Create employee advocate networks on social media to boost performance and team engagement
To use social media to its fullest potential, you must consider your internal team just as much as your external audience in your content strategy. Your employees should be your biggest advocates on social platforms, using the power of their networks to spread the word about your culture and services. Additionally, including your team in your strategy has a significant positive impact on their engagement within your organization.
A successful content strategy will authentically highlight and recognize employees while also amplifying their voices. This blog will walk you through why employee advocate networks on social media are business critical and how to achieve this.
Why employee advocate networks are a crucial component in your social media strategy
Increase the feeling of connectedness in your workplace
According to Statista, we spend an average of 151 minutes scrolling social media channels per day, making these platforms a great opportunity to highlight your team’s hard work and engage them in your organization’s initiatives and culture on a daily basis.
While by no means a replacement for important internal communications, simply keeping your employees in mind when developing content will boost their morale, appreciation and willingness to advocate. For example, these channels can be an effective medium to announce things like award wins, new office openings, new hires, etc.
Offer social proof to potential hires and customers
Social media platforms are now being used as search engines. This doesn’t just apply to teenagers using TikTok to find fast facts about their favorite celebrity. The workforce is increasingly using platforms like LinkedIn in their consideration phase to find information and develop opinions before they offer up their talents or purchasing power.
It’s crucial to note: Job seekers are not just monitoring your brand content. They are keeping tabs on how your employees speak about you and how they interact with fellow colleagues on social media. Some are even direct messaging employees at their top organizations to get a firsthand account of company culture. Now more than ever, you must foster a culture that inspires employees to be advocates – on social and beyond.
Cisco went above and beyond in embracing this new normal, training all of its employees to be LinkedIn influencers. This proactive and unique social employee advocacy tactic has already made a positive impact on their recruitment pipeline and lead time.
Boost social performance and reach
When it comes to social media performance, you are only as powerful as your network…or your ad budget. Organic performance–any social media activity without a paid promotion–is contingent on good content, but also on those inspired and willing enough to share it.
Collaborating with your team on your social content strategy will empower them to be active in promoting that content. Get them excited about your upcoming projects or culture initiatives and get them involved in your strategy early on. This will build powerful social advocacy networks that are excited to interact with the content they either helped create or feel speaks to their lived employee experience.
How to develop employee advocate networks on social media
Consider culture first
Employees will only authentically advocate for you if they truly believe in and align with your culture. This step starts way before your content strategy planning begins and must be a constant consideration in the workplace.
Get employees involved in content creation
Your team’s expertise is often your number one selling point for any potential hire or buyer, especially if you are a B2B business. So, it is important to get them as involved as possible in your content creation.
The Pivot marketing team works with new hires to craft their LinkedIn announcement at an early stage in their onboarding process. This gets them involved in our collaborative content approach right off the bat and inspires their advocacy on our social networks. As soon as these announcements go live, our team is often the first to share and react.
Celebrate successes and amplify voices
At Pivot, our highest performing posts are those that feature our amazing team. Pivot has an employee spotlight series that highlights the professional achievements of our employees, a Q&A series that allows our audience to get to know our team on a deeper level, and a blogging program with content that is developed entirely by Pivot experts.
Provide a social toolkit
Social media will not be not intuitive to everyone on your team. Provide ample resources to make participation as accessible as possible. For example, create a toolkit that includes basic instructions for each platform, profile set up tips, branded materials for employee social media use, copy templates, etc.
Additionally, social norms and best practices will look different to everyone, so it is important to implement a detailed social media policy that will establish guidelines for your brand. Revisit your current policy on a regular basis to make sure it aligns with your social initiatives and employee advocacy strategy.
Take advantage of LinkedIn’s employee features
LinkedIn is the most widely used professional networking platform, for businesses and professionals. Because of this, LinkedIn has features that make it very easy for your employees to engage in your content.
The “recommend to employees” function allows any individual associated with your page to post curated content straight from your organization. The “employee advocacy” tab in analytics allows you to track any engagement that comes from this.
Respect boundaries
Not every employee will feel comfortable or willing to be an enthusiastic social advocate for your organization – and that’s okay. None of these tactics should be mandatory for employees, unless they are specified in their job description or are company-wide initiatives and communicated as such (i.e., blogging).
Your team’s social advocacy and engagement can be powerful tools in your content strategy. Empower and inspire employees to utilize their social media networks and creative skill-sets to their fullest potential through toolkits, culture initiatives and active collaboration.
Need help engaging employees in your culture or communication initiatives? Pivot Strategies consultants know how to amplify your team and inspire action through strategic communications that create clarity. Learn more.
