A well-crafted social media policy can do much more than protect your brand’s reputation—it protects your company’s security, privacy and legal interests. The internet never forgets, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.

An effective social media policy also supports your employee advocacy content strategy. When employees post about a company on social media, it can improve brand awareness, drive qualified leads and establish thought leadership.

We’ve created a customizable social media policy template to help you build rules and protocols for representing your brand online including:

• Personal account do’s and don’ts
• Security and privacy guidelines
• Company association rules

Our social media policy template is a starting point for creating standards that will protect and grow your business. Empower your employees with the right guidance so they have the space to advocate for themselves while staying true to the brand and its values online.

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Social advocacy empowers employees to amplify your brand message in a way that’s consistent with your business’s voice and tone. With a strategy behind it, advocacy will help drive sales, attract talent and position your team members as leaders in their respective networks. It’s a win-win-win, and the companies that capitalize on the opportunity are reaping the benefits.

The time to build your social advocacy program is now. Kick off your process by taking inspiration from these four brands that have mastered the art of employee amplification.

How advocacy can strengthen your social media strategy

Social media algorithms are constantly evolving. While the path to a perfectly curated feed is paved with good intentions, there’s bound to be some trial and error along the way. As networks work those kinks out, marketers have to adapt.

Now that most networks are moving toward content recommendation algorithms, many social media managers are headed into 2023 asking a new question: “If our followers aren’t seeing our content, who will?”

That’s where employee advocacy comes in.

Whether we like it or not, seeing an original post from a familiar face in our social feeds has become a novelty. It piques interest. Factor that interest into the 842 social media connections each of your colleagues has on average, and you’ve opened your brand up to a whole new world of potential impressions.

According to our research, engaged social media users already think it’s essential for employees to post about their company and vice versa. This mutually beneficial relationship can help build brand awareness for your company while helping employees build up their personal brand.

4 social advocacy program examples to inspire your strategy

If you want to get a program started but you’re not sure where to begin, look no further. We’ve gathered these four proven social advocacy examples for tips and inspiration to coach your next crop of brand advocates.

1. Vizient

Vizient, the largest healthcare performance improvement organization in the US, saw a 200% increase in engagements within the first six months of launching their social advocacy program.

Results like these don’t just happen on their own. They happen when a dedicated team member—like Vizient’s Social Media Director, Elida Solis—gets equipped with the tools needed to power their strategy. For Vizient, that tool is Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social.

To get the rest of #TeamVizient up to speed and ready to post, Solis and her team put together an advocacy resource hub, complete with product demos, instructional videos and on-demand webinars. These provisions made it easy for individuals to understand how they can build their personal brand through their company’s advocacy program.

Since we started using Sprout’s Employee Advocacy solution, my network has become more engaged. I get asked about my company more than ever and people comment on how active I am on LinkedIn. It makes it easier for me to interact with my connections on social. I would highly recommend Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social to other companies considering it.

Carl Taggart
Vice President, Zone Leader NE & SE US—Spend Management Services and Delivery, Vizient

These efforts created a solid foundation for a program that sets a new standard for social advocacy. It even helped earn them the 2021 PR News Digital + Social Award for Best Use of LinkedIn (Community Engagement).

Takeaway: What you get from social advocacy is directly related to what you put into it. Dedicate staff time and resources to understanding what will make a program thrive at your organization. Then, keep iterating. If you set it and forget, you risk losing impact down the line.

2. Ivanti

Setting goals without benchmarks is like trying to shoot an arrow blindfolded. You might hit your target—but it won’t be easy. That’s why the team at Ivanti turned to Sprout for the tools and performance insights needed to revitalize their social advocacy program.

Jamie Laliberte Whalen, Ivanti’s Director of Social Strategy, knew exactly what she was looking for when she connected with Team Sprout. “I wanted Sprout to tell us where we are and where we need to be so we could set reachable goals to move us toward becoming best-in-class. I told the customer success team at Sprout, ‘Give me the key performance indicators and other metrics that we can hold ourselves accountable to, so I can bake that into our social strategy for the year.'”

With Sprout’s help, Whalen identified program adoption as an area of improvement. After retooling the program with a new incentive structure and revamped internal resources, Whalen kicked off an internal communications campaign to drum up excitement for the program.

These efforts resulted in a newly thriving ambassador program. “By the end of the first month of revitalizing the program, we had 17 million reach and an adoption rate of nearly 46%—which is well over the 30% benchmark for a best-in-class program,” said Whalen. “Also, after launching our incentive program, we went from 1,000 to 3,000 shares in the first month, and then up to 17,000 shares within the first quarter.”

Takeaway: You need measurable goals to gauge where you’re succeeding and where there are opportunities to improve. Use your performance data or industry benchmarks to create meaningful goals for your social advocacy program.

3. ZoomInfo

To Caroline Salis, Social Media and Community Manager at ZoomInfo, social advocacy groups are a type of community.

And why wouldn’t it be? ZoomInfo’s employee advocacy program boasts around 1,000 members who lean on each other for tips and inspiration on how to best position themselves and the ZoomInfo brand online.

“Praise is our best incentive,” says Salis. “People use our employee advocacy Slack group to get traction on their posts or gut check humor. The support and excitement you get from your teammates is natural and authentic. That’s an incentive in itself.”

This positive feedback loop has done wonders for ZoomInfo’s share of voice. “We have so many people who are proud to work at ZoomInfo, but they don’t know how to share. Advocacy and our Slack community empowers them to do something they’ve wanted to do all along.”

Takeaway: Experiment with incentives beyond gift cards or prizes to understand what really motivates your team. More than half of engaged employees say they would share company posts on personal accounts if they’re happy with their job (59%), and if they’re proud of the content they’re sharing (52%).

4. Salesloft

If you’re familiar with Salesloft but you’re not exactly sure why, it’s probably because you’ve seen Tom Boston come across your feed.

Tom Boston, Salesloft’s Brand Awareness Manager, has over 24,000 followers on LinkedIn. His most recent video received more than 3,000 likes, 500 comments and 200 shares. He’s a content creation powerhouse and a major asset to the Salesloft brand.

Boston started his content creation journey with general sales advice content. During a webinar on building a personal brand on LinkedIn, he revealed that he workshopped his humor-driven persona through experimentation.

His efforts show what’s possible when you take a chance and hit post—not just for Salesloft, but for other B2B sales leaders, too.

Takeaway: Tap a group of internal influencers to help your program take flight. Lean on these individuals to promote the program internally by showing what’s possible with advocacy.

Learning from social advocacy examples  

Hopefully, these advocacy program examples will inspire you to design your strategy that plays to your business’s strengths. As you pull this off, remember that content is only half the battle. You’ll need the right tools—like Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social—to empower your colleagues to be the best brand ambassadors they can be. 

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When taking an employee advocacy program up the chain, employee advocacy stats should be the backbone of your pitch. Decision makers want to see proof of success and the measurable benefits your company will gain by launching a brand amplification program.

Keep reading for statistics on employee brand advocacy that will grab the attention of multiple leaders across your C-suite.

The employee advocacy statistics your boss needs to see

According to The Sprout Social Index™, more than two-thirds (68%) of marketers report their organization already has an advocacy program.

While many advocacy programs are informal side projects, sophisticated brands will find ways to formalize and evolve them through dedicated staff, tools, processes and employee training.

Of the 1,000+ marketers we asked, those that had an advocacy program stated their top three objectives were increasing brand awareness, attracting qualified job applicants and having more control over brand messaging. Other reasons included driving more qualified leads, establishing thought leadership and creating new networking opportunities.

And employees want to post about their companies. According to Sprout’s Employee Advocacy Report, 72% of engaged users would post about their company if content was written for them.

Your C-suite pitch: Traditional social media tactics are becoming less reliable. Organizations leading the advocacy charge have an edge over their competitors. In the face of limited resources, changing algorithms and congested feeds, an advocacy program is a company’s greatest asset to amplify content, increase ROI and recruit top talent.

