Employee advocacy is a multi-faceted programme that encompasses employees, associates and all participants of corporate and personal communities. Unlike conventional marketing techniques, employee advocacy is not profit-driven. Instead, it is driven by principles of emotions and community building.
Here are 5 ways your employee can supercharge your brand image.
Cultivate the culture of discussion
Excluding meetings and occasional discussions, there are a few opportunities for your employees to express themselves. Contrary to the misconception, interaction amongst employees about topics of non-immediate importance, aren’t a threat to productivity. These are the building blocks of employee empowerment.
When employees debate and discuss amongst themselves, they are fostering a feeling of oneness and team unity. This team spirit comes a long way. It makes employees engage amongst themselves and motivates them to relay this discussion onto their social media platforms.
In today’s world, every four people are believed to have ten opinions. When your employees discuss, they would form favorable views about your brand and subjects relating to it. This provides impetus to the personality development of employees as well as your brand.
Initiate a trend about your brand
The world is but a global community. Connections between different employees are bound to overlap to a fair extent. Employee advocacy relies heavily on informing these connections about your brand.
When a social media participant views the posts about your brand from different sources, it would create a sensation of omnipresence for the brand like paid trend creation. And since your employees are first-hand bearers of this development, they enjoy a special type of attention. In times where recognition is hard to achieve, employee advocacy gives a two-tiered advantage i.e. Employee limelight and brand spotlight.
Enable the fluid flow of non-advertorial information
Your workplace would have undergone small but impactful changes. It could range from upgrading to a more efficient technology or having your workplace renovated with artistic décor or any such employee-centric developments at your workplace. Spreading such information via paid channels is undoubtedly the least judicious thing to do. However, sharing such information through the social media handles of your employees would advertise a different side of your brand. These developments don’t necessarily come within the periphery of conventional marketing content. Employee advocacy allows you to spread such pleasant but non-advertorial pieces through your employees.
Even though the key intention of employee advocacy is to build the brand, it does prove to be advantageous to the involved employees as well. These dual benefits make employee advocacy a desirable marketing tool.
Practice social selling skills
When your employees are sharing content about your brand, they perform the crucial action of selling your brand on social media platforms. This kind of selling doesn’t demand convincing until a receiver succumbs into acceptance. Seeking positive acknowledge is the primary goal of employee advocacy. This sets employee advocacy miles apart from profit-oriented marketing.
And in this process, your employees further their interpersonal skills by selling your brand through their personal social media platforms. Not only will it keep exercising the social skills of your employees, but it would also ensure they stay updated with the upcoming trends via social media. Thus, your brand would reap the benefits of employee advocacy in multiple ways.
Emergence as thought leaders
One of the most noticeable features across all forms of social media platforms is the presence of trendsetters. These users are highly influential crowd directors which mould public opinion with their knowledgeable insights.
The activity of such trendsetter serves as a food for thought amongst their thousands or even lakhs of followers. It must further be noted that much of the influencing power possessed by these trendsetters is acquired with time and experience, making their words highly valued in the business world and outside it. This channel can be leveraged to the advantage of both the employee and the brand. Employees get a virtual fan following, and your brand gets a channel to establish its presence on social media.
CONTACT SOCXO to get customized solutions for your Advocacy Marketing program?