Did you know that more than 50 million businesses have Facebook pages?
Every marketer-blogger has referred to the increase in social media noise as “noise”, and they have discussed how important it is to “cut through” the noise and reach your target audience.
Businesses have the great news that they can see the solution right in their faces or in the same place as them.
Do you know what your employees can do for your company as brand advocates?
Ten Reasons to Get Started Right Now
Ted Rubin once stated that not including employees in your marketing strategy was like trying to walk with one leg nailed to the ground. These facts prove his belief in the concept.
1. Employer advocates give you more reach
Your employees have on average 10 times the number of connections to social media than your brand (source: Social Chorus). The increased reach for a company with 100-200 employees could easily add up to 1,000X.
You can reach a wider audience and capture more interest, which will help you build your sales funnel. A wider reach is great for branding and spreading the word about your new product or event.
2. Social media advocacy adds credibility to your content
Nielsen’s trust barometer shows that employee advocates (friends, family) are more trustworthy than brands. Social media users trust 90% of employees’ advocates. Credibility is the most important thing in business. Social media is not a way to establish trust with your customers. Your content gains an advantage over brands when it is shared by others.
3. Brand shares are more popular than employee shares.
This study shows that promotional content is re-shared 24X as often by employees than when it was originally shared by brands.
If implemented correctly, employee advocacy can quickly become a word-of-mouth wildfire, introducing potential consumers to your brand. This is a great way to stay in touch with potential customers.
4. Employees share more content to increase engagement
It’s a simple question. Which would you prefer to interact with? We are wired to dismiss content from brands as “promotional,”, particularly on social media, where we use it to connect with friends and family.
observed today by Social Media Today: Your content can generate 8X as much engagement when it is shared by employees.
An increase in engagement is a great thing for a brand’s social media presence. It drives more engagement and creates valuable social capital.
5. Regular campaigns don’t convert as well as employee advocacy campaigns.
Starbucks is a popular example of employee advocacy. Starbucks refers to its employees as “partners”, which is exactly how you should treat them. Starbucks’ employees are responsible for a lot of the success, such as their TweetACoffee campaign.
The TweetACoffee campaign attracted large participation and ended up with tens of thousands of tweets.
Employee-led campaigns are more likely to generate interest that will lead to business. IBM found that leads generated through employee advocacy are 7X more likely than leads created by other means.
6. Your bottom line will be impacted by employee advocacy
Take Adobe example, a software giant. In some months, one of their Photoshop ambassadors generates more significant revenue than the Adobe @Photoshop Twitter account.
Many businesses claim that their sales have increased significantly by having their sales teams involved in social media.
7. Employee engagement can be improved by advocacy programs
Studies have shown that engaged employees tend to be more productive at work and are less likely to leave (sources are: Talent Cove, and Dale Carnegie infographic). There is nothing better than employee advocacy to improve the overall culture of your workplace.
8. Three important relationships are built on employee advocacy
Employee advocacy is a way to improve three crucial relationships in your business.
- Management and employees should have a good relationship.
- The relationship between potential customers and the brand.
- Your brand’s relationships with employees (teamwork to promote it).
Focus on each one and you will achieve more than just increased sales.
9. Employee advocacy makes branding more powerful
Your branding will become more powerful when you have greater reach, credibility, influence, and visibility. Social media can be used to promote product launches, event promotions, or other social media activities. You can also quickly share the information with your employees.
10. Employer brand is improved when employees advocate for their employer
What is your employer brand? To replace an employee, companies spend anywhere from 16% up to 213% depending on their position. You can reduce that cost by creating a strong employer brand.
These platforms can help you implement an employee advocacy program
DrumUp Employee Advocate Platform: It is essential to be able to measure the results of any project. DrumUp’s employee advocacy platform includes engagement analytics that measures employee engagement. This allows employees to track their engagement by comparing posts they share on social media.
The platform features a leaderboard and gamified system to keep employees motivated. The platform makes content management easy by allowing you to store and share your content with colleagues and source industry content.
NewzSocial – NewzSocial was created to help you optimize your content marketing funnel. It allows you to connect multiple feeds to the application, connect your advocates to it, and encourage sharing based on the guidelines you have set.
The app also provides advanced engagement metrics that will help you monitor your progress. The app can help you optimize your content marketing funnel by identifying the right influencers based on engagement statistics.
Kredible – Credibility is the key to success online. Your business will not grow beyond a certain point if you don’t prove yourself credible. Your business page will get more attention if you encourage employees to do so.
Kredible assigns credibility scores to any account that you may attach to the platform. This could be your business page or the LinkedIn accounts of your employees [the platform is restricted to LinkedIn]), and then suggests fields that can be edited to optimize the accounts. The platform offers relevant content suggestions that can be shared, in addition to this feature.
LinkedIn Elevate – LinkedIn’s employee advocacy program has seamless analytics. It can compare your marketing efforts with page views to help evaluate your employee advocacy program.
LinkedIn’s Pulse, Newsle, and Newsle are associated with the application. They provide sourcing suggestions and allow employees to share their content through them. LinkedIn is a great place to focus, not only on potential sales but also on potential hires.
Conclusion
Employee advocacy is a benefit to any business, there’s no doubt about that. Implementing the program is the only variable. You can improve your social media marketing companies in Phoenix results by optimizing your content marketing strategy, and improving employee relations.