Are you running a social media campaign and wish to convert your employees into advocates? If yes, you need to find out how to do it and its benefits.
So, we will talk about what employee advocacy is and the benefits it offers. Moreover, you can read about how to start such a campaign and its types. We will also talk about creating a media kit and some tips for the purpose.
You can also read about measuring results and things to avoid.
What is Employee Advocacy and Benefits Your Company Gets
Employee advocacy for social media is that your employees start promoting your brand online. You can try this method if you are a company looking to get more exposure. It is a great way to get promotions and improve your exposure.
Some benefits you get from doing this can be very useful and effective. For instance, you can have better metrics for your social media campaigns with it. At the same time, you get better authenticity for your brand. What else? Well, people will talk about your brand online this way.
You can get more trust and reach new audiences this way. It also improves your brand awareness and helps companies that are not social much. Amplification of messages matters a lot for any brand, and such campaigns work towards that.
Such campaigns would also help you create amazing social platforms that help get thought leadership. At the same time, such content is easy to use and helps networking. These benefits can be super helpful to improve your marketing and get results for your efforts.
How to Start An Advocacy Program?
Now that we know employee advocacy campaign benefits, you can be sure if you wish to use it. You can try using departmental heads for the purpose and create a positive voice for you. Starting such a campaign can be a bit difficult, but you can find some ways that work super well.
For instance, you can create an enthusiastic group about such efforts. You can try offering them incentives once your group is ready to work for the purpose. Try using both monetary and recognition incentives for your efforts.
Try to use certain guidelines for content production from your employees. At the same time, you should encourage authenticity. The stats say that employees’ personalized content would get 64 percent more engagement.
This content should be edited well to get the real boost and beauty. Editing is one of the main things to get if you want the real exposure you need.
Types of Employee Advocacy You Should Know
Now that you know how to start employee advocacy campaigns, you should also know the types of such campaigns. Offering incentives like declaring someone employee of the month can improve participation.
It would help your campaign get the real boost it needs for marketing. At the same time, you can reward participants within your company. Some companies also send merchandise for such efforts.
Create Amazing Content and Brand
Creating amazing content is super important for any such effort. So, create something that resonates with the audience and perfectly matches the needs of a social campaign.
Some Clever Tactics
You should be looking to use some tactics that are clever and work for the purpose. Start with finding out the ones that are already promoting your content online. They are the best candidates for such campaigns.
Use their efforts to improve your chances of getting the work done. Just tell them which platform they should work with and how they should promote. Such an effort can also encourage others to be a part of this social media effort.
You can try using this effort to ensure you hit all of your goals with perfection. Other incentives also exist, like commenting on your employee’s posts to encourage participation. You can offer to create content that seconds your employee’s social media content.
Try creating content that talks about their achievements and offers them digital gift cards. You can also try using shoutouts for all the creators that post the content. Donations can be a great way to improve your employee’s satisfaction with the content creation they do for social advocacy as employees.
You can offer them donations for the causes they believe in and work for. Linkedin endorsements and recommendations are perfect for employees who work for your social media success. The experts also believe that you should be looking to try using incentives for people who plan all this.
You can try offering incentives for the marketing head or other department heads that work for such efforts. It will be just like boosting leaders to get more positive results. At the same time, you can encourage friendly competition among the employees for better social campaigns.
Also, make sure that your content appeals to all departments when looking to encourage them. Another way will be to use email notifications for better advocacy content. Their email notifications can help them monitor the results you and they are getting for social advocacy.
At the same time, you can offer creators to be aware of the engagement they get. They will be happier to find out that they are helping the company get to its goals. It would also help them be more active as they know what results in they are getting for the company.
Talk about the Benefits
Another way to get more results is to offer information about the company’s benefits. One of these ways will be to try educating them to improve. Make sure that you make them comfortable in the sharing they do for your social advocacy.
Let them have their own perspective on things; just ensure the perspective goes with your brand voice. It would really help you perfect your efforts in social media marketing and advocacy.
Try using meetings if you wish to motivate them for the purpose. Let them be comfortable about what they are looking to share for their part. You can offer them the flexibility to post anything that goes with the brand voice.
Just ensure that you give them some guidelines that they should stick to. Let them know what they can get out of it when they contribute by taking time out for your company.
Offer Training, Use Individuality and Make it Easy
Offering them training can be super beneficial for any creator to discover how they can be more useful. At the same time, it would let them know why contributing is important. Training can help them find perfect reasons to share content.
