When starting an employee advocacy program, it’s not as simple as just asking employees to share content on social media.
Do this, and you’re likely to encounter questions and reservations from your employees.
“What content?”
“What social media channels?”
“Why? What’s in it for me?”
“But I don’t have time!”
To address these questions, reduce friction, and maximize results, you need to have an employee advocacy content strategy in place.
This strategy should cover both the logistics of getting your employees active on social media, as well as establish a content creation process that involves both your marketing team and employee advocates.
We’ve put together a 3 step content strategy for employee advocacy programs to help you on the journey. Following each of the three steps will encourage employee participation and generate tangible business results with your program.
Best of all, this strategy can be implemented whether or not you’re using employee advocacy software like DSMN8!
Step 1: Involve Employees at Each Stage of Content Creation
Step 1 is all about developing a symbiotic relationship between your marketing team and employee advocates.
The key to a thriving employee advocacy program is building a community around it.
Employees need their opinions considered, or they’ll feel like their social media profiles are simply becoming used as an extension of your brand accounts. Advocacy is a two-way street!
Start by explaining the benefits of personal branding and clarify how participating in your employee advocacy program will support their career paths.
We’ve put together a guide on the benefits of employee advocacy for employees if you need any pointers.
Next, ensure that your social media policy is up-to-date, and provide guidelines with a brand kit if appropriate. This helps your advocates understand what’s okay and what isn’t, alleviating the fear of doing something wrong.
It’s crucial to understand that one of the biggest reasons employees don’t share content on social media is this fear of doing something wrong.
They’re worried about sharing incorrect information, getting in trouble, or even that their boss will think they’re job hunting.
At this stage in your employee advocacy journey, it’s vital to alleviate these concerns.
Once they’re up-to-speed with your new social media policy and the shift away from the “don’t post about the company on social” mindset, it’s time to look at your content.
Ask your advocates for content ideas and suggestions.
Even though your marketing team are the social media experts, that doesn’t mean input from your advocates isn’t worthwhile.
Remember, they know their audiences and connections more than you do!
As your advocates work in various departments like sales, customer success, or HR, their content suggestions will help your marketing team create suitable content for different audiences.
Ensure that you regularly ask for feedback on the content provided for advocates to share. Is it generating interest? Do particular formats, styles or tones of voice work better for employee profiles? You’ll never know if you don’t ask.
Use our customizable templates to help with this process:
Watch the podcast episode below for more insights on creating a feedback loop for your advocacy program.
Step 2: Vary Content Types & Styles
I touched on this above when covering the benefits of asking for employee feedback and content ideas. But let’s take it a step further.
To manage a successful employee advocacy program, your marketing team will need to create content for employees to share.
Content creation for employees requires a different approach to the content you create for brand accounts.
The key thing to keep in mind when creating employee content is that you’re writing as a person, not a company. Be professional, yes, but don’t shy away from using some slang or emojis where appropriate!
You may have some advocates who are keen to write their own LinkedIn posts, but to guarantee participation, it’s wise to pre-create social media captions for your advocates. This requires minimal effort from their side, and for those who do create original content, your captions provide a starting point for employees to adapt.
I know what you’re thinking:
“But I don’t want my organization to spam social media with identical posts!”
There’s a simple way to avoid that:
Create multiple captions and images/graphics for every piece of content. 5 is great! When employees mix and match the captions and graphics and add their own insights, each post will look unique.
Most advocacy programs focus on LinkedIn, as the social media platform for professionals, but some industries include Twitter too. If you’re encouraging employees to share content on Twitter, include a shorter post caption too.
Remember that feedback loop I mentioned earlier?
This is a great way to test different content formats or styles to find out what works best for your advocacy program.
Find out what content types your advocates prefer to share, and create more of it. Dive into the analytics to discover what content topics and types are driving the most interest, both on social media and in terms of website clicks and leads/sales generated.
DSMN8 makes this process easy with a comprehensive analytics suite, including all the key metrics you need for content performance analysis. From social media impressions and engagement to link clicks and earned media value, using our data-driven approach will level up your advocacy content.
If you’re not using DSMN8 yet, you can use Google Analytics to analyze website traffic, and ask employees to share their social media impressions and engagement with you.
Remember that feedback loop I mentioned earlier?
Unless you’re in a small organization with less than 20 advocates, this might sound like a daunting task. Who has the time to consistently create social media content for 50, 100, or even hundreds of advocates?!
This is where personas come in.
Use our Ideal Advocate Profiles Worksheet to discover the most important people in your organization to get involved. These are the individuals who will help you drive results from the program. Think Sales, Marketing, Employer Branding / HR, Executives…
When you’re creating content for your personas, consider questions like these:
“What will help our sales and marketing teams generate leads and start conversations?”
Or, “What will help our HR team showcase our company culture to attract talent?”
Your goal isn’t to create unique content for every single advocate, but rather to help each of your personas generate results.
Watch the podcast episode below for more content strategy advice:
Step 3: Make It Easy to Distribute Your Content
The final step of your employee advocacy content strategy covers content distribution.
It’s crucial to make it as easy as possible for employees to participate.
Remember that some of your team, especially executives, are incredibly busy. Try to reduce friction wherever you can to get them on board.
Using the DSMN8 platform streamlines the process, with automated sharing features, and a user-friendly feed for employees to find all of your content to share.
Employees are much more likely to share content if it requires one or two clicks, rather than starting from scratch!
If you’re not using employee advocacy software currently, it’s still important to create a dedicated space for your program content. The last thing your employees want is a million emails letting them know there’s new content to share.
Instead, create a Slack channel (or whichever internal comms tool your organization uses). This will be the place for employees to find the latest content to share and suggest their own ideas.
Use this space to recognize employee efforts too! A simple shoutout or thank-you goes a long way. Motivate your team to participate, and celebrate their results too.
Additional Resources
Follow this 3 step strategy, and you’ll create a community of advocates eager to share content, while driving results that demonstrate the ROI of your program.
For further guidance, check out these resources:
Ready to start an employee advocacy program that your employees will actually want to participate in?
Choose a time to speak with the team.
Prefer to jump straight in and explore the platform?
Book a Demo of DSMN8, the #1 employee advocacy platform.
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.
