Your employees can become an integral part of your marketing campaign through employee engagement programs. Giving them the opportunity to share your content and engage with your audience can be beneficial both for the employees and the company.
Benefits of employee advocacy:
- Amplified reach
- Increased credibility
- Shorter sales cycles
- Employee engagement
- Relationship building
Companies with engaged employees are 202% more efficient than those without.
And with the power of your engaged workforce, your company can increase your social reach by a whopping 561% and eventually increases your company’s bottom line.
It’s a straightforward win-win.
Choosing the right employee advocacy program and activities can be a tough choice. There are numerous platforms that you could use and each of them has their own benefits. Let’s take a look at 4 such tools and how they can help you:
DrumUp
DrumUp’s employee advocacy platform is one of the simplest to use and this makes it easy to activate your employees as social advocates. DrumUp also has a social media management app that can be integrated to make the best of the content you share. Some of the main features of the platform are:
- Keyword Based Content Curation – DrumUp provides fresh content on a daily basis. The content is based on your keywords and is taken from high-ranking and reliable sources. It’s algorithms make sure you get the most relevant content recommendations. The ones you select can easily be added to a common stream that you can invite your employees to access. Employees can then share this content on their social media channels via the same platform and become recognized for providing good information. This opens the door for employee engagement and builds trust towards your company.
- Multiple Social Media Account Management – DrumUp lets you add multiple social media accounts to your dashboard. Employees can use this to broadcast content and company messages to a bigger audience. The more they share, the more likely they are to start engaging with other users and build connections. Thus, employees become powerful in their own right and even better brand ambassadors for the company.
- Advanced Scheduling – One of the platform’s best features is the scheduling options it provides. Employees can choose to auto-post content from the company’s feed, post curated content with a single click or completely customize the scheduling. With auto-posting, they just need to add feeds and the social accounts they prefer, everything else happens automatically. One-click scheduling lets you add comments and hashtags to content that you’re sharing. The platform also gives employees the option to create and share custom content.
- Content Library – Employees can save content for later posting by adding it to their content library. They can schedule this content to go out whenever they want and reuse it later when they need to. Content can be added to the content library by choosing the option while creating a custom post or by clicking on the star option while scheduling recommended or queued posts.
- Gamification – DrumUp lets you add a little fun to the employee advocacy program by making it a competition. Employees get points every time they share content. These points are tracked on a leader board that is fully transparent. The top performers can be given incentives as you see fit on a monthly basis or however you like. A little friendly competition can boost morale and increase participation.
Dynamic Signal
Dynamic Signal is an employee advocacy program that focuses on employee engagement. Their platform is called VoiceStorm and is designed to give employees the best experience. It gives employees safe content to share on social media and is suitable for both beginners and pros.
- Personalized experience – VoiceStorm provides information to employees based on multiple factors including their role, location, interest and seniority. Department heads can monitor the content that their employees receive and limit content from certain sources. They can choose to have employees receive only internal messages, third party content, videos, PDFs and more. Employees can follow their company on various channels to stay up to date on the latest news.
- Real-time notifications – VoiceStorm makes you are connected with your employees by allowing you to send messages to all or only certain employees. You can send messages through notifications, email and text messages allowing everyone to stay internally connected and up-to-date. Once you send the messages, you can track whom it was delivered to and who read it. Socially active employees can use this to communicate changes in strategies and plans immediately or correct errors.
- Analysis – Employers can keep track of everything their employees are sharing and see stats related to the number of employees that are participating, the number of views the content is generating, and your employees’ interactions with the audience. You can also add automated disclosures and blacklist certain words to prevent your employees from sharing bad content. This makes it easier for employees to share as they don’t have to worry about stepping out of line by mistake.
- Gamification – Like DrumUp, Dynamic Signal provides a gamified platform where employees get points for sharing content. You can take it a step further and have multiple leaderboards for different aspects like sharing, views, and employee engagement. If you feel like you’re employees are slowing down, the platform produces automated reminders, reports, and digests to improve employee participation. Employees can also provide feedback through surveys, quizzes, and other activities.
- Integration – VoiceStorm can be integrated into multiple social media channels, enterprise platforms and has Single Sign-On support. It is available in more than 15 languages and makes employee advocacy an easier process.
