Have you heard about employee advocacy programs but don’t know how to start or ways to convince your employees to come onboard? Don’t worry. In this blog post, we’ve compiled great employee advocacy examples and how to implement a successful employee advocacy program for your organization.  

Employee advocacy is a powerful strategy to promote brand awareness, improve sales, and build trust while engaging your employees. With that, 90% of businesses have plans to begin an employee advocacy program or have already implemented strategies to motivate employees to become brand ambassadors.

Before we go into the details of implementing a successful employee advocacy program, check out our…….

What is Employee Advocacy, and Why Is It Important?

Simply put, employee advocacy is a way employers engage their employees in promoting the company. It is a type of brand ambassadorship where the employees promote the organization’s products, services, and culture.

Recent research discovered that employee advocacy benefits organizations in three major ways:

• It positively affects “human capital,” i.e., your team. It helps enhance staff recruitment, engagement, and retention.
• It also has a positive effect on sales and growth of the company due to improved brand awareness and positive perceptions.
• It helps improve issues management and brand reputation.

With the inevitable benefits of employee advocacy, 80% of employers still haven’t implemented a brand advocacy program. 

This may be because employers are unsure how to create and manage successful employee advocacy programs, incapability to encourage employees to join, or lack of leadership support and buy-in.

The use of existing study that proves the efficiency and ROI of employee advocacy in the workplace can help get the buy-in.

And here are some powerful statistics you can begin with:

• In line with LinkedIn research, businesses whose employees share their company’s content see an increase in the views their job postings get.
• In line with Entrepreneur, social media content posted by employees receive 8 times more engagement than content posted directly from the brand’s social platform and is shared 25 times more often.
• Another research claimed 84% of customers trust recommendations from people they are familiar with more than any other way of advertising. 

Designing and managing a successful employee advocacy program is not an easy task. But, there are great employee advocacy examples available that can assist you with ideas on engaging your employees in advocacy campaigns.

Let’s have a look at them.

Read also: What is advocacy marketing and how to get it right

3 Inspiring Employee Advocacy Examples

Companies that use their employees in word-of-mouth marketing are getting tremendous results. This is especially true for large enterprise companies with many employees. Most times, employees have more followers and connections than corporate organizations.

According to Edelman Trust Barometer, a brand message spreads 561% further when shared by employees than when a brand’s official account posts them.

After all, their content on social media is much more genuine and, therefore, easily relatable. Thus, it is not shocking that employee-generated content has become a big buzz in employee advocacy.

Employers are now encouraging their employees to create their content about the company and post it on social media.

So what are a few of the best employee advocacy examples practiced by some of the world’s leading companies?

KPMG

KPMG Sweden, in 2017 found an untapped opportunity to engage their employees to drive more brand awareness, improve marketing and sales ROI, and enable their employees to act as thought leaders in management consulting.

Not long after launching a new employee advocacy campaign, KPMG experienced incredible results in various business areas.

Why did we choose this employee advocacy example?

KPMG’s employee advocacy program is the perfect example of how employee advocacy can impact different business aspects. 

To be specific, after the launch of the advocacy program, the company managed to:

• Increase brand awareness – in less than a year, content posted by employees on social media has driven 10.90K reactions with 1.74K shares and 12.90K unique clicks.
• Create a pool of high-quality job candidates by enhancing the company’s employer brand
• Boost internal communication by regularly supporting employee discussions on the latest company news and industry trends.
• Improve the company’s brand and business growth by regularly motivating employees to post engaging and informative content.

By viewing the KPMG’s Facebook page, you will see how active their employees are in communicating the company’s content with their network.

Google 

Google is a giant company with more than 100,000 employees around the world, and they are doing a great job in encouraging employees to be brand ambassadors.

Among the most important of Google’s differentiation strategies is the procurement of the best talent out there. They are specifically successful in utilizing employees to acquire the best job candidates and building a solid employer brand.

Why did we choose this employee advocacy example?

Their employees are great at creating and posting their content, making it more genuine, credible, and attractive to potential job seekers.

Employee-generated content is posted by supporters and shared on Google’s @lifeatgoogle page – an Instagram account created solely for employees’ stories and work experiences.

Adobe

Adobe’s Social Shift employee advocacy campaign is among the most popular and inspiring employee advocacy examples. 

They realized employees’ activities on social media directly affect the company’s revenue and talent acquisition efforts. 

So they decided to create a formal ambassadorship program and train their employees worldwide about the advantages and best practices of employee advocacy.

Why did we choose this employee advocacy example?

It’s no longer a secret that Adobe is doing an excellent job in driving employee advocacy in lots of various ways, including:

• Motivating amazing employee engagement on different social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook using the hashtag #AdobeLife
• Engaging employees to create and share their content on the Adobe Life blog.
• Creating a unique brand ambassadorship program. 

The Corporate Reputation team, in September 2014, gathered 21 employees from 7 various locations to participate in Adobe’s brand ambassador program. These employees were selected based on already doing an excellent job posting socially and were asked to help tell the Adobe story.

Employee advocacy is a great method in improving your company image and recognition while assisting your employees in developing their thought leadership.

However, you can’t implement a successful employee advocacy program without a solid strategy. You need to design a structured plan for your program and ensure your employees are in support.

6 Essential Tips to Build An Employee Advocacy Program

Your employees may already be posting business-related content to their network, particularly if they’re excited about their work or showing off their industry expertise.

With an employee advocacy program, everything becomes official. This allows you to build guidelines, resources, and rewards for employees who share content about your brand. It directs how employees post brand content and makes things easier for them.

