Employee Advocacy: What It Is And Why You Should Be Paying Attention

'Sustainable' and 'Growth' weren’t two words I’d seen put together before.

I know I know, how’s that rock I was living under?

But from working as a Marketer and Copywriter, I’d only seen companies want one type of growth: more—and that usually came at all costs.

I get it. The world of business is fast-moving and competitive and there’s an attitude that if you’re not first, you’re last. But is the hustle-at-speed culture really necessary? Personally, I don’t think so. I’ll save getting on my soapbox about consistency for another day, but for now, I want to focus on sustainable growth, because watching it become a priority in business has been refreshing to see and it can be a significant asset. But in order to do it, you need to actually care about your employees, not just say that you will, by making decisions that reflect this too. And one way to tell which companies are doing this is with employee advocacy.

Simply put, employee advocacy is the promotion of a business by those who work in it. It’s a goal that isn’t reached through forced marketing participation but by creating a business that your employees actually want to talk about.

The definition is still very much growing, with most people focusing on the marketing aspect and enabling their teams to promote their products or services on their own channels. But for me, I look at it as a rung on the old loyalty ladder. Because when your employees truly connect to your company and its mission, vision and values, you don’t need to incentivise them to talk about their careers or your company—it naturally becomes a point of conversation.

The relationship between employers and employees is always changing. It started as a “here’s your work, get it done, we may overwork you but if you have any issues with this here’s HR’s details”. Then the pendulum swung the other way and it went all “here’s your work, we may overwork you, but here’s a ping pong table, a beer fridge and a calendar packed full of employee socials so even though you’re overworked, you won’t mind as much because being here all the time is fun, fun, fun!” But now, employers are realising that it isn’t office furnishings that employees want.?

?Employees want to work for companies that offer support, protective policies, decent salaries, constructive feedback and career growth opportunities. And in the competitive environments many businesses now find themselves in, where people aren’t afraid to leave toxic work environments and speak up against ill-treatment, engaging employees in the workplace has quickly picked up significance. And in making this change, companies began organically improving their reputation and increasing their brand awareness—because their team was talking about them.

Reputation isn’t something you can completely control because everybody will have a different opinion. But everybody knows, if you want the goss, the scoop, the 411 on what a business is really like? You ask a company’s employees. Because they’ll give it to you straight—and it’s because of this, that employees have such a high-level of trust with those outside the organisation. Which means if your employees are advocating for you, it’s clear your business is doing something right.?

If your employees are advocating for your company, it helps you know that you’re doing a good job of leading your team and building a company that they care about. Which is great for your culture and gaining employee buy-in. But it also goes deeper than this. Because if you’re empowering your team to talk about your company publicly on social media, a platform that most employers try to limit use of out of fear of what their employees will say, it shows a key thing: you trust your team and value their voice.

In this post, we’re going to focus on the benefits to the business. Because, unsurprisingly, there are many. So, let’s break it down, shall we?

It Increases Your Company’s Reach

Let’s face it, your workforce are not only tech savvy, most of them have some form of influence on social media. The average person has 700 followers on social media, which means if leveraged right, employee advocacy can help with driving brand awareness—especially when you consider that content shared on social media platforms by employees is proven to have 8x more engagement.?

It Minimises Communication Gaps

At its core, marketing is all about the communication between a company, and its consumers-whether prospects or existing. The key thing is that it reaches your target audience. But a lot of the time, it won't. Research undertaken by Facebook showed that whilst 7/10 businesses communicate effectively using social media, only 20% of customers agree with that. Because when it comes to connection, it isn't a business you have the connection to—it’s the people behind it. This helps explain why brand-building messages that are distributed amongst the workforce, have a 24x greater effect than when it’s distributed by the company itself. An example of this in action is when you find yourself at an industry conference or networking event and you meet somebody—they don’t typically follow the company page, even though they might be the company’s ICP and be genuinely interested in your business. They follow you. Because it’s YOU they conversed and connected with in a meaningful way. This is why employee advocacy can play a huge part in bridging the gap and connecting businesses to their target audience—not just because of the initial connections, but because they can address prospects' queries instantly and close that gap—and when surveys say that 76% trust content shared by normal people, it’s definitely something you should be encouraging.?

