Remember that as employee satisfaction increases, so does the quality of customer relationships. An old marketing concept experiencing a sort of renaissance with the global influence of social media, employee advocacy programs are designed to use company employees to be the ultimate brand ambassadors. Advocacy from people builds brands faster than the brands can themselves in most cases.
Employee advocacy: Digital word of mouth
The process works because studies have shown that 90 percent of consumers trust recommendations that are made from people they know. And who better to promote your company than your employees? After all, they intimately know details about your business and the markets they serve. Plus, they can easily be seen as subject matter experts on specific products and services.
In a traditional world, the power of personal recommendations were highly dependent on one-to-one conversations. However, this phenomenon is magnified through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Allowing for digital word of mouth to become the new normal in personal marketing communications.
So how do you turn your employees into raving fans that are capable of increasing your leads by 25 percent? I’ve got five steps to get your started.
1) It starts with your company culture
Happy employees are more likely to share great information about their company. So, it’s important to examine your company’s culture before starting any advocacy programs. Make sure that you have policies in place that are worth sharing with your customers. Fostering a collaborative culture will also empower employees to take pride and ownership in the business.
2) Set clear objectives for the message
Remember, the purpose of an employee advocacy program should never be just raising awareness but it should clearly have measurable outcomes and actionable activities. So be sure to clearly define what is considered effective communication for your employees and remind them how they are helping the business achieve their goals. To assist them in this process, you might want to be proactive in creating a platform that allows for both company approved content creation and message tracking.
3) Training, training, training
Once you have the desired message carefully crafted and the social media tools in place, it’s time to train your workers. I recommend Dynamic Signal as a leading platform in the employee advocacy space giving you the freedom to build out everything from the most simple to robust platform in your company. Your training should not only go over the basics of social media usage but also provide a means of feedback to let the advocates know about the success of their efforts. Have a resource guide available in case brand ambassadors have questions.
Lastly, any great employee advocacy plan should have built-in perks for the employees. Be sure to plot out the WIIFM (What’s In It for Me) strategy and be able to educate them on that process. Do they get recognition in the company newsletter? Is there a plaque for outstanding participation? The options are endless so be sure to let them know about it.
4) Understand the legal ramifications
There are some potential risks to launching an employee advocacy program; especially if your employee uses their social media to reveal trade secrets. So it might be a good idea to discuss your program with a legal advisor prior to launching.
5) Have solid social media guidelines
Your policy should clearly identify what is considered best practices when using social media on behalf of the company. For example, responding to a reporter’s question or publishing their workplace complaints on their personal blogs could be very damaging to your company’s reputation. So, be sure to explain the difference between communication on non-related work topics and when they are speaking on the organization’s behalf.
Key takeaway
Employee advocacy programs are a great way to spread the good news about your company’s products and services. To be successful, you should review your company culture to make sure that it has the social constructs in place to support the marketing strategy. Have established social media guidelines in place along with a clearly defined message so that your workers can stay on target. Training is essential, not only to make sure workers know how to properly use the preferred social media platform but also to educate them on the perks of participation. Finally, be sure to get legal advice to limit any future risk.
