Todd Kunsman — October 7, 2019 More than ever, organizations are looking to stand out among the competition and also be seen among the massive online world of noise.
In your organization, there are most likely a handful of software platforms chosen to help combat the above challenges.
The goal is that these technologies will improve business ROI, but sometimes it just becomes too overwhelming.
Yet, there is one growing tech that is becoming a key component to driving results in multiple areas of the business: employee advocacy software.
How? Instead of having multiple platforms for different departments goals, employee advocacy contributes to more than one area of the business. This dramatically cuts tech stack overload, lowers expenses, and drives meaningful ROI.
In the below, you’ll learn:
- What Employee Advocacy Means
- Where this Software Helps Your Organization
- How Employee Advocacy Benefits Employees
What is Employee Advocacy?
Employee Advocacy is defined as the promotion of a company by employees on social media. These employees share their support for a company’s culture, the brand, product, or services to their online networks.
Parts of your organization — or most employees — begin engaging with company content, sharing it, and being the top spokespeople for your organization.
Now the thought of employees engaging with social media in the workplace might sound scary, but you can’t let that hold you back in our digital age.
In fact, employees are already on social media.
According to Weber Shandwick, 98% of employees use at least one social media site for personal use, of which 50% are already posting about their company.
It’s an unavoidable part of work, but trying to block or control social media use only hinders results and your company. Don’t be that company who tries to control every aspect of employees lives, you’ll quickly lose their trust and support.
But this is where employee advocacy software is crucial in order to organize and make this process easy. However, as alluded in the introduction, this type of software does not just serve one area of your business.
Previously, the focus of employee advocacy software was heavily on marketing and sales, but now it has evolved to be beneficial to areas of your business like social recruiting, communications, etc.
How Employee Advocacy Software Universally Enhances Business
As mentioned (and based on the definition above), you probably have a good idea as to the main areas of the business this type of software can improve.
But, there are quite a few areas that employee advocacy impacts that might not be as obvious, so let’s dive in.
Marketing
In the early years of employee advocacy, the core focus of an advocacy software platform was the results it brings to marketing. Employees having access to the latest content drive brand visibility, increase website traffic, boost leads (and lead quality), and more.
For example, let’s say you have 500 employees with an average of 1,000 social connections each. That alone is combined network reach of 500,000!
Your employees have connections and trusted insights, give them content and access to share and create great content.
Now, when your marketing team is creating content or looking to improve ROI, they can involve others outside of their department to assist.
This software type allows admins to organize groups of content, send emails to team members, provide social copy or allow employees to add their own, and track results directly within. Employees now become a trusted and organic extension of marketing.
Dell need exactly this and now actively has over 10,000 employees acting as an extension of their main marketing teams. You can learn more about their employee advocacy program here.
Sales
When you drive more results with marketing, your organization will naturally see an improvement in sales results too.
Many salespeople can use employee advocacy software to stay organized with content and resources, boost their social selling efforts, and improve sales enablement.
This software acts as a simple and clean way for sales to get the right content in front of their prospects much faster. But, it also allows salespeople to comment and tag other colleagues and stay in communication with marketing.
Plus, quality platforms will have many integrations to talk to your current sales stack as well.
So, what kind of results might come from this software for sales? You’ll see lead quality increase, win rates get stronger, and deal sizes grow.
After all, your business thrives on growing revenue and consistent sales numbers.
Communications
So you might be getting a better picture about employee advocacy so far. But, one often overlooked value is how it improves internal communications within the organization.
Just like outside content noise, your company has a lot of internal noise that makes it hard for employees to know what’s going on at the company. Or even what information best pertains to them.
Employee advocacy software makes it simple to stay organized on company news and announcements besides the latest blog content.
Yet, it allows employees to engage, provide feedback and comments, tag other employees, and receive the most beneficial info directly to them based on their interests or needs.
A more informed workplace is a more engaged community. A company that is more engaged, is also more productive and aligned with your company’s goals and missions.
Employer Brand
You may have heard of the growing need to improve your company’s employer brand. This is a focus on your organization’s reputation as a place to work and how people perceive the brand, both internally and externally.
It’s important for boosting recruiting, maintaining talent, and showcasing to the world your company’s work culture. And the best way to do that is through the use of social media.
Look at most major or well-known brands social media profiles. Many times you’ll see videos of company events or employee stories, volunteer work, employee promotions, and more. These all serve to be a “window” into what it’s like to work at your company.
68% of Millennials visit employer’s social media properties specifically to evaluate the employer’s brand, 12% more than Gen-Xers and 20% more than Boomers. (CareerArc)
Employee advocacy software makes sharing and distributing this content online easier. Plus a good platform enables employees to also create their own moments that they can recommend other employees engage with.
Your organization will quickly find audiences engaging more, brand sentiment going up, and you start to build a talent pool of amazing candidates who want to work at your company.
How Employee Advocacy Benefits Employees
While the majority of benefits are on your organization directly, this process can’t be a one way street. Mostly because you get force employees to get involved or force them to create or share content to their networks.
Instead, your organization needs to make it a part of the culture and show employees what is in it for them.
Not only are employees helping their company by using employee advocacy software, but they also gain career benefits as well.
When employees are sharing and creating content on social media, peers start to see them as thought leaders. This can boost their career development and open new opportunities to grow their professional endeavors.
Whether you like the term thought leader or not, it’s a natural progression on social media when someone is adding value.
Employees can start to get more opportunities to guest blog, be interviewed on podcast, ask to speak at events or conferences, etc.
And if anything, it grows their social networks and helps them become more influential among their peers. This makes them more valuable to your organization, but among their networks too.
Final Thoughts
As a large, enterprise, or high-growth company, employee advocacy software will (and should) be an important piece of your tech stack.
No longer is it only beneficial to marketing and sales results, but it’s the central place to build an engaged workplace community.
And the employee experience is a driving factor in your organizations success and you must give your people the tools they will want to use.
However, there are a few employee advocacy software options out there to choose from.
It’s important to know why your organization wants to adopt employee advocacy and the features you are looking for with a solution.
Want to learn how to build a successful employee advocacy program for real long-term results? Download this complete guide to what your organization needs to know.
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