What's on this page:
- 1. Lack of Measurable ROI and Impact.
- 2. Low Employee Participation and Engagement.
- 3. Lack of Timely or Relevant Content.
- 4. Maintaining Brand and Message Consistency.
- 5. Inefficient Social Media Management.
- 6. Limited Brand Reach and Audience Size.
- 7. Establishing Industry Thought Leadership.
- 8. Difficulty in Sales Enablement.
- 9. Complex User Experience and Adoption.
- 10. Streamlining Internal Communications
- The ROI of Solving These Employee Advocacy Blockers.
- FAQ.
- Additional Resources.
We analyzed over 1,000 verified G2 reviews from the world’s leading employee advocacy platforms to identify the most common challenges companies face when trying to get their employees more active on social media.
The verdict? While every organization’s culture and goals are unique, the pain points they face are remarkably consistent.
We found that the top advocacy challenges fall into 3 categories: participation, process, and proof.
From low employee engagement to demonstrating ROI, these are the 10 biggest obstacles that prevent advocacy programs from scaling, and how DSMN8 helps you overcome each one.
Driving Measurable Impact
1. Lack of Measurable ROI and Impact
Without visibility into results, it’s hard to prove advocacy’s contribution to brand awareness, engagement, and revenue with leadership.
This leads to employee advocacy being deprioritized over other marketing activities, even though marketers know that authentic content and employees’ personal brands drive significant sales and marketing outcomes.
How DSMN8 solves this challenge:
DSMN8 goes beyond vanity metrics.
With advanced analytics, UTM tracking, and customizable dashboards, you can connect advocacy activity directly to clicks, leads, and pipeline.
You’ll see exactly which content drives the most engagement, and which employees are your most influential advocates.
2. Low Employee Participation and Engagement
Employees aren’t sure what to share on social media, whether they’re even allowed to, or they don’t see the personal value in doing so.
And even when they’re actively encouraged to be active on LinkedIn, it’s often time-consuming to create or find content to share.
How DSMN8 solves this challenge:
DSMN8 makes advocacy effortless and rewarding.
With personalized content recommendations, mobile app access, and built-in gamification (think competitive leaderboards, recognition, and optional rewards), sharing becomes a habit.
When employees see their impact (and compete for top spots), participation naturally stays high.
Our built-in invites system makes it easy to onboard and offboard employees as and when needed.
3. Lack of Timely or Relevant Content
Employees want to share, but they can’t find relevant content quickly.
Searching for material kills momentum.
How DSMN8 solves it:
DSMN8’s curated content feeds deliver fresh, timely content directly to your employees’ dashboard and mobile app.
Segmenting users and tagging content ensures users always see what’s most relevant to their role, region, or audience.
The result? Employees actually want to open the app — and your content gets shared when it matters most.
Empowering Your Employees
4. Maintaining Brand and Message Consistency
Without the right system, employees may share outdated, off-brand, or non-compliant content.
This creates risk and inconsistency, especially in regulated industries.
How DSMN8 solves this challenge:
Providing content for employees to share through DSMN8 enables you to maintain control of brand messaging while giving room for personalization.
For industries with the strictest regulatory compliance requirements, you can even choose not to allow post customization.
DSMN8’s pre-approval workflows and content governance settings ensure every post stays on brand and compliant, even when using our AI content assistant.
Teams can easily manage regional, product-specific, or role-based content hubs, maintaining control without sacrificing authenticity.
5. Inefficient Social Media Management
Marketing and comms teams spend hours curating, approving, and scheduling content manually.
Adding advocacy to the mix feels almost impossible without technology to support.
How DSMN8 solves this challenge:
DSMN8’s centralized content hub streamlines everything, from curation to scheduling to sharing on behalf of executives.
With AI Content Assistant tailored to your company voice and secure delegate access controls, managing senior leaders’ LinkedIn presence has never been easier, while ensuring your team always has fresh content to share.
Wondering how active your employees already are on LinkedIn, and how this compares with your competitors?
Get a free Competitor Analysis Review to find out! 👀
6. Limited Brand Reach and Audience Size
Corporate pages only reach a fraction of potential audiences.
Algorithms favor people over companies, limiting your organic reach when relying solely on brand channels.
🎥 See how DSMN8 helps you amplify reach and engagement across employee networks — watch the 90-second demo below to learn more.
How DSMN8 solves this challenge:
We help you amplify your reach by turning every employee into a micro-influencer, building trust and awareness faster than paid media ever could.
Our study of half a million employee posts made through the DSMN8 platform revealed that:
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On average, across industries and company sizes, employees generate three website clicks per post.
