What is HR Marketing?

As time goes on, we are witnessing a drastic power shift when it comes to the workplace. It is no longer an employer-driven market. Instead, it is becoming a candidate-driven market, where job seekers hold more power than ever.

In order to adapt to this new way of doing things, a new form of marketing was created—HR marketing.

At its core, HR marketing is a company’s focused effort to attract the types of people they want to have working in their business – this includes;

• creating a career page
• posting job listings
• recruitment marketing
• creating a talent pool
• ensuring that they provide a positive candidate experience
• creating a positive employer brand

Human resource marketing ties heavily into a business’s employer brand and should not be understated. As a negative company reputation can cost a business 10% more per hire, it’s important to ensure a good employer reputation.

Another important statistic you really should keep in mind is that according to Glassdoor, 75% of job seekers are more likely to apply for a position if an organization actively controls its employer brand.

Therefore, companies must actively affect the perceptions of potential employees. They can do this by using recruiting marketing strategies and materials tailored to their target audience. To do this, there are various HR marketing tools that a company can employ in order to become effective HR marketers.

Companies can use these strategies to attract active and passive applicants – and who doesn’t want to be able to do that? Further, they can excite them about working in the business. The ultimate aim is to enhance reach within the targeted demographic.

HR Marketing vs. Employer Branding

HR Marketing

HR marketing is when a company actively promotes a position in an attempt to attract skilled candidates. This involves creating job posts and resources for prospective employees. Moreover, it is usually temporary and does not create a lasting impression.

Anyone looking at working with your company will likely do some research about your business before applying.

This is where HR marketing and employer branding become two parts of a whole:

Employer Branding

Employer branding is essentially a promise that a company makes to future employees. It sets the expectations for how they can anticipate being treated and the environment they’ll be working in. Much like any other form of branding, it combines various things to create an image, reputation and brand identity for your business as an employer.

You need to understand two components to create a good employer brand:

1. Employer Image:

Your employer image is how employees view your company, positively or negatively. This is affected by anything from online forums discussing working at your company to social media and news.

You may not even be aware of your company’s employer image. Nevertheless, it affects how people think about working at your company. Therefore, it also affects the number and quality of your candidates.

Developing a positive and long-lasting employer image takes time and effort and is known as an employer brand.

2. Employer Brand:

Employer branding is the ongoing process of establishing a business’s unique status as an employer. Furthermore, an employer brand aims to create a good employer reputation. Through this strategy, a company is more appealing to future candidates.

 As competition for capable employees is growing ever more intense within each industry, it’s crucial to stand out against similar organizations. A powerful and distinct employer brand can significantly help with this. 

Further, 86% of workers and job seekers read business evaluations and ratings before applying for a position. What’s more, companies that are actively investing in employer brands can reduce turnover by as much as 28%

To create a compelling employer brand, you need to know; 

• which types of candidates you want to attract
• what type of relationship you want with them
• how you will attract them

3 Types of HR Marketing

HR marketing is an umbrella term with multiple types of marketing falling under the categorization. Thus, you’ll have to understand the three different types of marketing if you want to effectively implement a marketing strategy and attract talent to your company.

Let’s go over each type of marketing and discuss the best ways to implement them.

1. Recruitment Marketing

Recruitment marketing is when a business advertises an open position within their company; intending to attract skilled and capable candidates to the position.

This type of marketing often consists of posting jobs on job search sites such as Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Upwork, or Indeed. Alternatively, you could promote the vacancy in a newspaper or buy a Facebook banner advertisement.

Further, recruitment marketing also consists of additional content geared towards anyone applying for a position at your company, including;

• blog posts
• podcasts
• PDFs
• videos

2. Talent Pool

A talent pool is a database of qualified individuals that have had a touch point with your company in the past.

These individuals have usually already applied for a position at your company, but you did not have a role for them at the time. Or, contrastingly, they could be someone who approached you at an event or conference that you think would be a good fit for your organization. They could even be someone working for your competitors or stand-out talent you found on social media.

3. Career Pages

Your company’s career page will often form the first impression for someone looking to work with you. Therefore, it’s crucial to have it reflect what you want prospective candidates to think about your company.

It’s an opportunity to show candidates what they can expect if they decide to work with you. You need to have a clear and authentic employer brand on your career page, allowing anyone looking at your company to visualize a successful future working with you.

5 HR Marketing Strategies + Examples

Below, we take a look at a few HR marketing plan samples which can help your company effectively begin attracting quality talent.

1. Develop a Consistent Brand Voice

An excellent example of a consistent employer brand voice is Brother International Corporation. They have implemented an employer brand voice of “We’re by your side” across all their channels (especially on their career page), where they promise to support their employees.

2. Purposeful Hiring

It is important to spend time and resources finding someone who aligns with your company’s goals and environment. Someone who has the necessary skills and work ethic to make hiring them worthwhile.

Once again, this ties into your employer brand. The brand you create across all platforms will help to filter out those candidates who will not be a good fit for your company. It will also help to draw in those people who you want working for you.

King, the development studio behind the Candy Crush Saga, is a great example of a company that has done this well. They have clearly stated values on their website, they help prospective candidates understand what the studio’s work environment is like.. Therefore, they are able to passively filter desirable candidates from those who will not be a good fit for the company.

3. Do Your Research

Understanding what makes a good employee in any role is a massive advantage. Having the data behind you can make attracting the right people to your organization infinitely easier.

For example, Google started Project Oxygen in 2006 to understand what makes a good manager. They found eight essential qualities their best managers had and decided to train all other managers in these soft skills.

From there on out, Google knew exactly what they were looking for regarding managers and their HR members. From there, they could far more easily filter through applicants to find people that fit their company values and goals.

4. Utilize Social Media

Social media is a useful tool when it comes to humanizing any brand, whether it be the company brand or the employer brand.

Using social media to connect with candidates on an emotional level is an invaluable tool. It can also be used to give applicants an idea of the environment they can expect to work in.

For example, Discord is a massive social media platform with largely untapped potential. Discord marketing can easily be used to grow your employer brand substantially.

An example of a company that is using social media to build its employer brand is Marriott careers. Storytelling is at the core of the content that they post. Most often, Marriott careers gives insights into what employees think and say about working there.

This is a powerful strategy and can help to attract qualified and skilled candidates to your company. Furthermore, it can excite them about working with you.

5. Create Employee Brand Advocates

According to an Entrepreneur study, when employer brand content is posted on an employee’s social media account, it is shared twenty-five times more. In addition, it tends to gain eight times the engagement.

Salesforce is one of the largest companies in the world, with over 73,000 employees, 65,000 of whom are on LinkedIn. According to their numbers, they have more than 11,000 employees who participate in their ambassador employee program.

This is a prime example of how to encourage and reward employees for doing the promoting for you.

With all this in mind, investing in an HR marketing course or an employee advocacy course might be beneficial to help optimize your strategies.

HR Marketing – Key Takeaways

References

Glassdoor: 40+ Stats For Companies to Keep In Mind for 2021

Harvard Business Review: A Bad Reputation Costs a Company at Least 10% More Per Hire

Working Capital Review: What Google’s Project Oxygen Reveals about Good Managers

Entrepreneur: How to Create a Social Media Advocacy Program

The post HR Marketing: The Ultimate Guide for 2024 [+Examples] appeared first on P2P marketing.

This 2024, company culture and employee experience (EX) is something we’re all increasingly aware of when it comes to gauging how successful we are as a business.

Companies that invest in providing great EX are up to 400% more profitable than those that don’t, and they appear twice as often on the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

EX is closely linked to engagement and when employees are engaged, businesses see a 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 17% increase in productivity.

Clearly, having happy and engaged employees isn’t just good for morale, it is good for business! Employee rewards can play a key part in achieving this if they’re done right.

So, how do you do employee rewards right? How do you use them to improve company culture and employee experience, as well as boost motivation and productivity?

In this guide, we’re covering exactly that: the pros and cons of employee rewards, how to use them to motivate and engage your employees, and 29 great reward ideas to use in your business!  

Ready?

Let’s dive right in!

The Pros and Cons of Employee Rewards

Done right, employee rewards are a great way to motivate your employees, improve employee satisfaction and create a strong great company culture.

That said, if they’re not done right, they can cause more problems than they solve. To be effective, employee rewards need to walk the line between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation is when we’re motivated by internal factors, such as the satisfaction or joy we feel when we’re doing something.

Extrinsic motivation is when we’re motivated by external factors like gaining a reward or avoiding a punishment. The proverbial ‘carrot and stick’ are examples of extrinsic motivation.

They both work, but only in particular circumstances. If you need to be nurturing intrinsic motivation, adding an extrinsic motivator will do more harm than good to performance.

This video by Bernd Geropp details the two and how they work:

Rather than using employee rewards as a carrot to motivate employees to perform and behave how you want them to, use them as a way to boost intrinsic motivation.

Right, let’s look at the pros and cons of employee rewards:

Pros: The Benefits of Employee Rewards

There are many important benefits to demonstrating employee recognition and rewarding employees. These include:   

• Demonstrates Employee Appreciation: rewards are a great way to show employees your appreciation for the work they have done over a set period. Appreciation is a key aspect of great employee experience and corporate culture.
• Increased Focus and Motivation: when there are rewards to be earned, employees tend to be more focused on achieving the desired outcomes. However, they can be too focused on earning the reward and lose sight of other important aspects.  
• Improved Job Satisfaction: Being recognized and rewarded for your hard work feels good and makes it worth doing. When we feel like our work is worthwhile and contributes to something bigger than ourselves, we tend to have higher job satisfaction.
• Higher Productivity: happy employees are more productive than unhappy or disengaged employees. This translates into higher profits for the organization, as well as reduced costs from things like inefficacy and employee sick leave.  
• Friendly Competition: a bit of friendly competition can be a great motivator. When employees are vying for the top spot, the competition can be fun and motivate them to work harder.
• Higher Levels of Accountability and Collaboration: recognizing and rewarding both individuals and teams leads to better collaboration between employees. It also improves accountability as employees will hold each other accountable.
• Greater Employee Retention and Loyalty: when employees feel seen, valued, and appreciated, they stay with their employers longer than those who do not. Employees that feel they belong to an organization will advocate for it, and bring in new talent to benefit it. 

Now that you have an idea of how employee rewards can benefit your business, let’s look at some of the potential disadvantages and pitfalls you may encounter:

Cons: The Disadvantages of Employee Rewards

The disadvantages of employee rewards mainly revolve around how they’re managed and what can happen when they’re used solely as extrinsic motivators:

• Challenges Quantifying When Rewards Should Be Given: implementing a rewards structure that is fair and equal can be a challenge. Different roles within the company will need different metrics, which can create the impression that some employees have it easier than others.    
• Unintended Consequences: sometimes, employees can become so focused on achieving a reward that they neglect other aspects or lose sight of overall objectives. For example, if rewards are tied to exceeding sales quotas, but not for customer support, customer support may suffer when employees are too focused on new sales.   
• Conflict and Rivalries: when there is competition for rewards, it can veer away from friendly competition and become a full-blown rivalry. This can lead to division and an unpleasant work environment for everyone else.
• Costs: frequently recognizing and rewarding employees can become an expensive exercise in the long term. Rewards should be frequent enough to keep people motivated but not so frequent that they become too costly for the company.
• Consistency and Frequency: if employees are rewarded too seldom, like once a year, they’re unlikely to remain focused or motivated on the work they need to do to achieve that recognition.
• Perceived Fairness and Value: the value of the reward needs to be relevant to the achievement but it also needs to be relative to the other rewards given out. This can be tricky. Who deserves a higher-value reward, the employee who worked incredibly hard all year or the employee who did one thing, once, that saved the company thousands of dollars?