Using Sprout’s Employee Advocacy platform is the easiest way to launch a brand advocacy program. In the platform, you provide pre-approved messaging that your team can share from one centralized hub. And your internal team can curate the articles directly in Sprout. Employees are empowered to post authentically, while feeling confident they’re staying on-brand.

Stats that prove the impact of advocacy on brand amplification

Advocacy supercharges your brand awareness efforts and enables you to amplify your reach beyond what you could achieve with organic tactics alone.

Take IT software company Ivanti. After creating a brand ambassador program with the help of Sprout’s Advocacy platform, the organization reached 16 million people on social media in the first month.

We had similar results at Sprout. In 2022, content shared through our Advocacy platform earned more impressions than all our social networks combined. In fact, 95% of the 740,000 impressions earned from our recent Salesforce global partnership announcement were driven by posts our employees shared.

Your C-suite pitch: Across industries, organic social performance has taken a hit. Tapping into employee networks is the most impactful way to amplify your best performing content and spike impressions—without stretching your bandwidth or ad budget.

Sprout’s Advocacy platform automatically measures shares, engagements and reach, so you can see your amplification impacts in real-time.

Stats that prove the impact of advocacy on revenue

Enlisting your employees as brand advocates isn’t just key to increasing awareness, it has serious effects on your bottom line and sales targets.

First, advocacy enables you to scale and amplify your best performing content so you can generate qualified leads without straining your ad budget. For example, at Sprout, we reached almost $450,000 in earned media value in 2022, while Ivanti achieved more than $500,000.

Second, according to Sprout’s Employee Advocacy Report, posting company content helps employees accomplish their day-to-day tasks and long-term goals—including social selling. About 72% of engaged social media users and 62% of casual users say sharing company posts helps their social selling efforts.

Empowering your employees to share meaningful content positions them as thought leaders in your industry, helping them generate new business opportunities. As LinkedIn reports, salespeople who regularly share about their company on social media are 45% more likely to exceed their quota.

Your C-suite pitch: Advocacy unlocks revenue gains by complementing your demand generation efforts. From achieving earned media value to empowering your team members to do their best work, investing in an employee brand amplification strategy pays in dividends.

Sprout’s Employee Advocacy reporting tools give you the data needed to quantify your advocacy program, and to connect results to leads, event registrations and more.

Stats that prove the impact of advocacy on hiring (and keeping) top talent

Potential new hires will research your company on social, keeping an eye out for what your current employees think about it. Afterall, your employees’ perspectives matter three times more to prospective candidates than your CEO’s. When employees celebrate your company culture, they elevate your employer brand and increase interest in your company.

In a recent Sprout survey of 1,000 consumers, 87% of Millennial respondents indicated that they feel more connected to brands when they see employees sharing information online, and 81% think it’s important for employees to post about their company (up from 72% in our previous survey).

Advocacy also invites your current employees to be stewards of your brand, fostering a sense of ownership, loyalty and belonging. When employees have a stake in your company, it improves their long-term morale, engagement and retention.

Your C-suite pitch: Creating employee advocates strengthens your recruitment and retention strategies. Advocacy expands your candidate pool and generates positive social sentiment and buzz that increases your application volume.

From Sprout’s platform, you can draft and send custom internal newsletters. Broadcast curated stories about open roles, company achievements and employer brand content so your employees can share the posts from their inbox with one click.

Why Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social is worth the investment

Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social is the easiest way to extend your social reach, increase brand awareness, drive sales and attract talent—while satisfying your employees with an easy-to-use platform.

Like one Sprout customer in the healthcare industry who increased their engagements by 200% in six months after launching their advocacy program. Their employees also reported 98% satisfaction with the platform.

Calculate how your business can benefit from using the Employee Advocacy platform with our ROI calculator.

The post Employee advocacy stats to secure C-level buy-in appeared first on Sprout Social.

But a poorly timed or worded social post could harm your brand reputation. Yet, 45% of companies don’t have a social media policy for employees in place.

Although people may forgive your brand, the internet never forgets, so it’s better to be safe than sorry! Implementing a social media policy will help protect your company and give employees the space to advocate for themselves while staying true to the brand and it’s values.

What is a company social media policy?

A social media policy is part of a company’s business code of conduct that tells employees how they should represent themselves and the brand on social media. It includes guidelines to protect the brand’s security, privacy and legal interests.

Social media platforms provide avenues for brand promotion, but they also present opportunities to misrepresent your brand, which is why a good social media policy is so necessary.

Why do you need a social media policy for employees

Here are several reasons organizations should adopt a social media policy:

Create brand advocates

Social media policies allow you to unlock all the benefits of employee advocacy, without putting your brand credibility at risk.

When your employees post about the organization online, it can increase brand awareness, establish thought leadership and drive qualified leads. Along with helping social selling, employee posts can support social recruiting efforts, attracting top talent to your company.

Your social media policy is a critical advocacy tool, giving your employees the guidance they need to represent your brand accurately within social networks.

Promote DEI

Brand diversity in social media is more important than ever. Company alignment with personal values is 74% more important to consumers than it was in 2021, so brands need to show and tell audiences what the company values.

Amplifying diverse voices via social media is an actionable step brands can take to prioritize representation and attract top talent from marginalized communities. An inclusive social media policy will empower and encourage voices from all backgrounds to advocate for the brand.

Maintain a consistent brand identity

A social media policy ensures that whenever someone interacts with your company online, either through a brand channel or an employee, they get the same consistent experience. This develops a more reliable, trustworthy identity for your company, turning customers into loyal fans and ambassadors.

Minimize legal action against your brand

Social media presents complicated considerations such as privacy law and copyright law. A well made social media policy will protect the company from potential lawsuits.

Consult with your legal counsel and outline a list of do’s and don’ts for the company to follow. These rules of thumb will help ensure the organization and contractors are compliant with laws, reducing the risk of legal action against the company.

Protect your brand from privacy and security risks

There are many privacy and security risks involved with using social media. The larger your team is, the larger those risks become. A good social media policy combined with security protocols will protect your accounts against hacking, phishing and fraud accounts.

And since social media is a common resource for scammers and criminals, it’s imperative your social media policy includes guidelines that protect both your employees and company. Whether it’s defending against phishing scams or ransomware attacks, make sure that everyone in your organization is vigilant about online protection.

Prevent a public relations crisis

Many organizations make the mistake of waiting until they’ve faced a public relations disaster to put a policy in place. Be proactive and implement a strategy in advance to minimize crisis.

Your social media crisis plan should align with your social media policy. For example, the policy can designate which teams are responsible for handling a PR crisis.

What every social media policy should include

A well-crafted social media policy will provide a variety of benefits, like empowering your staff and protecting your brand. But to relish those benefits, your policy needs to outline clear, comprehensive guidance.

Here’s some essential components every social media policy should have to get you started:

The purpose of the policy

Explain why the organization uses a social media policy. Be transparent and illustrate why your brand needs it. Here’s an example from our social media policy template:

Who the policy applies to

Emphasize how the social media policy applies to everyone from executives and managers to interns and freelancers. An example from our template is below:

Note how this section also provides the brand’s definitions of company-related information and social media. These clear distinctions ensure everyone within the organization is on the same page.

Personal account guidelines

You can’t control everything your employees do and say on their personal social media accounts. However, it’s important to show them why their behavior on personal profiles affects your company and how they can avoid conflict.

Regardless of whether or not your employees are speaking for you, the world might view them as a reflection of your brand. If your employees are acting questionably online, this raises suspicion about your business too.

Your social media policy will have a list of rules to follow, but the most important thing to remind your employees is that whatever they say on social media, they’re representing the company—even when on their personal accounts.

Outline basic expectations for behavior. For instance, they need to:

• Check their facts
• Respect the law (including copyright law)
• Avoid saying negative things about your brand or other companies

Company association rules

It’s also a good idea to include a disclaimer on personal accounts to remind customers that your employee is an individual, not a spokesperson for your organization. Many social media policies ask team members to state all of their posts are based on their own opinions, like Best Buy:

By separating themselves from their employees’ opinions, Best Buy reduces their risk of a PR crises.

