It’s 2024, and social media platforms are the central playing field for brand visibility and engagement. Businesses are constantly looking for ways to stand out among the competition, and forward-thinking companies have been turning more and more often to employee advocacy as a strategic approach to organically boost visibility and engagement on social media.
Activating employees as brand ambassadors on social media doesn’t only amplify your brand’s message across various platforms, bypassing the limitations imposed by social media algorithms on company pages. It also injects authenticity and trust into your digital presence.
The Power of Employee Advocacy
Let’s take a step back and first cover all the bases. What is employee advocacy?
Employee advocacy refers to the promotion of a company by its employees: this promotion brings countless benefits to companies, the first of them being that companies get to leverage their employees’ personal social media networks.
When employees share their positive work experiences, company news, or industry insights, it comes across as more genuine and trustworthy to their audience compared to traditional advertising. Their voices are perceived as much more authentic than any corporate voice. And one can see how such authenticity and inherent reliability can come in handy in a world where consumers value transparency and honesty over marketing tactics.
Why Employee Advocacy Works?
Before diving into how exactly you can activate your employees on social media to boost engagement and reach organically, let’s talk about why employee advocacy is such a powerful strategy for boosting brand presence.
a. Extended Network Reach
The cumulative reach of employees’ networks often surpasses that of the brand’s official channels, especially in larger organizations. In fact, according to LinkedIn, employees have, on average, 10 times more connections than their company has followers.
Employees typically have connections spanning various industries, professions, and demographics, offering a diverse (and untapped) audience pool. When employees share content, that content reaches their direct connections and has the potential to be reshared, further amplifying its reach exponentially. This network effect can significantly increase the visibility of brand messages, making employee advocacy a powerful tool for expanding audience reach organically.
b. Increased Trust and Reliability
Trust is the foundation of effective communication and marketing. Consumers are skeptical about traditional advertising, and employee-shared content is the one thing that screams trustworthiness.
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, people are more inclined to trust peers or individuals they perceive to be like themselves, people they can relate to. This trust extends to social media, which allows them to be and appear more relatable to their audiences than a corporate page ever will.
c. Enhanced Engagement through Personal Connections
Personal connections are more likely to engage with content shared by someone they know personally. 77% of consumers are likely to purchase after hearing about it from someone they trust (source: Neal Schaffer) — that’s how far the power of personal connections stretches.
The way people engage with content on social media is through likes, comments, shares, and discussions, which not only serve to amplify the message but also signal to social media algorithms that the content is engaging and worth prioritizing in feeds.
d. Cost-Effectiveness
Compared to paid advertising and other traditional marketing efforts, employee advocacy is remarkably cost-effective. Leveraging existing content and the personal networks of employees requires minimal financial investment in the form of an employee advocacy platform to facilitate, manage, and measure your advocacy program. Still, it can yield significant returns in terms of engagement and reach.
Why Employees Organically Boost Engagement on Social Media?
When employees share your branded content, they automatically engage their connections and followers, thus expanding your own brand’s reach. This diversity in audience can lead to unexpected opportunities for brand exposure and audience growth. For instance, an employee with a strong following in a specific interest group, like sustainability or technology, can introduce your brand to engaged and relevant audiences, multiplying the impact of your social media efforts.
- This organic propagation of brand messaging through trusted personal networks is invaluable.
- You don’t have to spend any marketing budget to achieve it because it’s your teams who are organically achieving these outstanding results.
- And because people trust people (not logos, not companies), the expanded reach also wins you higher engagement rates for the content shared by employees, making each post more likely to be seen, interacted with, and further shared.
One of the main benefits of employee advocacy is the diversification of the audience that your content reaches. Employees, each with their unique set of followers, friends, and connections across various social networks, serve as bridges to niche communities that your brand might not otherwise engage with.
And these connections are the most likely people to be interested in your company content — like-minded people, ex-colleagues, thought leaders, etc. which is why they are also the most likely to interact with the content your employees share.