As you can see, employee rewards offer some great benefits but have some pretty serious disadvantages too.

So, how do you do employee rewards right? How do you maximize the benefits and minimize the disadvantages?

The key to doing it right is to use employee rewards as a way of demonstrating that your employees are recognized and valued for their contributions to the company.

Rather than using rewards as extrinsic motivators or incentives to be earned, use them as a means to convey recognition and appreciation.

If rewards are given as tokens of appreciation, they become part of a good relationship between the company the employee. This improves retention, employee satisfaction and company culture.

They make employees feel valued, appreciated, and trusted. They also make them feel like they belong, and that they’re contributing to the greater good of the organization as a whole.   

Right, let’s look at some examples of employee rewards that you can use to demonstrate recognition and your appreciation:

7 Free Employee Rewards That Don’t Cost a Thing

Rewards don’t have to cost the company a lot of money to be valuable to employees. Here are some examples of free employee rewards that they will love:  

1. Recognition

Employee recognition is closely linked to performance. In one study done in 2020, 92% of employees reported that when they’re recognized for specific actions, they’re more likely to repeat them in the future.

There are many ways to show employees that you recognize them and value what they contribute. The aim here is to communicate that you have taken note of their efforts and appreciate them.

Being personal and specific makes recognition more meaningful too. Here are some ways to demonstrate employee recognition:

• Thanking individual employees or teams when they accomplish something challenging or go above and beyond
• Handwritten thank-you notes from a superior
• Naming an Employee of the Month (or quarter or project) and showcasing them on company social media
• Employee Spotlights on company social media highlighting the value they bring to the team or company

 The key to effective recognition is to be personal, specific, and timely. Thank them as soon as possible for their contribution and be specific about what you appreciate and the value it brought. Highlight how their actions align with company objectives or value too.  

2. Individual Attention

One of the simplest and most effective ways of showing an employee that they’re seen, heard and valued is to schedule some one-on-one time with them. This should be a time to focus on how you can help them grow.

Investing time and attention in your employees demonstrates that you’re interested in them as people, rather than as tools to achieve the outcomes of their position at your company. Offer them guidance, connect them to people who can advance their training, or mentor them to grow.  

3. Non-Monetary Workplace Perks

When it comes to workplace perks, there are many ways to reward employees that are completely free but still valued and important.

Non-monetary workplace perks can be anything your employees really like. Popular options are the best parking spot or a reserved parking spot, the coveted desk/chair/space in the office, or a bigger workspace or better office.  

4. Extra Responsibility and Designations or Job Titles

A lot of employees appreciate growth opportunities. If someone has taken on additional responsibilities, show that it is recognized and appreciated by giving them an appropriate title.

Making someone the ‘manager’, ‘lead’ or ‘director’ on a specific project does not mean you’re promoting them, but it does demonstrate appreciation for their extra efforts.

Similarly, giving people who are hungry for more responsibility and want to grow additional responsibilities shows them that you recognize their potential and trust in their abilities.  

5. Leftover Branded Company Swag

If you’re using branded company swag for your marketing, you can re-purpose any leftover merchandise as employee gifts.

Swag is great for onboarding new recruits and making them feel part of the company and it is great for bringing some unity to teams with matching apparel, mugs, or stationery.  

Higher-value items, like electronics or nice drinkware, can make great rewards for employees who deserve something a bit more special too.

6. Extra Time Off

Giving employees some extra time off after completing a particularly hard project or just as a token of appreciation for work well done is something every employee will appreciate!

Added leave days, a half-day Friday, or a long weekend won’t break the bank for your company. A break from routine and some downtime can boost morale and productivity too, making it a win-win for everyone.

7. The Right to Call Dibs

Giving employees the right to call dibs on anything they want to a set period is a fun and playful way to show employees that they’re appreciated. An item like a ‘Dibs Stick’ can be given to a specific employee for that week before it goes to someone else the next week.

Holding the ‘Dibs Stick’ means they can call dibs any one thing during that week. They can choose if they will use it to skip something like locking up or snag something like the best parking space.

9 Material Gifts for Employee Rewards

These employee gifts ideas make great rewards. They’re easy to personalize and you can control how much you spend on them too:  

1. Fancy Food and Beverages

Food is a universal favorite – everyone loves something yummy and the options are endless! From doughnuts to artisanal charcuterie boards, coffee, craft beer, or special wine there is something for everyone.

This kind of gift allows you to demonstrate that you really know your employees too. If you have someone who’s really into something, in particular, focus on that to make it meaningful.

2. Electronic Devices

These can be a little on the pricey end of the spectrum but electronics make great employee gifts. Wireless headphones, speakers, PC accessories, portable drives, and USB sticks are all popular items. The key here is to watch the quality and know what your employee will value most.

3. Kitchen and Bar Accessories

If your employee loves cooking and hosting dinner parties or prides themselves in their cocktail making abilities, they will appreciate something for their kitchen or bar. Cocktail shakers, fancy glasses, serving platters, and nice tableware will definitely be appreciated.

4. Nice Notebooks and Stationery

High-quality notebooks, pens, calendars, planners, and office stationery also make great employee gifts. Whether they’re branded, personalized, or just attractive and good quality, they’re a universal favorite that is also functional.

5. Office or Desk Accessories

A thoughtful gift for their office or desk is always a nice employee reward. Functional items like bookends or paperweights and decorative items like framed art prints or a photo frame for a picture of their family are great options. Look for things that match their style and are relevant to their interests and passions to make it more personal and meaningful.  

6. Pot Plants

Studies have shown that plants and greenery indoors are good for our physical and mental health. They can even boost productivity in the workplace.

They’re also very popular and the chances are you have more than one passionate ‘plant parent’ on your team! A small indoor plant in a nice pot is a gift that many employees will love!  

7. Event Tickets

Give your employees tickets to a sports match, concert, movie, or theatre for a gift they can share with friends or family. Choosing an event that they will love makes it personal and allowing them to include a loved one makes it meaningful.

Often, experiences are valued more than physical items so tickets are a great way to combine the two and give your employee something extra memorable.

8. Personalized Mugs, Stickers, and Magnets

Small personalized items like pins, mugs, stickers, and magnets make great gifts that don’t cost a lot. They’re thoughtful and unique, which adds value to otherwise low-value items.

Funky and fun options are images of their pets, a quirky thing they say often, or a quote from their favorite book or movie.

9. Vouchers to Eat Out

Vouchers for local cafes and restaurants are a great way to combine a material gift with a memorable experience for your employee. They can be as big or small as you feel appropriate and the employee can always pay in the difference if they choose to go for something more expensive.

Vouchers may seem a bit impersonal but the place you choose offers an opportunity to personalize the gift. Choose a place that makes something they love or have expressed wanting to try to make it more meaningful.

6 Subscriptions and Services to Offer as Employee Rewards

Employee rewards don’t have to be material objects. Sometimes a well-chosen service or paid subscription can hold more valuable for them than a material gift that costs a lot more. Here are some great options to consider:

1. Paid Print Media Subscriptions

Many great publications are only available to paid subscribers so a subscription to the New York Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired, or Tech Crunch can make a great gift.

Subscriptions for a set period, like 6 months or a year, are usually not very expensive. Allow your employee to choose from a selection or choose one that for them that will resonate with their interests.  

2. Subscriptions to Apps and Streaming Services

Give your employees the gift of hours of ad-free enjoyment with a premium subscription to a streaming service like YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Music.

A Subscription to a mindfulness and meditation app like Insight Timer, Headspace, or Calm can also be a great gift. It demonstrates that you’re invested in their well-being and encourages them to take time to relax.

3. Museum Memberships

Memberships to museums make excellent gifts for employees, especially if they have young kids, as they can share the experiences with their families and friends. Museum memberships are surprisingly inexpensive and can be enjoyed many times over.   

4. Entrance Passes for National Parks and Heritage Sites

A national parks entrance pass is a great gift for any employee who enjoys spending time outdoors. Passes give access to many different sites, which offer a variety of activities like hiking, camping, fishing, skiing, and swimming.

Valid for a year at a time, passes are a gift that will provide a huge amount of value to any employee who loves nature and enjoys some physical activity.

5. Vouchers for Food Delivery Services

We have all had those days where we get home from a long day and just can’t face cooking a meal! Vouchers for a local food delivery service, like Uber Eats, is a simple gift that most employees will appreciate. Let them choose the provider or choose one that services the area in which they live.

6. Learning Opportunities and Online Courses

Many employees are hungry to learn, grow and broaden their skillsets. Paying for online courses is a great way to show them that you recognize this and are invested in their growth and development.

There are loads of great online learning platforms like Udemy and LinkedIn Learning that offer courses for just about every industry. Bonus: you benefit from an upskilled employee on your team!    

7 Special and Creative Employee Rewards: Special and Creative

Employees everywhere are encouraged to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions. Here are some special and creative employee rewards ideas to fuel their creativity and overall well-being:

1. Creative Classes

Paying for classes for an employee’s creative passion is a truly personal and meaningful gift. Here are some lessons and classes you can consider:

• Cooking, wine pairing, and entertaining
• Breadmaking, baking, or cake decorating
• Painting, drawing, or digital art classes
• Creative writing classes
• Dance classes
• Music lessons
• Pottery/ceramics classes
• Papermaking classes
• Soap or perfume making classes
• Craft lessons for any craft your employee is passionate about

2. An Employee’s Fun Kitty

Set a budget for employees to use for ‘fun’. They can choose, plan and enjoy any activities they want using their budget for fun. You can also add funds to the fun kitty as an informal reward for great work.

Employees can get creative and curate an event or activity everyone will enjoy and participate in. It gives them autonomy, an opportunity to be creative, and an opportunity to work as a team on something fun and rewarding.

3. Personalized Care Packages

The covid-19 pandemic has reshaped how we work, how we live, and how we relate to one another. With many employees working from home, it has become challenging to keep workplace relationships strong.

Personalized care packages are a great way to show appreciation for your employees working from home. Packages can be as big or small as you like. Home office items like ergonomic laptop stands or stationery, a work branded water bottle, and comfy socks are great gifts.

You can also opt for self-care and comfort items like foam baths, aromatherapy candles, and a selection of snacks.

Care packages can be different for different employees, teams, or divisions, allowing you to make them as personalized as you like.  

4. Passion Project Days

Set aside some time for employees to work on things they love doing but often don’t get to work on because they’re not a priority for the company.

What this looks like will vary depending on what kind of business you have. This time aims to allow employees to update content, change outdated systems, do things better or in a new way – to develop something new or improve on something old.

The key is that these are things the employees want to work on. Things they’re passionate about. The change of pace and an opportunity to work on something personally rewarding is a great reward. Plus, some great ideas happen when employees are given free rein to try something new!

5. Sponsor an Employee’s Content on LinkedIn or Forbes

These days many employees are developing their professional presence in the industry as individuals, as well as for their employers. You can give them a bump by giving them exposure that has their name on it.

If an employee is contributing their expertise or insight for content that is relevant to your industry, put their name on it or quote them and then promote that article on LinkedIn or submit it to Forbes.

6. Winery and Brewery Tours or Tastings

If all employees drink alcohol, organizing a wine or beer tasting at a local winery or brewery is a great group outing. Events like this work really well because they’re structured enough to keep the whole group together, but not so structured that no one can relax and have spontaneous fun.