Security and privacy guidelines

Your social media policy should also defend against security risks and privacy issues. Robust social media policies outline the dangers of sharing online and help keep your employees out of trouble.

At a minimum, these guidelines should include details about:

• Sharing proprietary or confidential company information
• Posting defamatory, derogatory or inflammatory content
• Posting information or pictures that imply illegal conduct
• How to create secure passwords, including two-factor authentication for brand and personal social media accounts
• How to keep software updated and devices secure
• How to identify potential social media risks and attacks
• How to respond if a security breach takes place

The safer your employees are with their social media actions, the more secure your business becomes.

Legal guidelines

Your social media policy must provide clear guidelines on how to handle sensitive areas, particularly regarding the law and industry regulations.  Legal requirements vary by country and state, so make sure you consult with your legal counsel.

Your policy can cover, but isn’t limited to the following:

• Credit sourcing: What is the source of the information your employee is sharing? Crediting images and other information is crucial.
• Privacy and disclosure procedures: Let your employees know what is considered confidential, such as customer information.
• Disclaimers: Let your staff know what a disclaimer means when they use it online. As the City of Edmonton outlines in their social media guidelines, even if someone states that their opinions are their own, they’ll still be seen as a representative of the city by the public.
• Regulatory challenges: Certain industries like finance, government and healthcare have specific regulatory requirements. Outline any rules that may be associated with your industry.

Responsible engagement

Clarify who can speak on behalf of your company on social media. A small problem could snowball if not handled appropriately. If someone leaves a negative comment about your brand online, make sure your employees know how to respond.

The degree of freedom you give your staff will depend on the nature of your business. If you do allow your team to offer advice to customers, it’s a good idea to train them on the following:

• Brand guidelines: How to talk about your products, services and company.
• Etiquette: How to respond to comments from customers (tone of voice, customer escalation strategies, etc.).
• Confidentiality: Which details should absolutely not be shared on social media.
• Consequences: What will happen if they fail to follow the company’s social media policy.

For some businesses, the best option will be to direct the situation toward the staff trained to manage PR matters and conflict resolution. You may have members of your team responsible for crisis response, message approval, customer service, public relations management and social engagement.

An excellent way to ensure conflicts are always handled properly from the start is to set up pre-approved responses to common issues in a social media management platform like Sprout Social. These responses show your brand is aware of their concern and will direct them to the right person to resolve the problem.

You can even use Sprout’s social listening tools to ensure you’re the first to know when someone says something negative about your brand. The faster you’re aware of a problem, the easier it is to fix it before the fire spreads.

Social media policy examples

If you’re looking for inspiration, many social media policies are publicly available. Here are a few great social media policy examples that are specific and comprehensive:

Dell

Dell’s social media policy is digestible, yet still meets the requirements of the company’s needs.

The policy is broken down into several sections: purpose and scope, related policies and consequences of violations, social media account ownership and Dell’s five social media principles.

Notice how Dell uses these sections to define expectations and ties the policy back to the company’s code of conduct and equal employment opportunity policy.

For example, Dell Technologies’ Five Social Media Principles mentions the guidelines are reiterated in onboarding. This section also lists zero-tolerance behavior, rules of thumb and specific steps to protect security, privacy and legal compliance.

Playstation

Along with implementing a social media policy for employees, some brands create a separate policy for content creators and influencers. Playstation has a great social media policy for influencers.

Playstation begins by stating influencers must follow their rules whenever they post about Sony Interactive Entertainment products and services on any social media platform. Notice how they define collaboration as “free product, event tickets, or any other benefit or if you have an ongoing relationship with us.”

From there, Playstation lists specific guidelines that fall underneath four main principles: be responsible, be transparent, be specific and be yourself.

For example, under the “be transparent” section, Playstation lists how to disclose the relationship. They note the disclosure should be visible to viewers without having to click a link or a “see more” prompt. Influencers must include #ad at the beginning or end of the post. They also include caveats for video content:

Walmart

Walmart has a comprehensive set of guidelines and is an excellent model for enterprise companies with sophisticated social media presence across several channels. The retailer breaks down guidelines for both customers and associates for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The retail company states that no employee outside of the Walmart social team should answer customer complaints or questions directed toward the company. This kind of rule might seem restrictive, but it’s often best for larger companies to err on the side of caution.

Target

Target also does a great job of breaking down their social media policy in a way that’s clear and easy to understand. Their policy begins with a purpose, definition of social media and policy application:

Their guidelines are brief, but provide specific dos and don’ts for employees to follow:

They include examples of potential policy breaches and best practices when using social media:

The retailer also includes a summary of the social media policy within their code of ethics, with actionable steps to follow for specific scenarios and forms of communication:

Social media policy tools for employee advocacy

Social media is a powerful tool for your business, but it takes intention to enjoy its benefits. A social media policy will help guide employees across the organization on how your brand should be represented on social.

Social media in the workplace is manageable—you just need to dedicate time and effort into developing a social media policy that works.

Take control of your brand’s social identity by showing employees they have the power to deliver incredible results for your company. Give them the tools they need to best represent the brand and themselves by downloading our social media policy template.

The post Social media policy: A guide for your organization appeared first on Sprout Social.

“Ivanti manages and secures the ‘Everywhere Workplace,’” said Sal Viveros, the company’s Head of Global Corporate Communications. “Businesses depend on our technology to automatically manage, secure and service all of the on-premises and edge devices in their IT environment—from laptops to phones to virtual reality headsets.”

Part of Viveros’ role at Ivanti is to help increase brand awareness for the company and promote senior leadership’s expertise in how businesses can use technology and services to make the “Everywhere Workplace” possible. One of Viveros’ frequent collaborators at Ivanti is the Director of Social Strategy, Jamie Laliberte Whalen, whose responsibilities include shaping influencer marketing strategy and leading Ivanti’s newly reimagined brand ambassador and incentive program.

“The brand ambassador program is near and dear to my heart,” said Whalen, who joined the company in November 2021. “I wanted the program to be really successful. That’s why I reached out to our customer success team at Sprout Social to help us identify what we needed to do to improve it.”

Benchmarking brand ambassador program performance—with insight from Sprout

Whalen leads a social media team who deliver on Ivanti’s global social strategy with support from a system of internal stakeholders, like Viveros, and additional resources and tools, including Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social.

The assistance Whalen specifically sought from the Sprout Social team was twofold: First, she wanted to know what a best-in-class brand ambassador program looked like, especially for Ivanti’s industry. Second, she wanted insight into how Ivanti’s current efforts were stacking up against those top-tier metrics.

“In short, I wanted Sprout to tell us where we are and where we need to be so we could set reachable goals to move us toward becoming best-in-class,” Whalen explained. “I told the customer success team at Sprout, ‘Give me the key performance indicators and other metrics that we can hold ourselves accountable to, so I can bake that into our social strategy for the year.’”

Sprout’s team came back with a host of relevant data for Whalen to examine, including information on how similar programs by Ivanti’s competitors were performing and what tactics they were using. Whalen also received details on user adoption and engagement levels and signup rates for both best-in-class programs and Ivanti’s own program.

Whalen said, “We learned that our program had about a million in reach per month. Also, our adoption rate was just 17%. Some people would consider those numbers good, but in my view, they weren’t good enough. I also learned from Sprout that a best-in-class program has about a 30% adoption rate, and we obviously weren’t even close to that.”

After reviewing the data from Sprout, Melissa Puls, Ivanti’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, told Whalen she wanted to challenge everyone in the organization to utilize the program. “I told her I’d already included it in our social strategy,” Whalen said. “I knew it would be powerful if we had a program that allowed everybody to access and share content at the right time, wherever they are. The voices inside our company are the strongest voices. They are on the front lines, working hard every day in our ‘Everywhere Workplace’ to make sure Ivanti’s brand is standing up.”

Underscoring the value of employee advocacy—starting from day one

To increase utilization of Ivanti’s brand ambassador program and drive employee advocacy, Whalen and her team, with help from Sprout, examined how the current program was structured. “We looked at it holistically and examined its backend taxonomy,” she explained. “I wasn’t the first owner of the program, so I had to step back to understand how it was set up initially and determine how we needed to run and support it moving forward.”

