Essentials of Social Media Marketing: Chapter 15

 Fellow bloggers, we have reached the last chapter of the semester! Chapter 14 discusses employee advocacy. In the last chapter, we talked about using influencers as advocates for your brand. What most companies are forgetting is that their employees are just as able to reach a large audience as a paid influencer is. The average adult Facebook user has about 340 friends, and younger generations have an average of 500 friends. A company with 50 employee advocates has the ability to reach nearly 17,000 people on Facebook alone. 

Organic reach on social media is declining every day, utilizing a company's own employees to advocate for their brand is a cost-effective solution for brands to extend their reach. Hiring an influencer is a great way to increase brand awareness, but friends and family of employee advocates are more willing to purchase when they are encouraged by someone they trust. This solution is effective no matter the size of the company, it has been shown that mom-and-pop shops benefit from employee advocacy just the same as large international corporations. 

There are many benefits for businesses utilizing employee advocacy, and there are just as many benefits for the employee as well. Businesses will see greater reach, increased brand engagement, increased business, higher customer retention rates, and more. Employees will see career and network growth, be recognized as thought leaders, and be able to grow their personal brands. 

Although this seems like a great cost-effective alternative to hiring influencers, companies have admitted that there are some struggles with employee advocacy. 53 percent of companies struggled with finding content to post whereas 49 percent said it was difficult to keep employees motivated and 47 percent found a low adoption rate among employees. 

However, the text provides some tips to succeed with employee advocacy. You want to make sure that you have great communication with your employees throughout the process, sending daily or weekly reminders to continue posting, and at the same time be sure that you aren't forcing employees to participate! Employee advocacy works its magic the best when the posts feel natural and from happy and satisfied employees. You will also want to provide the right tools and good content to make the process easy for your employees, the easier the process is, the more likely they are to share.