In the first part of the series we discussed why employee advocacy is a must for companies large or small.
While best practices for implementation and the optimal ways to scale employee advocacy are still hotly debated (as each company’s deployment system is unique to its goals, needs and digital maturity)—there are several unifying things to consider when beginning to integrate employee advocacy into your overall marketing plan.
1. Your program goals must be crystal clear.
It is critical to understand that the goals of an employee advocacy program are much different than those within a traditional marketing framework. Yet like any other company initiative, employee advocacy goals should nonetheless align with those of the overall company. Carefully considering your company goals should be a top priority when planning to implement an advocacy program.
Below are the general things to consider when successful integrating an employee advocacy strategy (in order of progression:
A. Program Adoption or Employee Engagement. The first set of measurements you develop should focus on on-boarding users and social sharing of relevant content. Shares, sign-ups, logins are a few key metrics.
B. Brand Awareness and Sentiment. Employees are the best way to amplify your brand’s message, as they can organically increase reach and engagement. From a profit and loss perspective, employee advocacy integration will reveal decreased cost per impression (CPM) on employee activity vs social ad spending.
C. Social Media Training (adoption and progressions). Ensuring employees are competent by demonstrating social media and policy best practices is crucial in advancing the program.
D. Social Selling, Lead Generation & Revenue Attribution. Activity should be tracked to revenue. Even if early stages of your the program may not focus specifically on monetary generation, as the program matures revenue attribution, CRM integration and sales related metrics must be required.
2. Employee buy-in is paramount.
Implementing an employee advocacy program is not like planning a company picnic. It involves significant and widespread behavior change and skill development. Failure to adopt these facets could result in a failure to launch.
Things to consider when activating your plan?
WIIFT (aka “what’s in it for them?”). WIIFT must be at the heart of your communication plan. Employees must see the value in investing their personal time and energy into these new company initiatives. Programs perceived to be for the good of the brand vs the development of the employee have had a far less successful adoption rate.
Internal Marketing. Would you want to be part of something called (insert company name here)’s employee advocacy program? Sounds thrilling, right? Wrong. Come up with a catchy title that creates a sense of belonging and excitement. If you are truly a collaborative company, I suggest crowdsourcing the name of the program to drive further buy-in.
Outreach Testing. When the program launches, it is key to capture anyone who is initially excited and highlight his or her willingness to participate. The best way to pinpoint these go-getters? Distribute a company-wide engagement survey. This is a great first step to locate your most enthusiastic advocates and (perhaps more importantly) determine those less willing to opt-in. Regular surveys will help decipher how to communicate with your activation pool and by which methods. Will you use newsletters? Hold company meetings? Will you share success stories of active users each quarter? Before issuing the survey, ensure you have activated different channels to motivate your employee pool to join and are clear about the benefits growing a personal brand.
3. Build the content machine.
An employee advocacy program depends on having a steady flow of approved content. This means not only having strong internal company content, but 3rd party content that creates a culture of thought leadership with which your employees can engage. A recommended formula? We recommend fours pieces of original internal or 3rd party though leader content for every one piece of promotional content.
Below are six key questions to consider when formulating your (content-driven) employee advocacy strategy:
1. How much existing content do you have? Companies with lots of blog posts and mature content marketing teams will have a head start with content.
2. Who will be your internal content contributors? Having a cross-functional team of contributors that work harmoniously is essential.
3. What type of content is most effective for my audience? Ensure your content is optimized for each social channel and localized preferences are set for unique audiences.
4. Will you curate 3rd party content internally? This is the content that builds thought leadership. As programs scale, pressure and demand for vetted content 3rd party content will increase.
5. Is my employee advocacy platform able to curate and syndicate content at scale? Choose a platform that curates and syndicates content in large quantities so your employee advocacy machine does not shut down when you go from zero to hero.
6. Will my employee advocacy platform provide access to premium content? Licensed content allows your team to access trusted and valuable content, giving your organization an advantage.