Five Ways To Turn Your Employees Into Brand Advocates

Lisa Maynard is Vice President, Marketing at global affiliate marketing platform Awin.

Your company’s biggest influencers are closer to your business than you think. Who better to promote your brand than the people passionately driving it forward? If you haven’t yet, it’s time to empower your employees to become brand advocates.

As the adage goes, people buy from people. So it’s no surprise more and more companies are tapping into employee advocacy, particularly in B2B. Gartner predicted that by the end of 2023, “90% of B2B social media marketing strategies will incorporate scaled employee advocacy programs.” And it doesn’t just benefit the company. Employees sharing company content can position themselves as thought leaders and grow their professional profiles on social media. In fact, Hinge Research Institute found “almost 86% of advocates in a formal program said that their involvement in social media had a positive impact on their career.”

Building employee brand advocates may seem daunting, but you likely already have all you need to create your own program.

1. Start Small

You only need a handful of influential employees to kick-start an employee advocacy program. Chances are, some of your team are already sharing company updates and successes on their LinkedIn. Check their posts to see what type of content they’re posting and how much engagement they’re getting. Senior management is usually a good place to start, as they have larger, established networks, but don’t neglect less senior staff who may be well-connected within their field. Select three to five employees already sharing company content to help post more strategically on their channels as part of a beta brand ambassador program.

2. Prep Your Team

Now you’ve selected your company’s pilot influencers, it’s time to prep them for your next big announcement. Treat them as you would an external influencer—provide them with a clear brief including the goal, key messaging and the imagery or video assets they need to share the news. Share best practices for what’s worked well previously and how to maximize engagement.

3. Encourage Personalization

Don’t ask your team to share copy verbatim—each team member’s post should have their own flair to make it as authentic and engaging as possible. Ask them to relate the news to their own experience. Did they help build the product? Were they part of creating the campaign? Did they help set up the partnership? These details will help add personality to each post and boost visibility of the announcement.

4. Generate Healthy Competition

Create a leaderboard and incentivize top sharers with small prizes monthly or quarterly to encourage your team to consistently share company content. There’s nothing like some healthy competition between team members to motivate them to put more effort into their content to get more engagements and clicks.

5. Empower More People To Participate

Once you’ve got your small group of brand ambassadors regularly sharing company content and you’re seeing positive ROI, it’s time to start scaling the program.

• Create short guides with best practice tips on how to share company content. Sharing content about your employer might be daunting for employees, no matter their seniority, so providing guidance will give them the confidence they need without worrying about getting it “wrong.”
• Send a companywide email inviting all employees to join the program. Share the program’s success so far to demonstrate the power and personal benefits of employee advocacy. Consider launching the program with an incentive to encourage team members to join.
• Track, measure and optimize the program like any other marketing channel. It’s important to nurture the program to keep up the momentum. Share updates on how team members are performing and conduct regular check-ins to see where there may be gaps in support and areas of improvement. If you can invest some marketing budget, there are many employee advocacy platforms like EveryoneSocial that you can use to manage, automate and better track results.

Employee advocacy is a powerful way to increase brand visibility. As outlined above, it does require resources and investment, but by starting small with a handful of influential team members, you can feasibly kick off and grow a successful program long-term.

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