- When employees edit curated content, e.g. adding their own tone of voice or insights, they receive 9x more engagement on LinkedIn. This reveals audience desire for authentic employee-generated content above brand channel content.
- A CEO can outperform a company page in terms of engagement, even with 98% fewer followers.
Scaling Advocacy Across the Business
7. Establishing Industry Thought Leadership
Executives and subject-matter experts want to build their presence online, but they lack the time or structure to post consistently.
How DSMN8 solves it:
With Company Voice AI and Personal Voice AI, DSMN8 helps leaders build and maintain an authentic social presence at scale.
Marketing teams can provide draft content for approval or schedule/publish on their behalf with delegate access.
It’s the easiest way to turn leadership voices into industry-trusted thought leaders.
Learn more about how DSMN8 helps executives build trust online with our Executive Influence tool.
8. Difficulty in Sales Enablement
Sales teams need content that starts conversations, builds credibility, and nurtures leads, but they rarely know where to find it.
How DSMN8 solves it:
DSMN8 delivers targeted, ready-to-share sales content right where teams need it. Analytics reveal the impact, and automatic UTM tracking means you can see conversions in tools like Google Analytics.
By integrating with your tech stack, your sales team can be notified when new content is ready to share within tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
That means less time thinking about what to share on LinkedIn, more time closing.
9. Complex User Experience and Adoption
Even the best program fails if the platform feels clunky or confusing.
Employees won’t use what they don’t understand.
How DSMN8 helps with this challenge:
DSMN8 is designed for widespread adoption.
A clean, intuitive UX and mobile-first design mean anyone, regardless of role or tech ability, can share in seconds.
With single sign-on (SSO), users are up and running in minutes.
Our team of experts are always happy to provide support and training to help you get the most from the platform.
That’s why DSMN8 leads the industry in ease-of-use ratings on G2.
10. Streamlining Internal Communications
Sharing company news or announcements across dispersed teams is challenging, especially for non-desk-based employees.
How DSMN8 helps with this:
DSMN8 doubles as an internal communications tool.
Push notifications, pinned posts, email newsletters, polls, and internal posts ensure every employee — from office to frontline — stays informed and aligned.
No more missed updates or disconnected teams.
The ROI of Solving These Employee Advocacy Blockers
When you remove the biggest barriers to advocacy, the results compound fast:
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Higher employee participation
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Stronger brand awareness and trust
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More engaged sales and leadership teams
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Clearer, measurable business impact
DSMN8 brings together the people, the process, and the performance in one unified platform.
Whether you’re just starting your advocacy program or scaling globally, we help you do it faster, easier, and with real results.
See why enterprise brands like General Motors, Nokia, and Dropbox trust DSMN8 to power advocacy at scale.
FAQ
What are the biggest employee advocacy challenges?
The most common employee advocacy challenges include low employee participation, lack of measurable ROI, inconsistent brand messaging, and limited content visibility.
Our analysis of 1,000+ G2 reviews revealed that while every company’s culture is unique, the same pain points appear again and again: participation, process, and proof.
DSMN8 helps organizations overcome these by simplifying advocacy management, improving engagement, and delivering measurable results.
How can companies increase participation in employee advocacy programs?
Participation rises when advocacy is effortless and rewarding.
Personalized content feeds, gamified leaderboards, and mobile-friendly tools like DSMN8 make sharing easy and fun for employees.
DSMN8 also helps show personal impact through analytics and recognition features, turning advocacy into an everyday habit rather than a one-off campaign.
What is the ROI of employee advocacy?
Employee advocacy delivers measurable business impact — from greater reach and engagement to pipeline growth.
DSMN8’s analytics dashboards connect advocacy activity directly to clicks, leads, and revenue, proving the value of employee-shared content.
On average, employee posts drive 9x higher engagement when personalized compared with company posts.
How can brands maintain message consistency across employee-shared content?
With the right platform and governance, employees can share confidently without risking compliance or off-brand messaging.
DSMN8’s approval workflows, Company Voice settings, and content governance controls ensure every post stays accurate and on-brand — while still allowing authentic personalization where appropriate.
How can leadership teams or executives become thought leaders on LinkedIn?
Executives can scale their presence through consistent, authentic communication supported by structured workflows. DSMN8’s Company Voice AI and delegate access features allow marketing teams to manage posting and approvals while keeping leadership voices personal and authentic.
Learn more about our Executive Influencer solution to see how DSMN8 helps leaders become trusted industry voices.
Additional Resources
More on starting and scaling employee advocacy at your organization:
Emily Neal
SEO and Content Specialist at DSMN8. Emily has 10 years experience blogging, and is a pro at Pinterest Marketing, reaching 1 million monthly views. She’s all about empowering employees to grow their personal brands and become influencers.
