Employee advocacy programs are like untapped marketing gold that can help build brand awareness and even drive revenue to your company. To ramp one up successfully, consider using one of the many tools that can put your employees to work for your brand, and measure the success of their efforts.
First, though, are you familiar with employee advocacy programs? Employee advocacy programs help humanize business by putting employees front and center to act as ambassadors for the solutions you offer, as well as to highlight—and boast about—your company’s culture.
And why should you consider using an employee advocacy program? Because it makes sense: It can significantly set your company apart from its competitors. According to LinkedIn research, only 3 percent of employees share content about their businesses, but those shares are responsible for driving a 30 percent increase in the total engagement a company sees!
Giving your employees the green light and the resources to speak on behalf of your brand can boost engagement and drive exposure about the company’s offerings. If your employees are already posting on social media or sharing thoughts for an employer brand video, that’s a great start. But you can really elevate your employee advocacy program by using the right technology.
Give Your Program a Tech Boost
Investing in employee advocacy software can have a positive effect on your overall marketing efforts. No matter which tool you choose, you should look for the following key features:
- The ability to create your own content feeds so you can curate articles, company news and announcements, and other valuable industry insights, all in one place
- Connectivity to the major social media platforms to make it straightforward and seamless for your employees to share content in just a couple of clicks
- Integration with the other technology platforms your team is already using (i.e., Salesforce, Yammer)
- A mobile-friendly site/app so that your staff can post and share on the go
- A strong analytics component so you can track and measure results
Here are a few popular employee advocacy platforms designed to help you manage, monitor, and measure the brand messaging that your employees are sharing with the world:
- Description: “A social selling and employee advocacy platform.”
- Cool feature: Marketing teams can provide pre-approved content and messaging, and detailed reports show which employees and what content items are producing results.
- Description: “A content aggregator that boosts social media visibility, lead generation, and recruitment, while at the same time acting as a one-stop information hub.”
- Cool feature: A gamification element gives users points for sharing and content creation, and allows staffers to compete in challenges.
- Description: “An employee enablement platform designed to help your employees become powerful brand ambassadors.”
- Cool feature: Easily approve any content to add to the feed while browsing the internet, even from mobile devices.
- Description: “An employee advocacy solution that makes it safe and easy for your workforce to share approved social content with their friends and followers.”
- Cool feature: Promote important campaigns by sending emails to staff asking them to share specific posts.
- Description: “Bridges the gaps in workforce communications systems to deliver a modern work experience and engage your employee advocates.”
- Cool feature: They have a cool employee advocacy ROI calculator to help you determine the earned media value of the program.
As I’ve said before, the power of employee advocates is unlimited, and it dovetails beautifully into the new perception of work as an investment not only in hours but in engagement. And, analytics really crystallize the power of this synergy between employer and employee. In other words, employee advocacy software can help you energize your staff to become your company’s biggest cheerleaders, as well as fine- tune the messaging and distribution by measuring the results.
Photo Credit: Pricenfees Flickr via Compfight cc
Meghan M. Biro is a globally recognized Talent Management and HR Tech brand strategist, analyst, digital catalyst, author and speaker. As founder and CEO of TalentCulture and Founder of #WorkTrends, she has worked with hundreds of companies, from early-stage ventures to global brands like Microsoft, IBM and Google, helping them recruit and empower stellar talent. Meghan has been a guest on numerous radio shows and online forums, and has been a featured speaker at global conferences. She is a regular contributor at Forbes, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur and several other media outlets. Meghan regularly serves on advisory boards for leading HR and technology brands. Meghan has been voted one of the Top 100 Social Media Power Influencers in 2015 by StatSocial and Forbes, Top 50 Most Valuable Social Media Influencers by General Sentiment, Top 100 on Twitter Business, Leadership, and Tech by Huffington Post, and Top 25 HR Trendsetters by HR Examiner.