Employee advocacy and why it’s an utter waste of time.

I'm joking employee advocacy is not a waste of time… however it is a complete waste of time the way that most organisations view it.

When an organisation has a marketing-centric view of its communications and the marketing department believes that its role is to create content that others can engage with and share that absolutely misses the point of having a social media presence both as an individual and a company. None of us want to engage with our friends and connections posts that they have shared about their company (because frankly we have little or no interest in this). What we do have interest in however is what those connections of ours are doing themselves. We love to hear about the latest promotion, the fact that travelling to another country on business, that they've just won an award or that their wife has just had a baby. These are the things that really matter and these are the things that our audiences really want to hear about us.

They want to get to know us.

If you have any doubt about this, you need only look at your own posting history and scroll back to look at some of your posts that have been successful. Posts about product launches get very few views and hardly any interaction (other than from people you work with). Posts about what you do at work get a little or no interaction and very few views. But post about life events are invariably much much more successful and the reason is that people don't care about your products and services but they do care about YOU. Unfortunately, almost every instance we see employee advocacy focuses on sharing corporate posts. Posts that your audience are unlikely to have any real interest or resonance with.?

Employee advocacy done well however, is altogether different scenario. In this scenario people are sharing about their lives, they're sharing about who they are, and they're sharing the events that matter to them. Whilst this does not directly promote the business what it does do is promote those individuals and as long as the people in your audience are aware of what you do, you don’t need to keep telling them you only need to remain visible.

When I look at your organisation if I see a group of people who are diverse in terms of who they are their ethnic backgrounds, their gender, their hobbies and their experiences it’s fascinating. But when I see a bunch of corporate clones - everybody sharing the same content, everybody with the same backgrounds, everybody with the same viewpoint. It's like living in the Stepford wives.

So when you think about advocacy you need to stop thinking about re-sharing approved corporate posts and start thinking about sharing your own personal journey a journey that your audience are keen to hear about and a journey that moves them closer to you and build trust and relationship between you.

Organisations to get this right invariably see huge benefit for doing so organisations that simply re-share their own corporate post become an echo chamber that people are keen to ignore rather than engage with it has zero tangible benefit to the bottom line and very little tangible benefit to the credibility of the organisation.?

If you begin down the path of employee advocacy it is crucial that you understand the difference between crowd sourced and centrally lead advocacy one delivers in every measurable way one fails to deliver in any important measurable way.

If you'd like to know more about this please reach out to myself or one of the team.?

#employeeadvocacy #pipeline #digitalselling #salestransformation #sales?