Employee Advocacy is a term that we marketers keep hearing. How many of us are paying attention to it and how many of us are already on board using it? The other theory is how many marketers actually know what employee advocacy means. Are we missing the trick that lots of other companies and brands are ahead of the game with…?

So what exactly is employee advocacy? Well it has actually been around since before social media, in fact it’s always been around, as advocacy is the public support for our recommendation. Therefore, our employee advocacy is a positive recommendation we portray for either our products, services or most importantly company culture.

As marketers it’s important we understand that employees are our own best champions!

We all know the importance behind our brand and as marketers the importance of positive brand awareness. Having employees on board with you cannot only help to continue brilliant brand awareness but can also increase it even further afield! Say for example 50% of your employees are already active social media users and they are on board sharing your content and PR pieces, that’s a lot of impressions and audiences being reached through networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter, that may not have ever realised what a great product or service you offer!

It’s believed that people trust and believe another person over a brand. As marketers we should be utilising this. If we want to market our company in a positive light then ideally we should have as many employees engaged positively as possible. This will help improve efforts for your social selling strategy and lead generation efforts. Marketers should also get other departments on-board too, if employees are engaged with a company then they’ll advocate other people to come and work for you too – your recruitment team will love you!

Here are some tips into getting employee advocacy into practise.

• Start with some goal setting – How many executives do you want on board?
• Organise a programme and content strategy
• Look in to some analytics and KPI’s to get an idea for performance results
• Get your employees engaged with your programme, content and social media
• Organise some sessions so employees can share their social media knowledge
• Trial training sessions for those who don’t understand how to use social networks
• Decide on the growth plan and scale you want to reach
• Look into a technology company that provides a brand advocacy tool if you want to reach a wide scale
• Create some workflows to get an idea of your process and scale you want to take
• Keep reviewing and analysing your findings

Hopefully, these tips can help get you thinking how employee advocacy can have a positive impact on your marketing efforts. Ultimately, as marketers there’s an argument that there is only so much we can do. Our employees need to enjoy working for an organisation, therefore depending on the company’s ethics and practises, it can either help or hinder us marketers. Therefore, take a positive approach yourself and ensure the company is showing how it’s a great place to work internally and externally. Take a look into awards such as, Great Place to Work for and Times Top 100 companies. There are many awards and practices companies can take part in to ensure employees think they’re working for a top employer.