Last Updated: 21st December 2023.
What’s the most important thing to do before introducing an employee advocacy program?
Find out how your employees are already using social media.
You’ve gotta ask them, don’t make assumptions!
Here are 13 to-the-point questions you can send to your employees to test the waters before asking them to start posting on social.
Why Survey Employees About Social Media?
The Edelman Trust Barometer revealed that 73% of employees expect to be involved in planning at their job.
So, if you’re planning to start an employee advocacy program, keep your team in the loop!
Employee advocacy is something many of your colleagues have never heard of.
If you suddenly start a pilot program without any explanation or feedback from employees, it’ll be harder to get them on board. The last thing you want is confusion!
A positive company culture is fundamental to employee advocacy. As I explained in a recent article, employee advocacy and employee engagement are very intertwined.
If your employees are engaged, they’ll be more than happy to fill out the social media survey below.
You’ll get the data you need, and they have the ability to voice their opinions and give feedback. It’s a win-win! 🙌
OK, but why do I need this data before starting my advocacy program?
Well, here at DSMN8, we have years of experience setting up and managing employee advocacy programs.
We know what the pitfalls can be.
And a lack of knowledge is the major one.
We’re not just talking about giving employees appropriate social media training and teaching them how to use your advocacy platform…
You need to know where they’re at already. Like right now.
You might already have some excellent employee advocates posting regularly to LinkedIn.
Your employees might be digital natives using various forms of social media. Maybe they’ve grown an audience on TikTok.
They might be frustrated with a lack of regular updates from you about what’s going on in the company.
Maybe they don’t feel there’s enough company content to share.
You won’t know unless you ask 🤷🏻♂️
Employee Social Media Survey Questions
Time for the questions! ⏰
These will cover everything you need to know.
Find out how your employees use social media, what they think of your company social channels, and gauge how interested they are in joining an employee advocacy program.
To make it even easier, we’ve created a fillable pdf you can download below 👇
1. What social media networks do you use?
2a. Do you create content for social media?
2b. If yes, what forms of content? Short-form written posts (e.g. tweets), long-form posts (e.g. LinkedIn, blog posts), sharing photos, videos
3. Do you use social media professionally? For example, networking on LinkedIn or Twitter.
4. Do you engage with our content on social media? E.g. liking or commenting on posts using your personal profile, retweeting or sharing on LinkedIn.
5. How do you feel about our company’s social media presence? What could we improve?
6. Do you understand our social media policy / what you can and can’t post online?
7. What would you like to be included in our social media training?
8. Have you posted about the company in the last 6 months?
9. How often do you share company content to your own social profiles?
10. What do you feel is stopping you being more active on social (Content, Time, Understanding, Fear)”
11. Have you noticed other employees sharing on social media?
12. Would you like to be able to share company content more often?
13. Would you be interested in joining a pilot employee advocacy program? This would involve creating and sharing content online about our company and industry.
Get Your Free Social Media Survey
We’ve made a free pdf survey you can download.
It’s fillable, so no printing required!
Add the email address you want employees to send responses to (on the first page), and send it to your employees to fill out. Easy! ✅
How To Use The Survey Data
Find out what you need to include in your social media training plan. Your employees will have different levels of social media ability, but it’s good to get a general idea of what they need.
We’ve put together a guide on employee social media training featuring everything you should know.
Is it time to update your social media policy? Can employees understand it? If you don’t have one yet (or yours is outdated), get our free editable social media policy template!
Gauge how interested employees are in joining an advocacy program.
Find out who your best candidates are for an employee advocacy pilot program.
Figure out what the pain points are for employees when it comes to sharing on social media.
Do they feel like they can? Do they have enough content to share or enough time?
All of this info is super important, because a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach simply doesn’t work for employee advocacy programs.
You need to tailor your program and training to each employees’ needs.
Already running an employee advocacy program?
We’ve got a template for you too 🙌
Grab the employee advocate feedback survey template. It’s an editable Google Form to make the process as easy as possible!
Ready to start an advocacy program that your employees will actually want to participate in?
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.