Best Practices to Enhance Engagement Through Employees
Enhancing social media engagement through employees entails strategies that not only empower employees to become effective brand ambassadors but also ensure that their advocacy efforts align seamlessly with the brand’s goals and messaging.
a. Fostering Culture of Authenticity
Encouraging employees to share their genuine experiences and thoughts is crucial to have a successful advocacy program. Even if you don’t have a fully-fledged, formal program, you still want to encourage your employees to be authentic on social media, especially when they share company updates and experiences in the workplace. Naturally, authentic posts resonate more strongly with audiences because they provide fresh and unfiltered perspectives by real people.
Cultivating an environment where employees feel comfortable expressing themselves authentically on social media requires trust and openness from the management. This authenticity fosters a more human connection between the brand and its audience, making the brand more relatable and trustworthy.
b. Providing a Mix of Content
Diversity in the types of content shared — even by the individual employee — can significantly enhance engagement. Encourage employees to share various types of content, including behind-the-scenes glimpses of the workplace, professional achievements, and thought leadership articles and how they contribute to the company’s mission. This variety not only keeps the content fresh and engaging for the audience but also allows employees to showcase different facets of their professional lives and the company culture.
At the same time, you as a company can provide a variety of content types for your employees to share, maintaining a certain level of variety and engaging their audience — and, by extension, yours — with always new, branded content. Maintaining diversity is a big part of any content marketing strategy, and even more so when it’s your employee advocates sharing your content on social media. That will help maintain variety in their content output and appeal to a wider audience.
c. Training and Guidelines
Offering social media training and clear guidelines helps employees understand what is encouraged and what might be best avoided in their advocacy efforts. This training can cover areas such as how to maintain professionalism online, respecting confidentiality, and effectively communicating the brand’s message.
Guidelines should empower employees to share content confidently, knowing they align with the company’s values and public image. They are meant to instruct them on how to safely and effectively communicate and interact online but are also meant to give them the freedom to know what they are allowed to say about their own company without fear of breaching some kind of rule.
This can also be achieved by providing ready-made content that they automatically share, adding their personal touch to it. This way, they will feel empowered and confident and their activity will increase and create more opportunities for social media engagement.
d. Utilizing Multiple Platforms Effectively
While LinkedIn is a primary platform for professional content, other platforms like X, Instagram, and even TikTok should not be overlooked. Each platform reaches different demographics and can amplify the brand’s message in unique ways.
Employees should be encouraged to share content on the platforms where they are most active and engaged, using platform-specific best practices to maximize impact. Not every employee is the same, and employees from different demographics might feel more confident and at ease sharing content and thoughts on X or tikTok than they might do on LinkedIn, for example. Instead of fighting that, give them the tools to be able to do that, and they will advocate for your company on several platforms, enlarging your reach there, too.
e. Leveraging Employee Networks
This includes not only having employees share original content from your company on social media but also encouraging them to engage with the brand’s official social media posts by liking, commenting, and sharing.
This not only increases the posts’ reach but also adds a layer of employee endorsement to the content. This will make the posts visible to a wider and wider audience on social media platforms, and stimulate others to take notice of it. Employees’ personal networks are likely to take notice when they see them engaging with company content, further amplifying reach and engagement.
Conclusion
Activating your employees to boost social media engagement represents a paradigm shift in how companies approach digital marketing. By leveraging the networks, credibility, and authentic voices of their employees, brands can significantly enhance their social media presence, nurture deeper connections with their audience, and attract top talent.
Implementing a structured employee advocacy program, funded by clear goals, education, and recognition, can transform your employees into your most valuable brand ambassadors. As we move further into the digital age, the companies that recognize and harness the power of their internal communities will find themselves ahead, building stronger, more authentic brands that resonate with audiences across all social media platforms.
Post contribution: Camilla Brambilla Pisoni | Content Creator & Copywriter at Ambassify
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