Companies and not-for-profits often neglect one of their most powerful PR and marketing tools: their own employees.
In employee advocacy, businesses encourage employees to use their personal social networks to share the organization’s mission and messages. Successful employee advocacy requires organizations to inform, educate and engage the workforce.
Anyone with a Facebook or Twitter account can attest to the power of networking and how rapidly posts on social media can propagate and even go viral.
The average U.S. internet user has 200 Facebook friends and 61 Twitter followers, meaning an employee advocacy message could spread exponentially, reports the Pew Research Center. Moreover, at a time of public distrust of big organizations, the media and government, employees are more than twice as trusted as company executives or consumer activists, states the Edelman Trust Barometer.
Roughly half of all employees already post messages on social media about their employers, according to the Weber Shandwick white paper Employees Rising: Seizing the Opportunity in Employee Activism. Well over half (56%) of employees surveyed have either defended their employer to family and friends in person or on a website, blog or in a newspaper. Yet fewer than 30% employees say their company communicates with them well. Even companies that send plenty of messages to employees may not truly “keep them in the loop.”
Elements of Successful Employee Advocacy
A culture of trust, clear policies, a technology platform for sharing content, patient coaching and options for employees are the bedrocks of successful employee advocacy, experts agree.
“Social media advocacy doesn’t work at bayonet point. You need to allow your employees to choose the role that fits their skills and interests,” writes Jay Baer, president of Convince & Convert.
ATT&T trained thousands of employees to be social media brand advocates with a two-minute video that succinctly explains its Social Circle. The video tells employees how link their social media accounts to the platform and share company announcements, what to share, what not to post, how to respond to negative posts, and where to go to ask questions and find company resources.
According to Social Media Examiner, Zapposhe, an online shoe, clothing and accessories retailer, uses the Twitter account @eyezapp to show what it’s like to work at the company and uses @InsideZappos to host the #InsideZappos tweetchat to share an inside view of the company. Employees are encouraged to tweet about what they’re doing at work and to share resources that customers might find useful. A company leaderboard shows which employees are on Twitter and how many followers they have.
Weber Shandwick says organizations encourage employees to be advocates if they:
- Provide readily accessible tools for employees to use in social media
- Provide messages about the organization that employees can use in social media
- Provide easy-to-understand guidelines (a social media policy) to employees for using social media
- Ask employees to stay alert to social media postings about the employer
- Provide training for how to use social media properly
- Provide access to social media at work
- Provide updates about changes in social media so that employees can stay current on the latest tools and uses.
- Provide employees with one or more social media accounts to use.
Measuring Employee Advocacy
Proper monitoring and measurement is another hallmark of effective employee advocacy.
Devise your measurement before you start. Make sure your measurement plan and the metrics you select align with the organization’s primary business goals.
“Like anything else in communications, at some point you need to know whether this is working,” Baer says. Possible metrics include: share of voice, social connections for company accounts, reach, traffic, lead generation and sales. Not-for-profits may wish to track donations or number of new clients that result from social media activities. Summarize results in a format similar to a social media campaign report, but with an additional focus on employee engagement, recommends Hootsuite. Track the percentage of team members who participate and their level of social media expertise. This data will help you adjust how you promote the effort and encourage employees.
Bottom Line: A company’s own employees can often promote the organization better than its executives or corporate releases. Employees inspire greater trust and many are active on social media. A thoughtful, well-organized approach that truly involves employees can help you develop an effective employee advocacy program and measure its results.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
