Entrepreneur.com recently did an article listing “Must-Use Apps for Marketers.” They included some applications for employee advocacy, which caught my attention. Do we care? Turns out, yes, we should.
What it is:
Employee advocacy is the promotion of an organization by its staff members. A business may ask employees to actively promote the organization, often through social media, as an element of their jobs. However, the most compelling employee advocacy consists of freely-offered communications on the part of the workforce. – whatis.techtarget.com
In other words, employee advocacy is when your team lead sends out an email asking you to tweet something or reminding you to share your company’s latest blog post. Many companies are very casual about employee advocacy today, but maybe they shouldn’t be.
Why you should care:
Reach
- Dell found only an 8% overlap between the company’s Twitter followers and those of its employees – proving that by utilizing their own employees, they could reach many, many more people.
- Dynamic Signal estimates that the average employee reaches 1,140 followers on social media. Identify the top social media gurus at your company and your reach could become even more powerful.
Engagement
- Content shared by employees receives 8x the engagement of content on branded channels.
Conversion
- Traffic generated by employee advocates converts more than twice as fast as that from traditional marketing tactics
- Nielsen estimates a 90% conversion rate when a trusted connection suggests a product
- 78% of sales people using social media outsell their peers not using social media
[Check out the infographics at the end of this post for even more statistics]
How you should manage it:
The companies that benefit the most from employee advocacy have advanced beyond the “Please tweet this” email. They utilize sophisticated online tools to both distribute content to employees and monitor their activity. According to Entrepreneur.com, there are many up and coming new tools on the market, but here are the three most worth using right now:
Have you tried any of these yet? Other resources to share? Please tweet me at @RachelLColello or comment below!
In the meantime, here is some employee advocacy infographic eye candy:
The Stay Engaged Experiment 