Top 5 Employee Advocacy Best Practices to Follow

With the advent of social media and internet technology, companies can spread their message to global audiences that were previously unreachable. In this digital age, failing to take advantage of employee advocacy initiatives may give rival organizations a competitive edge. Publicly viewable content from current staff members acts as social proof, drawing attention and interest to brands and businesses. Take advantage of employee advocacy starting with these five employee advocacy best practices.

The Importance of Employee Advocacy

Using social media for advocacy can open your company up to an expanded network of people that may otherwise be impossible. Employee advocacy encourages a company’s workforce to become brand ambassadors that promote the organization’s culture, values, products, services, and opportunities through their social networks. The benefits of employee advocacy can positively influence your business in a range of ways, from strengthening your marketing department and sales team to enhancing your overall brand reputation.

Employee Advocacy Best Practices You Should Incorporate

Having an effective employee advocacy strategy is the best way to get C-suite executives to buy into the concept. To start, it helps to have an idea of how employee advocacy works. 

Next, define your objectives, which can range from driving sales to increasing brand awareness. Strategies can vary depending on the desired result, but there are several best practices your employee advocacy program can benefit from.

Including these five employee advocacy best practices can help enhance your company’s online presence, build trust with your audience, and promote your company's culture and values. 

1. Encourage Genuine Engagement

Social media platforms can be excellent places for your employees to share positive experiences about your company. Keep in mind, though, that inauthentic interactions may do more harm than good. To benefit from employee advocacy efforts online, employees need to become genuinely engaged in the program and create content that people relate to. 

Genuine engagement stems from an employee advocate’s actual experiences and communication style. 

Encouraging your employees to share personal experiences can foster real emotions from the audience. Likewise, content shouldn’t follow a strict script or framework as frequent social media users will quickly deduce that it came straight from your HR department. Natural interactions rooted in authenticity will create more engaging company content. 

2. Equip Employees With the Right Tools

You can further enhance employee advocacy programs with the right employee advocacy tools. You can provide your teams with access to specialized software designed to streamline and spread genuine, employee-generated content. 

Depending on the employee advocacy tool you pick, your software can help staff reference advocate example content and quickly generate it, track engagement, and learn from analytic insights.

To make employee-generated content more effective, you can provide pre-approved content and branding guidelines to your staff. Giving employees access to brand-aligned content supplies them with advocacy examples and helps them easily create social media posts, images, videos, and blogs. 

Branding guidelines can also provide insight into your organization’s standards, such as the preferred tone of voice, color scheme, and brand story. 

3. Ensure Content Is Shareable and Relevant

The best social media content is content that hits home with the intended audience. 

To create relevant content, employees need to understand your target audience and tailor the content toward challenges or needs that they may be experiencing. If the content is easy to understand and triggers emotive responses, those viewing it are more likely to pass it on. 

When your employees share content, whether it be a funny meme or a shocking news story, they do so so that others will view it as a reflection of themselves. Creating relevant content that resonates will lead to more shares and more exposure for your company. 

4. Promote Personal Branding Alongside Company Brand

When an employee engages in social media advocacy, it reflects positively on both parties. Employees who support their organizations through their personal networks enhance their professional image and reputation as well as the company’s. 

By using social media networks to highlight professional achievements and development within your organization, employees can simultaneously showcase their skill sets and vouch for your company. 

This mixture of personal branding and organizational promotion can lead to potential career development opportunities for employees in the future — which is quite an incentive.

5. Track Engagement and Reach

Effective employee advocacy calls on team members to track engagement and reach while looking for opportunities to improve. Your employees and social media managers can use the insights gained from analytics to improve future employee advocacy initiatives. 

Monitor key metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and mentions to determine how engaging your employee advocacy program is. Reach metrics, which indicate how many people have seen the content, will also help your team understand the campaign's success.

Turn Your Employees Into Social Influencers Today

The internet offers attractive opportunities for organizations to promote their company culture and values through employee social media accounts. Following these best practices for employee advocacy is an excellent way to maximize your company's reach and engagement. 

At SocialHP, our team of social media experts helps companies harness the power of social media to accelerate business growth and build genuine relationships. 

For more information and tips on optimizing your employee advocacy program, schedule a 30-minute introduction with us to see how we can help you fulfill your social media needs.