Employee advocacy allows you to turn your employees into brand ambassadors on social media. Employees create reach for company messages on social media networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or XING. Depending on the company's objective, direct business contacts, deals or applications are generated. Employee advocacy is a win-win situation, as not only the company but also the employees involved benefit from it.

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Employee advocacy is currently a trending topic in the marketing departments of many companies. According to a study by the Altimeter Group 2016 interest in employee advocacy has increased by 191% since 2013. According to the study 2018: The Year of Social Advocacy In The Workplace more than half of the managers surveyed recognize the potential, but only 10% have been able to implement a strategic employee advocacy program. Even the long-established NZZ takes up the topic and headlines: Everyone works in marketing now.

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Employee advocacy as a logical consequence

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There are good reasons for the increase in strategic employee advocacy projects, including in the DACH region:

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1. The organic reach of company profiles on social media platforms is continuously decreasing. For example, if you have 10,000 Facebook fans and publish a post, only a fraction - between 200 and 600 - of your fans will see it. only a fraction - between 200 and 600 - of your fans see it. The reason for this is the increasing competition in the newsfeed and the monetization of reach by social networks.
2. Social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook, but above all people themselves, prefer content from personal profiles. After all, you would rather follow a friend's recommendation than a company's advertisement, wouldn't you?
3. The increased use of social media by your employees. Depending on the study, between 46% and 90% of all Germans use a social network and have an average of 342 contacts. If you extrapolate this to the number of your own employees, who, unlike company profiles, do not have such a large reach restriction, then you quickly realize the untapped potential.
4. The current developments due to the DSGVO and the ECJ ruling could further fuel the topic of employee advocacy, as it is primarily the company profiles and less the personal profiles of employees that are being targeted by the authorities and warning parties.
5. Various statistics prove the success of employee advocacy. For example, according to IBM, generating a lead via an employee profile is seven times more likely compared to other lead generation tactics. Here you can find a list of these and other statistics on Employee Advocacy.
6. There are many B2B and B2C examples of how companies successfully use employee advocacy, particularly in the USA: From Deloitte to United Airlines to Mastercard and other examples.

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Employee Advocacy Fails

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Employee advocacy can take on various forms. At its core, however, it is always about empowering your employees and sending the right messages. The focus here is on "right". An unstructured approach to employee advocacy can have negative effects. For example, it has already happened that a benevolent employee has published his employer's competition on his private profile without mentioning the conditions of participation, whereupon the company was warned. Employees have also often advertised their company under the posts of competitors without identifying themselves as employees. This is also an infringement that can be cautioned.

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We must therefore provide employees with guidelines, assistance and clear rules for dealing with social media. These are traditionally manifested in social media guidelines. Many companies already have social media guidelines. These should be adapted as part of the Employee Advocacy Initiative.

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Video: Example social media tips from ZF

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Another stumbling block is the quality of the content shared by employees. An uploaded flyer with four different fonts, several URLs and a format that is not tailored to the size of the respective posting format is generally not conducive to being perceived as a high-quality company. If the employee also writes a very promotional message that does not match their other content, then the disaster post is perfect.

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There are many stumbling blocks in the area of social media, only a few of which I have mentioned here. The case described above could be remedied through regular training and the provision of high-quality content. There are various tools for this employee advocacy toolsthat could help to provide content in a centralized and structured manner.

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How do I start an employee advocacy project?

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Once the decision-making process in your company has been decided in favor of employee advocacy, you should of course first define your strategy. This should include defining goals, KPIs, target groups, content, responsibilities and processes. At this point, you should also draw up or update social media guidelines.

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It is then a good idea to start employee advocacy in a pilot project with a selected group and gain initial experience before rolling it out company-wide. You could either put together a representative group or proceed on a departmental basis.

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In practice, you should make sure that your company profile on the respective platform is up-to-date. Your advocates will be connected to it and also see it as a point of contact for content. Especially on Xing or LinkedIn, there is often the problem that employees have linked the wrong company to their profile.

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Once the company profile and the right connections are in place, you should take care of your employees' profiles. These can be enhanced visually and in terms of content to match your strategy. Do not underestimate this task. On LinkedIn, for example, there are around a hundred details that can be entered on a private profile. Small details, such as the profile slogan, are also crucial here.

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If you have decided on a pilot project, you should identify and, if necessary, process the content and create a tracking concept. Of course, you should then train your employees to enable them to fulfill their task. Small tips often have a big impact and it is surprising what power they can unleash in your employees.

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Accompany the pilot project intensively and regularly check the success of the project. Finally, process the experience gained and plan the next steps accordingly.

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Excursus personal branding

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In our article Personal branding on LinkedIn: the basics of building a personal brand you can find out how to build your own personal brand.