This is a guest article by Lilach Bullock, Content Marketing and Social Media Specialist, Speaker.
Over the years, especially with the development of internet technology, competition has grown tougher in most industries. The need for better marketing has grown as every business wants to gain the attention of their ideal prospects and turn them into customers.
Yet, consumers are growing immune to marketing. And a lot of them have very little trust in marketing – or brands, as studies have found.
This is evident in a survey commissioned by 4As where it’s revealed that only 4% of Americans think advertisers and marketers practice integrity. Furthermore, 69% of respondents believe that media people lie to “sell” more.
So how can businesses and marketers combat this growing mistrust in marketing? Well, there is one simple solution – and it’s right under your nose:
Your employees.
Employees have a large network of followers – put together, they likely have considerably more social media connections than your business. But most importantly, they have the trust of their followers: they’re regular people, which automatically makes them more trustworthy than a brand.
And because of this, a lot of brands have started leveraging their employees to help promote themselves and spread their brand messages.
In this article, discover why your employees are more valuable than you think and how to get started with employee advocacy.
What is employee advocacy and why should you consider it?
Employee advocacy is the process whereby employees promote the brands’ messages on different marketing channels, most often on social media, to achieve set goals. In most cases, these goals are brand awareness, lead acquisition, and customer acquisition.
In other words, they post important brand messages on their personal accounts in order to help the brand they work for to boost their reach, their engagement and generally, help achieve their marketing goals.
Having said that, here are 4 added values and benefits for your business when employees become advocates:
1. Improved social presence
One key element of improving your marketing results is increasing its reach. Sure, an individual employee might have a lower number of followers than your company page. But when you combine the followers of all your employee accounts, it will usually be higher than the company’s accounts.
And LinkedIn’s executive editor, Daniel Roth, confirmed this. According to him, a company’s employees have 10 times the number of social media followers that the company has.
Furthermore, employees boast of better engagement when they share their company’s content. For instance, employees are responsible for 20% of engagement on their company’s content even though only 2% of them reshare the company’s content.
Considering this, there’s a big potential for increasing your message reach when employees share your marketing messages. But even more, employees have built trust with their followers and friends over the years. As a result, their messages are more likely to attract better interactions and provoke action from their audience – and even help improve your sales.
Here’s an example of a Cisco intern promoting the company. With the number of likes and comments, Cisco can reach some Instagram users the company could have failed to reach directly.
2. Improved trust for marketing messages
Without trust, it’s impossible to achieve great results through marketing. Very few people will take action if they have distrust towards your marketing messages.
Having said this, your employees are more trustworthy to their audience than your company – period. Due to a relationship that has been nurtured over the years, your employees’ audiences see them as trusted individuals.
For example, in a Nielsen study of over 25,000 consumers from 50 countries, 90% of them say they trust recommendations from people they know. Therefore, you’re likely to achieve better results from employees.
Another point is that even without a prior relationship, most consumers are still likely to trust a company’s employee rather than the company itself. According to the 2014 Edelman trust barometer, employees are more trusted to communicate most topics. Overall, 36% of the public trust your employees most when it comes to your company communications.
3. Better employee engagement
When employees are involved in advocacy programs, they begin to see themselves as a part of the company. As a promoter of the company, employees become more committed to their job and the company’s progress.
Without exaggerating, high employee engagement leads to many benefits for your workplace. In a Gallup study, work units in the top quartile in employee engagement had 22% higher profitability, 21% higher productivity, and 10% higher customer ratings than units in the bottom quartile.
But beyond the benefits your company gain from employee advocacy, your employees also gain directly. In the process of promoting your business, more people see your employees as thought leaders in their field.
In a study by the Hinge Research Institute, 86% of employees engaged in an advocacy program believed it had a positive effect on their careers. Additionally, 87.2% of advocates expanded their professional network while 76% were able to keep up with industry trends.
These are benefits that can encourage employees to engage in advocacy.
Dell is a company that has taken employee advocacy very seriously. For its employee advocacy campaign, Dell engaged 43 of its employees from subject matter experts to executives.
Without a specific script, these employees were instructed to share what was important to them as a company representative. In one of those posts, Kevin Green, an executive director of marketing, posted about the life and business lessons he learned from his father who died of Parkinson’s.
The post went viral with over 200,000 views and a high engagement level. This led to Kevin becoming Dell’s second most-viewed employee on LinkedIn behind Michael Dell himself.
4. Helps to attract better talents
While researching prospective employers, great talents are bound to look at what current employees are saying about their employer.
An infographic from Careerarc shows that job seekers trust current employees of a company most for information when seeking employment there. On the other side of the graph, you’ll find that CEOs and executives are the least trusted.
This shows that your employees could play a bigger role in your recruitment process than even the top executives. Through employee advocacy efforts, job seekers can ask your employees about your workplace and its conditions.
As a result of this, it becomes easier to acquire more great talents at your workplace. Furthermore, you can achieve this result at a far lower employee acquisition cost than traditional methods.
Here’s an employee advocacy example from a Humana employee on Facebook showcasing why he loves working for this company:
How to make employee advocacy work
Having explained its benefits, employee advocacy can only produce great results when you have a sound strategy and execute accordingly.
Here are 6 points to put in mind to ensure employees improve their value to your business through advocacy:
- Set employee advocacy goals and define metrics to measure them.
- Pick the right social media channels for your campaigns.
- Develop employee advocacy guidelines.
- Encourage employees to get on board with advocacy campaigns.
- Pick the right employee advocates for your campaign.
- Use an employee advocacy tool to improve results.
For example, you use a tool such as Easy Advocacy to organize your employee advocacy efforts on social media channels for the best possible results. With it, you can schedule your employees’ social media posts and track their performance based on your goals:
Or, if you want to set up a more complex employee advocacy programme, complete with incentives, you can use an all-in-one tool like Smarp; it will allow you to create your employee advocacy campaigns, deliver content to your employees and keep track of your results, among other features:
By implementing these points, you improve the chances of running a successful employee advocacy campaign.
Conclusion
If your employees are just doing their jobs today, then you’re underutilizing them. With employee advocacy, employees can promote your business as well as advance their careers.
It’s a win-win for both your business and its employees: you gain more customers and your employees become better at their jobs.
Have you ever leveraged your employees in your marketing campaigns?
