Let Your Employees Be Your Voice: How Employee Advocacy Drives Business Growth

By Laura Holland

Employee advocacy is simple, it’s the promotion of a brand or business by those who work there, and it isn’t a new concept, it’s been around for decades in the form of conferences and networking events.

​The history of employee advocacy

Pre-internet - before social media referrals, and word of mouth were how people found out about companies, you may even have had referral bonuses which really incentivised employees to spread the word.

The early days of social media - Although LinkedIn launched in 2002, it took at least a decade for the platform to gain traction, pure social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook were where people were at and this is where companies were starting to explore how to leverage their employees on these platforms.

The mid-2010s - With company pages taking off on Facebook pure employee advocacy platforms were popping up, these included HootSuite Amplify, Dynamic Signal and Bambu by Sprout Social.

The influencer era - the late 2010s saw the meteoric rise of influencer marketing, this in turn made employee advocacy more favourable to the masses who wanted to find any way they could to build their personal brand. Companies leveraged this and started to encourage employee-generated content as they incorporated employee advocacy into their marketing strategies.

​The 2020s and beyond - With the pandemic accelerating the adoption of digitisation LinkedIn has become the main platform for content and employee advocacy, with an emphasis on thought leadership and educational content. With remote and hybrid working now the ‘new normal’ advocacy has become increasingly important in maintaining culture and talent.

​Employee advocacy statistics

• Brand messages are re-shared 24 times more frequently when distributed by employees through employee advocacy vs the brand's own channels. This massive increase in employee-generated content leads to greater reach.
  
• Content shared by employees receive 561% greater reach than content shared through the brand's official social media channels. Tapping into employees' networks is a proven way to increase advocacy.
  
• Employee advocacy leads convert 7x more often than other types of leads. Enabling employees to share content makes them more credible sources.
  

Employee social media engagement

You may be wondering what role employee advocacy on LinkedIn plays. Well, 89% of B2B marketers rely on the platform for lead generation with 62% advising that it results in success.

Not only does an effective employee advocacy strategy help brands and businesses build trust with prospective clients and customers, it also helps increase employees' own personal brand, reach and reputation.

​By focusing on increasing employee advocacy and enabling employees to easily share content, brands can reap the benefits of wider reach, increased lead conversion and higher trust.

Employee advocacy best practices

One of the toughest challenges is to get employees and colleagues to participate in employee advocacy, by setting out some best practices you can make this easier.

1. Set clear objectives - what do you want to achieve with employee advocacy? Is it brand awareness, attracting talent, or generating leads for example? Digging down into your goals will help define your employee advocacy strategy.​
2. Ensure the leadership team is on board - When employees see this is important to senior management it is much easier to get buy-in from the rest of the company.
3. Make it easy - everyone is busy at work and it’s very easy to de-prioritise tasks that don’t seem to have any consequences for doing so, so the best thing to do is make it as easy as possible for employees to share there and then - this could be sending round an email with the latest post, to notifying employees on LinkedIn.
4. Incentives - if you can, gamifying the process can tap into employees' competitive side and if you offer small rewards create a real camaraderie around your employee advocacy program.
5. Training - ensuring that employees know the best practices, and do not share or say anything that could damage the company’s or their own reputation. Highlight to them that this helps them to build their own personal brand as well as increasing the business’ profile too.
6. Start tracking - It’s always great to have stats to benchmark progress against so you can really start building reports around your employee advocacy metrics, and when you start seeing results it's a great time to..
7. Share the impact of employee advocacy to everyone - once they see the tangible results they are more likely to keep up with the program and you may even inspire a few more to join in too!

I think it’s time to get sharing!