7. Sponsored Exercise Classes

Exercise is a very important aspect of our well-being. It impacts our mood, our ability to focus, how well we sleep, and our overall health.

Sponsoring an employee’s fitness classes is a great gift as it shows that you care enough about them to invest in their health and well-being.  

Classes for just about any type of exercise are available online or in-person, for individuals or groups.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, when employee rewards and recognition are done right, they’re a great way to build strong company culture, improve employee experience and satisfaction, and boost motivation and productivity.

Today, we have covered the pros and cons of employee rewards, how to do them right, and covered 29 great examples of employee rewards to use for employee recognition and appreciation in your business.

Which rewards will work best for your business and who will you thank first?!

References

Business2Community: The Pros and Cons of Employee Incentive Programs

Element Three: 5 Ways Company Swag Boosts Company Culture

HubSpot: 5 Guaranteed Ways to Boost Job Satisfaction on Your Team

HubSpot: The Power of Praise & Recognition on Employee Happiness

McKinsey & Company: This Time It’s Personal: Shaping The ‘New Possible’ Through Employee Experience

Research Gate: Influence of Reward Systems on Motivation – Pros and Cons Based on Current Literature (2019)

Venturi: 17 Ways to Make Employee Rewards More Motivating (Pdf)

Word at Work: The Role of Recognition in the Employee Experience

The post 29 Employee Rewards to Skyrocket Motivation (2024) appeared first on P2P marketing.

More and more businesses are harnessing the power of their employees to act as ambassadors and gain huge benefits in organic reach, improved trust, and brand awareness, and boost sales.

The problem is that an employee advocacy program is hugely challenging to put together, manage and track if you don’t have the right software to help you do it!

That’s why we have reviewed the best employee advocacy platforms for you to use in 2024 to make it a little easier to find the right one for your unique needs.

We cover how they can help your employee advocacy program succeed, key features and functions, pricing, and the pros and cons of each platform so that you can easily select the best one for your business.

Let’s jump right in, shall we?

Quick Review: 8 Best Employee Advocacy Platforms

This is a quick comparison of the best employee advocacy platforms in 2024:

Keep scrolling to read the full reviews, including pros and cons, features, pricing, and more!

What Are Employee Advocacy Platforms?

In simple terms, employee advocacy platforms are software solutions that enable you to implement and execute an employee advocacy program for your business.

Much like ambassador and affiliate marketing, employee advocacy makes use of individuals endorsing and sharing content relating to your business on their personal social media channels. In this case, the advocates are the business’ own employees.

Employee advocacy programs focus on social media and are a great way to increase your brand’s organic reach. They’re also a great way to leverage word of mouth and the increased trust factor that exists when someone we know personally shares an opinion or recommendation.

Employee advocacy programs involve encouraging employees to share content that promotes the company, directly or indirectly, on their social media channels and with their personal and professional connections.

This is a little more complicated than it sounds!

Creating quality content internally and finding and curating external content that is relevant, good quality and places your company in a good light can be very challenging.

As can getting all that content to your employees for them to share, making sure they’re actually sharing it, and tracking the progress of the campaign as a whole.

However, a good employee advocacy platform will make the whole process much, much easier!

Employee advocacy platforms streamline the whole process from creating and collating content to sharing it with the right employees at the right time, to personalizing and customizing the content for authenticity, and, finally, to tracking the performance and efficacy of the program.

They offer integration with most major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

They allow you to create a curated library or feed of content for employees to access and share and they offer analytics to help you measure and track performance.

In addition, many platforms offer gamification, challenges, and competitions (which you can choose to incentivize if you wish) to build friendly competition and keep employees engaged and actively participating in the program.   

How We Evaluated the Best Employee Advocacy Platforms

When we evaluate the best employee advocacy platforms, we look at various factors that speak to the quality of the platform.

We aim to determine which ones give the best value to their users, are the most user-friendly and the most versatile so that users can make the most of what the platform has to offer.

When assessing each of the various options available, we take into consideration:  

• Expert user reviews
• Our personal experience with the platform
• Demos and trials
• Pricing
• Features, functions and integrations
• Added value

This is how we find the best employee advocacy platforms to present to you. We aggregate all this information and boil it down to just the important things so that we can present you with a simple way to compare the various options.   

We have tried to include something of value for everyone so that you can easily choose the best option for your business!

The 8 Best Employee Advocacy Platforms

1.Clearview Social

Clearview Social’s employee advocacy platform makes it easy for you to provide content for your team to share from their individual LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

It is an incredibly simple and easy-to-use platform that offers easy prompts, email or Slack reminders to share content, and an easy one-click activation feature to ‘share all’ with one click.

Clearview Social takes care of your post scheduling. It provides an algorithmic auto-scheduling tool called PeakTime, which uses AI to strategically share posts so that they go live at the optimal time for engagement on each platform.

The platform allows you to create curated content collections to share with your employees, along with suggested headlines and captions. This helps you control the messaging around your brand and optimize captions with relevant hashtags and keywords while making it super simple to share.

Clearview Social provides valuable data and reporting to track posts’ engagement and reach and see the ‘earned media value’ of your efforts.

It also offers gamification features with a leaderboard to keep employees engaged and motivated.

All in all, Clearview Social is a robust tool that is simple and easy to use but still offers everything you need for a strong employee advocacy program.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Simple and easy to use, easy to schedule content sharing
• Automatically queues and posts at the best posting times for engagement on different channels
• Share All – one-click sharing for multiple items across numerous channels
• Gamification features with a leaderboard and reports on activity
• Detailed data and reporting on shares, clicks, and earned media value
• Prompts and reminders for employees to share content via email or Slack
• Acts as a centralized database for all content shared by the organization and its members
• Option to auto-share company articles to a LinkedIn account without needing approval each time
• You can tag other users on Twitter and LinkedIn in your posts
• You can create curated lists of articles, suggested headlines, and other information for your employees, which makes it easier for them to share content effectively and on-message
• Allows multiple users to collaborate on campaigns within the platform
• Customer support is quick, friendly, and knowledgeable
• Scalable solution that you can use for any staff size

Cons:

• Does not currently post to Instagram automatically
• It can be time-consuming to search through old posts and delete obsolete/unwanted content
• Limited to specific social media platforms only
• It can be pricey for small budgets

G2 Crowd Rating: 4.6/5

Our Score: 4.5/5

Pricing: Not provided – contact them for a demo and quotation

Website: https://clearviewsocial.com/

2.Dynamic Signal

Dynamic Signal is a powerful company-employee communication tool. It connects to more social media platforms than many other options, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Weibo, Xing, BlogSpot, Tumblr, and WordPress blogs.

Dynamic Signal is offered in 12 different languages, making it a great option for international organizations. It also integrates with platforms like Salesforce, Slack, Adobe, and Oracle for improved integration with an organization’s existing internal communication channels. 

The platform helps organizations create curated and controlled employee advocacy programs. It’s gamification features breed friendly competition and drive engagement by users.  

Admins can post relevant content, internal and external, for users to share and can control what users see and what they can share. Admins can also write different versions of messages and captions, which then appear for randomly selected employees to keep the content unique and differentiated between different users.   

The platform offers reporting and analytics for analyzing the reach of different employees and gives insight into the kind of content to be shared by individual employees for maximum effect, based on their reach and audience niche.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Quick and efficient for communicating with employees, even international teams.
• Allows for separate leader boards, streams, accounts, etc. that can all be managed from one place.
• Intuitive and easy to use interface, easy to share posts and easy for each employee to find relevant posts to share with their networks.
• Gamification makes it fun and competitive for employees, which keeps them engaged.
• Shares internal news and accomplishments within the company, keeping employees in the loop and up to date. 
• Easy-to-use templates for posts, newsletters and email notifications.
• Customization allows for targeted messages to specific teams or groups of employees.
• Great after-sales support and assistance. Weekly ‘customer success’ meetings to keep customers in the loop and up to date.
• The platform looks very professional, which boosts trust in the product.
• Reporting function records outreach metrics effectively.
• Their weekly customer success meetings keep us in the know.
• Consistent upgrades and innovation that keeps the tool current with other apps.
• While it can get complicated, Dynamic Signal allows for very advanced targeting of content to team members by location, role, shift, and more.
• Native video sharing and embedding of YouTube videos is a great way to easily introduce a blend of content mediums.
• Some users felt it was geared more towards internal communications than social sharing tools.

Cons:

• Messages come from one email address, which cannot be changed.
• Occasional bugs and glitches that impacted connectivity.
• Can be difficult to tag people on LinkedIn/Facebook.
• If used with Workday, the Workday log in credentials is needed to log in.
• Customer service could be improved in some areas.
• Some users noted that there had been some recent availability concerns regarding server errors, etc. that had caused some frustration.
• In terms of functionality, the back-end of the platform is complicated and difficult for some users to manage.
• The differences in targeting between posts and broadcasts can be confusing.
• Unexpected pricing increases.
• Does not have an internal calendar for upcoming dates and events.
• The steps required to update the app is quite cumbersome, especially for the Apple store.

G2 Crowd Rating: 4.1/5

Our Score: 4.6/5

Pricing: Not provided – contact them for a demo and quotation

Website: https://dynamicsignal.com

3.Smarp

Geared for large organizations, Smarp facilitates effective communication and employee advocacy processes for enterprise businesses.

It allows for the creation, collation and delivery of personalized content to individuals, teams and groups within the organization.

Site curators put together the internal and external content they wish their employee advocates to share. They can then control the content streams, the order of appearance and schedule links and content to be made available to employees at the best times for them to share it.

Employees then share to their own social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WeChat, Xing, VK, and Weibo. Individual post captions can be edited by employees to maintain their personal and individual style or tone.  

Smarp offers gamification and incentives to keep employees engaged and interested. Companies can make their own prizes or incentives based on performance and participation.

The reporting and analytics of the platform allow employees to view metrics that help them keep track of their performance. Admins can access broad level data and then filter down to see performance statistics by employee and by individual post. 

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• The easy and intuitive handling and the fast overview over all relevant topics.
• Post titles can be pre-filled by the content publisher, which saves time and makes it easy to use. This feature uses the right number of characters for the channel it will be shared to.
• User friendly, quick, and easy interface for employees to use.
• Analytics features allow for reporting to track the progress and effectiveness of different campaigns.
• Easy way for employees to access the latest company news and share it through their social channels.
• Provides weekly updates sent to staff on what’s new/what to share, ability to track performance.
• Automation features make it self-sufficient, from proposing content to automated update emails for the users, and ensures engagement.
• Enterprise package offers groups, teams, channels, and channel manager features, making it a great option for organizations that require a customizable and scalable platform.

Cons:

• Some users found that it disconnected their accounts and they needed to log in again frequently.
• Inviting team members is a manual task, which can be time-consuming for larger teams.
• Sorting and searching to find older posts is difficult.
• Some android users had trouble connecting.
• That you can only upload urls for sharing externally.
• Doesn’t integrate with Social Sprout for those using it.
• Image loading can be slow or buggy.
• Leader board customization can be complicated.
• Points on the leader board are based on shares rather than engagement.
• The platform could be more dynamic/integrated with the social platforms it supports, which would allow for things like tagging on LinkedIn.

G2 Crowd Rating: 4.6/5

Our Score: 4.8/5

Pricing: Not provided – contact them for a demo and quotation

Website: https://smarp.com

4.Hootsuite Amplify

HootSuite Amplify is an employee advocacy platform that is an add-on to the HootSuite social media management platform.