LinkedIn Elevate
LinkedIn is the world’s most preferred network for professionals. They introduced their employee advocacy platform, named LinkedIn Elevate, in 2015 and it has since taken off. The platform is perfect for connecting with other professionals and sharing. It has 3 main features:
- Content From LinkedIn – The tool has a great algorithm that recommends content from both LinkedIn Pulse and Newsle. Employees will see content that is relevant to their interests and since LinkedIn is very reputable source, the content will carry value. Employees also get content recommendations based on their roles and can target audiences with specific content. This also helps them improve employee engagement.
- Sharing – Elevate makes employee sharing easy through their various desktop apps along with their Android and iOs apps. The app is help employees reach as many people as possible by posting when most of their audience is active. This is common amongst most social media apps but with a powerful site like LinkedIn, sharing at the right time can have huge benefits.
- Employee Adoption – With LinkedIn Elevate you can track employee adoption wit ease. The platform is aimed at building a habit of sharing among employees and motivates them through built-in promotions. It also provides social proof through metrics like profile views so they are ready to share more. LinkedIn Insights can help you recognize your most social employees and regions which allows you to plan and change a strategy a you see fit.
- Full Funnel Impact – Unlike other platforms, Elevate goes beyond the simple metrics such as who shared what and whom you’re engaging with. Employees can track the number of likes, comments, profile views, and connections. For Employers, it provides them with all of the above stats as well as who’s following the company page and job views. Employers can also track the impact their employees’ sharing has on the bottom line like leads, hires and sales.
- Social Enterprise – Elevate is focused on making your business grow. To that effect, they offer 1 month of free service to help you set up the platform and plan out your employee advocacy program. To help set you on the right path, you get coaching from experienced professionals, regular performance reports and access to LinkedIn Insights.
Getting It Right
Having socially active employees supports your human resources department and is great for your company but you need to make sure your employees understand what they’re doing and why. Here are a few tips to help you out:
- Start your employee advocacy program in stages – start with small groups, make sure they are well-versed with the program and then expand. Do not try to rush in and involve as many people as possible – it can be a nightmare for both you and your employee.
- For your employees to be good representatives of your company, they need to believe in it and share its core values. A good work culture and environment are key to a successful employee advocacy program. The more genuine they are while promoting the company, the more likely they are to be engaged and gain leads.
- Giving your employees freedom is also necessary. Employees need to know that you trust them so while you may keep close tabs on what they share, do not restrict them too much. Have a set of general rules in place and make sure your employees understand them, the rest can be as per the employee wishes.
- Your employees need to understand and maintain the brand image throughout the program. Employers have to take careful measures to ensure that everyone is in tune with the brand image and acts accordingly. Brand image affects how employees share and communicate with each other – If all your employees engage as per their own perception, consumers are likely to get confused.
- Make sure to help your employees as much as possible. Help them understand the process and how marketing on each social media platform works. This will give them a better idea of the what to share. The same goes for engagement, show them how to find good leads, influencers and the basics of employee engagement.
- Set realistic goals for your program. Not just the end goal but smaller goals that you and your employees can achieve along the way. The common goals are good for motivation and team morale. They also help you analyze your strategy and make changes when it isn’t working.
- Provide incentives for well-performing employees. With tools like DrumUp and Dynamic Signal, you can reward the toppers of the leaderboard with small gifts on a weekly or monthly basis. This will motivate them to perform better and make them more consistent.
- As the program develops, you can expand your employees’ horizon and give them the chance to create their own content. This is beneficial to the company and employees can provide valuable- information and fresh perspectives on current topics. It also gives employees the opportunity to develop their own skills.
- Set up a social media advocacy panel that can help out employees who have doubts/concerns even after the training. This will motivate the employees and help them get additional information on any particular platform or resource. This panel can consist of experienced professionals who understand all the platforms and tools.
- For every employee advocacy program, there are 2 metrics that everyone must track – reach and influence. These results can be shared with team leaders and employees to strategize their sharing and engagement. This will help get better results. There are tools that allow you to track analytics that are more in-depth – these can be used as you please.
- Make sure that everyone in the organization is using the same employee advocacy platform to avoid confusion. A uniform platform is easier to implement and track. It also keeps everyone on the same page and the program gets massive exposure.
Organizations with socially empowered employees have a better bottom line than those who don’t. A recent study has shown that users are more likely to buy services/products recommended by someone they know rather than official brand pages. This is the main advantage of employee advocacy and why it works so well. Your employees reflect on the organization’s culture and common goals, you have to work with them to gain their perspective and make them understand yours. Common goals and perceptions are the core of any successful company.