May 21, 2019 Dilara Atkins
When great media stories land and company initiatives launch, social media amplification can punch up the business results. But there’s a core audience of incredibly important nano influencers that many companies overlook when it comes to marketing efforts -- their own team members!
From selfies at work events to tweets about funny statements overheard in the office, your people are telling their people about your business. So, what do you want them to say? Answer with care and creativity, because it matters -- a lot.
Authenticity goes a long way when it comes to social media. This is why this marketing tactic works so well. Audiences feel connected to influencers as if they are their friends. Your employees already have a personal connected network that it would feel weird to even call them their audience. The trust is already built within their connections so when it comes to sharing about your brand, people are more likely to listen and pay attention. In fact, 93 percent of people trust brand information shared by their friends and family. Employee advocacy can be impactful in driving revenue, attracting talent and creating a trusted brand for your company.
In addition to increasing brand awareness, employees can drive sales and support recruiting efforts. When a lead comes from an employee, it is seven times more likely to convert into a sale. And job applicants from employee referrals get hired far more often than other channels.
The results are great on their own, but they’re downright amazing when you consider the ROI. An employee advocacy program costs just 10 percent of paid advertising -- a dime for every ad dollar. So how can you get started turning your employees into brand ambassadors?
1. Build Your Foundation in Employee Satisfaction
It’s important to note that company culture plays a big part in the likelihood of success for creating employee advocates. Unhappy team members are less likely to share happy company news. In fact, dissatisfied employees can do damage to a brand if their social content swings negative. Efforts to improve employee satisfaction (like a paint night or yoga session) can be budgeted as part of an employee advocacy program -- not just a line item for HR.
2. Clearly Communicate Your Vision and Values
Getting every single employee to understand the meaning of your brand’s existence -- and what you stand for in the world -- establishes the core message of your company. When everyone can articulate the “what and who we are” they’re more likely to share that in their conversations and their social channels. At InkHouse, we talk about our values every day. In fact, they’re posted on our wall!
3. Embrace a Not-So-Humble Brag
Look, you can and should be proud of the great media coverage you’re getting (at InkHouse, we certainly are!). Your employees are also going to get excited -- it feels great to work for a company that has positive, top-tier news coverage their friends and family might read. It may seem obvious, but let your team members know when this news happens. It’s an opportunity to boost morale, and to encourage employees to amplify the news by sharing on their own channels. There are plenty of easy, free ways to internally promote press coverage.
- Create a company-wide #press channel on Slack
- Send a weekly news roundup via email
- Talk about great coverage in team stand-ups -- and explain why it’s so great
- Publish top media hits to news screens in the office (and if you don’t already have one in your entry, consider getting one)
- Include top media hits in quarterly and/or annual company updates
- Ask the CEO or other top executives to share with their reports/the whole company
4. You Can Only Ask, Never Demand
Employees should never feel coerced to use their personal networks -- in-person or online -- to share anything about work. Always make it clear that you appreciate and encourage sharing, but only if they want to. You should never penalize someone for not sharing content, nor push too hard for participation. It’s a delicate balance to manage the tone of content and the frequency of sharing, but it’s worthwhile to build an inclusive, respectful employee advocacy program that works for your office.
5. Empower Employee Brand Ambassadors
Having all these tools and a structure in place can only do so much to kickstart activity. Identify employees that are currently active on social media. They are the people that will be more willing to share about their careers as opposed to employees who mostly use social for consumption. These ambassadors should be your advocates and play a crucial part in your planning process. Involving them in quarterly strategy planning and identifying new trends will create an engaged team. A picture’s worth a thousand words -- and many, many more social shares. Make sure you’re arming your employee brand ambassadors with super visual content.
6. Present Guidelines but Don’t Stump Creativity
Controlling how your brand is presented on social media is very important. Establishing social media guidelines and a policy document will help create consistency. A simple-to-follow do’s and dont’s list will be helpful when employees want to create posts. These guidelines can also provide tips and tricks on the best type of content (like ensuring stellar graphics). The key here is to not have such tight control that you are losing out on authenticity. Find the happy medium.
7. Giveaways!
It’s always fun to have quarterly themes and contests to really get things going! Sometimes a simple activation method that allows people to compete for mini prizes is all you need to kickstart the program. Make it fun and engaging with a points system that can enter your advocates into a raffle at the end of every quarter that could be announced at the quarterly meeting or any staff meeting. Make it work for you! The giveaway could also be an asset later on to infuse your brand in images (think branded t-shirt or coffee mugs).
8. Make it Super Simple and Easy
Employees are doing you a favor when they amplify your content, so make that favor as easy as possible. When sharing a news article, provide a potential social media post they can copy and paste or customize. If an executive gives a fantastic interview, include some time stamps and quotes along with the Vimeo or YouTube link. Make sure blog post links are optimized for social sharing so the image and description don’t need to be cleaned up. The less time and effort it takes for your team members to be brand ambassadors, the more success you’ll have.
To learn more about our approach to employee engagement and content amplification, connect with us on social or email workwithus@inkhouse.com!
