How can you leverage your employee base and create an environment that fosters employees advocating on your behalf? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

As brands continue to look for ways to expand their organic reach on social media, the search is on for an evergreen solution that won’t cost them an arm and a leg. While we at SocialToaster are definitely bias towards certain mediums, there is one audience that we see being overlooked again and again: your employees. Employee advocates are a powerful tool for giving your company’s online presence and social media engagement a boost. Like we’ve said before, around 60 million employees are already sharing messages, pictures and videos about their employers on social–so why not harness that power for the good of your company and start an employee advocacy program?

When an employee shares a company’s message, not only is that company reaching a new audience (the social network of that employee), it also benefits from a greater sense of authenticity and trust. After all, why else would an employee share brand content, if it wasn’t because they felt connected to the message? So how can you leverage your employee base and create an environment that fosters employees advocating on your behalf? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Sharing on Social

It’s very likely that your employees are already posting about their jobs on social. If those messages are positive, that’s great news for your business because on average, employee posts get 7 times more engagement than posts from company social accounts. You can use this to your advantage by giving your employees brand content like blog posts, news stories, videos and other information to share. This is also a great way to get less social media-active employees involved in your advocacy program; it takes the work out of it for them and helps you make sure the message being shared is brand-safe.

Writing for the Company Blog

Encouraging employees to write guest posts is a great way to engage them as advocates for your brand. There are many benefits to doing this, one being that your audience will probably trust and relate better with an employee than a C-level executive. It also diversifies your blog content and opens you up to new audiences. On the employee engagement side, this is a great way to recognize employees as thought leaders and gives employees the ability to show off their own work on social media while simultaneously showing off your company!

Writing Reviews

When employees love their jobs (which we hope they all do!) they want to tell the world how awesome their employer is. Today, that’s easy with sites like Yelp, Glassdoor, Google Reviews and even Facebook, that provide opportunities for customers and employees to review businesses online. Having good reviews of your company online is important because “88% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.”

Contributing to Content Creation

Not everyone is going to jump at the chance to write a guest blog or review, but that doesn’t mean they can’t contribute to your content. There are many ways employees can contribute, from giving you the inside scoop on customer wants and needs, to participating in brainstorming sessions, to taking a picture of an employee team-building exercise. By giving a voice to those who want to be involved, you are fostering a collaborative and creative environment, and giving more incentive for those employees to share the content to their networks; instead of just sharing information that’s been given to them, they will be sharing content that they had a hand in developing.

When your employees have a way to show pride in their work that also helps increase your reach and influence online, you’re setting yourself up for a major win-win situation.

Ready to start your employee advocacy program? SocialToaster can help you take your program to the next level by making it easy for employees to share your brands message with the click of a button. Contact our team of employee advocacy experts today to see what SocialToaster can do for you!