It’s Great For Lead Generation

LinkedIn identified that when employees share posts it’s not just reach that increases—click-through rates are 2x higher. This is partially due to the above, but also because a lot of people find that company social media channels are too promotional—so if you’re guilty, you might want to reevaluate your content strategy! But outside of this, leads generated through social selling and employee advocacy programmes also have a better conversion rate—with a study by IBM showing that in comparison to other strategies, it’s 7x greater. Thus, together with brand building and reaching your prospects, the possibility of lead generation is increasingly higher when your brand message is shared by employees.

The first step of employee advocacy is developing a brand, business or culture that your team actually wants to talk about. The second, is letting your employees know that you believe in employee advocacy—as hearing it directly from you that you trust their voice, want to help them develop and actively encourage them to get involved with sharing brand messages, rather than shy away from it, shows you value their voice inside and outside of the organisation.From here, you’ll want to ensure that you have a structure in place, as it helps to show your employees the different ways they can get involved if they want to. Here’s how to do that:

Share What’s In It For Them

This can be done through training or in your social guidelines, but regardless of what implementation technique you choose, it’s important to understand that employee advocacy isn’t for everyone. However, sharing the benefits is a great way to pique your team's interest... For example, it provides the opportunity to:

• Create connections
• Develop their network
• Build a personal brand/authority as a thought leader
• Increase career opportunities, not just with recruiter visibility, but with speaking and pr opportunities.?
• Get involved with company incentives

And so much more.

Provide Training

Not everybody knows how to use social media professionally, and not everybody is comfortable sharing information without guidance. People work in different ways, and by setting up training you can quell any nerves and help your team to navigate different approaches, strategies and ways to create content around your brand messaging. This doesn’t just help with creating consistency in posting but is great for enhancing your team's social media skills, developing topics that they’re passionate about talking about and showing them that they’re not in it alone.

Set-up Guidelines

Specifying your brand morals and the kind of vibe you want to put across can be crucial for helping employees understand your objectives. Some businesses implement dos and don'ts—others let their team have full reign. But based on personal preference I’d recommend having some form of guidelines in place—not to say what your team can't do, but to help them understand how to post, engage and use the platforms. Because whilst marketers and avid social media users understand different platforms and their audiences, not everyone else does—and having a resource in place can help to remove that knowledge barrier whilst educating and inspiring your team in the process. After all, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to get involved!

Start Slow

Approaching something with all guns blazing isn't always the right strategy—especially when it comes to creating and sharing content. For starters, not all of your team will want to get involved—and that’s ok. Forcing people to do something never works out well and your team’s social media platforms are theirs. It’s their network, their voice and their mindset that connects them to people—and it should be about encouraging them to have confidence in sharing that. Not hijacking their profiles for corporate messaging. By starting slowly, you give your team time to test the water and figure out what they want to say, how often they want to post and help them create a sustainable frequency—after all, consistency and quality should be the focus, not quantity.

Recognize and Appreciate Your Team's Involvement

Feeling valued in a company goes a long way towards employee retention, and recognition and appreciation help with this. Recognising and supporting your team when they get involved, is a great way to show that you appreciate their effort, their work and that they’re trying something new. Especially when they’re achieving the goals you set out. Appreciating your team can be as simple as verbal recognition, both privately and publicly, or if you want to go all in, then gifts and vouchers are always a solid option!

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The transformation of employees into advocates is indeed a win-win process. Not just because of increased exposure, but because within your organisation there is a wealth of knowledge and expertise—and recognising this is great for employee’s career development AND your business.

What are your thoughts on it?

Are you an advocate for employee advocacy, or would your HR department have a heart attack if you were to try?