Guide
Employee Advocacy: Turn Your Employees Into Brand Ambassadors
Find out how your company can benefit from employee advocacy and turn your employees into your strongest brand advocates with our step-by-step guide, created in partnership with Sociuu.
Your company already has access to its most valuable brand ambassadors: Your employees.
They know your brand, your products, and your services. They know your values and what makes your company special. Who better to advocate for your brand than the people who know it inside out?
A strong employee advocacy program can leverage these unique voices to increase brand awareness, strengthen employee loyalty, and attract new talent.
We spoke with Nanna Bøgelund, Head of Customer Success at Sociuu, to understand why employee advocacy is important and to get actionable tips for companies on how to create a successful employee advocacy strategy.
In this guide, we highlight the benefits of employee advocacy and provide a practical step-by-step guide to creating an employee advocacy strategy. We cover the following:
- What is employee advocacy?
- Why is employee advocacy important?
- A step-by-step guide to creating an employee advocacy strategy
- Integrating employee advocacy into your social media management workflow
What is employee advocacy?
Employee advocacy is the practice of employees sharing positive messages about your brand in their own voices on their own channels. There are numerous channels that can be used for employee advocacy, but in this guide, we will focus on employee advocacy on social.
Employees can be advocates for sharing all kinds of content about your company. They can post the latest updates about the company and its products, share when a new job is available, or give a behind-the-scenes look at what it is like to work for your company. They share these stories in their own words, which makes the messages more personal and authentic.
Why is employee advocacy important?
Loyal and happy employees are eager to talk about your company. It's an opportunity you shouldn't miss, and here are some of the top reasons why:
Higher reach and visibility
Every social media manager knows that social media visibility isn't easy to come by. Changing algorithms require you to constantly adapt your approach. Employees often have their own networks, and when they share stories about your company, it exposes your brand to a broader audience than you'd otherwise reach. Sociuu research shows that employee advocacy can increase your reach by 561% over traditional brand channels alone.
Authentic recommendations build trust
People often trust peer recommendations more than traditional advertising, AI-generated search results, or content from brand channels. In this context, it makes a lot of sense for companies to motivate their employees to tell positive stories. Having a human face for the communication makes it feel more authentic and personal and, according to a recent study by Sociuu, 76% of people trust content shared by employees more than official brand accounts.
Attract new talent and build a trusted employer brand
Employee advocacy is also a great way to attract new talent. When potential employees see that your staff are happy and proud to work for your company in their insights about what it's like to work for you, it can go a long way. It could be the deciding factor in whether or not someone applies for a job at your company. In fact, Sociuu found that companies with an employee advocacy program can see a 20% increase in applications.
Boost employee engagement and morale
A strong employee advocacy program can foster a sense of belonging and empowerment. Employees who feel seen and valued as brand ambassadors are more likely to be engaged, identify with company values, and be proud to work for your company. Happy employees stay with your company, and an advocacy program done well can help increase employee retention.
Saving marketing costs
Implementing an employee advocacy program doesn't require a large budget and can even help you save on marketing costs. Instead of relying solely on paid advertising to get a higher level of reach and engagement, your employees can help you bring your brand to a wider audience. To get the same level of reach and engagement, you'd have to invest money in paid ads that likely wouldn't have the same level of authenticity as organic employee posts.
A step-by-step guide to creating an employee advocacy strategy
Now that you know how employee advocacy can benefit your company, let's take a look at how to create a successful employee advocacy strategy.
A solid employee advocacy strategy can not only help you leverage your employees as brand ambassadors and increase your brand's visibility, but it can also help you overcome common challenges. For example, how to get stakeholders on board, how to motivate employees to stay involved in the long term, and how to track your results.
With these seven practical steps, you can create your employee advocacy strategy in no time.
Step 1: Think about your purpose
Every strategy needs a purpose, and an employee advocacy program is no different. You need to know why you are doing it and what your main goals are. Is it to attract new talent? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Do you want to deepen employee loyalty? Do you want to strengthen your employer brand? Or perhaps it’s a combination of all of these.
These goals are the foundation of your strategy and will impact all your activities, from the types of campaigns you run to how you track your results. They will help you stay on track and not lose focus. The purpose of your employee advocacy program is also very important to everyone involved, from the employee advocacy manager to the managers of other teams to the employees themselves.
“If you can't tell them why you have an employee advocacy program, why should they participate? Why should they care if they don't know why it's important? You have to be very clear about what the purpose is.”
