Employee Advocacy Masterclass with Dropbox [Podcast]

[Episode Twenty Six of ‘The Employee Advocacy and Influence Podcast] 🎧👇

Employee Advocacy Masterclass with Dropbox

Organizations all over the world in every sector are driving strategic competitive advantage by scaling the impact of their employees’ voices… and now YOU can too! As we delve beyond the why and get straight to the how so that you can put employee-driven growth at the heart of your organization.

Hosted by employee advocacy practitioner and CEO of DSMN8, Bradley Keenan.

[Transcript]

Welcome to this week’s episode of The Employee Advocacy and Influence Podcast. My name is Bradley Keenan and I’m the Founder and CEO of the Employee Advocacy Platform – DSMN8. And this week’s episode is going to be really special because we’re mixing things up a little bit, and we’re actually going to bring a guest onto the podcast.

Now when we originally started the podcast, I had imagined that we would have guests every single week, but we decided that we wanted to keep the podcast really short so that people could dip in, dip out, get the information that they need and not need to spend an hour listening to my boring voice.

But when we thought about guests coming on board, the challenge for us was that we knew that the moment a conversation started, it would make the podcast a lot longer.

So what we’ve decided to do is create this concept of a mini masterclass. A masterclass?

Yeah, a mini masterclass where we invite people from the industry who run Employee Advocacy programs who can essentially give their insight in the same way that I would each week. So it’s essentially a guest spot on the podcast.

So we’re starting this, this week it’s not going to be every week. It’ll be sporadic when we find people that we really think have huge value to offer you as somebody who either runs an Advocacy program or is looking to improve an existing one.

And this week we have Katherine Keenan, who runs the Employee Advocacy program at Dropbox.

I asked Katherine to join the podcast because she has done a really, really good job of essentially being an advocate for her advocates. So Katherine and I were connected on LinkedIn and all of a sudden I started seeing more people from Dropbox share content.

And the reason why I was seeing it is that every single day Katherine will go in and she’ll actually interact with some of the posts that are coming out from her Employee Advocacy program. And it only takes her to like and comment on 4 or 5 posts a day. And immediately she’s amplifying the reach of our Employee Advocacy program just through one person.

So I think outside of that, Katherine has so many tips that I think will be hugely valuable to somebody looking to run an Employee Advocacy program or, as I said, even if you already run a program at the moment. So at this point, I’m going to hand it over to Katherine.

Hi, everyone. My name is Katherine Keenan and I am a talent brand program manager. And recently our company just onboarded an Employee Advocacy tool for the first time. So we’ve had a lot of learnings and I figured I would share with you some of my top tips from the first 30 days. So let’s go ahead and get started.

All right. First, identify the different groups that would benefit from an Employee Advocacy tool and approach them individually.

Now, Employee Advocacy is not a one size fits all.

So the faster you realize that employees will use the tool for different reasons, the faster your adoption will be.

So here are a few examples of the different groups that I went after.

First, I pulled a report of our most engaged employees on LinkedIn, and I offered them early access to the tool, knowing that this group was already highly engaged and knowledgeable about LinkedIn.

I didn’t need to convince them of how or why they should be posting. Instead, I could convince them why this tool would provide them with consistent, top-notch content in a streamlined way.

Next, I went after our sales team. So we have a big product launch coming up at our company this month. So I knew many of our sales team would be turning to LinkedIn to promote this to their networks. Since we all know LinkedIn is a very popular platform for social selling.

So with the help of the project managers for the launch, we positioned the use of this tool as THE way that we would be promoting the announcement, not just an option.

And knowing that our sales team loves data and analytics, I can let them know that they could track the success of their individual posts, as well as pull a comprehensive report of all the analytics behind the launch announcements through the tool.

The last group I went after was our people team. Now this team is always looking for content to share with their candidates to show them, why they should come work here.

By providing them with content that is the most up-to-date with pre-written captions based on our key messaging, it takes the guesswork out of posting and then their posts are working for them even when they’re signed off. Because we know LinkedIn candidates are always on the hunt for new jobs. All right, next.

Have a rolling onboarding process. While you may think you have thought of everything, chances are you have not. For me, after our first onboarding session, I had several employees come up to me and ask me if certain company blogs were connected to this tool.

Now, I did not even know we were regularly posting to these blogs. While it took no time to add these blogs to our RSS feed, I was glad that I only had to make this mistake once in a smaller group.

You’re also able to see what some of the frequently asked questions are from the groups, and then you can tailor future onboarding sessions to make sure you’re addressing that content. Or if you see that people are loving a certain feature lead with that so that you’re engaging your audience from the start.

The key is to listen as much as you’re talking, during your onboarding sessions.

Next, have a plan for how to consistently bring on new users. Once you’ve done your initial onboarding sessions and promoted this to just about everyone at the company. What’s your plan for recruiting more employees?

Well, what I decided was I would focus on our new hires. So I know at my company every 2 weeks we have a new group of hires that start. So I’m currently working to get a 30-minute segment during their onboarding to explain what Employee Advocacy is, why it’s important, and then do a live demo.

Ideally, the new hires would practice their first post using the tool during the demo. This shows them that talking about their employee experience on LinkedIn is part of our culture and they’ve already seen how to do it within their first week.

Also, take into consideration everything is new to these hires, so they’re that much more likely to share their experience.

Finally, connect with people at your company. Don’t be shy, especially after an onboarding session.

Connect with all the attendees on LinkedIn. That way they see you posting on a consistent basis and it reminds them that they can do the same. This allows you to lead by example and show that advocacy can be authentic and real and not just out-of-touch promotions.

So there you have it.

Our first mini masterclass delivered by Katherine from Dropbox and no doubt you would have got a huge amount of value from that. So I just want to say at this point, a huge thank you to Katherine for putting that together for us.

Now, if you’re happy to listen to this outro, I’ve got some bonus content coming at the end that any Social Media or Marketing Manager would consider an absolute gift, so don’t go anywhere.

So firstly, I wanted to say thank you for taking the time to listen today. If you enjoyed today’s episode and you want to be notified of future episodes, please hit subscribe. And if you got value from today, I’d love it if you could even rate us or, even better, provide us with a review.

We started this podcast so we could help people who are looking to launch Employee Advocacy programs or already run programs at the moment. So the more feedback we get from our listeners, the better we can do this.

Now, here is the BONUS content that I promised.

If you want to find out how active your employees are on social right now, if you click the link in the footnotes of the show, we will create a report for you that will show you not only how active your employees are on social, but also the competitors of your choosing. So you can see how you benchmark against your competitors.

And we will show you how this breaks down by seniority inside your organization and geography. So hit that link, and one of my team will be in contact. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this week’s episode, and we look forward to seeing you same time next week.

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