Increase Brand Awareness With Employee Advocacy
If you want to increase brand awareness and aren’t including an employee advocacy program in your content strategy, you’re missing out on untapped potential. Consider these mind-boggling statistics regarding utilizing your employees as social media brand ambassadors:
8X jump in social media engagement when employees share content. (Social Media Today)
76% of people say they trust content shared by regular people more than brands. (Post Beyond)
88% of employees use at least one social media site for personal use, and 50% of those already post about their company. (Weber Shandwick)
With numbers like that, it’s clear why you should not only participate in social media as a brand but also encourage your employees to engage and share content.
EXPONENTIAL INCREASE
Your company-branded channels might have a couple of thousand followers on X, Facebook, Instagram, and/or LinkedIn, but what if you could amplify that reach and exponentially increase your impact?
Social media is all about reach, impressions, and engagement. Unless you have millions of followers, you typically have a finite number of folks you can organically and immediately reach with a social media post. Most people don’t have the luxury of posting something to social media and, within seconds, having thousands and thousands of likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, etc. However, each additional engagement amplifies your original content, helping it reach new audiences.
All companies, no matter their size, have built-in brand ambassadors in the form of employees who can provide far greater reach and opportunities for brand awareness and engagement.
REACH → IMPRESSIONS → ENGAGEMENT
There can be a lot of confusion around the meaning of these social media metrics, particularly “impressions,” which can differ by social platform. Lema Kikuchi, senior data analyst for social analytics firm SumAll, makes it very easy with this memorable “formula”:
For Reach: How many people saw my post?
For Impressions: How many times did my post get displayed?
For Engagement: How many times did people interact with my posts?
EXPAND YOUR REACH
Let’s look at an example. Your company’s branded social media channel has 2,500 followers. Your initial reach for a post is 2,500. Coincidentally, you also rely on that follower base for initial engagement, as they are the first to see your content. According to Kikuchi,
“The main purpose of social media marketing is to raise brand awareness, which means reaching as many people as possible and growing your audience.”
With that purpose in mind, you can expand your reach by encouraging your employees to engage with your content. As more people are exposed to and engage with the content, it has the potential to expand far beyond its initial borders. If just 10% of those initial 2,500 followers engaged with your content and shared it with their social networks, you can easily see how one piece of content could begin to snowball and gain significant momentum.
When you consider that, on average, your employees have 10X more connections on their social media networks than companies have, that’s a huge amount of new people that can be easily introduced to your brand and start engaging with your content.
YOUR EMPLOYEES ARE TRUSTED, LET THEM SPEAK ON YOUR BEHALF
Your employees’ followers are a great place to amplify your message and increase brand awareness because they already trust your employees through the pre-existing relationship. You might be surprised to learn that, according to the annual Edelman Trust Barometer study:
A “company technical expert” is trusted by 65% of people
A “person like yourself” is trusted by 61% of people
CEOs are trusted by 47% of people
The Board of Directors is trusted by 44% of people
When you really think about it, these numbers aren’t too shocking. It’s no surprise that the corporate-branded channel will post and say great things about the company. But when a regular employee posts something about the company, it carries more credibility and is seen as more authentic.
It should be clear that your employees are your greatest asset in social media marketing, and many businesses are missing out if they don’t engage them.
TAP INTO THE POTENTIAL
So, how do you start an employee advocacy program? Ask! Seriously, just ask your employees to participate and help amplify your brand’s message. Most employees are already active on social media, and often they just want permission and general guidance on what’s acceptable. If you don’t ask and don’t set some parameters, employees often think:
“Will marketing not approve?”
“What if I say the wrong thing?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
Once you’ve assembled a team of employee advocates, you need to engage them and make sure they’re notified when content is shared from the company's branded social channels. Investing in a social media amplification tool is a great idea to help distribute your message to your employee ambassadors. Most systems have a centralized hub where content can be compiled and sent out to advocates who can then, with one click, engage and share the message.
Can’t or don’t want to spend the money on a system? Go bare-bones and stick to email notifications. Once a week, send out an email to your employee brand advocates, alerting them to what the company has posted to social media. Make it easy for them by providing hyperlinks to the actual content.
SHAPE THE CONVERSATION
Likeable founder, Dave Kerpen said, “First, social media is not free. Second, it won't bring you immediate results. And, third, it can't make up for a bad product or service.” Once you accept those facts and realize that your employees and other people are probably already talking about your brand, it’s up to you to help shape that conversation.
Social media can be a noisy place. We can become overwhelmed by the amount of misinformation, and content can easily get lost. However, by asking employees to serve as your brand ambassadors, you’re opening the gates to a whole new level of reach, impressions, and engagement.
