Employee Advocacy… Why, What, How?

Why… 

Many marketers have heard me talk about employee advocacy before, and how important it is to Empower your Employees (who will then Power your Brand) and to encourage them to “be social” in today’s relationship age. The fact that relationships are the new currency is true whether you are looking for a job, planning an event or selling a product/service.

Do your employees know and love your company, its products and services? They could be great brand ambassadors if they had the right tools. Most employees have their own personal social media accounts and are connected to hundreds and thousands of people. What if they could use their own social media presence to help promote the company brand? Think of the reach you could achieve if your employees were empowered to spread the word to all of their connections, and those they influence and engage with regularly.

In today’s hyper-connected world, brands simply must embrace new ways of engaging with customers online, and your employees can help if you’ll let them. If you’re not looking for ways to involve your employees, then you are missing a huge opportunity to generate more Return on Relationship.

What… 

What’s holding many brands back in this regard is fear. Fear their employees will say something wrong. Fear of losing control of the conversation. Fear of opening a Pandora’s Box of criticism.

Yes, giving up control is scary—especially in the marketing of your company. But not leveraging the power of your employees in the social space is like nailing one of your shoes to the floor. Your competition will soon overtake you. Thankfully, there is a company pioneering the space, Dynamic Signal, and their mobile platform called VoiceStorm, addresses that fear, management, and workflow factors.

Empowering employees to be thought leaders is a great way to find success through an Employee Advocacy program. Real estate giant Pacific Union provides content to their agents, about many topics relevant to agent’s followers, so they can grow their personal brand online and remain top of mind for their current and future real estate customers.

How… 

By using a platform like the one form Dynamic Signal, you will transform your employees into a marketing army.

VoiceStorm, their mobile app, provides the tools to allow you to empower your employees to generate word of mouth and amplify your message around your marketing programs and measures the effectiveness from the top down. It helps you build an army of advocates in four steps:

1. It helps you identify the employees and others in your audience who are your best advocates. By focusing on these individuals, you can amplify your reach by maximizing the relevance of your content to your audience.
2. It helps you manage and curate a focused body of content that people will want to share with their social networks.

3. It empowers your employees and other advocates by gamifying communication about your brand. By rewarding employee advocates, you can encourage desired behaviors and amplify your social reach, while recognizing employees that are making a difference.

4. It measures your results. Dynamic Signal uses metrics that allow you to monitor the effectiveness of your outreach.

Employee advocacy helps you re-charge your marketing from the inside out, and kudos to Dynamic Signal for creating a platform that helps businesses get started. It is my hope that more companies will take this approach and develop more ways to help businesses empower their employees to become advocates and generate more #RonR.