Elevating Employee Brand Advocacy: #LinkedInx2U

2U, Inc.’s vision is to become the world's most iconic higher education company. The word iconic can be defined as, "widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence." Having worked for 2U for a little over three years now, I've seen the company evolve immensely and make strong strides towards becoming iconic. April 25th, 2018 at 2U HQ was no exception.

Yesterday, 2U employees had the opportunity to support the company’s vision to become more iconic by participating in LinkedIn Day. The LinkedIn team was on site to host break out sessions on enhancing your personal brand, provide one-on-one consultations, and to take professional headshots. Talk about a great opportunity for employees. I think this is the beginning of a huge movement to empower employees to feel confident speaking about what they do every day.

Employee advocacy, in a nutshell, is when a company’s employees promote and amplify the content that the company produces, promotes, and shares with its networks. Now, with the rollout of  LinkedIn Elevate, 2U has a great opportunity not only to have content promoted and shared on it's channels but also within the network of employees who choose to advocate for the brand to reach even more people.

LinkedIn Elevate, however, isn't just for the promotion of the 2U brand but also the brands of each the employees as well. This is what is most exciting, empowering employees to promote ideas and stories that help them to become more iconic. Here's how:

Social Platform Versatility:

Elevate is set up in a way where content that is shared by individuals will post to their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Employees before posting can choose what channels they choose to promote to in order to reach the correct audience. For example, if I found an article on data science that I wanted to share throughout my network I know that my audience on Facebook might think I've fallen off the deep end if I posted it there. It's not relevant to my friends and family that know me as a Washington Capitals fan who loves Game of Thrones, food pictures, and movie trailers on Facebook. Same with my Twitter handle, which is strictly geared around digital storytelling, branding, and content management. My LinkedIn account however is closely tied to the work I do here at 2U. Having worked in Admissions for UC Berkeley's Master of Information and Data Science program I have a connection to it within my network and the data science article is relevant to part of my audience.

Conversely, on all of my platforms, I love to share big news about 2U. Therefore, I have the option to share to all three if I have a post about former First Lady Michelle Obama speaking at 2U’s annual company meeting this year(#EPIC)! With LinkedIn Elevate, all I need to do to share this news, place it in front of my fellow 2Utes, and track it's success is to click a box next to LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to share the post to all three platforms.

Personal Brand Impact

A great incentive to employees who actively participate only 3-5 times a week through LinkedIn Elevate is that they start to build their own brand. A personal brand according to Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos is, "what people say about you when you're not in the room." Essentially you own what you share but how it's perceived from your audience is how your brand is developed. This presents a few great benefits to 2U Employees and the 2U brand itself.

1. You are the reason people become interested in 2U and may want to apply to the many job openings available.
2. You begin to build a reputation exposing you to a wider group of people and build out your network.
3. You provide great visibility into your skill sets and knowledge that may help you gain a promotion.

By creating an online presence, especially through a professional networking social platform like LinkedIn, you can enhance your in-person interactions with your brand being the intersection of the two. The larger your network and the stronger your personal brand becomes, the more influence you will gain, eventually leading to become more iconic. For some great tips on personal branding check out this great article.

Partner Brand Impact

At 2U, the employees not only represent the 2U brand but the brands of the University Partners. Whether it's a native advertisement from marketing or a call to inform the student that they've been admitted into a program in admissions, each of us here at 2U get to be a part of some amazing and well established brands. By sharing content from 2U’s inbound marketing team or an important partner announcement, each 2Ute can play a major role in helping the partners and programs succeed and organically reach those in the employees networks that the programs are applicable to.

2U Brand Impact

As 2U’s brand continues to mature in the digital space, employees help to continue to grow the brand through their social channels. I believe 2U and it’s employees have done a fantastic job of promoting and building 2U's influence. Now it's time to make it Iconic. With the amount of 2Utes that participated in #LinkedInx2U, I believe that there will be a stronger shift towards 2U’s vision through LinkedIn Elevate. The more people, companies, universities, and other major influencers hear about 2U and share content, the more likely 2U is going to become the most iconic company in higher education. Employee advocacy is going to be a great way to make an impact on the journey.

A few that have inspired me to jump on the employee advocacy train are Katharine Greenlee, Andrew Hermalyn, Jennifer Bangoura, Gaby Acosta, and Rani Hammond (I highly suggest following all five). A few key takeaways from their profiles: :

1. When they share 2U's content they add a brief insight. This is key for engagement in your posts.
2. They share but also generate content of their own. This is key for others to connect to their brand and be influenced.
3. They engage in other's posts. Like, Comment, and Share away your fellow 2Ute's posts.
4. They tag accurately. All related posts to hashtags and handles are included.  

In Conclusion

As a social media and communications nerd, I hopeeach of you who did participate in  LinkedIn Day got some great takeaways. Remember to tell your story and to feel empowered to share it with your network. Your voice has the power to help yourself, 2U’s university partners, and 2U to become iconic.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or comments. I'd love to speak further about how we can all utilize LinkedIn Elevate and help 2U become iconic!

Cheers,

Dave Leme | Twitter: @davedleme | LinkedIn: www.dhirubhai.net/in/daveleme

The opinions of this publication are my own and not of any other party involved or mentioned.