[Episode Sixty-Eight of ‘The Employee Advocacy and Influence Podcast] 🎧
What happens when you analyze over 500,000 LinkedIn posts from employees worldwide? The results reshape everything we thought we knew about employee advocacy.
Download the world’s biggest study.
In this special episode of The Employee Advocacy & Influence Podcast, Lewis Gray reveals the headline findings from DSMN8’s World’s Biggest Employee Advocacy Study. With outdated data dominating the conversation for too long, this new research finally sets the record straight, highlighting what really drives engagement, influence, and results when employees share content on LinkedIn.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why authenticity and small edits deliver 3–9x higher engagement
- The surprising power of mid-sized LinkedIn networks
- Why text-only and gallery posts outperform links and images
- The best times and days to post for maximum reach
- How even small caption tweaks can 3x performance
Authenticity Delivers Exponential Impact
One of the clearest findings from The World’s Biggest EVER Employee Advocacy Study is that authenticity isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the driving force behind advocacy success. Employees who made even the smallest edits to pre-approved posts, such as tweaking a sentence or adding a personal thought, saw nearly three times the engagement compared to copy-paste shares. And when employees went further, crafting fully original posts, the results skyrocketed: 9x more engagement, 17x more comments, and over 9x more clicks.
In an era where AI-generated content is everywhere, audiences are craving the human touch. Lewis emphasizes that you don’t need a company full of LinkedIn thought leaders; even small tweaks make a measurable difference. Personal anecdotes, authentic reflections, and unique perspectives resonate far more than polished corporate messaging. For program managers, the lesson is clear: encourage employees to add their voice, however small, to every post.
Caption Editing is the Easiest Win
The most practical takeaway is the power of caption editing. Shockingly only 3.6% of the posts analyzed included edited captions, yet those that did performed dramatically better, 3x more engagement, 4x more reactions, and 5x more comments. And the deeper the edit, the stronger the results: posts that were heavily rewritten (less than 30% similar to the original) outperformed copy-paste shares by 4x.
This insight reinforces that you don’t need employees to reinvent the wheel. Instead, simply encouraging them to tailor captions to their voice, whether that’s rephrasing, adding context, or sharing why the content matters to them, can drastically improve performance. For industries with stricter compliance rules, even minor tweaks can make a difference while staying within guardrails.
Advocacy Programs Must Empower, Not Dictate
Beyond the numbers, Lewis stresses that culture is the foundation of advocacy. The study shows that employees are most effective when they feel empowered, not instructed. Programs that push content for employees to share without flexibility risk coming across as top-down campaigns, which often leads to disengagement.
By contrast, programs that provide training, encouragement, and creative freedom see stronger results. Lewis shares examples where companies gave employees multiple caption options or encouraged them to tailor pre-approved messaging to their own style, and the engagement consistently spiked. The real power of advocacy lies in authenticity, and authenticity can’t be forced.
For advocacy managers, the key takeaway is to view advocacy less as a campaign and more as a movement. Equip employees with tools, templates, and guardrails, but always make space for their voices. That’s where influence truly scales.
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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.
