How to Build an Employee Advocacy Program & Promote with Marketing Automation Strategy
Employee advocacy is a powerful tool that empowers your workforce to promote your company’s brand, products, or services through their personal social media channels and other communication platforms. It leverages employees’ genuine voices and networks to enhance brand visibility and credibility, support and boost your marketing efforts, and turn your employees into social media and brand ambassadors.
According to a recent study on Stories, content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels.
In an era where traditional advertising is losing its impact, employee advocacy emerges as a beacon of hope in modern marketing strategies. It increases brand reach and trust and fosters a sense of ownership and pride among employees, leading to higher engagement and productivity.
Benefits of Employee Advocacy
Employee advocacy has various benefits, starting with increased brand visibility. Employees sharing company content reach a wider audience, including potential customers and recruits who might not follow the company’s official channels.
This increased visibility often translates into improved trust and credibility, as people are likelier to trust recommendations and information from individuals they know personally.
Moreover, employee advocacy enhances employee engagement by making employees feel valued and involved in the company’s success.
Building the Foundation for Employee Advocacy
Identify Your Goals
The first step in building a successful employee advocacy program is clearly defining your goals, such as increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, or enhancing employee engagement.
For example, if your marketing strategy focuses on boosting brand visibility, your employee advocacy goals should reflect this by aiming to increase your employees’ social media shares, impressions, and engagement.
Choose the Right Tools
Selecting the appropriate tech partner and platform is crucial for launching, facilitating, and managing your employee advocacy program.
Numerous tools, such as InviteReferrals , Ambassify, Hootsuite Amplify, EveryoneSocial, and Bambu by Sprout Social, can help streamline the process. They will provide a centralised place to gather your employee ambassadors, share your company content with them, and make it easy for them to share it on their own social media profiles.
These platforms offer different features, allowing you to curate your content, collaborate with your employees, gather feedback, schedule posts, and track your advocacy efforts and program performance with in-depth analytics.
The right tools should be straightforward and intuitive for employees to use, make it easy for them to share content, and provide you with valuable insights into the program’s effectiveness, helping you refine and optimize your strategy over time.
Engaging and Educating Employees
Create a Training Program
Training employees on brand messaging and social media use is essential to ensuring consistency in branding and effectiveness in your advocacy program.
A well-structured training program helps employees understand the company’s values, voice, and the type of content that aligns with the brand’s image. It will also help employees gain the confidence to write and create their own content.
A typical training program might include workshops, webinars, video tutorials, and easily accessible online resources that employees can always return to to hone their skills.
The training should cover key topics such as building, professionalising, and maintaining a professional online presence, best practices for social media engagement, and guidelines for sharing company content.
Develop Engaging Content
Creating engaging content is crucial for the success of your employee advocacy program. This is important to keep your employees engaged on the platform and ensure they share engaging content with their audience. The type of content you can create and share with your employees is unlimited, from blog posts, infographics, and videos to company news, event promotions, product updates, and more.
Having an employee advocacy platform to regularly update and distribute content will give your employees a centralized place to find all the content they want and need at any time and an easy way to share it.
To scale and take your program to the next level, you can encourage your employees to personalize the content you provide with their own insights or experiences. This will enhance its authenticity and appeal and shape its branding.
Encourage Authenticity
Authentic employee voices are vital to the credibility and success of your advocacy program. People are more likely to engage with content that feels genuine and personal, which is why content shared by employees can get up to 8x more engagement, according to Social Media Today.
Encourage employees to share their perspectives, stories, and experiences related to the company. This will promote more authentic branding on and offline. This can be achieved by creating a culture of openness where employees feel comfortable expressing themselves and where they are invited to find (and use) their own brand voice.
Provide tips and best practices for authentic sharing, such as being honest, using personal anecdotes, and avoiding overly promotional language.
Implementing the Employee Advocacy Program
Launch Strategy
Successfully launching an employee advocacy / Referral program requires careful planning and clear communication. Launch strategies can differ based on company size, available timeline and goals.
As a rule of thumb, start by identifying a pilot group of enthusiastic employees who can serve as early adopters and champions of the program. This group can help refine the process and provide feedback before a company-wide rollout. Then, based on their initial response to the program, develop a detailed launch plan with a timeline, key milestones, and responsibilities and communicate the program to all employees through multiple channels such as emails, internal newsletters, team meetings, and intranet posts.
Clearly explain the program’s goals, benefits, and how employees can get involved. A compelling narrative around the program can generate excitement and buy-in from the outset.
Incentives and Recognition
Well-thought-out incentives, rewards, and recognition programs can enhance employee motivation to participate in the advocacy program.
Consider offering rewards such as gift cards, extra vacation days, or public recognition for employees who consistently participate and drive significant engagement.
Creating a leaderboard to track and display top advocates can introduce a healthy level of competition. Recognize and celebrate participants’ efforts through shout-outs in company meetings, internal newsletters, or social media posts.
Personalized thank-you notes from senior leadership can also go a long way in showing appreciation and encouraging ongoing participation.
Promoting Your Employee Advocacy Program
To effectively promote your employee advocacy program, it’s essential to leverage various digital communication channels. Here’s how you can use email marketing, WhatsApp, and push notifications to ensure maximum engagement and participation.
Email Marketing
Email marketing Automation is a direct and personal way to engage employees and keep them informed about the employee advocacy program. Use this channel to regularly update employees, share success stories, and provide actionable tips on how they can contribute.
Example: Create a monthly newsletter dedicated to the advocacy program. The email can feature highlights such as top advocates of the month, upcoming training sessions, and new content available for sharing. A compelling subject line like “Boost Your Impact: New Content and Success Stories Inside!” can grab attention. Include clear calls to action, such as links to shareable content or sign-up buttons for upcoming webinars. Personalizing emails with the recipient’s name and past engagement stats can also enhance effectiveness.
WhatsApp can be a highly effective tool for real-time communication and community building among employees. Create dedicated WhatsApp groups or broadcast lists to facilitate quick updates and encourage active participation in the advocacy program.
Example: Set up a WhatsApp group titled “Advocates Connect” where employees can receive instant notifications about new content, upcoming events, and program milestones. Share tips on how to create engaging posts and encourage employees to share their successes and challenges. Regularly post interactive content like polls or Q&A sessions to maintain engagement and foster a sense of community.
Push Notifications
Push notifications are a powerful tool to deliver timely updates directly to employees’ devices. Use this method to remind employees about key actions or events related to the advocacy program.
Example: Implement a push notification strategy that alerts employees about new content available for sharing, upcoming training sessions, or monthly advocacy challenges. For instance, a notification saying, “New Blog Post: How to Share Company News Like a Pro – Check It Out Now!” can prompt immediate action. Ensure notifications are concise and provide direct links to the relevant resources or actions needed.
By integrating these communication methods into your employee advocacy program, you can maximize engagement, maintain enthusiasm, and ensure that employees are well-informed and motivated to act as brand ambassadors.
Monitoring and Measuring Success
Tracking the success of your employee advocacy program is crucial for understanding its impact and making data-driven improvements.
Key metrics to monitor include the number of active participants, activation rate, the volume and reach of shared content, engagement rates (likes, shares, comments), and website traffic or leads generated from employee-shared content.
Review these metrics regularly to identify trends, measure progress towards your goals, and gather insights for optimizing the program. Sharing these results with employees can also reinforce the value of their contributions and maintain momentum.
Conclusion
Employee advocacy is a powerful tool that can enhance your marketing strategy when implemented thoughtfully.
By setting clear goals, providing the right tools and training, and addressing common challenges, you can create a successful program that benefits your brand and your employees.