One need Whalen identified was an internal communications plan that would “let everyone know how awesome the reshaped program was going to be.” She said, “It’s not my program, it’s everyone’s program. And I think a key reason we’ve had so much success in improving it is because we made the point to get people—including executive leadership—involved and excited about it early on.”

Whalen said her team prioritized creating content and posting it to an intranet site to help employees understand how to use Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social. “We developed new videos to explain what Sprout is, how to use it on a desktop, how to use the mobile app, and more,” she said. “We also created resources like blogs and how-tos.”

This information is now a part of Ivanti’s onboarding process for employees.

New hires are excited and want to be part of something big, and onboarding provides the perfect opportunity to get them on the Sprout platform and become a brand ambassador.

Jamie Whalen
Director of Social Strategy

The social media team at Ivanti also realized that many existing employees didn’t know about the program—or hadn’t been educated well about how to use the Sprout tool. “We had two different groups to educate, so we created a quarterly newsletter to help everyone know what content is available for them to use and offer tips to help them succeed,” said Whalen. “There’s been a lot of follow-up by email, too, to highlight wins and keep people engaged.”

Measuring results and telling the value story through Sprout’s analytics

Using contests like gift card giveaways and other special events as incentives have helped drive employee engagement in the brand ambassador program. That includes Invanti’s sales and BDR teams, who were among those unfamiliar with the program and initially uncertain about the value it could provide. “Let’s just say I had a ‘Jerry Maguire’ moment with them,” Whalen laughed. “I was like, this will help me help you. Let me show why this is beautiful, and why it’s worth your time to participate.”

The education and incentivizing Whalen and her team have provided has paid off—delivering a quick and impressive return on investment, in fact. “By the end of the first month of revitalizing the program, we had 17 million reach and an adoption rate of nearly 46%—which is well over the 30% benchmark for a best-in-class program,” said Whalen. “Also, after launching our incentive program, we went from 1,000 to 3,000 shares in the first month, and then up to 17,000 shares within the first quarter.”

The newly thriving brand ambassador program at Ivanti is also helping the company save about $500,000 in marketing costs this year through earned media. “That’s a lot of money that Ivanti doesn’t have to spend on marketing thanks to our brand ambassadors,” said Whalen.

Executive leadership at Ivanti is not only paying close attention to these results, but also is engaging with the brand ambassador program as well—including acknowledging employees’ efforts. Whalen shared this example: “After our first contest, our CEO reached out to the three winners to thank them personally for being brand ambassadors. He was so impressed by these individuals and what they were able to do for the company. I don’t think these folks had ever talked to our CEO before, but now they were all in a conversation because of something they’d done together.” 

“Social media is critical to building the Ivanti brand, and using our employees to help communicate with our customers is important because it’s more authentic and more credible,” said Viveros. “With help from Sprout, we can provide information to our employees to share easily with our customers through social media. It’s a way for our key messaging to touch our customers directly.”

Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social is also really easy to use. I’m posting two to three messages per day myself, and it takes me just seconds to do it.

Sal Viveros
Head of Global Corporate Communications

Whalen credits the wealth of data and insights and the partnership that Sprout Social has provided for helping Ivanti’s brand ambassador program quickly achieve best-in-class performance. “We’re up to 17,000 shares monthly with our brand ambassador program—which gives us a lot more reach and a lot more eyes,” said Whalen. “I think that through our partnership, we have created a beautiful effect.”

Analytics that help communicate the bottom-line value of social media efforts to stakeholders and the “business-to-human touch” the customer success team delivers are top reasons Whalen said she’d recommend Sprout Social to other marketers. “You’re not just working with a company—you’re working with people,” she said. “Sprout really wants the best for your company. They will create a plan for you to become a best-in-class program. That’s what they do. Many companies say they do that, but Sprout has actually helped us do it, and we have the results to show for it.”

We couldn’t have succeeded without the data, insight and partnership we got from Sprout. We’re up to 17,000 shares monthly with our brand ambassador program—which gives us a lot more reach and a lot more eyes. I think that through our partnership, we have created a beautiful effect.

Jamie Whalen
Director of Social Strategy

Learn how Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social can help extend your social reach. Request your free demo today.

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Employee advocacy—the promotion of a company that an individual works at—can supercharge brand awareness, sales leads and talent acquisition on any channel.

In this article, let’s dive into why it’s time to start your strategy, and 10 tips to help you get started.

• Why is LinkedIn employee advocacy right for your social strategy?
• 10 tips to master advocacy on LinkedIn
• Tip 1: Optimize your LinkedIn page
• Tip 2: Set goals for your strategy
• Tip 3: Sort your stakeholders
• Tip 4: Curate content and create copy
• Tip 5: Show employees what’s in it for them
• Tip 6: Onboard and train employees
• Tip 7: Set an internal promotion schedule
• Tip 8: Secure executive buy-in
• Tip 9: Measure, report and readjust
• Tip 10: Practice what you preach
• LinkedIn advocacy metrics

Why is LinkedIn employee advocacy right for your social strategy?

There’s a reason 68% of marketers say their company has an advocacy strategy. It’s key to reaching untapped audiences, while getting your employees more engaged. And there’s plenty in it for your workforce, too.

With employees leaning on LinkedIn as their home to share content about their work and their own thought leadership, it’s the perfect place to kick off your program.

LinkedIn is easily the most important platform to prioritize your advocacy strategy. Here are a few ways advocacy on LinkedIn can lead to real business results.

Connect with decision makers

With over 65 million decision-makers on LinkedIn, it’s the place to connect with your next B2B buyers. And content is the key to reaching them.

From deep thought leadership to relevant memes commenting on industry insights, content is powerful. And considering most B2B buyers use social media to make purchasing decisions, interesting, persuasive content can translate into dollars.

Employee content receives about eight times more engagement than brand channel content. Imagine the impact encouraging your workforce to post could have.

Build trust with prospective talent and buyers

People trust who they know—a friend’s recommendation is the top reason people buy on social media.

Employee posts are the digital equivalent to word-of-mouth marketing. Encouraging them to become thought leaders grows brand trust by amplifying trusted voices; voices that are three times more likely to be trusted than the voice of a CEO.

Trust matters, and translates to sales—72% of consumers say they feel connected to a brand when they trust it. And consumers who feel more connected to a brand are more likely to pick them over competitors. Similarly, most high-level professionals say thought leadership is a more trusted basis for assessing a vendor than marketing materials.

Brand trust also gives you the pick of top talent. After all, what would you believe first: a post saying “my company is the best place to work” written by a CEO, or an employee?

Engage your employees

Having engaged employees doesn’t necessarily mean going into the office every day, or attending every happy hour.

An advocacy strategy helps employees engage with their business in a way that also empowers them to grow their own influence and networks. And companies with engaged employees are 20% more likely to retain them, according to LinkedIn.

And if it’s buy-in you’re worried about, consider this: most employees would post about their company if the process was made easy, which an advocacy strategy takes care of.

10 tips to master employee advocacy on LinkedIn

Now that you know the “why,” let’s get into “how” to get your LinkedIn employee advocacy strategy off the ground.

As with any strategy, the hardest part is starting. So we’ve got 10 actionable tips to kick off your strategy and master brand amplification in the process.

1: Optimize your company’s LinkedIn page

If you’re encouraging employees to post more, your company page needs to be presentable. After all, every six pieces of content shared on LinkedIn influences 13 company page views, one new follower and six views on your careers.

Our LinkedIn audit article goes much deeper into this. For now, here are a few quick wins to score right now:

• Check your branding: Your profile picture and cover image should be high quality, eye-catching and up-to-date.
• Complete your profile: This is a no-brainer—an incomplete or barren profile doesn’t inspire trust.
• Add fresh job postings: Eight people are hired every minute on LinkedIn. Post your open roles and remove outdated ones.
• Recent post shares: Keep your posts up to date. Even better, engage with employee posts to show that you care.

