It has become one of the fastest growing trends in marketing and communications in the past two years and is becoming an essential part of any communications strategy. Industry pioneer Smarp believes that while companies benefit greatly from having their employees act as their brand ambassadors, the starting point and biggest beneficiaries of a successful Employee Advocacy program are the employees themselves.
“Companies are realizing that each employee has their own network of friends and followers who form a massive new potential audience for the company”, Smarp CEO Roope Heinilä says.
“For years and years companies have tried to solicit customers to act as brand ambassadors while ignoring their own employees. Employees have the biggest vested interest in the success of the company and would therefore make the best brand advocates. If your employees are not the biggest fans of your company, then who are?”
When done right, the biggest beneficiaries of an employee advocacy program are the employees themselves.
What is in it for me, asks the employee
The idea behind employee advocacy is to help employees improve their professional brand by giving them the opportunity to discover and share interesting content to engage their networks. As the resulting conversations revolve around the employer and its business, the company can achieve huge benefits in the form of increased reach, credibility, and authenticity of their messages.
In a nutshell, employee advocacy platforms like SmarpShare provide a place where the company gathers interesting content like blog posts, open positions, industry trends, and company news. The employees are notified of the new content and use the online platform or mobile apps to share the content they find interesting and relevant to their own social networks on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Sina Weibo or Xing. Both the individual employee and company are then able to measure how that content performs and learn what type of content resonates with their networks.
What it all comes down to is quality content that employees want to share. The employee needs to find the content interesting and of value to his or her network of contacts in order to gain anything on a personal level from sharing it.
“The biggest reward for an employee advocate is an opportunity to boost their own career”, Heinilä explains.
“And this is exactly why any employee advocacy program needs to help the employee build and manage their professional brand as an expert and a thought leader in their field. When done right, employee advocacy can empower employees to become better at what
they do.”
Text: Sanna Nyström
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