Here’s how to implement an employee advocacy program:

1. Create a positive workplace culture

For your employees to willingly become brand ambassadors, they need to love their jobs more than their paychecks.

Discovered in the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer was that 73% of employees expect prospective employers to give them the chance to help structure the future of society.

Truly, not all companies have a higher social goal – or maybe not an obvious one. To meet employee expectations for social impact, you could:

• Focus more on service
• Stress your brand’s reputation as an industry leader
• Identify your brand as an industry disruptor that encourages innovation
• Support your employees in times of need
• Give back to society (e.g., through charity work or environmental responsibility programs)

It is also essential to build a high-trust culture as trust is a key ingredient of employee workplace recommendations. Workplace culture is all about ensuring your employees love to come to work every day.

2. Set goals and KPIs for your advocacy program

Your employees may have started posting about work on their social media platforms. However, without an organized system and clearly defined goals, there is no way you can track results.

The clearer you define your goals, the simpler it will be for your employees to understand what’s helpful.

If one of your goals is to increase awareness, motivate employees to post about the brand. If you’re launching a new product or service, create shareable content employees can boast of.

An employee advocacy campaign should align with at least one of your brand’s primary business objectives. Once the objective is clear, you can decide which social media metrics you need to track. These may include website traffic or leads.

Once you’ve wrapped up your advocacy campaign, make a summary of your results in a report to view return on investment (ROI). You can also include information about general metrics like employee engagement and increase in reach.

Remember not to get so wrapped up in a particular advocacy campaign that you forget about daily employee posts with your branded hashtags.

3. Identify employee advocacy leaders

For large organizations, the C-suite frequently has the most visible online presence. (Not until you put an employee advocacy program in action).

However, these top leaders are often not the most logical drivers of an advocacy program. Rather, bring in people who are natural social media users, enthusiastic about the organization and the brand.

Train them to help build your employee advocacy program. Encourage them to define and communicate advocacy campaigns and goals or design proper incentives.

They will assist you in learning the type of tools and resources employees are very much likely to use and share.

After that, work with your advocacy leaders to establish potential beta testers. They can assist in guiding your strategy and give honest feedback.

You may notice an initial flurry of social shares when starting your employee advocacy program. However, all the enthusiasm might fizzle out without efficient internal leadership over time. Employee advocacy leaders help ensure advocacy is a continuous focus.

4. Create social media guidelines for employees

Employees need to know more than what the message is and how best to communicate it. The kind of language they should use, how often they need to post, and how they respond to comments.

An employee advocacy style guide and social media policy help put you on track. Guidelines will help protect your organization’s reputation and prevent legal issues and security risks.

Also, ask your employees for their input. Engaging your staff early on helps to encourage buy-in. Remember that each employee will have a varying comfort level with social media.

Begin by getting everyone updated on best social media practices and company guidelines and policies. Ensure the guidelines are easy to grasp and follow and add recommendations on what, where, and how to post.

All these should enable employee advocacy rather than restricting it.

5. Get employees onboard

After putting your goals and guidelines in place, it’s time to engage your employees. Make them aware of your advocacy program and tools.

It would be best to never force your employees to post brand content on their platforms. First, this is not a nice way to foster trust and secondly, forced social shares will lack enthusiasm and genuineness.

And this will unlikely spark excitement among your staff’s network. Another way to make employees excited about your company and, in turn, support advocacy is by recognizing their great work.

A notice in a monthly newsletter or “employee of the month” program can be effective. Also can spare time in a team’s meeting to appreciate employees. Another motivator is recognition or re-share on the main company’s social pages.

6. Create and share valuable resources for employees to post

Provide employees with all the tools and resources needed to spread the word about your company. Build a robust content library of pre-approved resources your employees can post with just a couple of taps or clicks.

Keep in mind that they’re much more likely to post something exciting or fun compared to a boring brand update.

If you want to announce a product, ensure your employees understand it and are happy about it – Design shareable resources such as graphics or videos for different social channels.

However, don’t limit their creativity. Motivate them to post what excites them personally about your company as much as it aligns with your social media guidelines.

Also, update the social content you give to employees regularly. This will help create a consistent social media posting habit. Provide a mix of excitement, shareable content, and industry trends.

The Do’s and Don’ts for Your Employee Advocacy Program

The Dos of Employee Advocacy Program:

• Have clear goals
• Identify the KPIs you want to track before you implement your employee advocacy program
• Ensure your everyone is included in the program
• Share the goals with your employees
• Organize training sessions for your staff
• Create content that is relevant to your employees and their followers
• Add company-related content and also third-party content to your program
• Ask for feedback from your employees
• Encourage your employees’ branding efforts
• Allow employees to create their content
• Post engaging content
• Use your employee advocacy program to publish company-updates
• Consistency is very important: share new content regularly
• Make your employee advocacy program exciting: employ gamification

The Don’ts of Employee Advocacy Program:

• Do not force your employees to post your content.
• Do not use your employee advocacy program to monitor your employees’ activities on social media. That is not what an employee advocacy program is created for!
• Do not forget to track the metrics regularly. That’s the only way to be aware that the program needs any adjustments.
• Don’t be heedless to your employees’ requests regarding the advocacy program.
• Do not launch your employee advocacy program without having a solid content marketing strategy. 
• Don’t forget to motivate team leaders to post-professional content on their social media platforms regularly.
• Don’t tell your employees to post the same content. Rather, motivate them to personalize their messages.
• Don’t assume an employee advocacy program is only meant for marketers!

If you’re planning to launch an employee advocacy program in your company and witness firsthand the power of advocacy campaigns in driving better business results, reach out to Talent Prospect today!