2: Set goals for your strategy

A brand amplification strategy has cross-team benefits. Which means you’ll need cross-team goals.

To set goals for your strategy, consider what extending your LinkedIn reach can do for each of your teams.

For your marketing team, goals might center around brand awareness, building impressions and reach, increasing followers, etc.

For recruiting, decreasing time-to-hire, increasing applications and reducing turnover are huge.

And for sales, think about increasing leads and lead conversion.

Meet with other teams to show them how your program will benefit them, and to set relevant goals.

3: Sort your stakeholders

Advocacy is a team effort, through-and-through. Collaboration is the best ticket to success.

Identify who should be looped in at the least, and who can help out at most. Here are a few stakeholders to consider:

Project owners

Even when it’s collaborative, an advocacy program will need someone to oversee it. The project owners can be responsible for overseeing or actively:

• Curating content for employees to share
• Creating copy for that content
• Sharing an internal newsletter with share-ready content
• Providing training and onboarding employees into the program
• Gathering and reporting on performance results
• And more

Identify a project owner. Then, identify go-to advocates on each team to send you data, help curate or to simply encourage their team to post ready-made content you provide.

Content supporters

Consistently providing post-ready content and copy for employees is a key part of advocacy. But it’s also time consuming. Tapping your creative teams to help can provide new leadership opportunities, while lightening the workload.

“Our three-person social team has limited time,” says Aubree Smith, Content Specialist and advocacy champion at Sprout Social. “To support advocacy, the Content Team curates our highest priority content and writes pre-approved social copy for employees to use on LinkedIn.”

This collaboration has made it possible to provide more post-ready content. The better the content variety for employees, the more empowered they are to share thought leadership.

Internal influencers

When you think of “influencers,” you probably think of accounts with a million followers. But you have influencers under your roof—your social-savvy employees.

Identify employees who are already active on social media, and those with a large LinkedIn network. Then, pitch your program to them. This can be streamlined with a tool like Sprout’s advocacy platform, which identifies employees with large follower counts.

Piloting your program to a small, interested group first will help you determine your processes before you extend it to the entire organization. And after your program has started, you can identify more all-star content sharers by looking at who shares advocacy posts the most often.

4: Curate content and create copy

From simple reshares, to lengthy “broetry,” there are many ways to post on LinkedIn—and that can be overwhelming.

“I’ve always wanted to be active on LinkedIn, but I would often get stuck on questions like: what should I post? Who am I writing for? Am I adding any value?” Sprout Growth Account Executive Chris Long tells us. With nearly 10,000 LinkedIn followers, he’s a certified Sprout influencer.

Not knowing what to post and posting anxiety block employees from posting—even when they want to. Solve this by providing employee advocacy content and pre-written post copy to make posting easier, and to ensure messaging is on-brand.

Think about what your employees would be most likely to post. Celebratory employee spotlights and industry insights are a great place to start, as employees are most likely to share employee updates and educational content. Plus, they positively impact your brand image.

In addition to providing content, you need a go-to place for employees to find it, and an easy way to regularly share new content with employees.

This is one of the best reasons to use a tool. Sprout’s advocacy platform provides a one-stop hub for you to curate LinkedIn copy and content, and for employees to find it. We even have a built-in newsletter tool to help you share new content with your teams as it’s curated.

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And all content shared from our advocacy platform looks native to LinkedIn, making your employees’ thought leadership look seamless.

As Chris puts it, “I love Employee Advocacy because it’s helped me answer those initial questions by giving me tracks to run on when I sit down to write. Big picture, it’s helped me gain confidence in my social presence.”

5: Show employees what’s in it for them

When it comes to employee benefits, monetary prizes are always enticing.

But our research shows that expanding networks and content pride are also major motivators.

Chris sums it best: “Through advocacy I’m easily building ‘muscle memory’ by posting with more consistency. And over time I’ve seen a tangible impact on lead generation, people reaching out about job openings and making genuine industry connections.”

When you introduce your program, consider what benefits you’ll offer—like swag, monetary incentives or recognition. And highlight skills employees gain through advocacy, like becoming thought leaders, expanding their networks and making a business impact.

6: Onboard and train your employees

It can’t be overstated: the key to employee participation is ease.

Whether you offer live trainings, recorded trainings, document guides or all of the above, here are some areas to provide training for:

• What not to post: This is especially important if you have a flexible advocacy program and encourage employees to source their own content. Provide guidelines for on-brand language, brand values and dos/don’ts.
• What to post: Provide guidance on the types of thought leadership, insights and resources that are appropriate to help shape employees’ own strategies.
• Social media copywriting: Provide training on using hashtags, how to write for LinkedIn, emoji best practices and best practices for writing on social.
• How to use your tools: If you’re using a robust solution like Sprout’s Employee Advocacy platform, train admins who curate and approve content, and employees who will use the advocacy tool as a hub to search for and post content directly to their channels.

7: Set an internal promotion schedule

If you’re running a promotion on social media, you know you don’t just post once.

The same goes for advocacy.

When you launch your program, promote it via email, internal newsletters, team message systems, town halls and more.

Then, keep advocacy top-of-mind with a consistent internal promotion schedule. This can include:

• A regular newsletter of ready-to-post content and copy for employees to share
• Reminders in Slack or Teams when there’s a fresh batch of advocacy content
• Leaderboard updates that celebrate employees who post the most
• Updates on the impact their advocacy posts have had on the business

8: Secure executive buy-in

It’s always a bonus to have the boss on your side to boost your program resources.

But for an advocacy program, it can add a whole new level of executive-driven content. While employee voices are a powerful trust-builder, people also want to hear from your CEO—70% of consumers feel more connected to brands with CEOs active on social.

Ask your executives if they’d be willing to create posts or content employees can blast out to their own networks.

Not all content you provide to employees needs to be linked to a blog or video. You can also provide posts for them to reshare and add their own commentary to. When you use a platform like Employee Advocacy by Sprout, you can provide executive posts they can reshare, and their posts will look native to LinkedIn.

9: Measure, report and readjust

Once your program has started, revisit your goals. Look at how they’re tracking, and whether your strategy—or your goals—need a course correction.

And evaluate the advocacy program itself—with the knowledge that it won’t be perfect immediately. Evaluate your performance, survey employees and meet with your stakeholders to determine what’s working and what isn’t.

Pro tip: Share progress with your employees. They got you to this point. Celebrate how far their posts have pushed the strategy, your company’s LinkedIn presence and your business goals.

10: Practice what you preach

Share employee advocacy content yourself!

You don’t want to be a posting poser. Get your own thought leadership off the ground, as you encourage employees to share their own.

Beyond leading by example, this will also help you get a sense of how to use any employee advocacy tools you utilize, pain points in the process and will help you develop tips.

LinkedIn employee advocacy analytics: what to measure and why

We’ve talked about the importance of measuring and reporting on your progress. And there are some stand-out metrics you can use to measure employee advocacy efforts to prove ROI.

While LinkedIn’s analytics are a strong intro to measuring advocacy, they only go so deep. We’ll show you a few ways Sprout’s advocacy platform can help.

Let’s go through a few of them and why they matter.

Metrics that tell you, “how many people are using advocacy?”

Conversion rate

Look at what percentage of your employees opt in to your advocacy program to see if you need another push. If your number is high, this is also a great metric to share with executives for more buy-in.

Find this by dividing the number of employees who showed interest in your advocacy plan, divided by the total number of employees you opted-in.

Active participation

Not everyone will participate in your program—that’s ok. But you still need to assess whether you have healthy participation.

Looking at “Employees posting from recommendations” in LinkedIn’s baked-in advocacy analytics shows you how many posts have been shared by employees.

But using a platform like Employee Advocacy by Sprout gets more specific, providing a pre-calculated percentage of employees who actively post, average shares per employee and more.

Top contributors and posts

Knowing who participates the most and which posts perform the best helps you determine who to give incentives to.

And knowing which of your curated posts get the most employee shares helps you understand what employees like to share, and what kinds of stories to curate more often.

LinkedIn shares

Shares provide another way to measure which posts employees are most interested in sharing.