“With all that said, getting started is the most important thing,” Nanna adds. “Start and learn. But know why you are starting so you can get people on board. And then make room to develop the reasons why and how this can benefit the company and the employees, their professional brand, and their relationship with the company.”
Step 2: Get stakeholders on board
Convincing managers is something you’ll want to do very early on. You need them on board to support you and motivate their teams to participate.
Managers may worry about losing control over what is communicated externally and how much resource it will take away from business-as-usual work. But typically, many managers can see the benefits of communicating with their own social networks about the company and their jobs. It can lead to a positive impact on their own visibility, as well as that of the company.
In general, Nanna's advice is to link employee advocacy to broader business objectives and show exactly how the program is going to help achieve them. For example, if hiring is a priority right now, then showing managers how employee advocacy can help bring in top talent is a good place to start. If another objective is to build brand awareness across particular markets, then it's time to crack out the stat we shared above about how employees can help brands to increase their reach.
Step 3: Set guidelines and train your employees
Now that you have your goals in place and your stakeholders on board, it's time to give your employees the skills and resources they need to get started.
One challenge is striking the right balance between support and freedom for employees to tell their stories in their own words. Helping too much and setting too many guidelines can come across as controlling and will limit the authenticity of posts, but stepping back completely may result in very limited or no activity from the employee or potential miscommunication.
Many employees want to tell stories about their company, but they want to make sure they're not breaking any rules or policies. By providing them with training materials, you can remove one of the biggest barriers for employees that keeps them from joining – they may not know what’s allowed and are afraid of making a mistake.
With clear guidelines and training, you can help employees improve their skills so they know what is appropriate to share. Providing them with these resources can help lower the barrier to entry and help them develop an authentic voice to tell stories in their own words.
“Giving them content to share can motivate and inspire your employees about what to write, how to write it, and when. Give them the skills so that they have the confidence to add their own point of view to make it more authentic.”
Keep in mind that the time you invest in training your employees will pay off in the long run and improve your results.
Step 4: Run employee advocacy campaigns
You have trained your employees, and they are eager to get started. The next step is to think about your employee advocacy campaigns. Here, it's important to reach out to other teams. Their expertise can help you stay up-to-date and aligned with your brand voice. This will depend on where you sit in the organization, but here’s a quick rundown of how each team can help:
- Work with the social team to stay on top of what's being posted on the brand's social accounts, and make sure employees can quickly share new announcements as they're released.
- The content team can provide you with the latest content and what is planned for the coming weeks and months.
- HR can help you with all aspects of employer branding. They probably already know some good employee ambassadors and can tell you what the company's recruitment needs are.
Your goals and collaboration with other departments should give you a good idea of what content is perfect for your employee advocacy campaigns. Think about what kind of materials your employees will need to share the content. Ideally, they will have a library of visuals and materials to choose from that will work across different social networks.
Also think about frequency. An employee advocacy program isn't just about strategy, it's about keeping the wheels turning. Employee advocacy is not a one-time thing, but a long-term process, and by investing in it on a regular basis, you can ensure that it becomes a habit for employees to share their stories.
You also need to determine how you will communicate with employee ambassadors, which communication channels you will use, how often you will reach out to them, and how often you will share content with them.
Step 5: Encourage employees to participate
Employees are obviously critical to the success of your employee advocacy program. If they don't participate, there is simply no employee advocacy. To motivate them, you need to keep in mind that to be active, they need to take time out of their workday to do so. That's why it's important to make employee advocacy a win-win for your company and your employees.
Show them why they should care. In addition to highlighting how it helps achieve company and team goals, show them what's in it for them.
“Employees can create their own personal brand with employee advocacy. They can grow their personal network, reach more relevant people, and build brand awareness among the company’s target audience. Their expertise becomes visible on social media, and they are more likely to be invited to events and client meetings because people recognize their knowledge.”
Continue to encourage them, after all, it’s not the top priority of their job. Make it clear that their participation is voluntary, but it can have a positive effect on their career and the wider business. Celebrate brand ambassadors and give company-wide shout-outs. Share success stories and how their efforts have positively impacted your business. Add some fun gamification to keep the spirits up. These are small things you can do, but they can have a big impact on keeping employees engaged.
