When you think about your last big purchase, what comes to mind? Were you immediately persuaded after seeing a post from a corporate account? Or, did you do some additional digging to hear from your peers, influencers, or reviews about the product or service you were interested in?
Even as social media and social selling have evolved over the years, one thing remains the same: people buy from people. So, even as corporations cultivate a presence on social media, word-of-mouth messaging is more important than ever.
In the B2B world, employee advocacy goes beyond a corporate presence and enables individuals to build trust with their audiences on behalf of their organization. According to LinkedIn, employee advocacy is effective because an average employee network has ten times as many connections as a company has followers. Even more, buyers are more likely to trust an acquaintance or a mutual connection than a faceless corporate account.
Employee advocacy programs don’t just appear overnight. It takes time to develop a strategy, select an employee advocacy tool, recruit advocates, and measure success. In this post, we’ll share tips that we’ve used to help our clients build employee advocacy programs of their own.
Jen Graessle
Brand Activation Manager | Seismic
Set expectations for your employee advocacy program
Establishing your organization’s social media employee advocacy program can sometimes feel overwhelming. Simply asking your colleagues to post on LinkedIn three times a week won’t turn into sales right away. Neither will exclusively sharing your company’s corporate-sponsored content.
As you begin to build your employee advocacy program, it’s important to first set expectations. Employee advocacy should be thought of more as social engagement than social selling. Employee advocacy is less transactional and more of an activity designed to build credibility and spark authentic conversations within your social network.
Defining success is critical when setting expectations. If your program’s impact isn’t primarily measured by closed deals, how do you measure success? There are several impactful metrics you can use to measure success.
- Growth in audience engagement (clicks, likes, and comments)
- Growth in advocate engagement (shares, likes, and comments)
- Growth in the number of profile views they received
- Responses to their outbound messages (rather than just the number sent)
- Introductions made by existing clients or customers
Carefully choose an employee advocacy software
Once you’ve set expectations, you need to find the right employee advocacy tool to get your program up and running. As you begin to evaluate solutions, it’s important to consider a tool that will grow with your organization over time. But that’s not the only thing to consider. Here are a few things to look for in an employee advocacy platform:
- Compliance: Organizations in highly regulated industries need a solution that automates approvals and gives administrators the ability to enforce their social media policies.
- Third-party content: Provide access to high-quality, third-party content which can limit oversharing of corporate content.
- Content curation: Equip employee advocates with diverse content that addresses different markets and interests.
- Personalized communication: Give employee advocates the flexibility to develop status updates that align with their personal brand and alleviate the burden of producing corporate-approved status updates for the entire content library.
- Mobile experience: Consider mobile-friendly solutions that enable advisors to easily manage their social media presence using their smartphones.
- Intelligent technology: Artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing can help improve the content discovery process making it easier for employees to share content.
Identify your first cohort of employee advocates
In the early stages of your employee advocacy program, it’s important to start small. There’s no rush to recruit 500 advocates on day one. Remember that you don’t need to convince the reluctant. Instead, focus your attention on your colleagues who already see the value in social media. You’ll maximize your ROI by supporting individuals who are interested in building a new skill and willing to dedicate their time to social media.
Once you’ve gotten your first cohort up and running, success is your best friend. When your colleagues begin to string together small victories like a LinkedIn post that gets reshared by an industry influencer, others within your organization will take notice. These wins will become your greatest recruiting tool. When one advocate has tangible results, others will be interested in creating results of their own.
Prioritize content and compliance
One of the benefits of employee advocacy programs is that it empowers individuals to extend the company brand. However, that benefit doesn’t come without risks, especially in highly regulated industries. Compliance features ensure that shared content adheres to industry regulations and your organization’s policies regarding confidentiality and privacy.
So, how can you provide personalized content at scale, while ensuring it’s compliant? Having a compliance team review every post that’s shared can create bottlenecks and limit agility. Instead, the employee advocacy software your organization uses should automate compliance for you. AI-based compliance platforms can review content at scale, ensuring that the content shared by advocates adheres to company and industry standards.
Making employee advocacy a reality
Building a successful employee advocacy program requires strategic planning and execution. It starts with identifying your desired outcomes. From there, start small and identify what works best for your organization. As your initial class of employee advocates begin to find success, establish best practices and begin to scale.
Finding the right employee advocacy tool is an important step in your journey. Seismic LiveSocial empowers customer-facing teams to engage buyers purposefully and proactively on social media.
If you’re ready to learn more about Seismic LiveSocial, get a demo. You can also watch this webinar to learn how your organization can build trust at scale on LinkedIn.
