serviced clients throughout the Middle East. He now enjoys living and working in Vancouver for part of the year, and spends the rest of his time in the Turkish Riviera working remotely to assist clients communicate effectively in a wired world. Connect with Josh at: joshua@strategisconsulting.ca.
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