Step 6: Track your results
All your efforts are for nothing if you don't track your results. You need to know what is working and what areas need improvement. Measurement gives you a clear picture of whether your employee advocacy program is helping to achieve broader business goals. Depending on the goals you set at the beginning of your strategy, you will choose different types of metrics to track your performance.
There are two different sets of KPIs you can choose from: external and internal KPIs. External KPIs track how your employee advocacy is performing outside of your organization. This could be measuring how many interactions your employees are getting, how many posts are shared by the employees on social channels, or how many people are coming to your website.
Popular external KPIs are:
- Earned media value (EMV)
- Engagement
- Clicks
Compare these KPIs to regular marketing campaigns to see how well your employee advocacy program is working.
Internal KPIs show you how your employees are embracing your employee advocacy program. This is especially important in the beginning because you won't get good external results if your employees aren't engaged. Tracking these types of KPIs gives you a clear picture of whether you are doing all the right things to ensure that employees are participating.
Popular internal KPIs are:
- Number of employees signed up
- Number of employees completing training
- Number of employees engaging with campaigns
Track your KPIs regularly so you can identify areas for improvement and adjust your employee advocacy strategy. This gives you the numbers you need to show employees and the rest of the organization how effective your strategy is.
“Measuring all the great stories your employees and colleagues are sharing can be very time-consuming and requires a grand overview. That is one of the great reasons why a tool that tracks the stories shared is very valuable, as it easily provides you with insights and showcases the effect.”
Step 7: Involve employees and get feedback
Don't forget to involve your employees in improving your program. Ask them for feedback. What works for them? What is missing? What do they want? By asking these questions, you can get valuable feedback and ideas that will help you improve your employee advocacy campaigns.
“Keep in mind that ultimately it is your employees who are the focus. Because it's not called employer advocacy, it's called employee advocacy. It's not just you as a company telling the stories, it's them telling the stories in their own voice. It's important that those two sides are balanced in the strategy and that employees are brought in as collaborators. Their success is the company’s success.”
Involving them shows them that their opinions are valued and motivates them to stay involved. It's also an opportunity to create a space where participating employees can share their experiences and best practices. This could be a dedicated chat group, or leading champions could provide training for newcomers. Maybe they could even present their experiences at a town hall.
There are many ways to actively engage your employees in your employee advocacy program. Ideally, your employees are involved from the beginning, and they often have ideas that can help improve the performance of your campaign. You can create stories that are tailored to them because they have the relevant network behind them that will be interested in these stories.
Integrating employee advocacy into your social media management workflow
In this guide, we focused on employee advocacy on social, so it makes sense to implement your employee advocacy into your social media management process. Your social team knows what kind of content is being posted, and they are experts in their fields. They can create engaging social posts that your employees can use as inspiration, or repost to increase reach, or they can be part of the training process to help your employees become more skilled. Ideally, employee advocacy will become an integral part of your social media strategy.
Manually tracking and managing employee advocacy can quickly become time-consuming and complicated, even for smaller companies. A social employee advocacy tool can help, allowing you to run campaigns and monitor performance from one place. This will save you a lot of time and make working together easier.
Sociuu is an advanced social employee advocacy platform that can do all of this. You can set up and run your campaigns, streamline workflows, track metrics (like EMV, engagement, and clicks), and share scoreboards to keep your employees motivated. You can also customize your campaigns to meet your needs, such as running campaigns globally or breaking them down into small groups. This can be very useful if you want to offer regionalized content.
Brandwatch has partnered with Sociuu to provide an integration that makes it easy to implement employee advocacy alongside your social media management activities. All social media posts created in Brandwatch can be automatically sent to the Sociuu Content Hub, speeding up the sharing process and getting better results. For example, Croonwolter&dros used Sociuu and Brandwatch and achieved an incredible 74% employee adoption rate and an ROI of 9.2. With the integration, their social media team was able to achieve more visibility.
Conclusion
Your employees are your most powerful brand ambassadors. They know why your company stands out from the competition. A great employee advocacy program benefits not only your company, but also your employees. At a time when engagement through traditional brand channels is harder to come by, individual stories are more valuable than ever.
Employee advocacy can help in many areas of your business, from increasing employee retention to raising brand awareness, strengthening employer branding, attracting new talent, or deepening customer loyalty. Employees can help you shine online and highlight all the great things you do, such as DEI initiatives.
“Having employees tell all the stories about all the great things the company does, like sustainability efforts, can deepen trust and make the company really stand out in what it does.”