6 Compelling Reasons Why Your Business Needs Employee Advocacy

Why does it matter to get through the clutter? Because researchers have shown, time and time again, that consumers make their business talk online. They trust people more than they trust brands —  actually, 88% of them trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations!¹

To get what they need from you, consumers need to see you on social media sites. But, there’s a caveat — they don’t want to hear from your corporate accounts, they want to hear from your people, the people who know you and your story and come across as much more trustworthy and authentic and sincere than you, as a company, do.

That’s where your employees step in.

They are a powerful asset, and it’s often to the detriment of the company that they are overlooked in your content strategy. With their help, you can easily spread your brand’s story and vision on social media sites.

Employee advocacy explained

Your employees have a big incentive to be your advocates — your company is their place of work, and what benefits you, benefits them as well. We actually wrote e separate article specifically on the benefits of employee advocacy. Most of the time, employee advocacy is already happening in companies, whether it’s being managed or not.

Think about these instances for a minute, does any of these sound familiar? Have these things already been happing in your company?

• 47% of employees are already communicating with customers in an online environment2 by answering questions, sticking up for the company, or through other activities.
  
  
• 50% of them are sharing pictures, videos, and other content even when not encouraged by the company they work for (this can be a double-edged sword, as it can be dangerous if there are no company-issued posting guidelines).

Your employees are an existing resource that can be further utilized to benefit your company. The cost of starting and managing an employee advocacy program is significantly lower than the cost of launching an advocacy program with customers.

However, it still delivers impressive results. Here are our top 6 ways employee advocacy can and will deliver value to your business.

1. Online reputation management

6 out of 10 employees will go out of their way to defend their employer to friends, family, and online connections³. With careful management, you could easily bump that number even higher.

Given that, on average, employees have an average network of 800 connections, you can expand your reach and get your content to a whole new audience, and leverage their loyalty to your company to enhance your employer brand. 

2. Online content creation and distribution

Your employees can create meaningful content and distribute it over social media much cheaper than you ever could. They are amazing collaborators when it comes to content creation and UGC. 

If you wanna diver deeper into how you can build a content strategy with and around your employees, check out our free Content Creation for Social Advocacy guides! 

3. Sales boost

With just a 12% increase in employee advocacy, you could easily double your sales⁴. Attempting to do so through any other channel would cost a lot more.

4. Expanded reach

Your potential reach grows with every employee advocate to include their social connections. This quickly surpasses what a company could hope to reach organically.

In fact, around 90% of people you reach through your employees will be hearing about your brand for the first time.

5. Authenticity boost

There’s nothing authentic in a corporate social media account. People trust people, and authenticity is built one advocate at a time.

When that happens, every message you put out there will be amplified by real, human voices. That's why focusing on your employees and letting your employees spread the word about you, activating the power of word of mouth, and trusting them to be your online social media ambassadors and social sellers, is the preferred way for you to humanize your brand.

6. Minimal investment

Employee advocates are not looking for an extensive rewards program. Being already invested in the success of your company, they are looking for recognition, not rewards, and a simple thank you will go a long way.

Yes, gamification and a rewards system can be helpful drivers to increase motivation within a community, but good content and company loyalty will always be the basis upon which internal engagement is built.

Leverage employee advocacy to increase awareness, leads & sales

A handful of good employee ambassadors can do wonders for your company. Once you start growing their numbers and managing their efforts, they can amplify your marketing efforts and contribute tremendously to your bottom line.

All it takes is a little effort and coordination coupled with a lot of vision and drive to tap into your biggest resource — the human resource. Ambassify advocacy platform can help you along the way, allowing you to easily implement and execute employee advocacy goals. Start boosting social media awareness and engagement today, and you will be seeing results astonishing tomorrow!