It is designed to help you manage your employee advocacy program effectively by providing a library of curated posts for employees to access and share on their own social media channels.

The platform enables social media admins to specify and remind employees about content they want them to share and when. It also offers robust analytics to see which posts are garnering the most engagement and which employees they belong to.

HootSuite Amplify uses a clean and intuitive, mobile-first interface. It is easy to use and makes participation in the employee advocacy program very easy for employees.

It allows for scheduling, provides a visual calendar for employees to see when their posts will go out, and integrates with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Very intuitive, easy to use, and schedule posts. 
• Analytics show which posts are performing better on which channels and platforms, as well as engagement on different posts and platforms.
• Allows for comparison with competitors.
• Desktop and mobile versions available.
• The mobile app is very effective and intuitive.
• Automatically shortens links, which saves time.
• Allows for keyword search on Twitter.
• The visual calendar is a great way to plan posts, it also shows how many posts are scheduled for each date and can be filtered to check that a particular channel has been chosen.
• Works well with LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Cons:

• Glitches with tagging on some platforms, especially Twitter.
• Doesn’t allow for multiple images/graphics when sharing to Instagram. Sometimes the images on Instagram are cropped off to fit.
• Some users found the interface to be cluttered or dated and not that easy to navigate. Some users found it to be confusing and overwhelming at first because there are a lot of functions.
• Customer support can be slow to reply.
• Connected accounts disconnect often and need to be logged into again.
• The analytics are not very user-friendly in terms of titles and filters. Limited capabilities for tracking specific activities, keywords, or hashtags. 
• Some users mentioned prohibitive costs.
• Doesn’t work smoothly with YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.
• Some users found that the integration with multiple social media networks made it confusing and complex.
• Inbox can be difficult to use when replying to Facebook messages.

G2 Crowd Rating: 4.4/5

Our Score: 3.7/5

Pricing: Not provided – contact them for a demo and quotation

Website: https://www.hootsuite.com/products/amplify

5.Sociabble

Sociabble offers solutions for internal communication, employee advocacy, and employee engagement. The platform aggregates content from various sources, including official company content and user-generated content, into a curated feed of relevant material for employees to share on their social media accounts.

The content is personalized and can be organized into themed channels. Companies can also extend the platforms use to their partners, affiliates, and external influencers.

Sociabble offers gamification to keep employees engaged and competitive, with incentives, surveys, and quizzes. Users can also create their own content within Sociabble and share it with groups or on their social media accounts. Admins can create challenges to incentivize employees to create quality content or campaigns.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Collates all content into one place so that it is easy to find and share.
• Gamification helps keep employees engaged and participating.
• Filters the content shown to employees, which saves time finding relevant content for them to share.
• Simple, intuitive, easy to use interface. Easy to set up and end-users need minimal training.
• Great customer service that offers thoughtful and helpful post-sales support.
• It works well with Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn and Instagram can be challenging.
• Provides suggested captions, which users can edit to make them authentic.
• The basic purpose and configuration of the platform are very straight-forward but it can be customized for higher-level usage.
• Allows for more customization than competitors.
• You can form channels/groups for specific purposes and ensure you cater to the interests of your audience.
• Automated and customized newsletters for specific audiences
• Integration with tools like Feedly and Trees.
• Mobile app is available.
• Each customer gets a ‘Customer Success Manager’ to help them make the most of the platform and keep users engaged.
• Gamification and reward system keeps employees engaged and competitive.

Cons:

• There are some limitations for customizing the content in the different channels of the platform.
• Analytics (leads form and code not certified with Google). Can’t measure engagement for a particular month/week. No unique URLs so hard to tell if a post was shared from the platform or not.
• Tagging needs to be done manually, can’t automatically tag the company or individuals.
• Some customizations and new features are only available at an extra cost.
• Gamification is geared towards adding new users (and thus paid for seats for Sociabble), rather than incentives to promote specific campaigns by existing users.
• Some users experienced difficulties with autorenewal and difficulty giving notice on their contacts.

G2 Crowd Rating: 4.6/5

Our Score: 4.7/5

Pricing: Not provided – contact them for a demo and quotation

Website: https://www.sociabble.com

6.Easy Advocacy by Agora Pulse

Easy Advocacy by Agora Pulse is a great starter package that is completely free! It is a quick and simple to use the platform, that makes sharing content super simple for employee advocates.

Easy Advocacy allows for ‘campaigns’ to be set up and then emailed to a distribution list of employees or affiliates. They receive an email with links and suggested captions to use when sharing to their social media accounts.

Sharing from the email is easy and straightforward and the platform supports sharing to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or via email.

Easy Advocacy provides gamification and a visual leader board that shows which campaigns and which employees are garnering the most traffic and engagement.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• One of the very few employee advocacy platforms that is completely free to use.
• Allows for complete control of the material being sent out to employees for sharing.
• Allows users to modify captions and wording to keep their tone and authenticity.
• Great for individual campaigns, especially for promoting specific events.
• Very easy to use, simple, and straight forward user interface.
• Unlimited number of distribution lists and campaigns.
• Supports sharing to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest platforms.

Cons:

• Does not support sharing to Instagram.
• Limited reporting and analytics.
• Distribution lists need to be manually uploaded, which can be time-consuming.
• Assembling content for sharing needs to be done by one or two people and users cant suggest or create content within the platform.

Product Hunt Rating: 5/5

Our Score: 3.5/5

Pricing: Free

Website: https://www.easy-advocacy.com

7.EveryoneSocial

EveryoneSocial is an employee advocacy platform for social selling. The platform makes it easy to collate and share content with employees, who can then share it to their personal Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Xing, Wechat, and Slack accounts, as well as their email contacts.

One of EveryoneSocial’s strengths is its focus on employee engagement. It collects data from employees and then modifies its interface to keep them engaged. The platform features a leader board for gamification and incentives so that employees can see where they stand in the rankings. It also allows users to create their own content and they can add feeds and blogs that interest them too.

Content can be controlled by blacklisting or marking certain items as ‘read-only’ so that it cant be shared if it is inappropriate for the company’s image. Sharable content can be shared as-is from the platform or modified by users as they wish. It also features an extensive set of analytics tools to monitor employee advocacy and provides detailed reports.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Approved content can be tagged for importance so that users know which content to focus on. Scheduling allows for posts to be pre-scheduled to post at preferred times.
• Gamification and the visual leader board keep users engaged and informed as to the progress and value of their posts.
• Very simple and user-friendly interface – no need for any training. Each feature is meaningful and precise.
• Quick and easy to use, streamlined and easy to schedule posts ahead of time.
• The integrations with LinkedIn, Twitter, and Point Systems for sharing the content over social media.
• Works well for large enterprises as well as smaller organizations. 
• Metrics and analytics allow for informed decisions around strategy and can even inform hiring choices.

Cons:

• Some users found it to be slow for browsing and buggy at times. 
• Others found that recent content was easy to find but searching for older or more specific content was challenging. Does not have a keyword or hashtag search function.
• Filtering could be improved to be able to filter out all posts that have not yet been shared rather than having to scroll through all posts.
• The analytics view could also be enriched with additional charts to keep track of the evolution of the interactions with your post and extract some more meaningful trends and insights for better posting.
• The platform does not automatically post at optimized times for maximum attention, which varies for different social media channels.
• Some users found that customer service was quick to respond but that bugs took a long time to be fixed.
• Mobile App occasionally gets stuck when sharing content.
• Sharing across all social channels can be limited by the APIs on popular channels like Instagram.
• Only supports small size images.

G2 Crowd Rating: 4.5/5

Our Score: 4.2/5

Pricing: Not provided – contact them for a demo and quotation

Website: https://everyonesocial.com

8.Post Beyond

PostBeyond is one of the most comprehensive employee advocacy platforms, which also offers brand resource management, employer branding, process management, and social selling.

As an employee advocacy platform, it requires the company to assemble and curate a content library from various internal and external online sources.

Curators can then segment employees into teams or groups and share different combinations of content with them. Employees can use their mobile devices or phones to check the feed within the platform and share content items on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

PostBeyond offers robust reporting and one of the metrics they use is the ‘earned media value’ of a campaign, which tells the company what that would have cost them if they were advertising using paid social media. This is useful for calculating ROI and informing strategy and employee incentives to participate.  

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• All content is vetted and approved by the company before they’re available for employees to share.
• Allows for scheduling to specific dates and times and automatically provides a suggested caption for each post, which can be edited by each user.
• Very user-friendly, simple, and clearly set out interface. 
• Suggests external articles that are related to the industry and the articles are displayed in a structured manner, making it easy to find them and share.  
• Gamification and ranking make it a fun, engaging, and rewarding experience.
• Provides an analysis of each share to help users better engage with their social media audience.
• Very customizable so niche users within the organization can get relevant content to share.
• CS/Development teams are flexible, responsive and accommodating when specific functions or features are needed.
• Great customer support and after-sales service.

Cons:

• View options in the user interface are limited.
• Limited number of supported social media platforms. 
• Users can’t search for previous posts and finding older articles can be difficult.
• Most shared articles are displayed by the total number of shares and can’t be filtered by timeframe to see the most shared in the last week or month.
• Page loading can be slow.
• Topics could be broader to allow for more individuality between users’ posts.
• Does not immediately notify users that a post has been successfully shared and they need to reload the page to check.
• Tagging people on social media posts has to be done after posting, by editing the post on the social media channel rather than from within the platform.
• Load times on the user-end are sometimes times slow.

G2 Crowd Rating: 4.6/5

Our Score: 4.5/5

Pricing: None provided – contact them for a custom quote

Website: https://www.postbeyond.com

Conclusions and Our Two Top Picks

In conclusion, there are many great employee advocacy platforms to choose from. They vary in terms of their core functions and features, the social media channels they support and the other software they integrate with.

We selected and reviewed the 10 best employee advocacy platforms and have tried to include a wide range of options so that there is bound to be a solution for your unique needs.

Of the 10 employee advocacy platforms we reviewed here, these are our two top picks:

Top Pick #1: Best Employee Advocacy Platform for Small-Medium Businesses

Sociabble – is a robust employee advocacy platform that offers performance and lead tracking, gamification, content aggregation, moderation and sharing to several different social media channels. User reviews noted that Sociabble provides great customer support that is personalized and helps them make the most of what the platform has to offer.  

Top Pick #2: Best Employee Advocacy Platform for Big Businesses

Smarp – is a an employee advocacy platform designed for large organizations. It offers a range of features that allow for the customization and personalization, targeting, scheduling and prioritizing of posts. The platform allows sharing to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WeChat, Xing, VK, and Weibo. It also offers gamification to keep employees engaged. Smarp offers robust analytics and reporting, which are essential for building successful campaigns.

References and Useful Resources

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: What is Employee Advocacy?

Smarp: 3 Employee Advocacy Trends to Look Out for in 2023

G2 Crowd: Software Reviews – Employee Advocacy Platforms 

TrustRadius: Software Reviews – Employee Advocacy Platforms

Capterra: Software Reviews – Employee Advocacy Platforms

The post 8 Best Employee Advocacy Platforms to Succeed in 2024 [Detailed Review] appeared first on P2P marketing.

So, how do you create a solid online presence and gain the trust of your customers, peers, and industry? How do you connect with your audience in a meaningful way?

The answer employee advocacy. People trust people. They connect with people. Employee advocacy humanizes your brand and makes it personal and trustworthy.

The benefits of employee advocacy also include improved employee engagement and corporate culture, employee empowerment, and making it easier to recruit top talent… The list goes on.