Such training must have the primary ways to use social platforms for the purpose. So, ensure that you keep offering them the information that would motivate them to work well for what you need. The experts also believe in providing employees with collaboration tools for their social advocacy.
Such tools would help them find the best ideas they can use. At the same time, you can appoint someone to create ideas that can be shared with your employees. They will feel more motivated to share and produce content with less effort required.
Involve Them
Involving them in the whole process can really boost their content production. So, you should ensure that you keep on telling them about the campaign and motivate them in every possible way. Try using tweets and Facebook posts and texting them on their phones for the purpose.
It really helps them boost their motivation when you keep them involved. At the same time, you can reshare their content and tag them on all social channels they use. Ensure that you also try using guest content curators that are out of the marketing team for social advocacy.
Such anticipation would help you get creators from other departments. This would create amazing enthusiasm that stays for a long and works for your creation. Ensure that you reward them and thank them for their amazing work in your advocacy.
Just find every way you can use to make them involved in your efforts. Another thing to do is to report their success to them and their peers. This would help them feel special and improve their efforts perfectly.
Use templates to let them have ideas about the efforts they can do on social platforms. Also, ensure they get pre-written or ready-made templates for the content they can share as advocates. Try to offer them content pieces like images and videos for the efforts they are looking to offer.
Create Social Media Kit
Try using social media kits to promote and monitor your employees’ content creation efforts as your social advocates. You can try using a package that is tailored for the needs and tells the stats you should use. Try using brand stories and find out about your audience’s demographics.
You can offer your employees to find out about the prior collaborations of your brand. Ensure you set a color theme and let them use tools like Canva to design and create. Offer them templates to create their employee advocacy content.
At the same time, you should ensure that you create an amazing copy that works well.
Measure Results for Your Campaigns
Measuring your results for your campaigns is a thing that your advocacy would really benefit from. You can find out which employees are getting the best responses. Find out which employees are participating, follower growth, and messaging reach and engagement.
You should also measure:
- What is your website referral traffic from social platforms?
- You should also find out the correlated leads that matter.
- Such work can help you get a stronger culture for your marketing. Also, ensure that you have a great culture for your employees to perfect your results.
- Find out which employees have active participation.
- Also, ensure that your employees are posting regularly or not.
- Find out the organic engagements and reach their content.
Statistics tell that such organic reach would get to 459 connections on Linkedin. You can reach 455 friends on Facebook and 772 followers on Twitter. Try to find out the number of accounts created, active, and sent out.
Such efforts can surely help you get more followers and you can also try using services for the purpose. Just visit the websites that sell followers and you can get real Instagram followers for your marketing. Make sure that you buy such services to improve your Instagram and other platforms’ results.
Also, ensure that you reward the top contributors and find potential hire referrals. Let your employees know about their impact.
Things to Avoid
Avoid these things when getting advocacy:
- Make sure that your employees sound like humans and not just like robots responding. They should be adding personality to their content.
- You should never force them to post on their personal socials if they don’t want to.
Some Ideas for Inspiration
We have some ideas that would work perfectly well for content:
- You can try using job interview posts in a super-funny way.
- Offer content around what your employees are doing in their professional lives.
- You can offer before and after photos for service-based brands, like saloons.
- Try showing their training and certifications on your company pages and accounts.
- Also, you can use their behind-the-scenes and welcome interns.
You can try using all these methods to improve your marketing efforts and create an amazing following on social platforms.
Why encouraging employees to post on social media is important?
You can get more followers on social channels when you encourage your employees to share their content. It creates a sense of fun and indicates a great environment for potential hires. This method would also improve marketing and help improve social media stature.
Why is it difficult to get posts from employees on social media without training for advocacy?
Training helps employees understand why it is important that they should post. It would also help them find out how they can post content on different social media channels.
How can you create a good marketing effort with employee awareness for advocacy?
Your potential clients would love to see your employees in action. Such effort would help you create a sense of personalized identity for your employees and you. You can also get more followers that show how useful your content is for your audience with an improved sense of thought leadership.
Final Thoughts
Getting your employees to become advocates can help your marketing efforts on social platforms. So, we discussed why you should involve them, motivate them, reward and help them to do that for you. You can also read the benefits you get with such efforts.
Getting more advocates for your business and getting content from them can help you get better content reach. Also, you can read how templates, great copy, encouragement, engagement, and talking about their results can help them.
Moreover, you should use social media kits, some ideas that we shared, and some things you should avoid. Ensure that you do not force them to post from their accounts and give them incentives like donations for their causes. Also, make sure that you give them incentives in the form of gifts, endorsements, and recommendations on Linkedin.
