In this article, which is an interview with Danielle Guzman of Mercer, she describes the business case for employee advocacy as well as five things you need in your plan as part of your roll out.
Employee Advocacy Business Case
Brand messages reached 561% further when shared by employees vs. the same messages shared by official brand social channels.
79% of firms surveyed reported more online visibility after the implementation of a formal employee advocacy program. 65% reported an increase in brand recognition.
Content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels.
Peer-to-peer marketing is the leading driver behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions.
5 Things You Need In Your Employee Advocacy Plan
A clear game plan with KPIs
A rollout out plan
A brand reputation management process
A social media policy
A training curriculum
So often, employees are expected to "just get on with it" and for many people they are scared. At my last company, one day it's a sackable offence to post on social media, the next day, it's OK. Employees see this as "a trap", they have to be given permission from the leadership team and leadership need to lead by example.
The Mistakes Companies Make With Employee Advocacy
It's seen as a way to "pump out" corporate content
No strategy
No leadership involvement
No continual involvement
While researching this article I noted that Danielle has 48K followers on Twitter, where as her company, Mercer, has 32.5K followers on Twitter. What a great example that people prefer people to brands.
Employee Advocacy Business Case
Let's take IBM as an example. According to Wikipedia they have 352K employees and if you check out IBM's Twitter they have 588K followers. 588K followers is pretty good, but you would expect that, they are a big company.
Let's take 10% of the IBM workforce and train them to look good on social and empower them to talk on social in an insightful and educational way.
Let's say on Twitter this 10% of the workforce has 100 followers.
Just 10% of the workforce would have a reach on Twitter of 3.5 million .... and their followers would be people who know and love the employees staff and so are more likely to share.
The corporation gets 588K followers, by taking a small portion of the staff, even if they had a small following, the employees could amass 3.5 million followers.
IBM on LinkedIn has 8,555,380 followers, which again, is pretty good.
If we empowered the above 10% of IBM staff to provide insight and educational content. The average person on Linkedin has 500 connections.
This would give the IBM business a following of 17.6 million.
Again, the people that are connected to the IBM employees, know and love them and are far more likely to comment, share and engage on their friends, than they are on a cold corporation.
The corporation can get 8.5 million followers, but a small part of the employees could soon punch higher with 17.6 million.
Obviously, if we empowered more than 10% of the employees, the figures would go up. Obviously, if we trained the employees to grow their following and to grow their networks, then the figures would go up even more.
Considering the clear and compelling stats around the power of employee advocacy, I would agree with you. Today, your target audience would rather hear from your employees – not the brand. Here are a few compelling stats to get you thinking: Brand messages reached 561% further when shared by employees vs. the same messages shared by official brand social channels.79% of firms surveyed reported more online visibility after the implementation of a formal employee advocacy program. 65% reported an increase in brand recognition.Content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels.And one of my favorite’s (from McKinsey): Peer-to-peer marketing is the leading driver behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions.
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