This can also ladder up to your business goals and brand awareness.

Metrics that tell you, “how does advocacy support business goals?”

Advocacy post reach or impressions

Reach directly ladders up to brand awareness business goals.

In LinkedIn’s analytics, this metric tells you how many LinkedIn members interacted with advocacy posts shared by employees and their companies, location, job function, seniority and industry.

But Sprout’s advocacy platform measures potential reach by looking at the networks of each employee who shares your content, and how many new people that content may have reached.

Earned media value

Advocacy is essentially employee-driven advertising for your company. Earned media value allows you to directly compare the reach your employees’ reach to your paid efforts.

In other words, this metric can show your organization how many advertising dollars your advocacy program saved them. In Sprout’s advocacy platform, you can customize this to your needs.

Clicks and engagement

Looking at clicks and engagement is a great way to link social media advocacy efforts to driving traffic to your website, newsletter, blog and more.

And engagements can help you understand what content is successful beyond your employees, and entices new audiences to stop and interact with employee-shared content.

LinkedIn SSI

Social selling is one of the most powerful benefits LinkedIn can bring to your sales team. According to LinkedIn, salespeople who regularly share content are 45% more likely to exceed their quota.

As your sales team shares their own advocacy posts, their LinkedIn Social Selling Index will rise, laddering up to their personal lead goals and your business goals.

Strengthen your strategy with a LinkedIn employee advocacy tool

From content curation to measuring employee involvement, we’ve talked about a lot of moving parts in this article. The best way to make advocacy a cake walk for your employees, and to streamline your efforts, is with a LinkedIn employee advocacy tool.

Sprout’s Employee Advocacy platform streamlines every step of your strategy—from content curation and sharing, to measuring your efforts. Advocacy makes it easy for employees to get involved, easy for you to start and saves you crucial advertising dollars.

A tool is your ticket to creating a powerful program that has real impact—for your social and your entire organization. Find out more about how our solution will empower long-term results.

The post 10 Tips to Master LinkedIn Employee Advocacy appeared first on Sprout Social.

“The content we produce has tangible impacts on the healthcare industry. We provide educational resources to healthcare professionals that help them stay informed,” says Elida Solis, Social Media Director at Vizient.

When the COVID pandemic began, Elida and her team jumped into action. They refocused their content on the emerging needs of the healthcare community. To amplify their message, they tapped into the power of employee advocacy and tripled their impressions in the first six months.

Their strategy proved so effective they were awarded “Best Use of LinkedIn” by PR News.

In two years, Vizient turned their employees into brand advocates, gained thousands of new followers and increased their awareness and engagement with the help of Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social.

Tapping employee networks to make thought leadership accessible

Before the pandemic started, Vizient was in the early stages of developing their employee advocacy program. After lockdown measures were put in place and their work went virtual, they accelerated their advocacy project plans and launched with a small pilot group.

Employee advocacy is a new initiative for us. During the pandemic, our Member Performance team—like everyone else in the country—couldn’t travel to meet their clients. It was a critical time. They had our COVID resources, but they struggled with how to share them. They didn’t know what to say or how to share the messages broadly.

Elida Solis
Social Media Director, Vizient

Sprout’s Employee Advocacy solution provided Vizient team members with streamlined access to company content and pre-approved social messaging, which made them feel more confident sharing posts with their network.

By posting prepackaged content on LinkedIn, I have been able to reconnect with former colleagues, expand my network and engage in interesting conversations with my community. If you’re looking for an easy way to help your team stay current on relevant information and expand your brand’s influence in the market today, I would recommend Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social.

Richard Ponder
Assistant Vice President Pharmacy & Care Delivery Product Strategy, Vizient

Soon, the initial results were in and the pilot far exceeded Elida’s expectations. Within three months, Vizient saw double the engagement compared to their traditional organic social channels and gained thousands of new followers.

Vizient leadership decided it was essential to expand the program to other teams. One-by-one other departments were onboarded, and Vizient continued to see record-setting impressions.

Elida and her team were determined to make Employee Advocacy implementation as user-friendly as possible.

She says, “It was a commitment to our employees. We are giving them a tool that’s easy to use. It’s a straightforward, time-efficient way to reach their networks.”

Elida and her team provided support, including an internal advocacy resource hub that houses a product demo, instructional guides and on-demand webinars. The resources equip Vizient employees with personal branding tips to elevate their social presence and maximize the advocacy program.

Providing value to customers and team members alike

Vizient’s employee advocacy success is rooted in their commitment to providing value to their audience and team members.

For example, at the onset of the pandemic, Vizient immediately halted all ongoing content development efforts to refocus their entire strategy on COVID-related educational resources.

As Elida says, “We, as a company, made the decision to make a lot of our content available to healthcare professionals outside of our membership program. We knew it was a critical time to share timely updates in an efficient, accessible way. Social media played a key role in helping us do that.”

By putting the needs of their audience at the forefront of their strategy, Vizient saw significant performance improvement—from their engagement rate to follower count.

To maximize the effectiveness of employee advocacy, Elida knows their content must resonate with Vizient team members as well. She makes it a top priority to provide them with 10 to 15 insightful content stories they actually want to share.

She advises team members to, “Share what’s most relevant. Don’t think of it as ‘promoting content.’ Consider what your network wants to learn more about. When you share a post, customize the copy to infuse your experience and make it relevant for your audience.”

Above all, Elida and her team want the content to make a positive impact on healthcare and the lives of professionals in Vizient’s community and beyond.

Elevating the value of social and advocacy

When Vizient first started using Sprout’s platform of social management tools, they made it clear they needed to communicate social performance results with executives and other departments on a regular basis. Their most important key performance indicator (KPI) was engagement.

Using customized versions of Sprout’s performance reports, Elida and her team create monthly and quarterly reports that elevate the value of social across their company.

At Vizient, we’re really fortunate because our senior leaders get it. They really understand the importance of social. They see the results in our performance reports and they’re actively engaged and participating in our social initiatives.

Elida Solis
Social Media Director, Vizient

As Elida says, “We’re able to view the metrics and the results from the number of active employees—the amount of shares, the resulting impressions and engagements. About 85% of our employees in the system are active, and that’s a big win for us.”

But equally important is their employee satisfaction, which is the ultimate value of the program. In every internal survey they’ve conducted, their Employee Advocacy satisfaction score was 98% or above. On average, 67% of employees reported receiving greater network engagement because of the program.

Since we started using Sprout’s Employee Advocacy solution, my network has become more engaged. I get asked about my company more than ever and people comment on how active I am on LinkedIn. It makes it easier for me to interact with my connections on social. I would highly recommend Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social to other companies considering it.

Carl Taggart
Vice President, Zone Leader NE & SE US—Spend Management Services and Delivery, Vizient

Elida points out that although employee advocacy is voluntary, the Vizient team shares posts because they find it beneficial and enjoy celebrating company culture.

Sprout Social helps Vizient extend brand awareness

For Elida and her team, employee advocacy has increased brand awareness, supported recruitment and generated lead opportunities. It’s also giving Vizient employees the ability to amplify content through their own voice and perspective.

Learn how Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social can help extend your social reach. Request your free demo today.

The post How employee advocacy tripled Vizient’s social media engagements appeared first on Sprout Social.

Between quiet quitting and a 54% increase in LinkedIn members changing jobs year-over-year, it takes more than having a “cool office” to attract and retain great employees. In fact, lacking work-life balance, quality compensation and company culture are the top reasons people are leaving their jobs, according to LinkedIn.

Let’s get into what an employer branding strategy is, how it can feed recruitment and retention and why investing time into your employer brand is an investment in your bottom line.

What is employer branding?

Your employer brand is the perception and reputation of your company among current employees and job seekers. Employer branding is the set of strategies and tactics you use to actively build this brand and reputation.

In other words, an effective employer branding strategy actively answers the question, “What makes your company the best place to work?”

Building your employer brand can include a mix of creating content that promotes your company culture, brand mission and values, encouraging employee advocacy and making improvements to your hiring process.