But you don’t have to take our word for it – the numbers don’t lie.

So, let’s dive into the employee advocacy stats so you can see for yourself!      

21 Mind Blowing Employee Advocacy Stats

5 Employee Advocacy Stats on Social Media Usage

Social media usage has grown over the last few years and continues to do so. Reaching people and putting your brand in front of them on social media is now an integral part of marketing and sales for every company, across all industries.

To understand the magnitude of social media’s presence in our lives, let’s look at the numbers:

1. 50.64% (3.96 billion people) of the global population actively use social media and 63% are over the age of 13, making them part of the eligible audience (Backlinko)
2. In 2020, people had an average of 8.6 social media accounts and spent an average of 2 hours 24 mins a day on social media (Backlinko)
3. 66% of Facebook’s 2.8 billion active monthly users, 1.85 billion, are active daily (Statista)
4. 50% of Instagram’s 1 billion monthly active users, 500 million, are active daily (Backlinko)
5. 40% of LinkedIn’s 675 million monthly active users are active daily (Foundationinc)

7 Employee Advocacy Stats on Marketing

Marketing through employee advocacy on social media has some unique benefits. These include greater reach, higher engagement, higher trust, and a more personalized brand experience for your customers:

561% greater reach when messages are shared by employees rather than by the brand’s official social media channels (MSLGroup)

800% more engagement on posts shared by employees, when compared to the same posts shared by official brand accounts (Social Media Today)

700% greater conversion frequency when leads are developed through employee social  media (Marketing Advisory Network)

76% of individuals surveyed say that they’re more likely to trust content shared by individuals over content shared by brands (AdWeek)

84% of consumers value recommendations from friends and family above formal advertising (Neal Schaffer)

77% of consumers are likely to purchase after hearing about it from someone they trust (Neal Schaffer)

91% of B2B buyers are active on social media (SuperOffice) and 75% of B2B buyers use social media to support purchase decisions (Linkedin)

Employee advocacy is particularly important in the B2B space. Check out this video by Oktopost on YouTube for more info on the benefits of employee advocacy for B2B companies:

9 Employee Advocacy Stats on the Impact of Employee Advocacy Programs

The benefits of employee advocacy extend beyond increased brand awareness, lead generation, and sales.

They also include employee empowerment to become thought leaders in their industry.  Improved communication, engagement, and company culture, which lead to higher employee motivation and productivity. With this, comes an improvement in recruiting and talent acquisition, as well as better talent retention.  

Here are some numbers to illustrate this:   

1. Companies with a successful employee advocacy program are 58% more likely to attract, and 20% more likely to retain, top talent (LinkedIn)
2. 90% of B2B buyers are more likely to engage with salespeople who are seen as industry thought leaders (Tribalimpact) and 82% are experienced increased trust as a result of thought leadership content (LinkedIn)
3. 74% of employees feel they are not up to date on company information and news (Trade Press Services) and 85% of employees said they’re most motivated when management offers regular updates on company news (Trade Press Services)
4. Well informed and engaged employees outperform their peers by 77% (EveryoneSocial)
5. 79% of job applicants use social media in their job search (Glassdoor)
6. 73% of sales teams that use social selling outperformed peers (Aberdeen Group)
7. Customers referred by advocates have a 37% higher retention rate (Deloitte).
8. Companies with highly engaged teams have a 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 59% reduction in staff turnover (Forbes)
9. Highly engaged teams show 21% greater profitability (Gallup)

The 6 Most Important Benefits of an Employee Advocacy Program

The employee advocacy stats demonstrate the undeniable value of employee advocacy for improved brand awareness, marketing reach, engagement, and lead generation. As well as improved lead conversion, sales, and customer retention.

They also show how successful employee advocacy programs benefit the company internally, through improved employee engagement and company culture. Higher productivity, and reduced employee turnover. Employees also benefit, from a better professional online presence, the tools to further their career objectives, and working in a well-respected company. 

Let’s look at the 6 most important benefits of employee advocacy:

1: Social Media Reach, Engagement and Improved Brand Awareness

Employee advocacy allows you to reach more people organically on social media. According to LinkedIn, on average employees have social networks that are 10 times larger than their company’s network.

This means that every employee post has the potential to reach 10 times more people the same post shared by your company.

The scale of organic reach from employee advocacy posts elevates brand awareness and recognition far beyond what can be achieved by the company’s social profiles alone.

According to Social Media Today, posts by employees achieve 8 times the engagement of content shared directly by a brand.

People innately trust information shared by peers. They feel it is more relevant to them as individuals, which adds yet another layer of value to employee advocacy.

2: Personalization, Authenticity and Improved Trust

Personalization, connection, and relationships are at the heart of customer loyalty and retention. When brand content is shared by peers, the people reached by that content see it connected to an authentic human being, rather than a nameless and faceless brand.

As more and more people use social media as search engines to find information about the companies they’re considering doing business with, the human element of social media has become essential too.

When employees share company content, they’re connecting themselves to the content and putting a face and authentic human sentiment to the company content.  

According to PostBeyond, a HubSpot study found that 75% don’t trust advertisements but 70% trust recommendations from consumer reviews. A survey by AdWeek found that 76% of individuals surveyed said that they’re more likely to trust content shared by individuals over content shared by brands.

This kind of implicit trust extends to employee advocacy posts too, as they from real people who are known to the audience. According to HubSpot, people are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on a social media referral. 

3: Improved Employee-Company Engagement

A key aspect of employee advocacy involves sharing company information with employees. This improves employee engagement and employee-company interaction, which creates a connection and affinity between the employee and the company. This boosts company culture too. 

A report by Altimeter Group found that employee advocacy forms an important part of investing in ‘relationship economics’. It stated that “socially engaged employees are more optimistic, inspired, connected, and tenured”.

A meta-analysis conducted by Gallup found that groups with a high level of employee engagement had almost twice the likelihood of success in terms of composite scores based on financial, customer, retention, safety, quality, shrinkage, and absenteeism metrics.

Improved employee engagement had positive impacts on absenteeism, productivity, staff turnover, customer ratings, sales, and profitability.

4: Empowering Employees and Developing Thought Leadership

Employee advocacy also benefits the employees themselves. Employee advocacy programs provide employees with a range of content that is highly relevant to their industry and that reflects well on the organization they work for.

Employees can frame that content within their authentic style and voice and leverage it to make themselves look good. When employees are publically well informed, knowledgeable and up to date in their field, they begin to emerge as thought leaders and establish their personal brands.

This also benefits the company. A 2020 Edelman B2B Thought Leadership Study found that B2B decision-makers use thought leadership to vet a company’s capabilities. 59% agree that an organization’s thought leadership is a more trustworthy source for assessing a company’s capabilities than the company’s marketing material.

5: Talent Acquisition and Retention 

When you have prominent, engaged, and passionate thought leaders in your organization, you’re able to attract top talent. People want to be on teams with thought leaders and they want to work for organizations with a great reputation.  

Employee advocacy also means that talent is seeing you – whether they’re looking at job postings or not – because your employees have the tools to make their own jobs and careers, working for your brand, look as good as possible.

6: Increased Leads, Conversions, and Sales

Employee advocacy brings together improvements throughout the business for better marketing, social selling, customer service, and customer retention. 

A bigger online presence, higher levels of trust, and a broader network for referrals make generating leads easier.

In the B2B space, buyers use social media to find trusted solutions. According to LinkedIn, 75% of B2B buyers use social media to support purchase decisions.  

As direct sales now focus on social selling, sales teams use social media to meet their prospective clients, interact with them and develop relationships that convert to sales.  

According to LinkedIn, leads from employee advocacy convert 7 times more frequently than other types and salespeople who share content are 45% more likely to achieve or exceed their sales quotas. 

Wrapping Up

If you’re on the fence about the value of an employee advocacy program, these employee advocacy stats paint a very clear picture – the benefits are undeniable!

A successful employee advocacy program will increase employee engagement and productivity, improve your brand’s online presence, resulting in greater reach and engagement on social media. It will help you build a stellar brand reputation, improve sales, conversions, and your bottom line!

References

Altimeter: Relationship Economics

Backlinko: Social Network Usage & Growth Statistics: How Many People Use Social Media in 2024?

EveryoneSocial: Employee Advocacy Statistics

Forbes: 10 Timely Statistics About The Connection Between Employee Engagement And Wellness

Post Beyond: Employee Advocacy

Social Media Today: 8 Ways that Employee Advocacy Can Boost Your Marketing Efforts [Infographic]

The post 21 Mind Blowing Employee Advocacy Stats [2024 Update] appeared first on P2P marketing.

Treating your employees in the same manner as you treat your customers increases employee engagement, puts everyone on the same page, and aligns all areas of the business with its core values and goals.

It increases productivity, creates a better company culture, and improves customer service.

In this guide, we’re covering what employee marketing is, why employee marketing is important, and how to do it right in your business.

Let’s dive in!

What is Employee Marketing?

In simple terms, employee marketing is the promotion of the brand’s core values, goals, and culture to its employees.

The objective of this is to create an emotional connection with the company and the brand, which leads to enthusiasm and improved employee engagement.

Internal employee communication and sharing information is very important for this, but it’s adding marketing tactics to the mix that makes the magic happen. 

When employees are engaged and passionate about their company, they’re more motivated and productive.

That enthusiasm and positive sentiment towards the brand shines through in customer interactions and their official and unofficial employee advocacy on social media.    

Check out this video by Gallup for a useful snapshot of why employee engagement is so important:

Having an engaged and motivated workforce also improves employee retention and makes hiring new talent much easier.  

Treating your employees like customers and marketing the company to them, while sharing vital information and keeping everyone connected and engaged is at the heart of employee marketing.

Why is Employee Marketing Important?

Employee marketing has many benefits. One of the most important ones is increased employee engagement and the impacts of engagement on company culture, productivity, and customer experience.

Engaged employees do their jobs better, and they’re more in tune with the company’s objectives and values.

They can bring that awareness and passion into their interactions with customers, colleagues, and partners. 

When employees have quick and easy access to the relevant information they need, they’re more efficient and effective, improving customer experience directly and indirectly.

Let’s look in more detail at how improved employee engagement benefits the company and brand:

Company Culture and Internal Brand Awareness

Effective communication, that goes both ways between the company and its employees, is essential for getting the whole organization on the same page and pulling together towards the common good.

This can be a challenge, especially in larger organizations, because communication can’t be a one-size-fits-all memo.

To be effective, internal communication needs to borrow some marketing tactics!

Approaching internal communication in the same way you would approach communication with your customers helps you tailor communication to reach them best.

Looking at them as a ‘target audience,’ which needs to be engaged to properly process the message, changes the game completely.

When the message is delivered in a way that best reaches them and shows them how it applies to them, in their specific role, it is much more effective.  

Employees who are aware of what is happening in their company on a broader level and are able to see their role in that bigger picture are more likely to feel like they’re a part of something meaningful.

Having your workforce, across all departments and sectors, feeling like they’re part of one community fosters a sense of belonging.

It makes working for that particular company meaningful and fulfilling. Employees are happier, more open, and more aware of the brand or company as a whole.

Improved Productivity

Employee engagement and productivity go hand in hand.

According to Forbes, “teams who score in the top 20% in engagement realize a 41% reduction in absenteeism and 59% less [employee] turnover. Engaged employees show up every day with passion, purpose, presence, and energy”.

The reason for this is surprisingly simple – when employees are well-informed, and they feel valued and heard at work, they are more productive.

Internal communication, optimized by marketing tactics, makes this possible!

