Employees are a valuable asset that you can leverage to increase your company’s social media reach and content visibility. Employee advocacy, although a relatively new marketing technique, has been perceived as being a cost-effective way to achieve this. More companies are beginning to realize that employees have the power to create a reach beyond that of the CEO and the brand’s official pages in promoting products and services across their own social networks. All while instilling trust in the brand and its expertise.
Unfortunately, a lot of businesses fall prey to tunnel vision and only focus on branding through employee advocacy. Your employee advocates can be so much more than just mere puppets for your marketing team. Not that Branding isn’t important, but instead of investing even more capital in promoting products, why not try something more authentic? Perhaps employee engagement?
It does take time to embrace whether one can leverage employee advocacy to achieve other targets and milestones. But that’s where proper employee advocacy programs come into play to drive down costs progressively. The payoff from employee brand ambassadors is huge if done right. Employee advocates should be nurtured for the long term and not short term to sustain effectiveness.
If you keep up with these guidelines, you’ll not only be well on your way to making some new employee brand ambassadors, but also improving the work culture and employee engagement of your company.
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Sell your products to your own employees
If you can’t sell your product to your employees, how do you expect them to advocate it to prospects? One way to lower attrition is by keeping your employees satisfied and interested in their jobs. Advocacy should communicate that. Think of your employees as your internal customers at the end of the day. In doing so, you’re creating real Creating marketing advocates is what it’s all about.
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Communication IS Culture
Communication is ammo to the gun. Employees are the gun. They fire the ammo i.e. communication via advocacy. Employees who advocate on their company’s behalf need to have a sense of clarity to accurately portray the opinions of a team.
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Motivation and encouragement only help
Employees can never truly be advocates if they are forced or coerced into promoting their brand name. But if the work environment supports and encourages them, they should have no trouble doing it by themselves. Encouraging employees can bring about thought leadership which can then create long term motivation for others in the company. Once your employees have made it a habit, they are unstoppable.
A company that is serious about employee advocacy needs to start thinking internally rather externally. You’re giving your employees the power to advocate for your brand. What you’re trying to do is spark your people from “off” to “on”. Advocacy shouldn’t be thought of as a burden but make it look like a mind-set to have.
