[Episode Eighty-One of ‘The Employee Advocacy and Influence Podcast] 🎧
How does a fast-growing startup turn every employee into a brand influencer without a formal program? In this episode, Lewis Gray and Elliot Elsley sit down with Megan Batterbury, Senior Talent Operations Specialist at incident.io, to go behind the scenes of their organic advocacy success.
Megan reveals how incident.io leverages top-down influence, starting with founders who met on Twitter, to create a culture where being loud on the internet is the norm. From viral “guy in finance” recruitment parodies to monthly content days, discover how they drive massive website traffic and high-quality candidates through authentic, unpolished social media activity.
Key Takeaways:
- How executive-led influence creates a ripple effect across the entire workforce.
- The “Signal Boosting” tactic: How to drive maximum engagement in the first 15 minutes of a post.
- How to use content days to generate organic employee-led posts at scale.
- Strategies for tracking advocacy success through recruiter follower growth and career page spikes.
Cultivate Advocacy from the Top Down Naturally
Megan emphasizes the importance of employee advocacy effectiveness when led by leadership rather than mandated by policy. This episode highlights that at incident.io, the culture of being loud on the internet began with the founders, two of whom actually met via Twitter. Because leadership is consistently active on platforms like LinkedIn, social presence has become a normalized, ingrained part of business operations. This top-down influence removes the friction of asking for permission, as employees see their CEOs engaging in the same digital spaces. For brand leaders, this proves that genuine executive buy-in is the most powerful catalyst for organic workforce participation.
Host Content Days for Employee Influencers
One of the most practical strategies Megan mentioned is structured content days to help employees overcome writer’s block. Once a month, the team gathers to brainstorm topics ranging from product shipping updates to lessons learned. This collaborative environment allows employees of all tenures, even those at the company for only two weeks, to find their voice and contribute. By providing a space for editing and scheduling together, it ensures incident.io’s steady stream of diverse perspectives is ready for distribution. For social media managers, this creates a sustainable engine for employee-generated content.
Bridge the Gap Between Social Activity and Recruitment
Megan shares how social media influence has a direct, measurable impact on recruitment cycles and candidate quality. At incident.io, they coordinated a talent team post in early January, which led to a massive spike in website traffic and career page applications that even surprised the marketing department. By having recruiters post about specific roles in an authentic way, the company saw higher engagement from candidates who were previously unresponsive. This strategy works because employees, such as engineers, can sell the product and culture to their peers more effectively than a generic corporate ad.
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Learn More About Employee Advocacy:
Selina Sher Gill
Selina has a Master's Degree in Marketing and Brand Management, and is DSMN8's Digital Marketing Executive. She's a pro at creating and editing video content, using these skills to create short-form social media videos and edit the Employee Advocacy and Influence podcast.