Better Customer Service

Customer service, especially in customer-facing businesses, is the most important aspect to consider.

When employees are more engaged and feel personally connected to their company, they can better help customers.

Their passion and enthusiasm shine through in their interactions. And that sense of personal connection to the company makes them take ownership of their part in the customer experience.

Effective employee communication gives employees the tools they need to succeed at customer service.

They’re more efficient at finding solutions, and the other employees and departments needed to fulfill that solution are also better equipped to help them help the customer.

When all the different parts of the whole are working together and aligned in their approach and objectives, the customers receive the best service.  

A Great Foundation for Employee Advocacy and Brand Ambassadors

Passionate and enthusiastic employees who are well-informed and feel a part of the greater community make the best employee advocates.

Employee advocacy programs are one of the best ways to leverage social media for increased brand awareness, positive sentiment, and better sales.

Customers trust employees more than companies or high-level executives.

Social media posts from employees get up to 8 times more engagement than those shared from corporate accounts and the reach and engagement.

The collective reach of numerous employees on social media is exponentially greater than that of the company’s official social media accounts alone.

Engaged employees are naturally better ambassadors for their company and brand.

They’re more knowledgeable, and their authentic positive sentiment towards the company results in genuinely enthusiastic participation. 

How to Do Employee Marketing Successfully

Employee marketing essentially takes employee communication and blends it with marketing for the best results.

As such, your internal communication needs to have a strategy with specific goals, a content plan, and metrics to measure success.

A central aspect of marketing is understanding the audience, presenting relevant messages to that audience, and measuring the outcome.

This allows for the campaign to be modified to improve the audience’s experience and to make a greater impact. This applies to employee marketing and communication, too.

To implement employee marketing successfully, you should incorporate some other marketing principles:

Identifying Audiences and Targeting

Effective communication is audience-specific. Just as in customer marketing you would develop a customer persona and market to that ‘ideal buyer’. The same applies to employees.

It is important to determine their different attributes, context and location, and role in the company.

Understanding who they are and how to effectively communicate with them is essential for supplying them with relevant information that helps them perform their specific role in the business.

Identifying the different groups in the workforce allows for communication to be segmented and targeted.

Here, it is important to consider the method of delivery, based on what forms of communication are available to different groups.   

Personalization and Relevance

The most effective messages are those that resonate with the audience.

Personalized and contextualized messages are more relevant and interesting to the receiver because it applies to them personally.

This also helps the receiver to understand what they’re expected to do with the information they receive in the context of their role in the company.

Communication is useless if the receiver doesn’t know how to use that information properly to achieve the intended outcome.

Personalized messages answer the questions of ‘why am I being told this?’ and ‘what am I meant to do with this information?’ because they’re relevant to the receiver’s context and role.

Feedback, Measurement, and Adjustment

Assessing the impact of your communication strategy can be tricky, especially when your goals are difficult to measure in concrete terms.

This is where feedback from employees makes all the difference.

Employee marketing shifts traditional employee communication towards an ongoing conversation, where information is moving both ways.

Gathering feedback regularly allows you to keep track of how your strategies are working, which methods work best for which groups, and how you can improve going forward.

It also allows you to measure the success of your campaign and progress toward your goals.

While these things can be difficult to quantify and track, there are software solutions to help you keep track of your metrics.

Many employee advocacy platforms can help you here, especially if you are also running an employee advocacy program.

Assembling a Diverse Team

Employee marketing requires a diverse skill set. Creating a team of people to plan, organize, and execute the process makes all the difference.

When assembling your team, you can emulate some of the roles found in a traditional marketing campaign:  

• Campaign Manager: someone to oversee the campaign. They keep track of what’s working and what’s not, and making sure that communications go out in a structured way. This person also keeps track of the feedback and measurement metrics for evaluating the success of the campaign.
• Human Resources: human resources and employee communication/marketing need to be closely aligned. HR is essential for keeping communication in line with workplace protocols. HR also provides information around the things that matter most to employees and providing information around issues that need to be addressed, etc. Employee marketing is about making essential internal communication as engaging as possible.
• Experienced Content Creators: in marketing, content creation is about more than crafting excellent messages. It is about incorporating the strengths and limitations of different methods of communication to achieve the most engagement and reach. Take into consideration how well something reads on mobile vs email, how enticing a subject line is, which method gets the most responses etc. to make sure that those excellent messages are being read and making an impact.
• Visual Media Creators: incorporating images, quizzes and polls, videos, and infographics is a great way to engage your audience. No marketing campaign relies on text alone, nor should any employee marketing campaign. Having some people on the team who can create great visual content is key to the campaign’s success.   

Final Thoughts on Effective Employee Marketing

Employee marketing is a blend of internal communication and marketing.

It involves treating your employees the same way you treat your customers and developing great relationships.

Employee marketing is important for several reasons and has great benefits, like improved employee engagement, employee retention, better productivity, and developing a great company culture.

It also makes for a great customer service experience and boosts sales and customer retention.

In a digital age, employee communication is the key to keeping employees connected and aligned with the company’s values and mission, and pulling together for the good of the greater community.

If you haven’t started getting your employee marketing program, now is the time!

References

Beekeeper Blog: 3 Reasons Why Internal Marketing Communication Is Imperative

Dynamic Signal: Business Success Depends on If Employees Can Hear You

Forbes: 10 Timely Statistics About The Connection Between Employee Engagement and Wellness

Harvard Business Review: Selling the Brand Inside

The post Employee Marketing: The Definitive Guide for 2024 and Beyond [Updated] appeared first on P2P marketing.

People trust people much more than entities. Positive reviews, word-of-mouth recommendations from peers, friends, and family generate much higher levels of trust than marketing messages from a faceless company or brand.

The problem is, how do you achieve this? How do you create an organic, authentic online presence?

To build a humanized, personal, and trusted online presence with exponential reach and influence, the answer is a good employee advocacy program that is planned, strategic, controlled, and measurable.

Let’s dive right in and see how an employee advocacy program can help your business grow and succeed in 2024!

What is Employee Advocacy?

In simple terms, employee advocacy is the promotion of a company by the individuals who work for it. 

It can be as simple as a personal post thanking the company for their lunch, sharing excitement for an upcoming training program, or sharing a personal achievement in their career.

It can also be sharing the company’s latest blog or congratulating the company for a milestone or award achieved.

This kind of organic promotion happens all the time, especially when employees are actively engaged and part of a positive corporate culture.

When employees who are proud of their work, proud of their company, and feel valued within it, they will naturally share that outlook with their friends, family, colleagues, and professional networks.

In companies that do not have a strong corporate culture, an employee advocacy program can bring employees together and give them something to participate in that breeds friendly competition and boosts morale.

It will also give the company valuable insight into their corporate culture and highlight ways to improve it, which not only boosts productivity and positivity for existing employees but also attracts top talent when recruiting new hires.  

So, how does an employee advocacy program work?

A formalized employee advocacy program is all about equipping your employees with the tools and content to use their social media presence to increase the company’s brand visibility and position the brand in a positive light.

An effective employee advocacy program provides employees with:

• Curated content to share that is relevant, interesting, and promotes the image of the brand. This can be internal and external content in the form of images, blogs, articles, information about events and current affairs in the industry, promotional material about the company, and anything else that promotes the brand’s reputation.
• A way to easily access the content provided so that it takes minimal effort to share it.
• Incentives to participate. This includes education and training around how the program benefits them and the company, how to make the most of the program to further their professional aspirations, and competitions and incentives to participate enthusiastically. An instruction to participate might make them do it, but it won’t make them do with the engagement and enthusiasm that make it authentic and effective.
• A way to see their progress, the fruits of their labor, and where they stand in relation to other participants. This goes hand in hand with the incentives mentioned above but often a simple leader board, even without any incentive or reward, will be enough to keep employees engaged and actively participating.

This might seem like a lot to put together and coordinate. Luckily, there are dedicated employee advocacy platforms that will take care of all of the above and make it a breeze to curate content, provide it to employees and track the progress and efficacy of the program!

That said, there is a lot involved in making the most of an employee advocacy program… But… The benefits are huge and absolutely worth it!    

7 Amazing Employee Advocacy Benefits

1: Larger Brand Presence and Social Media Reach

Social media has become a primary source of information for people researching a brand or business.

Visibility on social media is a key aspect of any marketing campaign and using your employees’ social media presence will exponentially extend your brand’s organic reach.

An improved presence online, with a wide variety of posts and perspectives, on multiple channels, is an expensive and time-consuming objective to achieve through paid marketing alone.

But as the saying goes “many hands make light work”. Using your employees’ existing social networks to spread the word about your brand is a great way to spread the load. It costs very little compared to paid advertising and achieves much more, much quicker.

People trust information shared by individuals much more than messages shared directly by a brand.

They also trust their known peers more than a faceless, nameless brand. It is word-of-mouth advertising in the most modern sense and a valuable tool for reputation building and management.

In terms of a social media presence, reach and brand awareness an employee advocacy program will:

Reach More People Organically:

organic reach is one of the most important aspects of social media marketing. Each employee has a network of diverse audiences that a brand’s corporate profiles do not reach.

According to LinkedIn, on average employees have social networks that are 10 times larger than their company’s network.

This means that every employee post has the potential to reach 10 times the number of people the same post shared by your company does.

Elevate Brand Awareness and Recognition:

The scale of organic reach from employee advocate posts elevates brand awareness and recognition far beyond what can be achieved by the company’s social profiles alone.

The more times someone sees your brand, shared from a trusted peer, the more recognizable your brand is and it will be something they think of immediately when needed.

Achieve Greater Engagement:

According to Social Media Today, posts by employees achieve 8 times the engagement of content shared directly by a brand.

People innately trust information shared by peers and feel it is more relevant to them as individuals, which adds yet another layer of value to employee advocacy.

Clearly, the social media marketing value of employee advocacy is huge.

You don’t even need all your employees to be advocating for you – According to Katie Levinson, writing for LinkedIn, when only 3% of employees share company-relevant content they can drive a 32% increase in engagement and get twice the number of CTRs compared to company shares of the same content.

2: Greater Trust, Authenticity and a Humanized Brand

Increased reach and engagement are not the only employee advocacy benefits. When brand content is shared by peers, the people reached by that content see it connected to an authentic human being, rather than a nameless and faceless brand.

Employees who deal directly with customers are immediate representatives of your brand.

That human connection is an essential component of how customers feel about your brand and if they choose to purchase your product or service. Personalization, connection, and relationships are at the heart of customer loyalty and retention.

As more and more people use social media as search engines to find information about the companies they’re considering doing business with, the human element of social media has become essential too.

When employees share company content, they’re connecting themselves to the content and putting a face and authentic human sentiment to the company content.   

According to PostBeyond, a HubSpot study found that 75% don’t trust advertisements but 90% trust recommendations made by friends or family, and 70% trust recommendations from consumer reviews.

This kind of implicit trust extends to employee advocacy posts too, as they from real people who are known to the audience.

According to HubSpot, people are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on a social media referral. 

3: Improved Employee-Company Engagement

One of the less obvious but very important employee advocacy benefits is how participating in the program improves employee-company engagement.

When employees are actively interacting with the company as a whole, rather than just within their specific role, it creates a new level of awareness and engagement.

Employees that actively participate in the bigger picture objectives of their organization feel more connected to their company.

Aside from a boost in morale and a more connected and interactive workforce, a report by Altimeter Group found that employee advocacy forms an important part of investing in ‘relationship economics’.