The benefits of an employer branding strategy

Your employer brand will always exist—with or without your involvement. Taking an active part in building yours can attract new talent, retain current talent and boost your reputation.

And building reputation matters—50% of work candidates say they wouldn’t work at a company with a bad reputation. Not even for a pay raise.

Here are a few ways employer branding benefits your entire organization.

Recruit top-tier talent

A world-class employer branding strategy puts you in the enviable position of having your pick of the talent pool. According to Glassdoor, 75% of candidates are more likely to apply at a company that actively manages its employer brand.

And this is a stand-out benefit for teams feeling the hiring crunch. While 62% of marketers plan on filling 2-6 new positions, more than half also say finding experienced talent is their top challenge.

A strong employer brand helps you reach and build trust with prospective talent by showing them why it’s the best next step for their career.

Reduce turnover and boost employee satisfaction

Your employer brand starts from within—employees who feel cared for at work are 3.2x more likely to be happy at work, according to LinkedIn.

Part of employer branding is emphasizing what your employees love about your company—and fixing what they dislike. Involving employees by encouraging feedback and empowering their advocacy can help them feel heard and engaged.

In the Edelman trust barometer, 60% of respondents would choose a place to work based on their beliefs and values. Communicating your company values through employer branding helps set expectations with new employees, and attract those who share your values.

Manage your reputation and build consumer trust

Every step of an employer branding strategy involves assessing and improving your reputation.

Talking to employees about their frustrations, checking your company reviews and understanding how people talk about you on social boosts your image. And building your reputation as a great place to work among the workforce extends to your bottom line by reducing turnover and the time it takes to hire employees.

Create powerful advocates

Like we said—improving your employer brand starts from within. And this includes leveraging the people who know your business best: your employees.

Employee advocacy is all about building trust. People are 3x more likely to trust company info from an employee vs a CEO. And according to The Sprout Social Index™, 58% of consumers say they’d purchase from a company they trust over a competitor.

Empowering employees to post about their work experience is one of the best ways to build trust in your brand—with prospective talent and consumers alike.

Fuels more effective corporate communications

Maintaining a strong employer brand is a responsibility shared between corporate communications, social teams and among all employees. According to Edelman, managing brand and corporate identity is an increasingly key function for communications professionals.

An employer branding strategy paints a picture of who you are as a company, from your values as a brand to your diversity and inclusion efforts and more.

Companies that don’t show how they care for employees or put values in action will fall behind.

Steps to creating a powerful employer branding strategy

In short: To improve candidate engagement and employee advocacy while reducing turnover, employer branding is the key to success.

Here’s how to create an employer branding strategy that brings your company’s values to life to stay competitive in the market and desirable to current staff.

Step 1: Assess where you’re at

Start at the beginning: Do an audit to see where your employer brand currently stands.

Here are a few action items to consider:

Survey your employees

Ask for their honest feedback through anonymous surveys to understand what’s going well and what isn’t.

If the survey reveals problems with your corporate culture or internal communications, address them. Share your action plans with employees and show you’re willing to adapt to meet their needs. This helps build a team of loyal brand ambassadors and demonstrates you’re not just talking the talk.

Look at your reviews

Regularly checking and interacting with reviews is crucial—so much so that according to Glassdoor, 62% of job seekers say their perception of a company increases after an employer responds to a review.

Reviews are an unfiltered source of information about your company culture and brand perception. These reviews can come from external platforms, like Glassdoor, or internal resources, like exit interviews.

Dig into social media

When it comes to what people really think about your brand, social media is an insights goldmine.

Tap your social team—what common praise, complaints and FAQs do they see?

You can also take this a step further by using a social listening tool to check in on your brand health, sentiment, common keywords people use to talk about you and more.

Review recruitment and onboarding processes

The hiring and onboarding processes are the first chances you have to show a potential employee how your company operates.

Talk to current employees—especially recent hires—about how these processes went. And assess the process with your recruitment team. What can be improved? What isn’t working?

Identify content and resource gaps

Content can play a role at every step of the hiring process—from recruitment to retaining talent.

It’s also a crucial tool for building your brand’s story.

Here are a few areas to look at to determine whether more content and resources are needed:

• Social media content: Audit the type and frequency of content your team is publishing around your brand, employees and open positions.
• Website content: Do you have a career page? If so, does it need a refresh?
• Job postings: Are these as clear and as accurate as possible?
• Onboarding materials: Do these help new hires as much as possible, or do they leave gaps that new hires must scramble to figure out?
• Internal newsletters: Are you staying connected to your employees regularly? Is there value in the content you already send out?

Step 2: Develop your employee value proposition (EVP)

A strong EVP will outline rewards—both monetary and non-monetary—you offer to employees in exchange for their experience, skills and effort. Think:

• Salary
• Benefits
• Growth opportunities
• Diversity and inclusion efforts and promises
• Remote work flexibility
• Company culture and more

Your EVP is the basis for your employer brand messaging and strategy.

Remember to be honest. Your EVP must be an accurate representation of what employees can expect when working at your company. Setting employees up for certain expectations that you can’t meet will only hurt your reputation.

Step 3: Define your goals and KPIs

Setting goals and KPIs is a crucial part of assessing how your strategy is going—and to secure buy-in.

What do you want to achieve with your employer branding strategy? Set SMART goals and identify KPIs to measure success. On the recruitment side, your goals may include:

• Attracting more leads
• Implementing campaigns for priority roles, departments and more
• Desired number of new hires
• Receiving more referrals
• More engaged employees
• More qualified candidates for new positions
• A higher offer acceptance rate
• Higher employee retention over time

On the marketing or content side, your goals might include:

• More employee-shared posts
• Increase in employer branding related posts
• A boost in positive reviews on sites like Glassdoor
• Adding awareness campaigns around your employer brand to boost perception and awareness

Step 4: Identify target audience and candidates

According to LinkedIn, 40% of professionals say colleagues and work culture are top priorities when picking a new job. Before you can focus on attracting more talent, you need to first identify what kind of candidate you want to attract.

Who is your target audience? What environment are they looking for? This goes beyond simply looking at job title or sophistication level. Creating a rough picture of your ideal candidate will guide how you build your job descriptions and more.

Step 5: Determine your channels and stakeholders

Just like no one person is responsible for your brand as a whole, employer branding is a team effort.

Determine individual responsibilities and get stakeholders on board now to prevent burnout and disorganization later. Who needs to be involved? What will each person be responsible for? How will you align stakeholders with the strategy?

Think about all of your communication channels, like social media, newsletters and internal emails. Determine which channels will be key to strengthening your employer brand and will reach the right audience—internally and externally.

Step 6: Involve your C-suite

At the highest level, C-suite buy-in is crucial to making any changes to the organization that are needed to improve your employer brand.

According to a McKinsey study, 62% of employees get some purpose from work, but want to get even more. Give your C-suite an opportunity to help provide that feeling of purpose by involving them in communications. After all, who wants to work on a ship when the captain doesn’t believe in its journey or purpose?

And don’t be afraid to involve your C-suite in your strategy’s day-to-day, too. Encouraging leadership to contribute to employer brand content, build their own social media presence or be active in internal communications can show current and future employees that they’re involved.

Step 7: Create a rollout plan

A rollout plan will keep your strategy organized and consistent. It will also ensure your stakeholders know what to expect and outline how employee advocates across your company can get involved.

Here are a few items to consider using in your rollout plan:

• An editorial calendar for blog and social media content focused on your employer brand (think: employee features, your values, etc.)
• Internal emails to source employee feedback, encourage posting, etc.
• Checking and responding to reviews, or encouraging current employees to leave reviews
• Regularly encouraging employees to post about open roles—regardless of team
• Updating career websites and your website as a whole to reflect your employer proposition

Step 8: Track results

Your strategy is a process—not a destination. Once you’ve launched your strategy, tracking your results will help you mark your successes, and pivot when something isn’t successful.

Track your KPIs to determine whether you’re meeting those goals you set. You likely already have a number of tools that can help you measure your success—from social platforms themselves, to employee advocacy tools. Set a regular review cadence to analyze your performance, evaluate your strategy and determine next steps.

