Why employee advocacy can be your best marketing channel

Employee advocacy is possibly the best way to involve, motivate and breed employee dedication.

For many individuals within a business, their efforts, ingenuity and experience are, sadly, more often than not, ignored or taken for granted as a bought and paid for aspect of their employment.

No!

Your employees, your compatriots, your friends are, without doubt, your best marketing channel/resource…and I’ll tell you why.

Because.

Because they are invested and that investment tells from the time they rock-up at work, the way they dress, the attitude to others within the office space, the ideas they derive and the atmosphere they foster around them.

Here are a few stats for you.

Brand messages are re-shared 24 times more frequently when distributed by employees’ through employee advocacy vs the brand (Source: MSLGroup)

98% of employees use at least one social media site for personal use, of which 50% are already posting about their company (Source: Weber Shandwick).

Approximately 100% of what I say, is fact (Source: David Wing)

But let’s forget at least one of the above – employees are the lifeblood of your business, if not specifically for leads (although they do generate many), then for recruitment purposes, certainly.

There are a multitude of employer review sites available and for those future staff members looking at employment within a company, a search for opinions on said business is very important.

What an employee says, either during or after there tenure with a business can be the difference between hires that exceed and those that merely meander.

So that’s one reason why employee advocacy is important, here’s another…

…employees are influencers!

They are the face and the voice of your business, whether you want it or not. To that end, a process should and must be integrated into your social media policies.

Employees, those that see your brand as a career and not just a job, will want to shout from the rooftop about your services, culture and simply, why your business is THE business to work for/with, so let them…with some guidance.

I’ve seen companies endeavour to take advantage of staff member’s social accounts, insisting they post, comment, and share company content on their hard built/won channels, but here’s why that’s not ok.

• A staff members’ social channel is theirs and theirs alone. They spent months or years curating and building their channel and if their channel is, likely, substantially larger than the businesses’, then I can see why you might wish to reach their audience, but the content is likely at odds and you didn’t pay them for this – their social is not your to co-opt.
• Chances are, said channel is not relevant to your business – your brand might sell steel girders, but your employee shares content around lifestyle and make-up.

Last one: employees are often experts beyond their contract requirements.

Look in-house and ask the questions – does your staff know video editing, are they social media savvy, do they enjoy podcasts and dabble themselves?

All businesses and brands require exposure and while many know the value of social media, the knowledge to capitalise on these channels is nuanced and detailed. Your CEO might think he knows how to ‘post’ on Twitter, but is that the right channel, is he/she using the right hashtags and ultimately, is there a reason to the post beyond posting for postings’ sake.

If you wish to speak with us, visit Wing Digital Marketing and let´s make productive and successful changes together.