The report states that “socially engaged employees are more optimistic, inspired, connected, and tenured”. They also stated that socially engaged employees were:

• 27% more likely to feel optimistic about their companies’ future
• 20% more likely to feel inspired
• 20% more likely to stay at their companies
• 15% more likely to connect to co-workers beyond their core teams

However, employee engagement is more than difficult to quantify ‘soft benefits’, like positive sentiment and inter-departmental interaction.

A meta-analysis conducted by Gallup found that groups with a high level of employee engagement had almost twice the likelihood of success in terms of composite scores based on financial, customer, retention, safety, quality, shrinkage, and absenteeism metrics.

The report found that, when compared to units with low employee engagement, units with highly engaged employees have:

• Reduced absenteeism (41% less)
• Increased productivity (17% more)
• Reduced staff turnover in high turnover organizations (24% less)
• Increased customer ratings (10% higher)
• Increased sales (20% higher)
• Greater profitability (21% higher)

As you can see, the hard benefits of improving your employee engagement will have a huge impact on your business, at every level.

4: Empowering Employees as Thought Leaders and Industry Experts

Employee advocacy benefits companies and brands hugely. However, it also benefits the employees themselves.

Aside from the benefits of being more engaged and successful in their chosen professions, they’re also able to develop their personal brands and establish themselves as thought leaders and industry experts.

Providing employees with a range of content that is highly relevant to their industry and that reflects well on the organization they work for allows them to share that information from their personal accounts.

They can frame that content within their own authentic style and voice, leverage it to make themselves look good by being well informed, knowledgeable and up to date in their field.

As they’re not solely sharing company-curated content, they can use it to augment their own efforts on social media and create conversations that they’re passionate about.

It can bolster their unique web presence and add a layer of authority to their channels.

A company with highly regarded employees is more attractive to business prospects, especially B2B business decision-makers, and can open up partnership opportunities that would otherwise not be available to the company.

In addition, an Edelman B2B Thought Leadership Study found that B2B decision-makers use thought leadership to vet a company’s capabilities, and 59% of them agree that an organization’s thought leadership is a more trustworthy source for assessing a company’s capabilities and competencies than its marketing material.

5: Recruitment and Attracting Top Talent

Harboring visible, engaged, and passionate thought leaders in your organization is a great way to attract customers and partners.

However, it also attracts top talent for your recruitment. Highly regarded individuals reflect well on their teams, and their organizations as a whole and this is something people take into consideration when looking to make the switch to a new company.

Employee advocacy as a whole is great for recruiting. Finding great talent requires a great reputation and employee advocacy is all about building that reputation.  

In addition, high caliber talent isn’t always looking for a new position and they may not see your job postings at all.

Having a highly visible social media presence means they’re more likely to see your openings without having to look for them. They’re also seeing them in the context of an authentic campaign selling how great your company is, from an employee’s perspective.

No one can sell how great it is to work for you like your own employees, armed with the right content and the objective of making their own jobs and careers look as good as possible!

6: Strategic and Controlled, with Measurable Results 

A good employee advocacy program is one that is planned, strategic, and somewhat controlled. It is based on clear objectives and the content provided to employees is aligned with those objectives. Results are visible and measurable.

Check out this video by Oktopost on YouTube about which metrics and KPIs you can use to measure your employee advocacy program:

This may sound overwhelming if marketing is not your area of expertise. However, there are many great options to support you on this journey!

Your in-house marketing department or external agency is likely to already have a social media marketing strategy in place, which can be adjusted to include employee advocacy.

If you don’t have this in place, there are loads of great professionals and agencies who can get you up and running with your program and set you up to continue with it alone or with them long term.

There are also dedicated employee advocacy platforms that provide you with the software to seamlessly run your program. They provide a platform for content to be shared with employees, make it easy for employees to participate and provide tracking and reporting so you can see the results of your program.

Many platforms also provide a wealth of resources, training, and guides to help you make the most of your program and the platform.  

You can create social media guidelines and policies for employees to ensure that social media is used in a way that only benefits the brand and you can control the content provided to them.

This includes content and recommended copy and captions. These measures protect your company and brand image, without curtailing the benefits of the program.

7: Increased Revenue  

As you can see, there are massive benefits to using an employee advocacy program, which may not be as direct and easily quantifiable as we would like.

There is plenty of research that shows the value of an employee advocacy program for marketing, reputation building and brand awareness, as well as increased employee engagement and the benefits for HR and recruitment.

All of these will help you succeed and make your business more profitable, in various ways. However, there are also some very direct benefits to an employee advocacy program, such as increased sales. 

In 2024, all sales lean heavily on your online presence, especially on social media.

Social media is increasingly functioning as a platform for people to do their independent research on products and services long before they speak to or interact with anyone who works for you.

Your presence and visibility on social media are huge factors in purchasing decisions.

Even B2B buyers use social media to guide their purchasing decisions when they’re looking for a trusted solution to their problem.

Social selling is how sales teams use social media to meet their prospective clients, interact with them and develop relationships that convert.

Salespeople within an employee advocacy program have a huge bank of great content to share and the tools to make reaching and communicating with prospective clients easy and effective.

According to LinkedIn, leads from employee advocacy convert 7 times more frequently than other types and sales people who share content are 45% more likely to achieve or exceed their sales quotas. 

An employee advocacy program that extends beyond customer-facing teams will further augment the sales team’s efforts by creating a larger presence on social media, building the brand’s reputation and making the brand more recognizable and familiar to prospective customers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are a great deal of employee advocacy benefits for those who implement an effective program. These include improving your brand’s online presence, greater reach and engagement on social media, creating a stellar brand reputation, increasing employee engagement and productivity, recruitment and improved sales, conversions and revenues.

The best part is that these benefits can be realized by any company, in any industry. Regardless of size or sector, an employee advocacy program will benefit your company in many ways. It is also cheaper and more effective than traditional advertising. What’s not to love?!    

References

Edelman: B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study

EveryoneSocial: The Benefits of Social Selling

Gaggle AMP: Employee Advocacy: What’s in it For the Employees?

HubSpot: 71% More Likely to Purchase Based on Social Media Referrals [Infographic]

LinkedIn: Making the Case for Employee Advocacy: A Pocket Guide

Marketing Profs: Why Social Media Marketers and Brand Managers Should Care About Employee Advocacy

The post 7 Amazing Employee Advocacy Benefits [Guide] appeared first on P2P marketing.

So, what does a great employee advocacy program look like in practice?

In this guide, we’re looking at 6 of the best employee advocacy programs and key takeaways you can use in your program for success in 2024.

Let’s dive in!

What is an Employee Advocacy Program?

To put it simply, an employee advocacy program is a marketing and employee engagement strategy aimed at equipping and incentivizing employees to promote their employer. This may be in person, online, and on social media.

Employees talk about their employers, jobs, and careers all the time, both in-person and online. An employee advocacy program recognizes and leverages that by equipping employees with curated and relevant content to share.

It also provides an easy-to-use platform to access and share content and provides structure and guidelines on how to use social media effectively.    

The benefits of an employee advocacy program for both the employer and the employees are huge:

For the employer, there is huge organic social reach, up to 8 times more engagement, increased brand awareness, increased trust, and a host of new ways to generate leads and sales.

Employee advocacy programs also help boost employee engagement, productivity and innovation, employee retention, and even recruiting top talent.

For employees, there is a wealth of content to share with their networks on social media, without having to spend a lot of time looking for it or creating it.

This content can be used to polish their professional image and even position them as experts or thought leaders, advancing their own career goals.

To be successful, employee advocacy programs must be carefully planned, strategic, well-maintained and monitored. Content needs to be curated, on-brand, relevant and timely.

Employees need to be engaged and activated to take part authentically and enthusiastically.

This may seem like a lot but there are many great employee advocacy platforms that will streamline the whole process and make running a great program much easier than you would expect!

6 Most of the Most Successful Employee Advocacy Programs

1: Dell

Dell is one of the pioneers of employee advocacy programs. They started with sentiment analysis and social media monitoring but then scaled that into a fully-fledged employee advocacy program.

Employees participating in the program are known as Dell Champions. They promote the social culture at Dell and give the public a window into it from the outside.

As a global company, Dell Champions around the world share content with fellow employees and the general public.

To qualify for the program, Dell offers social media and brand certifications from Dell’s Social Media University. The program also has participation from top-level executives, which has been one of their main successes.

Dell was one of the first employee advocacy programs that allowed participants to find and share content, rather than just sharing what was provided by the company.

By empowering employees through certifications and training, and giving them the agency to select relevant content of their own, Dell created a highly engaged and responsible program.

Dell’s employee advocacy program is one the long-term success stories in employee advocacy.

Incentives

• Training and certifications to become an expert in a specific subject/area
• Exclusive program, only open to those who have completed the certifications
• Opportunity to participate in a program alongside high-level executives from the company
• Focus on company culture and engagement, rather than program-specific incentives  

Successes

Dell’s employee advocacy program has over 1200 Dell Champions, in 84 countries! These champions have shared hundreds of thousands of posts to various social networks and directed tens of thousands of visitors to Dell’s website.

Key Takeaways from Dell’s Employee Advocacy Program

• Not every employee is suitable or willing to participate, which is absolutely fine. A smaller group of engaged and passionate participants will work very well.
• Providing training and certifications creates experts who can become thought leaders and authorities on their subject
• Involving high-level executives drives participation from employees and engagement from the public

2: Adobe

Adobe was one of the first to implement an employee advocacy program, around 2013.

Recognizing the importance of employees for the success of the brand, they started small and slowly scaled the program to include over 900 employee advocates.

At the outset of the program, they defined their goals and then tracked them to see how effective the program was.

The results of the tracking allowed them to tweak and improve the program, which is now one of the most effective ones in the game.

Using the employee advocacy program EveryoneSocial, they set out to:

• Help employees know what content they can share externally
• Provide the tools to employees get better at leveraging their social networks
• Improve internal communications
• Connect internal employees and create a space for content sharing and creation  
• Create a workplace community and build employee engagement

Importantly, their focus was not solely on marketing benefits for the company.

They were focusing on creating an environment for sharing and, by extension, marketing organically. 

As the program grew and developed, they went on to narrow down the content provided into niche groups so that employees could find the content and combination of topics that best suited them and their unique voices.

They now have over 186 different content groups, and each employee joins the groups that interest them.

This allows each employee to access the content they most value and enjoy, meaning their social media presence is personalized and authentic. 

Incentives

Some of the incentives provided by Adobe to drive participation and engagement include:

• Providing training and content to share to make it easy for employees to participate.
• Creating fun and engaging activities and challenges for employees to take part in and then share their experiences and achievements. 
• Acknowledging and celebrating employees’ social efforts by featuring successful posts on the digital signage in every office. 
• Creating a special ambassador program for the employees who are doing really well on social media.

Successes

Adobe’s initially small advocacy program has scaled to 900 employees. These employees achieve a massive social reach of over 3 million, with each employee averaging over 4000 connections on social media.

Workplace culture, employee engagement, and retention all improved with the program. 

Two members of the special ambassador’s program managed to generate 5.5 million impressions in just 5 days after speaking MAX, Adobe’s annual creativity conference in 2015.

Key Takeaways from Adobe’s Employee Advocacy Program

• Start small, track ROI and progress, and then scale from there.  
• Create specialized content for niche groups in your workforce so they can easily find content that is relevant to them and their particular interests.
• Set out your goals and objectives for the employee advocacy program at the outset. Then you can select the right metrics to track the efficacy of the program and refine your methods over time.
• Communication, community, and employee engagement are important for long term success.  
• Using incentives keeps employees interested and engaged in the program. 

