What is Employee Advocacy? Benefits and Best Practices

With the internet and social media, companies have multiple ways to spread awareness of their brand. One of the most influential ways to do this is through employee advocacy. Employee advocacy is when employees take to social media to promote their employer. This allows businesses to expand their reach for free through employee networks and social media channels.

Why Is Employee Advocacy Important? Key Benefits

Businesses that realize the importance of employee advocacy receive several key benefits. Some of the most important advantages include:

• Enhancing Brand Awareness: Employee advocacy will increase your company's visibility and reach potential customers that might not have reached through traditional marketing campaigns.
• Boosting Employee Engagement: Employees who spread positive messages about their employer may feel more connected to the company and its business goals.
• Improving Recruitment Efforts: Potential candidates may be more inclined to join your business when current employees praise and recommend their employer.
• Reducing Marketing Costs: Employee advocacy programs can work without expense, effectively cutting costs on paid ads and other marketing campaigns.
• Fostering a Positive Company Culture: When you ask your employees to share their experiences online, it builds a strong culture of trust and transparency.
• Building Customer Loyalty: Employee advocacy builds an authentic relationship with potential customers and encourages long-term customer loyalty.
• Shortening Sales Cycles: Individuals who view the employee advocates as trusted voices will be more likely to convert into leads and customers upon reading the positive reviews.

There are several significant advantages that come with employee advocacy. Among the most important is the trust and transparency it creates with company employees and potential customers who read positive reviews.

What Is an Employee Advocacy Program and How Do You Implement It?

Successful employee advocacy programs encourage current and former employees to spread positive content about your company. The difference between influencer marketing and employee advocacy is that companies use their employee circles to promote their brand rather than an influencer's network. These include promoting company events, sharing content on social media, and leaving positive company reviews online. While the programs sound simple to implement, there are steps you should take to increase the program's chances of success:

• Defining Clear Goals: Every program should have a way to determine if the efforts are successful or if changes are needed. You can base your objectives on several outcomes, such as the number of posts created and the number of potential customers or candidates interested.
• Choosing Effective Platforms: The platforms you use for your employee advocacy program should reflect what your employees already use. Social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook are good starting points.
• Training Employees for Success: Holding meetings and brief training sessions can assist employees who aren't sure how to use their voice to be brand advocates. It's also essential to ensure employee-shared content follows company values and guidelines.
• Encouraging Content Creation: Encouraging employees to personalize their messages leads to more authentic and effective advocacy. It's also a good idea to provide prompts that can jump-start employee creativity, like examples of personal stories or industry insights.
• Rewarding Employee Contributions: Rewarding your employees' efforts can lead to more employee advocacy in the future. Incentives like bonuses, awards, and recognition can help boost your program.

Measuring the Success of Employee Advocacy

The success of your employee advocacy journey will depend on which metrics you measure. They will indicate where you're meeting your advocacy objectives and where you need to make adjustments.

Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

To figure out how well your employee advocacy program is performing, you'll need to come up with and monitor relevant KPIs. Some KPIs you may want to consider include:

• Employee participation rate: The number of advocates divided by the total number of employees multiplied by 100.
• Engagement: The number of Likes, Comments, Shares, and Follows across all employee advocacy platforms.
• Leads: The number of leads generated from links shared by employees.
• Website traffic: The amount of traffic to your company's website tracked by web analytics tools.

Analyzing Engagement Metrics

With employee advocacy statistics and data, you can perform analytics and adjust as needed. Gather the data and enter it into a spreadsheet or an analytics tool. Over time, you'll be able to see trends that will indicate the success of your program. Adjust the messaging tone, employee enthusiasm, and outreach as needed.

Navigating Common Challenges

Companies that implement employee advocacy programs often must overcome challenges to succeed. Some common challenges are:

• Overcoming Resistance From Employees: Not all employees may be keen on using their personal networks for work. Emphasizing incentives can help decrease employee resistance. 
• Addressing Compliance Concerns: If employees share information like private customer data that violates regulations, it can lead to compliance issues and reputation damage. Make sure employees are aware of the rules and laws before they post publicly.
• Managing Brand Consistency: Employees who don't fully understand the brand voice and organizational goals might post messages that aren't consistent with the brand. Create and distribute the messaging guidelines so employees know the best path for advocacy.

Ways To Encourage Employee Advocacy and Best Practices

Maintaining a high standard for employee advocacy requires your company to encourage employees to abide by best practices. Some of the things to emphasize in your employee advocacy program include:

• Authenticity: Authentic advocacy is critical to building trust. Messaging that comes across as forced or fake can drive away potential customers.
• Human Connection: Encouraging employees to promote how the company values community, collaboration, and diversity to create stronger bonds with your audience.
• Social Selling: Social selling involves building relationships and closing sales through social media platforms. Urge employees to sign up for platforms like LinkedIn and begin to network to increase the scope of your employee advocacy program.
• Career Development and Networking: Promote your employee advocacy program for career development and improving networking opportunities. Employees who see a mutual benefit in participating in employee advocacy are more likely to take it seriously.

Building an employee advocacy program requires clearly defined objectives. Once employers and employees know these goals, they can begin creating and sharing content that puts the company in a positive light. Encouraging employees to participate with incentives will increase the program's chance of success.

Boost Your Employee Advocacy Efforts With SocialHP

Employee advocacy programs are highly beneficial to companies in all industries. However, getting started can be a challenge. For a head start to a successful program, contact us at SocialHP. 

At Social HP, we help design and enhance employee advocacy programs, allowing companies to expand their reach and generate more leads. Book a demo with us today and see how we can help your company grow.

Employee Advocacy Program FAQs

What is an example of employee advocacy?

One example of employee advocacy is an employee posting information about how their company creates new products or services to solve societal problems.

What is the role of HR employee advocacy?

HR departments play a significant role in developing and encouraging employee advocacy programs. HR representatives must also train and inform employees about how to create and share content that meets regulatory and corporate guidelines.