Give employees a voice with employee advocacy

Employee advocacy is the internal and external promotion of an organization by its staff members—like posting on social media. Your employees are some of your best brand advocates. Employee content gets up to 8x more engagement than content on brand channels, so invest in amplifying their voices.

Encouraging them to post about your company is one of the most powerful ways to build trust with and attract talent.

With Sprout’s employee advocacy solution, Edina Realty saw a 674% MoM increase in social engagements.

Employee advocacy goes deeper than simply asking staff to post. Take an active role in making posting easier by curating content for them to share—72% of engaged users on social media say they would post about their company if content was written for them.

Using an employee advocacy platform, like Sprout’s, makes curating and sharing content with your employees easy. It lightens your load too by simplifying measuring the impact of your employee content.

If you use Sprout, you can curate employee advocacy content in the same place you schedule your brand’s social media posts.

Request a demo

Employer branding demands culture shift

Your employer branding strategy should be more than just a marketing effort—it should be a way of life.

Management and leadership teams must be fully devoted to the brand in order to follow through on commitments to their employees and adjust when growth areas are revealed.

A great employer brand starts from the inside out. Take it slow, and start from within by amplifying employees’ voices internally to reach new talent externally. Find out how Sprout’s Employee Advocacy platform can supercharge your employer brand.

The post Employer branding for retention and recruitment appeared first on Sprout Social.

This year, Sprout Social expects to reach 10 million impressions from our Employee Advocacy platform alone. That’s more than all our social profiles combined.

More than two-thirds (68%) of marketers report their organization already has an advocacy program. From increasing brand awareness to building an employer brand that attracts top talent, employee advocacy helps brands achieve business goals.

However, many advocacy initiatives are informal side projects. Looking forward, building a sophisticated program requires strategic content planning and cross-functional collaboration.

In this article, we offer prescriptive recommendations for how you can curate a pipeline of content and ensure the long-term success of your advocacy efforts in 2023—and beyond.

The pillars of a content strategy for employee advocacy platform

According to Sprout’s research, brands report not having enough content as one of their greatest employee advocacy challenges. As one marketer said, “You need a lot of content to support a program. If your company’s not in a good place with content, then you’re going to struggle.”

The key is to curate the right content, not just a lot of content, that aligns with your brand’s goals and values. To fuel your employee advocacy program and build your content repository, make sure your content checks all the essential boxes:

Educational resources

Your advocacy content should be rooted in providing value to your audience. Share educational resources that will inform, engage and spark conversation. Focus on relevant topics that will help your community approach common industry challenges.

Share-worthy educational resources include in-house and third-party:

• Blog posts
• Videos
• Social media posts
• Data reports
• Templates and tools
• Case studies

Behind-the-scenes/company culture content

Employee experiences are the most compelling examples of your company’s culture. Share content that gives people an inside look at working at your company. Include blog posts or videos from the point of view of your employees. Ask your team members to take people behind-the-scenes of industry events, development trainings or volunteer opportunities.

This content will humanize your brand, resonate with your audience and give your team members a chance to cheer on their colleagues.

Executive thought leadership (owned and earned)

Strong executive communication plans are a must for managing brand identity, boosting employee morale and recruiting talent. Incorporate executive thought leadership into your advocacy strategy. Share blog articles, videos, social posts and other content created by your C-suite or leadership team.

Take your strategy to the next level by keeping track of the publications quoting and interviewing your execs. Prioritize curating earned media placements to build your brand’s thought leadership credibility.

Recruitment content

A compelling employer brand helps you convince talent that your organization is the best place for them to build their careers. Many of today’s candidates wish they knew more about what it’s really like to work at a company before joining.

That’s why employee testimonials are a powerful recruitment tool. By incorporating employee advocacy into your recruitment strategy, you can amplify your open job posts while inviting your team members to infuse their personal experiences into their social messages. Afterall, your employees’ perspectives matter three times more to prospective candidates than your CEO’s.

Candidates are also interested in industry awards and recognitions. Share award press releases, graphics and videos in your employee advocacy platform to spread the word. At Sprout, this content is our most widely-shared by employees.

Philanthropic announcements

Prospective candidates, current team members, customers and industry partners want to know that you follow-through on your corporate social responsibility commitments. While taking a stand through tactics like social activism is important, you must share what actions you’re taking to back up your words.

In your advocacy platform, share announcements related to scholarships you fund, off-site volunteer days or donations that support your philanthropic initiatives.

Product news/industry partnerships

One of the best ways to keep your team and your customers up to date on industry news and product changes is by tapping into your employee advocacy channel. Share press releases, blog posts and videos announcing product enhancements, new releases, seasonal launches and trend reports.

When announcing new partnerships with other industry leaders and brands, lean into employee advocacy to generate major buzz. For example, when Sprout announced our Salesforce partnership, 95% of our 740,000 social impressions related to the launch were a result of employees sharing content from the advocacy platform.

4 ways to ensure you never run out of content for your employee advocacy program

Gathering all the content you need for a successful advocacy program can seem overwhelming. You don’t have to do it alone. Here are a few tips on recruiting other departments to curate so you always have enough content on-hand.

1. Collaborate more closely across your marketing team

Work closely with your content, communications, product and customer marketing teams to stay in the loop on upcoming articles, important news and company updates. Have regular meetings and work in shared calendars to promote visibility.

Your content team can also help you curate. As the writers and editors behind blogs, videos, case studies and more, they can efficiently draft prepackaged social copy to accompany each curated post. Not only will their curation productivity fuel your advocacy strategy, it will help them meet their traffic goals.

2. Build relationships outside of marketing

Partnering with other teams in marketing is a great start, but to achieve an employee advocacy strategy that appeals to your entire organization, you need to go beyond marketing. Form cross-functional relationships across your business.

Ask yourself who can be your points of contact in HR, sales, engineering, R&D and operations. Work with them to surface content relevant to their team’s goals and find out what resonates with their external audience. Each team might have completely different content they want to share.

3. Source ideas across your organization

Your team members have a pulse on trending content. Use them as sources for interesting third-party articles, reports and analyses from your industry.

Sprout’s Employee Advocacy solution offers all users the option to curate content. By clicking the “Add Story” button in the upper right corner, you can suggest a content piece be added to your company’s current stories feed.

4. Find out what your employees want to share

Design an employee advocacy program your team members actually want to participate in by measuring your performance results at every stage of your program. Determine which stories are being shared the most, which topics resonate and where there are gaps in your content strategy.

Don’t be afraid to ask your employees for feedback. Consider asking:

• How would you rate our employee advocacy program?
• Has our employee advocacy program helped you expand your personal brand on social?
• What do you need help with to maximize your use of our advocacy solution?

Try our free checklist, where we’ve boiled it down to 6 easy steps for launching an employee advocacy program.

Ensure a steady stream of employee advocacy content

Employee advocacy is no longer just “nice to have.” Today’s social teams are up against constant algorithmic shifts and resource deficits that make organic social growth challenging. A sophisticated employee advocacy program is critical to gaining impressions, increasing awareness, securing leads and finding top talent.

To make the most of your advocacy program, collaborate with other departments to help you source and curate content. When you consistently supply your team with new content, the results on your business goals will speak for themselves.

Want to determine the impact of employee advocacy on your company’s bottom line? Try Sprout’s employee advocacy ROI calculator tool.

The post The complete guide to create your employee advocacy content strategy appeared first on Sprout Social.

Nearly 9 out of every 10 people take a company’s reputation into account before joining. Employer branding is now more important than ever, yet so many brands are getting it wrong on social media. 

In this masterclass, Alex Ayin and Glen Scott from multi-award winning agency Wiser explore how your brand can effectively use social media to improve employee brand, build reputation and reach new networks using employee advocacy.

You will learn:

• How to attract the best external talent to your business through social media
• How to bring your employer brand to life online
• How to utilise social listening to find great user-generated content
• How to train your employees to become your biggest advocates

The post How to Find, Secure and Keep Top Talent with Social Media – With Wiser [Webinar] appeared first on Sprout Social.