3: EA Games

Video game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) is a company with thousands of employees in over 50 different locations around the world.

As a result, the company was fragmented and there was no sense of community between different offices and no cohesive company culture. 

They started an employee advocacy program in 2014, called EA Insiders, with the objective of bringing employees together and creating a more cohesive company culture.

They also wanted the program to connect the employees with their community of players.

The program bridged the divides between employees in different locations and created a highly engaged community.

True to form, EA then gamified their entire program to keep employees engaged and active.

Incentives

EA gamified their program, with challenges and competitions to achieve specific metrics, which change frequently.

They have a leader board so participants can see where they stand and engage in friendly competition.

They also managed to foster a sense of unity and belonging in their employees, who felt part of a greater community. 

Successes

EA Insiders now has over 1000 participants, with a collective reach of over a million people! The program drives over 6000 engagements each month.

Company culture and a sense of community are strong within the organization, too.

Key Takeaways from EA’s Employee Advocacy Program

• Company culture, a sense of community, and unity are important for success.
• Gamification and incentives boost engagement and active participation
• A centralized program can work well for companies operating in different locations

4: Starbucks

For their employee advocacy program, Starbucks created employee accounts on various social networks and allowed their employee “partners” to create content for them in the form of pictures, stories, and discussions about Starbucks.  

Starbucks calls their employees who contribute to the social media accounts “partners,” which creates both a sense of belonging and a sense of agency and accountability.

Handing over content creation to employees could be a risky move, but Starbucks created in-depth guidelines on how to use social media when posting on behalf of the company. These are freely available, even publicly on their website.

Rather than creating participation incentives, they offer employees opportunities to further their skills development and gain qualifications.

As a result, employees are more knowledgeable, well-trained, and more positive toward their employer. It has also reduced staff turnover significantly.

Incentives

Starbucks leveraged employee engagement and company culture as the incentive to participate rather than making program-specific incentives.

By providing opportunities to their employees and giving them the title of ‘partner,’ they created a sense of belonging. This led to a passion for their work and personal contributions to the company.

They now have Partner of the Month and Partner of the Quarter awards for those who excel at customer service.

These are shared widely on social media and in the stores themselves.

Successes

The Facebook page by Starbucks’ employees has more than 370 000 followers.

Their Twitter account has more than 50 000 followers, and their Instagram account has 127,000 followers. An Instagram search of #tobeapartner currently yields 915,042 posts!

Starbucks’ overwhelmingly positive online presence, as a result of its employee advocacy program, is truly massive.

Creating such a presence through company handles and accounts would be almost impossible.

Key Takeaways from Starbucks’ Employee Advocacy Program

• Giving employees a sense of agency and independence in the process allows them to take ownership of their participation and contribution to the program.
• Providing in-depth guidelines is essential for success, especially when employees are creating their content to share.
• Investing in employees drives participation, pride in their company and passion for their work, which shows in their customer interactions and social presence.

5: Reebok

Reebok’s employee advocacy program has been a huge success. It focuses on employees showcasing their own fitness journeys and activities while wearing Reebok gear and encourages employees to generate content for the program.

Posts are accompanied by #FitAssCompany, which allows for easy tracking of the program and posts shared by employees.

Tracking has allowed them to evaluate and tweak the program over time to make the most of it.   

Employee generated content and images of individuals being active and quite literally ‘walking the walk’ has created a lot of great content that is very authentic and personal.

This sets the program apart from programs that do not encourage employees to generate content themselves.

Reebok has had their employees be a part of the journey, from the beginning.

Rather than creating a strategy and making employees implement it, they asked social media-savvy employees how they would like to represent the brand and reach more people.

In this way, the program has been more collaborative and creative from the outset.

The majority of Reebok’s employees are part of their target market – young, fit, and very active on social media.

Adding the unique hashtag and providing more content, allowing employee-generated content to be shared by colleagues and the company itself, and streamlining the process with a mobile app have made the whole program one of the most organically successful ones.  

Incentives

Reebok leveraged its employees’ desire to share their own content and promote their personal accounts by adding a unique hashtag.

They also took a collaborative approach, which allowed employees to generate content and take a more active and creative role in the program, which fostered ownership and engagement.

Successes

Largely fuelled by their employees’ posts and content, Reebok’s Official Facebook page has over 10 million followers, their Instagram has over 2.7 million followers, and their Twitter account has over 700,000 followers.

And that is just the main, official profiles. There are countless others for different regions and disciplines – a truly mammoth social presence!    

Key Takeaways from Reeboks’ Employee Advocacy Program

• Leverage your employee’s natural passions and aspirations for authentic content creation and enthusiastic engagement with social media
• Collaboration with employees in decision-making and content-creation processes fosters ownership and cooperation from employees and boosts employee engagement
• Make it easy to participate – Reebok uses a mobile app to share content with employees. 

6: Vodafone

Vodafone’s employee advocacy program, Go Social, is run through Dynamic Signal and is managed by Vodafone’s in-house Social Comms Team.

At the start of the program, they surveyed employees to see how many would be willing to participate and what their challenges were.

One of the things that came out of that process was that there was a lot of apprehension about what kind of content would be acceptable to post when posting in connection to the company.

Another was an overall willingness to participate if it was easy to do so and didn’t take too much time.  

They decided to use a platform to streamline the process and create a feed of company-approved content for employees to share, as well as guidelines and policies for social media use.

Using the platform as a centralized portal for employees to access content made it easy for willing participants to find and share relevant content.

They provide internal and external content to share, as well as company-approved content generated by employees themselves.

Incentives

Vodafone recognizes high achievers and displays them on the leaderboard.

They also recruit ambassadors from different sectors within the company to make sure that all areas are involved and engaged.  

They also provide training and guidance and allow individuals to create content to be approved and shared with the program for other employees to share.

This benefits the creators and fosters greater ownership and engagement with the program as a whole.

Successes

Go Social now has over 2000 active users, sharing thousands of posts and generating millions of impressions.

There are numerous Vodafone official accounts for different regions and sectors on all major social media platforms.

In this way, they have achieved a huge social media presence that is simultaneously focused and niche-appropriate for different audiences.   

Key Takeaways from Vodafone’s Employee Advocacy Program

• Clear guidelines and training on posting appropriately on social media make employees more comfortable and confident sharing content connected to the brand.
• Involving employees in content creation allows employees to leverage the program for their own benefit too, which improves participation and engagement.
• Numerous smaller or more niche-focused accounts that fall under the larger brand umbrella can be a good way to achieve greater engagement while still achieving a huge reach.

5 Important Takeaways from Successful Employee Advocacy Programs to Use

Looking at the highly successful employee advocacy examples above, there are five key aspects to take into consideration when you’re planning and implementing your program:

1: Set Clear Goals and Track Progress and Success

It is important to start with clear objectives and clear means of measuring success.

Define clear goals and choose the right metrics to measure progress along the way. This will allow you to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.  

Some metrics you can consider include:

• Social Media Engagement to see which kinds of content get the most engagement and which employees are getting the most engagement and why.
• Reach or the number of impressions and reach achieved by different kinds of content, shared by different employees.
• Mentions on social media.
• Website referrals and traffic to the brand’s official website.
• Leads, conversions, and sales as a result of the program.
• New job applicants and the quality or experience of those candidates.
• Employee engagement and level of participation in the program. A few dedicated brand evangelists may get great results on a small scale, but if there is a greater lack of interest and engagement, you need to find ways to address that and get more employees excited to participate.

The metrics you choose must be closely aligned with your goals and objectives. It is also important to include participants in the tracking and measuring of success so they can see the fruits of their labor and be motivated to keep going.

Recognize and reward those who do well and encourage and educate those who are falling behind.

2: Develop a Strong Content Strategy  

Once you have defined your goals and objectives, develop a strong content strategy to support them.

It is very important to have a well-developed strategy before you begin so that employees can access quality content from the beginning.

Content should be beneficial to the brand and to the employees. It should be content that is relevant to different roles so that they can find content that works best for them and will resonate with their audiences.

Planning content development and progression is also important, it should be unique and build on what has been shared before so as not to be too repetitive.

The content strategy should also include initiatives from the company that will generate opportunities for good content to cover those initiatives. These can be events, conferences, training programs, or charity drives.

Employees can participate in these events and then share on social media while also boosting employee engagement within the company.   

3: Focus on Employee Engagement and Building a Strong Company Culture First

An engaged and passionate workforce strongly drives successful employee advocacy programs. Starting out with a disengaged and unmotivated workforce is not going to work.

Employees need to be interested and aware of what is going in the company as a whole. They need to feel connected to the brand and invested in its success.

Ideally, employees feel valued and trusted, that they are members of a community and part of something bigger than themselves.

Assessing employee engagement and actively working to increase it before the launch of the program will work better than trying to use the program to foster engagement.

Efforts to boost morale after the program begins can feel insincere or like the company is only doing it to further its PR agenda.  

4: Incentives – Involve Employees in the Process as the Main Incentive

While gamification and program-specific incentives can be a great way to keep employees engaged, they should not be the sole incentive to participate.

Sustainable programs are ones that focus on the benefits to the employees. On how the program can further their career aspirations and position them as thought leaders or experts in their field.

This, coupled with a strong affinity with the brand, creates a great program that will last and keep developing.

Employees can lose enthusiasm for incentives and gamification over time.

The authenticity of content sharing can also be compromised if sharing is done solely for points in the program. It is better if sharing is part of an employee’s personal social media strategy. 

When employees share content that they are genuinely passionate about -audiences can feel that.  It bolsters the employee’s genuine presence in that space.

This is how thought leaders are established and how employees can make the most of the program for their benefit and the brand.   

5: Make it Easy to Participate and Provide Clear Guidelines and Policies

Participation in the program needs to be quick and easy for employees. They are already very busy and don’t necessarily have much time or energy to put into the program daily.

If they can find relevant content and share it quickly, they’re much more likely to participate regularly.

Using an employee advocacy platform is a great way to facilitate the process and make it easy for employees to participate.

You can create a centralized portal for content access and sharing to provide suggested captions, and employees can share directly from there with a few clicks.

Content can be segmented and curated for different sectors within the company. These platforms also make tracking metrics easier and adding content much easier for the company.

Providing clear and comprehensive guidelines for social media use is also very important. These protect both the company and the employee and form a solid foundation for a successful program.

When employees are sure of what they can and can’t share, they’re more confident and less anxious about ‘saying the wrong thing,’ which can be a barrier to participation.

This is especially important if you have employees generating their own content.

Guidelines should be very clear but also flexible.

Overly restrictive guidelines will only create more tension around possibly ‘doing the wrong thing’ and undermine the employee’s feeling of being a trusted partner responsible for advocating for their company.

Overly restrictive guidelines also stifle creativity and genuine interest or enthusiasm from participants.

Employees should be free to use their voice and couch content from their perspective for it to be truly authentic.

Check out this video by In2Communications for a little more info on employee advocacy and social media policy:

Resources

Advisorpedia: Reebok: One Brand That’s Really Nailing Employee Advocacy

EveryoneSocial: The Brand Ambassador Role: How Adobe Maximizes Employee Advocacy

Harvard Business Review: The Importance of Employee Engagement on Performance 

Marketing Week: Starbuck’s Investment in Staff Creates Brand Advocates

Marketing Insider Group: How to Implement an Effective Employee Advocacy Program

Public Relations Review (Vol. 46, Issue 4): Understanding of the Definition and Importance of Employee Advocacy

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