Employee Advocacy and Social Selling

Have you heard of employee advocacy or social selling? They are both effective social media marketing activities that your team can participate in to increase sales, enhance brand authenticity and employee engagement with not just your customers, but your organisation as well.

First, you need to understand what the difference is between employee advocacy and social selling is:

Employee Advocacy: Exposure employees generate for brands using online assets such as social media, email and messaging apps.

Social Selling: Salespeople engaging with prospects as they guide them through their brands buyers journey.

As an individual, you can participate in either activity on behalf of your company separately or you can use both to increase your company’s reach, build trust with your customers and generate more leads.

Let’s take a look at employee advocacy in more detail:

There are several benefits that come with participating in employee advocacy activity, such as:

• Employees are able to reach more people beyond their corporate social media channels

• Employee messages are more authentic and trustworthy, giving the company a ‘human’ voice

• Employee advocacy initiatives bring employees closer to the company and can increase employee engagement

• Employee advocacy encourages employees to be brand ambassadors and helps to enhance their personal brand.

• Employees can emphasise their company’s core brand values and authenticity, especially if that employee shares the same beliefs.

Sounds great doesn’t it? The numbers employee advocacy can generate are even better!

• Company branded messages have an extended reach of 561% when shared by employees

• Most employees have an average of 850 social media connections across various social networks

• Companies with engaged employees outperform those without by 202%

• Salespeople who use social media outsell their peers by 78%

• Up to 64% of employees in a formal programme credited employee advocacy with developing new business

• Nearly 31% of high-growth firms have a formal employee advocacy programme

So how do you start an employee advocacy programme?

For best results, we find that incorporating your employee advocacy activities with your current social media strategy is one of the best approaches to setting up a programme. This will ensure that key messages compliment the current objectives and match the tone of voice of the company.

Make sure your employees know why the advocacy programme is important, providing them with guidelines, KPIs and ongoing training and support.

Although providing your employees with guidelines will help to ensure their posts are complimenting your brand, allow your employees some flexibility to put their own spin on the message - this will help enhance the authenticity!

To encourage your employees to participate, take part yourself and offer incentives. This will show your employees the value of the programme and encourage employee engagement.

What does employee advocacy give back to employees?

Employee advocacy doesn’t just benefit your business! It can help to build your employees company knowledge and their credibility as brand advocates.

The more your employee shares company content, the more they establish themselves as thought leaders in your industry, which in turn will allow them to contribute to the growth of the company.

In addition, being recognised as a thought leader can also bring your employees more career prospects and growth.

Measurement

Once your employee advocacy programme is up and running, you’re going to have to find a way to measure the performance of not just your content but your employee activity!

Some key questions to ask are:

• Are you getting the participation you need?

• Who is actively participating?

• Who are the top contributors?

• What’s the reach and engagement like?

• What content is shared the most?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you to measure the value of the programme to your business.

Now you understand employee advocacy better, let’s take a look at social selling:

With social selling, there are several benefits including:

• Salespeople are positioned as go to resources and can build trust with customers by showing they understand the business and believe in the product or service.

• Continuously learn more about their customers and their industry.

• Social selling allows salespeople to engage with their customers throughout the buying journey and build a relationship.

• Customers rely on several channels to receive information such as social media, email and messaging apps.

With social selling, there are several benefits including:

• Salespeople are positioned as go to resources and can build trust with customers by showing they understand the business and believe in the product or service.

• Continuously learn more about their customers and their industry.

• Social selling allows salespeople to engage with their customers throughout the buying journey and build a relationship.

• Customers rely on several channels to receive information such as social media, email and messaging apps.

Like employee advocacy, the success if social selling speaks for itself when you consider:

• Socially engaged companies are 58% more likely to attract top talent

• Engaged employees are 20% more likely to stay at their companies.

• Salespeople and brand advocates are 57% more likely to get a 23% increase in leads

• Engaged employees are twice a productive

• 80% of engaged employees are responsible for 80% of customer satisfaction.

Looks good too, doesn’t it? Just image how well it would perform if you combine social selling with employee advocacy! For more information on the process of employee advocacy, social selling, or simply social media, we’re always available for a chat.